High resolution 21 cm mapping of the Ursa Major Galactic cirrus: Power spectra of the highlatitude HI gas

We present a power spectrum analysis of interferometric 21 cm observations of the Ursa Major highlatitude cirrus, obtained with the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) of Penticton (Canada). These high-resolution data reveal the intricate structure of the diffuse Galactic HI, at angular scales from 1 arcmin to 3 degrees. A filtering method based on a wavelet decomposition was used to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio of the data. The power spectra of the integrated emission and of the centroid velocity fields were used to deduce the three-dimensional (3D) spectral index of the density and velocity fields of the HI cirrus. The spectral index is similar for the 3D density and velocity fields with a value of -3.6 +- 0.2.. Using the Leiden/Dwingeloo observations, this analysis was extended to the whole North Celestial Loop (which includes the Ursa Major cirrus), showing that the scaling laws prevail from 0.1 to 25 pc. The centroid velocity and integrated emission fields show moderate correlation, with a maximum cross-correlation value of 0.44.