2024A&A...687A.254H

The existing reservoirs of neutral atomic hydrogen gas (H I) in galaxies are insufficient to have maintained the observed levels of star formation without some kind of replenishment. This refuelling of the H I reservoirs is likely to occur at column densities an order of magnitude lower than previous observational limits (N_H I, limit_ ∼ 10¹⁹ cm^–2 at a 30″ resolution over a linewidth of 20 km s^–1). In this paper, we present recent deep H I observations of NGC 5068, a nearby isolated star-forming galaxy observed by MeerKAT as part of the MHONGOOSE survey. With these new data, we were able to detect low column density H I around NGC 5068 with a 3σ detection limit of N_H I_ = 6.4 × 10¹⁷ cm^–2 at a 90″ resolution over a 20 km s^–1 linewidth. The high sensitivity and resolution of the MeerKAT data reveal a complex morphology of the H I in this galaxy - a regularly rotating inner disk coincident with the main star-forming disk of the galaxy, a warped outer disk of low column density gas (N_H I_ < 9 × 10¹⁹ cm^–2), in addition to clumps of gas on the north-western side of the galaxy. We employed a simple two disk model that described the inner and outer disks, which enabled us to identify anomalous gas that deviates from the rotation of the main galaxy. The morphology and the kinematics of the anomalous gas suggest a possible extra-galactic origin. We explore a number of possible origin scenarios that may explain the anomalous gas, and conclude that fresh accretion is the most likely scenario.