Continued Investigation of Low Intensity Emission Lines from the Interstellar Medium

雷诺兹博士将继续研究星际介质中热电离气体的性质和起源。这种气体是一种主要的、新发现的介质成分，但我们对它知之甚少。要准确地了解星际物质及其过程，就需要像研究介质的其他主要成分一样，对这种电离成分进行彻底的研究。这项工作将集中于观察电离区域的结构和运动学，电离气体区域和银河系高纬度中性氢区域之间的关系，以及气体内部的电离条件。观测将由威斯康星大学的大孔径法布里-珀罗光谱仪进行，该光谱仪使探测和研究这种气体发出的微弱光谱线成为可能，并因此成为有关星际介质最后一个主要成分性质的主要信息来源。仪器的发展将大大提高观测能力，并将有助于进一步开辟这一星际介质天文学的新领域。

Dr. Reynolds will continue his investigation into the nature and origin of warm ionized gas in the interstellar medium. This gas is a major, newly identified component of the medium about which very little is known. An accurate understanding of interstellar matter and processes is going to require as thorough an investigation of this ionized component as of the other principal components of the medium. The work will concentrate on observations of the structure and kinematics of the ionized regions, the relationship between the regions of ionized gas and regions of neutral hydrogen at high Galactic latitude, and the ionization conditions within the gas. The observations will be carried out with the large aperture Fabry-Perot spectrometer at the University of Wisconsin, which has made possible the detection and study of the faint optical line emission from this gas, and which as a result has become the primary source of information about the properties of this last major component of the interstellar medium. Developments in the instrumentation will provide significant improvements in the observational capabilities and will help to open up further this new area of interstellar medium astronomy.