(Abridged) This paper presents an absorption-line study of the multiphase circumgalactic medium (CGM) based on observations of Lya, CII, CIV, SiII, SiIII, and SiIV absorption transitions in the vicinities of 195 galaxies at redshift z<0.176. The galaxy sample is established based on a cross-comparison between public galaxy and QSO survey data and is characterized by a median redshift of <z>=0.041, a median projected distance of <d>=362 kpc to the sightline of the background QSO, and a median stellar mass of log(M_star/M_sun) = 9.7 \pm 1.1. Comparing the absorber features identified in the QSO apectra with known galaxy properties has led to strong constraints for the CGM absorption properties at z<~0.176. First, abundant hydrogen gas is observed out to d~500 kpc, well beyond the dark matter halo radius Rh of individual galaxies, with a mean covering fraction of ~60%. In contrast, no heavy elements are detected at d>~0.7 Rh from either low-mass dwarfs or high-mass galaxies. The lack of detected heavy elements in low- and high-ionization states suggests that either there exists a chemical enrichment edge at d~0.7 Rh or gaseous clumps giving rise to the observed absorption lines cannot survive at these large distances. Considering all galaxies at d>Rh leads to a strict upper limit for the covering fraction of heavy elements of ~3% (at a 95% confidence level) over d=(1-9) Rh. At d<Rh, differential covering fraction between low- and high-ionization gas is observed, suggesting that the CGM becomes progressively more ionized from d<0.3 Rh to larger distances. Comparing CGM absorption observations at low and high redshifts shows that at a fixed-fraction of Rh the CGM exhibits stronger mean absorption at z=2.2 than at z~0. We discuss possible pseudo-evolution of the CGM as a result of misrepresentation of halo radius.
The Circumgalactic Medium (CGM) of late-type galaxies is characterized using UV spectroscopy of 11 targeted QSO/galaxy pairs at z < 0.02 with the Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and ~60 serendipitous absorber/galaxy pairs at z < 0.2 with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. CGM warm cloud properties are derived, including volume filling factors of 3-5%, cloud sizes of 0.1-30 kpc, masses of 10-1e8 solar masses and metallicities of 0.1-1 times solar. Almost all warm CGM clouds within 0.5 virial radii are metal-bearing and many have velocities consistent with being bound, …
We analyze the physical conditions of the cool, photoionized (T $\sim 10^4$ K) circumgalactic medium (CGM) using the COS-Halos suite of gas column density measurements for 44 gaseous halos within 160 kpc of $L \sim L^*$ galaxies at $z \sim 0.2$. These data are well described by simple photoionization models, with the gas highly ionized (n$_{\rm HII}$/n$_{\rm H} \gtrsim 99\%$) by the extragalactic ultraviolet background (EUVB). Scaling by estimates for the virial radius, R$_{\rm vir}$, we show that the ionization state (tracked by the dimensionless ionization parameter, U) increases with distan…
We present results from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS), a unique spectroscopic survey designed to explore the connection between galaxies and intergalactic baryons. The KBSS is optimized for the redshift range z ~ 2-3, combining S/N ~ 100 Keck/HIRES spectra of 15 hyperluminous QSOs with densely sampled galaxy redshift surveys surrounding each QSO sightline. We perform Voigt profile decomposition of all 6000 HI absorbers within the full Lya forest in the QSO spectra. Here we present the distribution, column density, kinematics, and absorber line widths of HI surrounding 886 star-form…
We report new observations of circumgalactic gas in the halos of early type galaxies obtained by the COS-Halos Survey with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. We find that detections of HI surrounding early type galaxies are typically as common and strong as around star-forming galaxies, implying that the total mass of circumgalactic material is comparable in the two populations. For early type galaxies, the covering fraction for HI absorption above 10^16 cm^2 is ~40-50% within ~150 kpc. Line widths and kinematics of the detected material show it to be cold (T ~…
We study the cross-correlation of distribution of galaxies, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) and X-ray power spectra of galaxies from current and upcoming surveys and show these to be excellent probes of the nature, i.e. extent, evolution and energetics, of the circumgalactic medium (CGM). The SZ-galaxy cross-power spectrum, especially at large multipoles, depends on the steepness of the pressure profile of the CGM. This property of the SZ signal can, thus, be used to constrain the pressure profile of the CGM. The X-ray cross power spectrum also has a similar shape. However, it is much more sensiti…
We present the first results from our NASA Keck Observatory Database of Ionized Absorbers toward Quasars (KODIAQ) survey which aims to characterize the properties of the highly ionized gas of high redshift galaxies and their circumgalactic medium (CGM) at 2<z<4. We select absorbers optically thick at the Lyman limit (τLL > 1, log N(HI) > 17.3) as probes of these galaxies and their CGM where both transitions of the O VI doublet have little contamination from the Ly α, β forests. We found 20 absorbers that satisfy these rules: 7 Lyman limit systems (LLSs), 8 super-LLSs (SLLSs) and 5 damped Lyα (…
The baryon content around local galaxies is observed to be much less than is needed in Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Simulations indicate that a significant fraction of these "missing baryons" may be stored in a hot tenuous circum-galactic medium (CGM) around massive galaxies extending to or even beyond the virial radius of their dark matter halos. Previous observations in X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signal claimed that $\sim(1-50)\%$ of the expected baryons are stored in a hot CGM within the virial radius. The large scatter is mainly caused by the very uncertain extrapolation of the hot gas…
The cycle of baryons through the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is important to understand in the context of galaxy formation and evolution. In this study we forecast constraints on the feedback processes heating the CGM with current and future Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) observations. To constrain these processes, we use a suite of cosmological simulations, the Cosmology and Astrophysics with MachinE Learning Simulations (CAMELS), that varies four different feedback parameters of two previously existing hydrodynamical simulations, IllustrisTNG and SIMBA. We capture the dependencies of SZ radial profi…
We survey the highly ionized circumgalactic media (CGM) of 29 blindly selected galaxies at 0.49 < z_(gal) < 1.44 based on high-S/N ultraviolet spectra of z > 1 QSOs and the galaxy database from the COS Absorption Survey of Baryon Harbors (CASBaH). We detect the Ne VIII doublet in nine of the galaxies, and for gas with N(Ne VIII) > 10^13.3 cm^-2 (> 10^13.5 cm^-2), we derive a Ne VIII covering fraction f_c = 75 +15/-25% (44 +22/-20%) within impact parameter (rho) < 200 kpc of M_* = 10^(9.5-11.5) Msol galaxies and f_c = 70 +16/-22% (f_c = 42 +20/-17%) within rho < 1.5 virial radii. We estimate th…
Annihilating dark matter (DM) models offer promising avenues for future DM detection, in particular via modification of astrophysical signals. However when modelling such potential signals at high redshift the emergence of both dark matter and baryonic structure, as well as the complexities of the energy transfer process, need to be taken into account. In the following paper we present a detailed energy deposition code and use this to examine the energy transfer efficiency of annihilating dark matter at high redshift, including the effects on baryonic structure. We employ the PYTHIA code to mo…
We examine how HI and metal absorption lines within low-redshift galaxy halos trace the dynamical state of circumgalactic gas, using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that include a well-vetted heuristic model for galactic outflows. We categorize inflowing, outflowing, and ambient gas based on its history and fate as tracked in our simulation. Following our earlier work showing that the ionisation level of absorbers was a primary factor in determining the physical conditions of absorbing gas, we show here that it is also a governing factor for its dynamical state. Low-ionisation metal abso…
Low ionization metal absorption due to OI has been identified as an important probe of the physical state of the inter-/circumgalactic medium at the tail-end of reionization. We use here high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations to interpret the incidence rate of OI absorbers at z~6 as observed by Becker et al. (2011). We infer weak OI absorbers (EW > 0.1 A) to have typical HI column densities in the range of sub-DLAs, densities of 80 times the mean baryonic density and metallicities of about 1/500 th solar. This is similar to the metallicity inferred at similar overdensities at z~3, suggesting…
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) around galaxies is believed to record various forms of galaxy feedback and contain a significant portion of the "missing baryons" of individual dark matter halos. However, clear observational evidence for the existence of the hot CGM is still absent. We use intervening galaxies along 12 background AGNs as tracers to search for X-ray absorption lines produced in the corresponding CGM. Stacking Chandra grating observations with respect to galaxy groups and different luminosities of these intervening galaxies, we obtain spectra with signal-to-noise ratios of 46-72 …
Detection of thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect in the circumgalactic medium of low-mass galaxies -- a surprising pattern in self-similarity and baryon sufficiency
Davies et al. (2019) established that for L^* galaxies the fraction of baryons in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is inversely correlated with the mass of their central supermassive black holes (BHs) in the EAGLE hydrodynamic simulation. The interpretation is that, over time, a more massive BH has provided more energy to transport baryons beyond the virial radius, which additionally reduces gas accretion and star formation. We continue this research by focusing on the relationship between the 1) BH masses, 2) physical and observational properties of the CGM, and 3) galaxy colours for Milky Way…
In this white paper, we summarize current observations of the baryon census at low redshift (Shull, Smith, & Danforth 2012). Measurements of Lya, O-VI, and broad Lya absorbers, together with more careful corrections for metallicity and ionization fraction, can now account for approximately 60% of the baryons in the intergalactic medium (IGM). An additional 5 +/- 3% may reside in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), 7 +/- 2% in galaxies, and 4 +/- 1.5% in clusters. This still leaves a substantial fraction, 29 +/- 13%, unaccounted for. We suggest improvements in measuring the baryons in major compon…
Using Suzaku data, we had found a $3.4σ$ evidence for the X-ray emitting warm-hot circumgalactic medium (CGM) in the L$^\star$ galaxy NGC 3221. Here we present XMM-Newton data and outline an efficient, rigorous and well-defined method to extract the faint CGM signal. We confirm the CGM detection at $4σ$ significance within 30-200 kpc of the galaxy. We claim with $99.62\%$ confidence that the CGM is extended beyond $150$ kpc. The average temperature of the CGM is 2.0$^{+0.2}_{-0.3} \times 10^6$ K, but it is not isothermal. We find suggestive evidence for a declining temperature gradient out to …
We present the KODIAQ-Z survey aimed to characterize the cool, photoionized gas at 2.2<z<3.6 in 202 HI-selected absorbers with 14.6<log N(HI)<20, i.e., the gaseous interface between galaxies and the intergalactic medium (IGM). We find that the 14.6<log N(HI)<20 gas at 2.2<z<3.6 can be metal-rich gas (-1.6<[X/H]<-0.2) as seen in damped Ly-alpha absorbers (DLAs); it can also be very metal-poor ([X/H]<-2.4) or even pristine gas ([X/H]<-3.8) not observed in DLAs, but commonly observed in the IGM. For 16<log N(HI)<20 absorbers, the frequency of pristine absorbers is about 1%-10%, while for 14.6<log…
Hydrostatic equilibrium (HSE), where the thermal pressure gradient balances the force of gravity, is tested across a range of simulated EAGLE haloes from Milky Way L* haloes (M_200~10^12 Msol) to cluster scales. Clusters (M_200>=10^14 Msol) reproduce previous results with thermal pressure responsible for ~90% of the support against gravity, but this fraction drops for group-sized haloes (M_200~10^13 Msol) and is even lower (40-70%) for L* haloes between 0.1-0.3 R_200. Energy from feedback grows relative to the binding energy of a halo toward lower mass resulting in greater deviations from HSE.…
We present composite spectra constructed from a sample of 242,150 Lyman-alpha (Lya) forest absorbers at redshifts 2.4<z<3.1 identified in quasar spectra from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) as part of Data Release 9 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. We select forest absorbers by their flux in bins 138 km/s wide (approximately the size of the BOSS resolution element). We split these absorbers into five samples spanning the range of flux -0.05 < F<0.45. Tests on a smaller sample of high-resolution spectra show that our three strongest absorption bins would probe circumgalac…
We explore the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of two simulated star-forming galaxies with luminosities L ~ 0.1 and 1 L* generated using the smooth particle hydrodynamic code GASOLINE. These simulations are part of the Making Galaxies In a Cosmological Context (MAGICC) program in which the stellar feedback is tuned to match the stellar mass-halo mass relationship. For comparison, each galaxy was also simulated using a 'lower feedback' (LF) model which has strength comparable to other implementations in the literature. The 'MAGICC feedback' (MF) model has a higher incidence of massive stars and an …
We present new results on the kinematics, thermal and ionization state, and spatial distribution of metal-enriched gas in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of massive galaxies at redshift 3, using the "Eris" suite of cosmological "zoom-in" simulations. The reference run adopts a blastwave scheme for supernova feedback that produces galactic outflows, a star formation recipe based on a high gas density threshold, metal-dependent radiative cooling, and a model for the diffusion of metals and thermal energy. Synthetic spectra through the multiphase CGM produce interstellar absorption line strengths…
We present a study exploring the impact of a starburst on the properties of the surrounding circum-galactic medium (CGM): gas located beyond the galaxy's stellar body and extending out to the virial radius (200 kpc). We obtained ultraviolet spectroscopic data from the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph (COS) probing the CGM of 20 low-redshift foreground galaxies using background QSOs. Our sample consists of starburst and control galaxies. The latter comprises normal star-forming and passive galaxies with similar stellar masses and impact parameters as the starbursts. We used optical spectra from the S…
For low-redshift cosmology and galaxy formation rates, it is important to account for all the baryons synthesized in the Big Bang. Although galaxies and clusters contain 10% of the baryons, many more reside in the photoionized Lyman-alpha forest and shocked-heated warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) at T = 10^5 to 10^7 K. Current tracers of WHIM at 10^5 to 10^6 K include the O VI 1032, 1038 absorption lines, together with broad Lyman-alpha absorbers (BLAs) and EUV/X-ray absorption lines from Ne VIII, O VII, and O VIII. We improve the O VI baryon surveys with corrections for oxygen metallicity…
We use the TNG50 simulation of the IllustrisTNG project to study cold, dense clouds of gas in the circumgalactic media (CGM) of Milky Way-like galaxies. We find that their CGM is typically filled with of order one hundred (thousand) reasonably (marginally) resolved clouds, possible analogs of high-velocity clouds (HVCs). There is a large variation in cloud abundance from galaxy to galaxy, and the physical properties of clouds that we explore -- mass, size, metallicity, pressure, and kinematics -- are also diverse. We quantify the distributions of cloud properties and cloud-background contrasts…
We use a particle tracking analysis to study the origins of the circumgalactic medium (CGM), separating it into (1) accretion from the intergalactic medium (IGM), (2) wind from the central galaxy, and (3) gas ejected from other galaxies. Our sample consists of 21 FIRE-2 simulations, spanning the halo mass range log(Mh/Msun) ~ 10-12 , and we focus on z=0.25 and z=2. Owing to strong stellar feedback, only ~L* halos retain a baryon mass >~50% of their cosmic budget. Metals are more efficiently retained by halos, with a retention fraction >~50%. Across all masses and redshifts analyzed >~60% of th…
The hot ($>10^6$ K) phase of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) contains a large fraction of baryons in galaxies. It also retains signatures of the processes that shaped the galaxies, such as feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and supernovae, and offers a uniquely powerful way to constrain theoretical models of feedback. It is, however, notoriously difficult to detect. By stacking 2643 optically selected galaxies in the eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS), we present spatially resolved properties of the extended CGM in both star-forming and quiescent galaxies spanning an order …
We simulate stacked observations of nearby hot X-ray coronae associated with galaxies in the EAGLE and Illustris-TNG hydrodynamic simulations. A forward modeling pipeline is developed to predict 4-year eROSITA observations and stacked image analysis, including the effects of instrumental and astrophysical backgrounds. We propose an experiment to stack z~0.01 galaxies separated by specific star-formation rate (sSFR) to examine how the hot (T>=10^6 K) circumgalactic medium (CGM) differs for high- and low-sSFR galaxies. The simulations indicate that the hot CGM of low-mass (M_*~10^{10.5} Msol), h…
We use the EAGLE (Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments) cosmological simulation to study the distribution of baryons, and far-ultraviolet (O VI), extreme-ultraviolet (Ne VIII) and X-ray (O VII, O VIII, Ne IX, and Fe XVII) line absorbers, around galaxies and haloes of mass $\mathrm{M}_{200c}=10^{11}$-$10^{14.5}\,\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ at redshift 0.1. EAGLE predicts that the circumgalactic medium (CGM) contains more metals than the interstellar medium across halo masses. The ions we study here trace the warm-hot, volume-filling phase of the CGM, but are biased towards temperat…
Large OVI columns are observed around star-forming, low-redshift ~L* galaxies, with a dependence on impact parameter indicating that most O^5+ particles reside beyond half the halo virial radius (>~100 kpc). In order to constrain the nature of the gas traced by OVI, we analyze additional observables of the outer halo, namely HI to OVI column ratios of 1-10, an absence of low-ion absorption, a mean differential extinction of E(B-V)~10^-3, and a linear relation between OVI column and velocity width. We contrast these observations with two physical scenarios: (1) OVI traces high-pressure (~30 cm^…
We present basic data and modeling for a survey of the cool, photo-ionized Circum-Galactic Medium (CGM) of low-redshift galaxies using far-UV QSO absorption line probes. This survey consists of "targeted" and "serendipitous" CGM subsamples, originally described in Stocke et al. (2013, Paper 1). The targeted subsample probes low-luminosity, late-type galaxies at $z<0.02$ with small impact parameters ($\langleρ\rangle = 71$ kpc), and the serendipitous subsample probes higher luminosity galaxies at $z\lesssim0.2$ with larger impact parameters ($\langleρ\rangle = 222$ kpc). HST and FUSE UV spectro…
The dispersion measures (DM) of fast radio bursts (FRBs) encode the integrated electron density along the line-of-sight, which is typically dominated by the intergalactic medium (IGM) contribution in the case of extragalactic FRBs. In this paper, we show that incorporating wide-field spectroscopic galaxy survey data in the foreground of localized FRBs can significantly improve constraints on the partition of diffuse cosmic baryons. Using mock DMs and realistic lightcone galaxy catalogs derived from the Millennium simulation, we define spectroscopic surveys that can be carried out with 4m and 8…
Resolving circumgalactic gas flows around a z$\approx$3.6 quasar using MUSE and ALMA
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca(米兰比可卡大学);DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark(丹麦技术大学空间中心);Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)(宇宙黎明中心);INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste(意大利国家天体物理研究所的里雅斯特天文台);Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen(格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所);INAF–Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio(意大利国家天体物理研究所天文与空间科学观测站);IUCAA(印度天体物理学与宇宙学大学研究中心);Leiden Observatory, Leiden University(莱顿大学莱顿天文台)
(Abridged) We study metal absorption around 854 $z\approx$2.4 star-forming galaxies taken from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS). The galaxies examined in this work lie in the fields of 15 hyper-luminous background QSOs, with galaxy impact parameters ranging from 35 proper kpc (pkpc) to 2 proper Mpc (pMpc). Using the pixel optical depth technique, we present the first galaxy-centred 2-D maps of the median absorption by OVI, NV, CIV, CIII, and SIV, as well as updated results for HI. At small galactocentric radii we detect a strong enhancement of the absorption relative to randomly locat…
Most of the baryons from galaxies have been "missing" and several studies have attempted to map the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of galaxies in their quest. Recent studies with the Hubble Space Telescope have shown that many galaxies contain a large reservoir of ionized gas with temperatures of about 10^5 K. Here we report on X-ray observations made with the Chandra X-ray Observatory probing an even hotter phase of the CGM of our Milky Way at about 10^6 K. We show that this phase of the CGM is massive, extending over a large region around the Milky Way, with a radius of over 100 kpc. The mass c…
We analyze the sources of free electrons that produce the large dispersion measures, DM $\approx 300-1600$ (in units cm$^{-3}$ pc), observed toward fast radio bursts (FRBs). Individual galaxies typically produce DM $\sim 25-60$ cm$^{-3}$ pc from ionized gas in their disk, disk-halo interface, and circumgalactic medium. Toward an FRB source at redshift $z$, a homogeneous IGM containing a fraction $f_{\rm IGM}$ of cosmological baryons will produce DM $= (935~{\rm cm}^{-3}~{\rm pc}) f_{\rm IGM} \, h_{70}^{-1} I(z)$, where $I(z) = (2/3 Ω_m)[ \{ Ω_m(1+z)^3 + Ω_Λ \}^{1/2} - 1 ]$. A structured IGM of…
Probing the Baryon Distribution with Fast Radio Bursts
The University of Sydney(悉尼大学);University of Cape Town(开普敦大学);African Institute for Mathematical Sciences(非洲数学科学研究所);Curtin University(科廷大学);Swinburne University of Technology(斯威本科技大学);ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav)(引力波发现卓越研究中心 (OzGrav));Stanford University(斯坦福大学);Trinity College Dublin(都柏林三一学院);Stellenbosch University(斯坦陵布什大学);Aix-Marseille University(艾克斯-马赛大学);Australian National University(澳大利亚国立大学);Indian Institute of Technology, Indore(印度理工学院印多尔分校);Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院);University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院大学)
The problem of missing baryons in the local universe remains an open question. One propose alternative is that at low redshift missing baryons are in the form of the Warm Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM). In order to test this idea, we present a detailed analysis of X-ray high-resolution spectra of six extragalactic sources, Mrk 421, 1ES 1028+511, 1ES 1553+113, H2356-309, PKS 0558-504 and PG 1116+215, obtained with the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer to search for signals of WHIM and/or circumgalactic medium (CGM) X-ray absorbing gas. We fit the X-ray absorption with the IONeq model,…
We present measurements of the radial gravitational acceleration around isolated galaxies, comparing the expected gravitational acceleration given the baryonic matter with the observed gravitational acceleration, using weak lensing measurements from the fourth data release of the Kilo-Degree Survey. These measurements extend the radial acceleration relation (RAR) by 2 decades into the low-acceleration regime beyond the outskirts of the observable galaxy. We compare our RAR measurements to the predictions of two modified gravity (MG) theories: MOND and Verlinde's emergent gravity. We find that …
In this thesis, we systematically analyze the properties of intergalactic \Ovi absorbing gas structures at high redshift using optical spectra with intermediate ($\sim 6.6$ \kms FWHM) and high ($\sim 4.0$ \kms FWHM) resolution, obtained with UVES/VLT. We complement our analysis with synthetic spectra obtained from extensive cosmological simulations that are part of the OWLS project (Schaye et al. 2010). Our main conclusions are: 1) Both the observations and simulations imply that \Ovi absorbers at high redshift arise in structures spanning a broad range of scales and different physical conditi…
The assembly and fate of a giant disc galaxy in a protocluster at $z = 3$
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen(格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所);Leiden Observatory, Leiden University(莱顿大学莱登天文台);Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia "Augusto Righi", Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna(博洛尼亚大学物理与天文学系);INAF-Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna(博洛尼亚空间科学与天体物理观测站);INFN-Sezione di Bologna(博洛尼亚意大利国家核物理研究所)
Recent studies have demonstrated that the emission from the circumgalactic medium of the Milky Way displays a relatively high degree of patchiness on angular scales of $\sim10^\circ$. Taking advantage of the Spectrum Roentgen Gamma eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS), we aim to constrain any variation in the soft X-ray surface brightness on scales going from sub-degree to a hundred square degrees. We observe modulations of about $60$% on scales of several degrees and decreasing for higher energies. The observed patchiness is stable over a period of two years, therefore excluding that…