  The Berkeley spectrograph aboard the ORFEUS telescope made its second flight
on the 14-day ORFEUS-SPAS II mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia in
November/December 1996. Approximately half of the available observing time was
dedicated to the Berkeley spectrograph, which was used by both Principal and
Guest Investigators. The spectrograph's full bandpass is 390-1218 A; here we
discuss its in-flight performance at far-ultraviolet (FUV) wavelengths, where
most of the observations were performed. The instrument's effective area peaks
at 8.9 +/- 0.5 cm^2 near 1020 A, and the mean spectral resolution is 95 km/s
FWHM for point sources. Over most of the spectral range, the typical night-time
background event rate in each spectral resolution element was about 0.003/s.
Simultaneous background observations of an adjacent blank field were provided
through a secondary, off-axis aperture. The Berkeley spectrograph's unique
combination of sensitivity and resolution provided valuable observations of
approximately 105 distinct astronomical targets, ranging in distance from the
earth's own moon to some of the brightest AGN.

Astrophysics