The Cosmic Carbon Budget

Details The Cosmic Carbon Budget The Cosmic Carbon Budget

Jul 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002hst..prop.9465s&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #9465

Physics

Hst Proposal Id #9465

Scientific paper

Gaseous carbon drives the chemistry of, and is an important coolant in interstellar clouds. In solid form, carbon is the second most abundant element in interstellar dust, the key element contributing to interstellar extinction, and the dominant heat source in some interstellar clouds. Given the fundamental importance of this element to interstellar cloud physics, it is surprising that only 8 measurements of gas- phase carbon abundances exist for neutral clouds; 7 are in diffuse clouds where the least amount of chemistry and dust incorporation are expected. The single measurement in a translucent cloud suggests a C abundance that differs from the diffuse clouds, but the measurement uncertainties make this difference statistically insignificant. We, therefore, have no information about carbon's behavior in translucent clouds, regions dense enough for chemistry and dust growth to be important but low enough extinction so that UV spectroscopy is possible {unlike for molecular clouds}. We propose to measure total gas-phase C abundances in 6 translucent clouds with our principal scientific goals being to 1} accurately determine the fraction of carbon in the gas and dust phases in environments bridging the gap between diffuse and molecular clouds 2} determine the relative depletions of C and O in neutral clouds with known O-depletion enhancements and 3} explore how the interstellar gas-phase C/H is related to extinction variations.

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