HISS, a new tool for H I stacking: application to NIBLES spectra [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00517


H I stacking has proven to be a highly effective tool to statistically analyse average H I properties for samples of galaxies which may or may not be directly detected. With the plethora of H I data expected from the various upcoming H I surveys with the SKA Precursor and Pathfinder telescopes, it will be helpful to standardize the way in which stacking analyses are conducted. In this work we present a new PYTHON-based package, HISS, designed to stack H I (emission and absorption) spectra in a consistent and reliable manner. As an example, we use HISS to study the H I content in various galaxy sub-samples from the NIBLES survey of SDSS galaxies which were selected to represent their entire range in total stellar mass without a prior colour selection. This allowed us to compare the galaxy colour to average H I content in both detected and non-detected galaxies. Our sample, with a stellar mass range of 10^8 \lt {{ M}}\star (M\odot) \lt 10^{12}, has enabled us to probe the H I-to-stellar mass gas fraction relationship more than half an order of magnitude lower than in previous stacking studies.

Read this paper on arXiv…

J. Healy, S. Blyth, E. Elson, et. al.
Fri, 2 Aug 19
57/61

Comments: 40 pages (of which 23 pages are appendices), 28 figures, 5 tables, published in MNRAS