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A. M. Smith (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center), C. -H. Lyu (CAEL), F. C. Bruhweiler (The Catholic University of America)
Current chemical models of translucent clouds imply that sulfur is depleted with respect to its average abundance in diffuse clouds as determined by Morton (1975 ApJ,197, 85) by factors exceeding 10. Existing gigahertz emission observations yield sizable uncertainties in the column densities to background stars, and attempts to measure column densities of CS in the lines-of-sight to various stars through the absorption in the A-X (0,0) electronic transition near 257.6 nm have been unsuccessful. CS dissociates primarily through discrete absorptions into predissociating states. In analogy with CO the strongest of these is the C-X band found near 140.0 nm. We report the tentative identification of the C-X band of CS in the interstellar spectra of HD 24398 (zeta Per), HD 148184 (chi Oph), and HD 154368. The estimated column densities will be compared to the predictions of prevailing chemical models.