Related papers: Organic Matter in Space - an Overview
Flattened, rotating disks of cool dust and gas extending for tens to hundreds of AU are found around almost all low mass stars shortly after their birth. These disks generally persist for several Myr, during which time some material…
Dust grains play a central role in the physics and chemistry of cosmic environments. They influence the optical and thermal properties of the medium due to their interaction with stellar radiation; provide surfaces for the chemical…
Since the 1990's, protoplanetary disks and planetary disks have been intensively observed from the optical to the millimetre wavelength and many models have been developed to investigate their gas and dust properties and dynamics. These…
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
The outer Galaxy is an environment with metallicity lower than the Solar one. Because of this, the formation and survival of molecules in star-forming regions located in the inner and outer Galaxy is expected to be different. To gain…
Understanding the origins and distribution of matter in the Universe is one of the most important quests in physics and astronomy. Themes range from astro-particle physics to chemical evolution in the Galaxy to cosmic nucleosynthesis and…
As comets journey into the inner solar system, they deliver particulates and volatile gases into their comae that reveal the most primitive materials in the solar system. Cometary dust particles provide crucial information for assessing the…
We discuss models that astrochemists have developed to study the chemical composition of the interstellar medium. These models aim at computing the evolution of the chemical composition of a mixture of gas and dust under as- trophysical…
Debris disks are tenuous, dust-dominated disks commonly observed around stars over a wide range of ages. Those around main sequence stars are analogous to the Solar System's Kuiper Belt and Zodiacal light. The dust in debris disks is…
Planets are formed inside disks around young stars. The gas, dust, and ice in these natal disks are the building materials of planets, and therefore their compositions fundamentally shape the final chemical compositions of planets. In this…
Clouds also form in atmospheres of planets that orbit other stars than our Sun, in so-called extrasolar planets or exoplanets. Exoplanet atmospheres can be chemically extremely rich. Exoplanet clouds are therefor made of a mix of materials…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it is an important component of the interstellar medium and plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies, the formation of stars and…
We discuss the connection between the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds and those characteristics of cometary matter that could be remnants of it. The chemical evolution observed to occur in molecular clouds is summarized and a model…
Organic macromolecular matter is the dominant carrier of volatile elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and noble gases in chondrites -- the rocky building blocks from which Earth formed. How this macromolecular substance formed in space is…
Exocomets are small bodies releasing gas and dust which orbit stars other than the Sun. Their existence was first inferred from the detection of variable absorption features in stellar spectra in the late 1980s using spectroscopy. More…
Except in a few cases cosmic dust can be studied in situ or in terrestrial laboratories, essentially all of our information concerning the nature of cosmic dust depends upon its interaction with electromagnetic radiation. This chapter…
Astrochemistry lies at the nexus of astronomy, chemistry, and molecular physics. On the basis of precise laboratory data, a rich collection of more than 200 familiar and exotic molecules have been identified in the interstellar medium, the…
Hydrocarbon organic material, as found in the interstellar medium, exists in complex mixtures of aromatic and aliphatic forms. It is considered to be originated from carbon enriched giant stars during their final stages of evolution, when…
My thesis work aims to study the inter-relation between various physical and chemical conditions in a wide range of astrophysical environments. Our studied regions range from the super-hot regions (i.e., nebular, photon-dominated, or…
The study of the chemical evolution of gas and dust from pre-stellar dense cores to circumstellar disks around young stars forms an essential part of understanding star- and planet formation. Throughout the collapse- and protostellar…