The Wisconsin H Mapper (WHAM): A Brief Review of Performance Characteristics and Early Scientific Results
R. J. Reynolds , S. L. Tufte , L. M. Haffner , K. Jaehnig , J. W. Percival, PASA, 15 (1), 14
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The Wisconsin H Mapper (WHAM): A Brief Review of Performance Characteristics and Early Scientific Results

R. J. Reynolds
S. L. Tufte
L. M. Haffner
K. Jaehnig
J. W. Percival

Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, 475 N. Charter St., Madison, WI 53706, USA
Space Astronomy Laboratory, University of Wisconsin, 1150 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706, USA

Abstract:

The Wisconsin H Mapper (WHAM) is a recently completed facility for the detection and study of faint optical emission lines from diffuse ionized gas in the disk and halo of the Galaxy. WHAM consists of a 15 cm diameter Fabry-Perot spectrometer coupled to a 0.6 m ``telescope'', which provide a one degree diameter beam on the sky and produce a 12 km s resolution spectrum within a 200 km s spectral window. This facility is now located at Kitt Peak in Arizona and operated remotely from Madison, Wisconsin, 2400 km distant. Early results include a velocity resolved H map of a 70 region of the sky near the Galactic anticenter, the first detections of H emission from the M I and A high velocity clouds, and the first detections of [O I] 6300 and other faint ``diagnostic'' lines from the warm ionized medium. Through the Summer of 1998, WHAM will be devoted almost exclusively to a survey of the northern sky, which will provide maps of the distribution and kinematics of the diffuse H II through the optical H line in a manner that is analogous to earlier sky surveys of the H I made through the 21 cm line.

Keywords: ISM: general -- ISM: H II regions -- ISM: structure -- instrumentation: spectrographs

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