ORFEUS II echelle spectra: H-2 measurements in the Magellanic Clouds

More than 20 years after the Copernicus satellite, ORFEUS allows the invest igation of molecular hydrogen (H-2) in the diffuse interstellar medium by w ay of FUV absorption spectroscopy once again. This time, targets in the Mag ellanic Clouds were also observed, allowing the first investigation of cold H-2 in a metal-poor environment outside the Milky Way disk. This paper pre sents new H-2 measurements in LMC gas along the lines of sight toward HD 26 9698 (Sk -67 166), HD 269546 (Sk -68 82) and HD 36102 (Sk -67 104) and summ arizes the ORFEUS H2 measurements in the the Magellanic Clouds. For seven l ines of sight we investigate correlations between N(HI), N(H-2), E(B-V) and compare the results with H-2 observations in the Milky Way disk. We find t hat the abundance of Hz is low in comparison to the total gas quantity and speculate that the fraction of hydrogen in molecular form is limited by the lower dust content of the Magellanic Clouds.