We report the discovery of a possible accretion stream toward a Milky Way–type galaxy M106 based on very deep H i imaging data with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The accretion stream extends for about 130 kpc in projection length and it is similar to the Magellanic stream in many respects. We provide unambiguous evidence based on the stream morphology, kinematics and local star formation activity to show that the H i gas is being accreted onto the disk of M106. Such a long continuous flow of gas provides a unique opportunity to probe the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and reveals how the gas stream traverses the hot halo and CGM, and eventually reaches the galaxy disk. The source of the stream appears to be from M106's satellite galaxy NGC 4288. We argue that the stream of gas could be due to the tidal interaction with NGC 4288, or with a high speed encounter near this system. Close to the position of UGC 7356 the stream bifurcates into two streams. The second stream may be gas tidally stripped from UGC 7356 or due to an interaction with UGC 7356. Our results show that high-sensitivity H i imaging is crucial in revealing low column density accretion features in nearby galaxies.

We report the discovery of a 100 kpc H i tail in the merging galaxy pair NGC 4490/85 detected by the Five-Hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The tidal tails extended in both the south and north directions, and they are much longer than that reported previously based on the VLA interferometric maps. The NGC 4490/85 is surrounded by a large gas envelope, and a starburst low metallicity dwarf galaxy MAPS 1231+42 is found to be connected with the gas envelope, indicating that galaxy interaction trigged the intense star formation in it. Based on the fact that the metallicity in MAPS 1231+42 is one order of magnitude lower than that in the two disks of NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, we speculate that the gas near this galaxy should be primordial and could be due to gas inflow from the circum-galactic medium (CGM). We also found a collimated gas component pointing at a nearby dwarf galaxy KK 149, suggesting that this galaxy might also be interacting with the NGC 4490 pair. We discuss the possible origin of the long tidal tails and the extended gas envelope in this merging system based on the new data from FAST.

We present the first data release of HI sources extracted from a pilot extra- galactic HI survey using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). We extracted sources from three-dimensional(3D) spectral data cubes to perform interactive searching and computing, yielding global HI parameters for each source, extending redshift ranges of HI emission up to z = 0.04. A total of 544 ex- tragalactic HI sources have been detected by the pilot FAST HI drift scan survey covering part of the sky region in right ascension(R.A. or α) and declination(Dec or δ) range 00 h 47 m < R.A.(J2000) < 23 h 22 m and +24 ◦ < Dec.(J2000) < +43 ◦ . Of which, 528 sources are matched with optical counterparts via examination of digi- tal optical survey databases collected from NED ⋆ and Vizier ⋆⋆ data center, and 449 of them have optical velocities. Furthermore, We detect 36 galaxies with HI mass < 10 8 M ⊙ , which is significant for the study of low-mass systems in local universe. We present catalogs for all HI detections with signal to noise ratio(S/N) greater than 5.1. The data are classified into four categories based on their S/N and baseline qualities, which are flagged with code 1 to 4 :(1) 428 sources with signal of S/N > 6.5; (2) 54 sources with signal of 5.1 ≲ S/N ≲ 6.5; (3) 28 sources with relatively poor baselines; (4) 33 sources that are partly masked by strong RFIs. Besides, we find 16 HI sources that have not been matched with any counterparts in the existing galaxy catalogs. This data release can provide guidence for the future extragalactic HI survey with FAST.