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M. Andre, C. Oliveira, C. Howk, H. W. Moos, S. Lacour (Johns Hopkins University), A. Vidal-Madjar (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris), S. Cartledge, D. Meyer, J. T. Lauroesch (Northwestern University), U.J. Sofia (Whitman College)
We present a survey of the total interstellar O/H ratio along more than 20 sightlines through the diffuse ISM. This survey makes use of archival HST observations of the weak O I 1355.6 Ang intersystem line, as well as atomic hydrogen, and FUSE PI team observations of the electronic transitions of molecular hydrogen along these sightlines. It has been shown that the abundance of oxygen in the solar-neighborhood ISM is significantly below solar and shows remarkably little variation (Meyer et al. 1998; Cartledge et al. 2001). The FUSE data, which provide molecular hydrogen measurements, allow us to probe the total O/H ratio in wider range of environments than has previously been possible. This work is part of on-going efforts to understand the base O/H ratio in the ISM, its dependence on physical environment, and its implications for understanding measurements of the D/O ratio and galactic chemical evolution.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: mandre@pha.jhu.edu