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Session 63 - The Frontiers of Far Ultraviolet Astrophysics - II.
Topical, Oral session, Wednesday, June 10
Sierra/Padre,
The Berkeley and Echelle spectrographs aboard the ORFEUS telescope collected dozens of intermediate-resolution (\lambda / 3000 to \lambda / 10,000) far-ultraviolet spectra during the ORFEUS-SPAS I and II space shuttle missions in 1993 and 1996. A suite of papers based on ORFEUS-II data from the Berkeley spectrograph will be published in a dedicated issue of Ap. J. Letters in mid-1998. I will summarize some of these papers, whose topics range from the lunar atmosphere to intergalactic H I clouds in the Virgo cluster. I will also present the results of ongoing work, including measurements of the O VI column density along several halo sight lines and a study of absorption from high-latitude molecular hydrogen. Along the way I will try to point out the challenges posed by far-ultraviolet astrophysics (e.g., the density of spectral features and the strong modulation of stellar continua) and by the modern instrumentation used in this band.
