Interstellar oxygen along the line of sight of Cygnus X-2
I. Psaradaki, E. Costantini, M. Mehdipour, D. Rogantini, C. P. de, Vries, F. de Groot, H. Mutschke, S. Trasobares, L.B.F.M. Waters, S.T. Zeegers

TL;DR
This study investigates interstellar oxygen along the line of sight to Cygnus X-2 using high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy and laboratory dust measurements, revealing solar oxygen abundances and the potential presence of silicate dust.
Contribution
It combines laboratory measurements of dust samples with X-ray spectral analysis to characterize interstellar oxygen and dust properties in a novel way.
Findings
Oxygen has solar abundance along the line of sight.
Silicates provide an acceptable fit to dust features.
Challenges remain in precisely determining dust chemistry.
Abstract
Interstellar dust permeates our Galaxy and plays an important role in many physical processes in the diffuse and dense regions of the interstellar medium. High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy, coupled with modelling based on laboratory dust measurements, provides a unique probe to investigate the interstellar dust properties along our line of sight towards Galactic X-ray sources. Here, we focus on the oxygen content of the interstellar medium through its absorption features in the X-ray spectra. To model the dust features, we perform a laboratory experiment using the electron microscope facility located at the University of Cadiz in Spain, where we acquire new laboratory data in the oxygen K-edge. We study 18 dust samples of silicates and oxides with different chemical compositions. The laboratory measurements are adopted for our astronomical data analysis. We carry out a case study on…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
