The Milky Way and its gas: Cold fountains and accretion

Abstract

The Milky Way is acquiring gas from infalling high-velocity clouds. The material enters a disk-halo interface that in many places is populated with HI clouds that have been ejected from the disk through processes linked to star formation. The Smith Cloud is an extraordinary example of a high-velocity cloud that is bringing > 106 Mẫ‰ of relatively low metallicity gas into the Milky Way. It may be part of a larger stream, components of which are now passing through the disk. © Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2012.