Related papers: A radical route to interstellar propylene formatio…
Carbon-rich evolved stars from the asymptotic giant branch to the planetary nebula phase are characterized by a rich and complex carbon chemistry in their circumstellar envelopes. A peculiar object is the preplanetary nebula SMP LMC 11,…
We report the first detection in interstellar space of the 3-cyano propargyl radical (CH2C3N). This species was observed in the cold dark cloud TMC-1 using the Yebes 40m telescope. A total of seven rotational transitions for both ortho- and…
We present Jansky Very Large Array observations of 20 - 37 GHz absorption lines from nearby Galactic diffuse molecular gas seen against four cosmologically-distant compact radio continuum sources. The main new observational results are that…
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…
The intermittent dissipation of interstellar turbulence is an important energy source in the diffuse ISM. Though on average smaller than the heating rates due to cosmic rays and the photoelectric effect on dust grains, the turbulent cascade…
The recent unexpected detection of terrestrial complex organic molecules in the cold (~ 10 K) gas has cast doubts on the commonly accepted formation mechanisms of these species. Standard gas-phase mechanisms are inefficient and tend to…
Methanol and its precursor formaldehyde are among the most studied organic molecules in the interstellar medium and are abundant in the gaseous and solid phases. We recently developed a model to simulate CO hydrogenation via H atoms on…
Grain-surface chemistry plays a crucial role in the formation of molecules of astrobiological interest, including H$_{2}$S and complex organic molecules (COMs). They are commonly observed in the gas phase toward star-forming regions, but…
Methanol and complex organic molecules have been found in cold starless cores, where a standard warm-up scenario would not work because of the absence of heat sources. A recent chemical model attributed the presence of methanol and large…
High quality archival spectra of interstellar absorption from C I toward 9 stars, taken with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope, were analyzed. Our sample was supplemented by two sight lines, 23 Ori and…
Complex organic molecules are ubiquitous companions of young low-mass protostars. Recent observations suggest that their emission stems, not only from the traditional hot corino, but also from offset positions. In this work, 2D…
Context: An unexpectedly complex polyatomic chemistry exists in diffuse clouds, allowing detection of species such as C2H, C3H2, H2CO and NH3 which have relative abundances that are strikingly similar to those inferred toward the dark cloud…
We observed the 9-cm Lambda-doubling lines of CH along the dense filament of TMC-1. The CH column densities were compared with the total H2 column densities derived using the 2MASS NIR data and previously published SCUBA maps and with OH…
Absorption and emission lines originating from the nu3 C-H stretching manifold of gas phase CH4 were discovered in the high resolution (R=25,000) infrared L band spectrum along the line of sight toward NGC 7538 : IRS9. These observations…
Observations of diffuse clouds showed that they contain a number of simple hydrocarbons (e.g. CH, C$_2$H, (l- and c-)C$_3$H$_2$, and C$_4$H) in abundances that may be difficult to understand on the basis of conventional gas-phase chemical…
A new chemical model is presented that simulates fully-coupled gas-phase, grain-surface and bulk-ice chemistry in hot cores. Glycine (NH2CH2COOH), the simplest amino acid, and related molecules such as glycinal, propionic acid and propanal,…
We present observations of methanol lines in a sample of Class 0 low mass protostars. Using a 1-D radiative transfer model, we derive the abundances in the envelopes. In two sources of the sample, the observations can only be reproduced by…
Virtually all detailed gas-phase models of the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds exclude polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH's). This omission is unfortunate because from the few studies that have been done on the subject, it is…
It is currently assumed that infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) represent the earliest evolutionary stages of high-mass stars ($>$ 8 M$_{\odot}$). Submillimeter and millimeter-wave studies performed over the past 15 years show that IRDCs possess…
How complex organic - and potentially prebiotic - molecules are formed in regions of low- and high-mass star-formation remains a central question in astrochemistry. In particular, with just a few sources studied in detail, it is unclear…