Abstract: Incident shock waves in pure CO have been characterized in the Electric Arc ShockTube facility at NASA Ames Research Center. Spectrally and spatially resolved emissionspectra characterize radiative signatures from CO in the VUV and mid-infrared and atomiccarbon and C2 in the visible. CO absorption of a single vibrational line is also measuredwith a tunable diode laser. The experimental data analyzed here are at a pressure of 0.25Torr in the driven section and span a shock velocity range from …