Neutral gas in the Milky Way halo

We made use of the ESO data archive and retrieved all publically available absorption-line data for low- and high-redshift QSOs observed with the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the VLT. This enormous data archive (Spectral Quasar Absorption Database, SQUAD; PI: M.T. Murphy) provides high-quality spectral data for ~400 quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN).

Most of these spectra were taken in the UVES standard configuration using the 1" slit, providing a spectral resolution of R~45000 (corresponding to a velocity resolution of ~6.6km/sFWHM). The spectral coverage as well as the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) varies substantially among the spectra, reflecting the various scientific goals of the original proposals. For several of the sight lines we performed deep (brightness temperature limit, Tb_lim_~30mK, angular resolution: 9' FWHM, spectral resolution: 0.5km/s FWHM) follow-up radio observations using the Effelsberg 100-m telescope to search for HI emission.