The Deuterium Abundance in the Local Interstellar Medium

Abstract

Accurate measurements of the interstellar deuterium/hydrogen ratio along different lines of sight are needed to test predictions of contemporary cosmologies. I describe our GHRS observations of the Lyman-α, 2600 Å and 2800 Å spectral regions for the spectroscopic binary system Capella, obtained with 3.57 km s resolution and high signal/noise. We are now analyzing these data to infer the column densities of H I, D I, Mg II, and Fe II along this 13 pc line of sight.