The stereographic image shown below is what every crystallographer hopes for--a beautiful single crystal. Unfortunately the structure is what every chemist has nightmares of--a nasty artifact! Images are of the single crystal for MSC 95153 in the nmr tube as submitted. An orthorhombic space group was found, and due to the late hour (5:30 on a Friday) data were collected without looking for extinctions. When the data were examined, extinctions corresponding to Fddd were present. Thus, for probably the fifth or sixth time, the structure of sulphur has been determined very accurately in the IUMSC!

If other crystallographers have determined the structure of S8 in the Fddd form, I would appreciate a note. Based on the number of times we have done it, it may well be one of the most studied (by single crystal X-ray diffraction) small molecules. In our facility it has been submitted (since 1978) by five different research groups (two inorganic, three organic)--all with the same results! In the present study, the S-S distances range from 2.0488(13) to 2.0531(9)A.