Basic galaxy data for spiral-rich group members

In a previous paper (Savage et al., 2014ApJS..212....8S), these far-UV spectra were used to discover 14 "warm" (T >= 10^5^ K) absorbers using a combination of broad Ly{alpha} and broad O VI absorptions. A reanalysis of a few of this new class of absorbers using slightly relaxed fitting criteria finds as many as 20 warm absorbers could be present in this sample.

A shallow, wide spectroscopic galaxy redshift survey has been conducted around these sight lines to investigate the warm absorber environment, which is found to be spiral-rich groups or cluster outskirts with radial velocity dispersions {sigma}=250-750 km/s. While 2{sigma} evidence is presented favoring the hypothesis that these absorptions are associated with the galaxy groups and not with the individual, nearest galaxies, this evidence has considerable systematic uncertainties and is based on a small sample size so it is not entirely conclusive.