A Study in Blue: The Baryon Content of Isolated Low Mass Galaxies

Understand

We study the baryon content of low mass galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR8), focusing on galaxies in isolated environments where the complicating physics of galaxy-galaxy interactions are minimized.

• We measure neutral hydrogen (HI) gas masses and line-widths for 148 isolated galaxies with stellar mass between $10^7$ and $10^{9.5} M_{\odot}$.
• We compare isolated low mass galaxies to more massive galaxies and galaxies in denser environments by remeasuring HI emission lines from the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey 40% data release.
• All isolated low mass galaxies either have large atomic gas fractions or large atomic gas fractions cannot be ruled out via their upper limits.