Properties of Galactic cirrus clouds observed by BOOMERanG

TL;DR

This study characterizes galactic cirrus clouds using multi-wavelength data from BOOMERanG and other instruments, revealing their physical properties such as temperature and emissivity, and demonstrating a method applicable to future missions.

Contribution

Developed a technique to identify and analyze cirrus clouds across multiple wavelengths, linking physical properties like temperature and spectral index, applicable to upcoming space missions.

Findings

Detected eight cirrus emission patches at 345 GHz.

Found a correlation between dust temperature and spectral index.

Measured dust temperatures between 7 and 20 K.

Abstract

The physical properties of galactic cirrus emission are not well characterized. BOOMERanG is a balloon-borne experiment designed to study the cosmic microwave background at high angular resolution in the millimeter range. The BOOMERanG 245 and 345GHz channels are sensitive to interstellar signals, in a spectral range intermediate between FIR and microwave frequencies. We look for physical characteristics of cirrus structures in a region at high galactic latitudes (b~-40{\deg}) where BOOMERanG performed its deepest integration, combining the BOOMERanG data with other available datasets at different wavelengths. We have detected eight emission patches in the 345 GHz map, consistent with cirrus dust in the Infrared Astronomical Satellite maps. The analysis technique we have developed allows to identify the location and the shape of cirrus clouds, and to extract the flux from observations with different instruments at different wavelengths and angular resolutions. We study the integrated flux emitted from these cirrus clouds using data from Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), DIRBE, BOOMERanG and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in the frequency range 23-3000 GHz (13 mm 100 micron wavelength). We fit the measured spectral energy distributions with a combination of a grey body and a power-law spectra considering two models for the thermal emission. The temperature of the thermal dust component varies in the 7 - 20 K range and its emissivity spectral index is in the 1 - 5 range. We identified a physical relation between temperature and spectral index as had been proposed in previous works. This technique can be proficiently used for the forthcoming Planck and Herschel missions data.