A Definitive Determination of the Interstellar Carbon Abundance toward rho Ophiuchi A and B

Abstract

We present the results of an effort to derive interstellar gas-phase C II abundances along the lines of sight toward rho Oph A and B. Our analysis is based on high-resolution NUV and FUV archival spectra acquired with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. Column densities of C II are derived both from fits to the weak C II] 2325 intersystem transition and from fits to the damping wings of the strong C II 1334 line. We find that the results from the weak-line and strong-line determinations agree with each other remarkably well for both sight lines, demonstrating the reliability of the f-values of the C II transitions. Furthermore, the gas-phase C abundance that we obtain for rho Oph A is in very good agreement with previous determinations of interstellar C abundances from measurements of the weak C II] 2325 line. By demonstrating the reliability of the damping wing fitting technique for the C II 1334 line, our analysis opens the door to future surveys of interstellar C abundances using the same methodology.