Related papers: Interstellar Hydrides
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…
Bipolar outflows constitute some of the best laboratories to study shock chemistry in the interstellar medium. A number of molecular species have their abundance enhanced by several orders of magnitude in the outflow gas, likely as a…
Shells are fine stellar structures identified by their arc-like shapes present around a galaxy and currently thought to be vestiges of galaxy interactions and/or mergers. The study of their number, geometry, stellar populations and gas…
Molecules and dust are formed in and around the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and supernovae (SNe), and are ejected into the interstellar medium (ISM) through the stellar wind. The dust and gas contain elements newly synthesised in…
Observations of star forming environments revealed that the abundances of some deuterated interstellar molecules are markedly larger than the cosmic D/H ratio of 10-5. Possible reasons for this pointed to grain surface chemistry. How- ever,…
HI observations have revealed in several shell galaxies the presence of gaseous shells slightly displaced from the stellar shells radially, in the outward direction. We propose a mechanism to form this gaseous shells, based on the…
Planetary systems such as our own are formed after a long process where matter condenses from diffuse clouds to stars, planets, asteroids, comets and residual dust, undergoing dramatic changes in physical and chemical state in less than a…
Constraints on the molecular gas content of galaxies at high redshift are crucial to further our understanding of star formation and galaxy evolution through cosmic times, as molecular gas is the fuel for star formation. Since its initial…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed unexpectedly rapid galaxy assembly in the early universe, in tension with models of star and galaxy formation. In the gas conditions typical of early galaxies, particularly their low…
The abundances of gas and dust (solids and complex molecules) in the interstellar medium (ISM) as well as their composition and structures impact practically all of astrophysics. Fundamental processes from star formation to stellar winds to…
We review the current knowledge and understanding of the interstellar medium of our galaxy. We first present each of the three basic constituents - ordinary matter, cosmic rays, and magnetic fields - of the interstellar medium, laying…
A prediction of standard inflationary cosmology is that the elemental composition of the medium out of which the earliest stars and galaxies condensed consisted primarily of hydrogen and helium 4He with small admixtures of deuterium,…
Much of the baryonic matter in the Universe is in the form of H2 which includes most of the gas in galactic and extragalactic interstellar clouds. Molecular hydrogen plays a significant role in establishing the thermal balance in many…
Stellar systems are often formed through the collapse of dense molecular clouds which, in turn, return copious amounts of atomic and molecular material to the interstellar medium. An in-depth understanding of chemical evolution during this…
The recent discovery of terrestrial-type organic species such as methyl formate and dimethyl ether in the cold interstellar gas has proved that the formation of organic matter in the Galaxy begins at a much earlier stage of star formation…
Interstellar space is filled with a dilute mixture of charged particles, atoms, molecules and dust grains, called the interstellar medium (ISM). Understanding its physical properties and dynamical behavior is of pivotal importance to many…
Observations made using large ground-based and space-borne telescopes have probed cosmic history all the way from the present-day to a time when the Universe was less than a tenth of its present age. Earlier on lies the remaining frontier,…
This paper presents a review of ideas that interconnect Astrochemistry and Galactic Dynamics. Since these two areas are vast and not recent, each one has already been covered separately by several reviews. After a general historical…
We investigate the observability of hydrogen molecules in absorption. The absorption efficiency of the hydrogen molecules become comparable with or larger than that of the dust grains in the metal-poor condition expected in the early…
The gases of the interstellar medium (ISM) possess orders of magnitude more mass than those of all the stars combined and are thus the prime component of the baryonic universe. With L-band surface sensitivity even better than the planned…