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What Have We Learned from SWAS?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2006

Edwin A. Bergin  and
Gary J. Melnick
Edwin A. Bergin
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Department of Astronomy, 825 Dennison, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA email: ebergin@umich.edu
Gary J. Melnick
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA email: gmelnick@cfa.harvard.edu
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Abstract

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The Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) has recently completed 5.5 years of successful operation. Among the legacies of the mission has been a greater understanding of the abundance and spatial distribution of H2O and O2 within molecular clouds. We summarize SWAS results and discuss how the measured low abundance of water vapor and non-detections of molecular oxygen are suggestive of a general lack of atomic oxygen in the dense centers of molecular clouds. We also present a new more comprehensive model for the oxygen chemistry in the interstellar medium.

Keywords

astrobiology — astrochemistry — ISM: molecules — molecular processes — radiative transfer