Absorption-Line Systems and Galaxies in Front of the Second-brightest Quasar, PHL 1811

The extraordinarily bright quasar PHL 1811 at a redshift z = 0.192 providesan attractive opportunity to use ultraviolet absorption-line spectroscopy tostudy the properties of gas systems in the local universe. An R = 20,000 far-UVspectrum recorded by FUSE revealed 7 extragalactic absorption systems, one ofwhich is a Lyman limit system at z = 0.08093 accompanied by three systemshaving redshifts which differ from it by less than 0.008. The abundance of Owith respect to Fe in the Lyman limit system is not much different from thesolar abundance ratio. Supplementary low resolution spectra recorded by STIS(on HST) at longer wavelengths helped to substantiate our identifications ofsystems in the FUSE spectrum and suggested the presence of an additional 4systems that could be detected only through their Ly-alpha features.Spectroscopy at visible wavelengths of 7 galaxies within approximately 2' ofPHL 1811 indicated that 2 of them are near the redshift of the quasar and 4have redshifts within 850 km/s of the extragalactic absorption systems. TheLyman limit system is likely associated with an L* galaxy lying 23" from thesightline. Finally, in addition to prominent features at very low velocitiesarising from the disk of our Galaxy, the strong resonance transitions of C IIand Mg II show evidence for material at v = -200 km/s; the column densities ofthese two species suggest that 17.7 < log N(H I) < 18.1 if the material has asolar composition.Comment: 47 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the June 2003 issue of the Astronomical Journa