Physics
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21544010l&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #440.10; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.398
Physics
Scientific paper
Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe and it plays a major role in the chemistry and physics of molecular clouds. Molecular oxygen, despite being predicted to be a major reservoir of this element, remains elusive, in part due to the fact that studying interstellar molecular oxygen is essentially impossible from the ground due to absorption by terrestrial O2. In the past decade SWAS and Odin offered the capability to search for emission from two low-lying O2 transitions, but there has yet to be a definitive detection of this species. The results from both SWAS and Odin agree that the abundance of molecular oxygen is at least a factor of 100 below the predictions of gas-phase chemistry models. Herschel, with superior HIFI receivers and significantly smaller beam sizes, offers a one to two magnitude improvement in sensitivity in terms of detectable O2 column density. Such sensitivity makes it the possible to observe interstellar O2 even at low abundances - making it a key diagnostic of the chemistry in molecular clouds.
We have an accepted Open Time Key Program on Herschel called the Herschel Oxygen Project (HOP). The goal is to observe two magnetic-dipole rotational transitions of O2 at 487 GHz and 774 GHz toward 20 sources, which comprise a variety of physical and chemical conditions. A third line at 1121 GHz will be observed toward a subsample of compact and warm sources, where the strength of this line is expected to be enhanced. We will report the status of the HOP program and our ongoing efforts to obtain ancillary data for the program sources.
The author acknowledges the support of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Herschel Oxygen Project Team
Li Di
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