Related papers: Chemical Differentiation toward the Pipe Nebula St…

We have previously analyzed sensitive mid-infrared observations to establish that the Pipe Nebula has a very low star-formation efficiency. That study focused on YSOs with excess infrared emission (i.e, protostars and pre-main sequence…

Observations of the Pipe Nebula have led to the discovery of dense starless cores. The mass of most cores is too small for their self gravity to hold them together. Instead, they are thought to be pressure confined. The observed dense…

We present our analysis of a fully sampled, high resolution dust extinction map of the Barnard 59 complex in the Pipe Nebula. The map was constructed with the infrared color excess technique applied to a photometric catalog that combines…

We describe a model for the thermal and dynamical equilibrium of starless cores that includes the radiative transfer of the gas and dust and simple CO chemistry. The model shows that the structure and behavior of the cores is significantly…

Molecular inventories in starless cores are powerful tools for probing the physical and chemical structures at the earliest stages of star formation. Wide-band spectral scans are invaluable for obtaining a comprehensive view of the chemical…

The deuterium fractionation in starless cores gives us a clue to estimate their lifetime scales, thus allowing us to distinguish between different dynamical theories of core formation. Cores also seem to be subject to a differential N2 and…

Low- and intermediate-mass ($\rm 0.8~M_\odot < M < 8~M_\odot$) stars that evolve into planetary nebulae (PNe) play an important role in tracing and driving Galactic chemical evolution. Spectroscopy of PNe enables access to both the initial…

A millimeter molecular line survey of three carbon-rich AGB stars and two oxygen-rich planetary nebulae has been carried out over the frequency range 80.5-115.5 GHz. Sixty eight different transitions were detected in the data from 27…

We present a 8 deg x 6 deg, high resolution extinction map of the Pipe nebula using 4.5 million stars from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) point source catalog. The use of NICER, a robust and optimal technique to map the dust column…

Dense cloud cores present chemical differentiation due to the different distribution of C-bearing and N-bearing molecules, the latter being less affected by freeze-out onto dust grains. In this letter we show that two C-bearing molecules,…

We detect a weak unidentified emission line at E=(3.55-3.57)+/-0.03 keV in a stacked XMM spectrum of 73 galaxy clusters spanning a redshift range 0.01-0.35. MOS and PN observations independently show the presence of the line at consistent…

Prior to star formation, pre-stellar cores accumulate matter towards the centre. As a consequence, their central density increases while the temperature decreases. Understanding the evolution of the chemistry and physics in this early phase…

Investigating the physical and chemical structures of massive star-forming regions is critical for understanding the formation and the early evolution of massive stars. We performed a detailed line survey toward six dense cores named as…

Massive star-forming regions exhibit an extremely rich and diverse chemistry, which in principle provides a wealth of molecular probes, as well as laboratories for interstellar prebiotic chemistry. Since the chemical structure of these…

The Kleinmann-Low nebula in Orion (Orion-KL) is the nearest example of a high-mass star-forming environment. For the first time, we complemented 1.3 mm Submillimeter Array (SMA) interferometric line survey with IRAM 30 m single-dish…

In order to study a molecular-cloud-scale chemical composition, we have conducted a mapping spectral line survey toward the Galactic molecular cloud W3(OH), which is one of the most active star forming regions in the Perseus arm, with the…

AIMS: To study the structure of nearby (< 500 pc) dense starless and star-forming cores with the particular goal to identify and understand evolutionary trends in core properties, and to explore the nature of Very Low Luminosity Objects (<…

To complement the optical absorption-line survey of diffuse molecular gas in Paper I, we obtained and analyzed far ultraviolet H$_2$ and CO data on lines of sight toward stars in Cep OB2 and Cep OB3. Possible correlations between column…

We present new results on CO depletion in a sample of nearby pre-stellar cores, based on observations of the millimeter C17O and C18O lines and the 1.3 mm dust emission with the IRAM 30m telescope. In most cases, the distribution of CO is…

Spectroscopic studies of ices in nearby star-forming regions indicate that ice mantles form on dust grains in two distinct steps, starting with polar ice formation (H2O rich) and switching to apolar ice (CO rich). We test how well the…