NASA NTRS1978
This paper deals with general inferences about the low-density phase of interstellar gas having temperatures well above 200,000 K (the 'coronal gas') which can be drawn from O VI absorption data for 72 stars. Attention is given to the behavior of radial velocities, possible evidence for circumstellar O VI, the space distribution of the O VI gas, crowding of normal interstellar gas, and temperature distributions for the coronal gas. A model is adopted in which the coronal gas is contained within randomly distributed and nonoverlapping parcels, each with a size, pressure, and internal temperature distribution that do not vary markedly from one unit to the next. It is shown that the one-dimensional velocity dispersion for O VI regions (26 km/s) is substantially higher than the value for ordinary interstellar clouds (6.4 km/s).