New Copernicus scans have been made of several molecular line wavelengths in the ultraviolet spectrum of zeta Oph. Multiple scans in the far-ultraviolet and a new noise-reduction scheme for the near-ultraviolet were used to obtain significantly better signal-to-noise ratios than in previous observations. The OH D /sup 2/..sigma../sup -/ - X /sup 2/II (0,0)Q1(/sup 3///sub 2/) transition at 1222.071 A was detected with an equivalent width of 3.5 +- 0.42 A, implying a column density of (1.54 - 1.96) x 10/sup 14/ cm/sup -2/. Improved upper limits were determined for the remainder of the molecules which were sought. Although the abundance of OH exceeds the values predicted by published calculations using gas-phase ion-molecule reactions, the discrepancy is not large, and probably does not necessitate the assumption of other formation processes. (auth)
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Jr. Snow T. P. (1976) studied this question.