text: The water molecule is an asymmetric top, that is, it has three independent moments of inertia. Rotation about the 2-fold symmetry axis is illustrated at the left. Because of the low symmetry of the molecule, a large number of transitions can be observed in the far infrared region of the spectrum. Measurements of microwave spectra have provided a very precise value for the O−H bond length, 95.84 ± 0.05 pm and H−O−H bond angle, 104.5 ± 0.3°.