Related papers: Cometary glycolaldehyde as a source of pre-RNA mol…
It has been a long-standing problem to detect interstellar glycine (NH$_2$CH$_2$COOH), the simplest amino acid, in studying a possible relation between the Universe and origin of life. In the last about 40 years all surveys of glycine…
The zodiacal cloud is a thick circumsolar disk of small debris particles produced by asteroid collisions and comets. Here, we present a zodiacal cloud model based on the orbital properties and lifetimes of comets and asteroids, and on the…
The relation between ice composition in the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on the one hand and relative abundances of volatiles in the coma on the other hand is important for the interpretation of density measurements in the…
Surprisingly strong CO emission has been observed from more than a dozen debris disks around nearby main-sequence stars. The origin of this CO is unclear, in particular whether it is left over from the protoplanetary disk phase or is…
Molecular oxygen, O$_2$, was recently detected in comet 67P by the ROSINA instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft with a surprisingly high abundance of 4 % relative to H$_2$O, making O$_2$ the fourth most abundant in comet 67P. Other…
Comets are a remarkable feature in our night sky, visible on their passage through the inner Solar system as the Sun's energy sublimates ices and liberates surface material, generating beautiful comae, dust, and ion tails. Comets are also…
The coma of comet C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS) is one of the most chemically peculiar ever observed, in particular due to its extremely high CO/H2O and N2+/H2O ratios}, and unusual trace volatile abundances. However, the complex shape of its CO…
The origin of organic compounds detected in meteorites and comets, some of which could serve as precursors of life on Earth, still remains an open question. The aim of the present study is to make one more step in revealing the nature and…
Comets are small bodies thought to contain the most pristine material in the solar system. However, since their formation 4.5 Gy ago, they have been altered by different processes. While not exposed to much electromagnetic radiation, they…
Molecular cations are present in various astronomical environments, most notably in cometary atmospheres and tails where sunlight produces exceptionally bright near-UV to visible transitions. Such cations typically have longer-wavelength…
The chemical evolution of a star- and planet-forming system begins in the prestellar phase and proceeds across the subsequent evolutionary phases. The chemical trail from cores to protoplanetary disks to planetary embryos can be studied by…
Comets formed in the outer and cold parts of the disk which eventually evolved into our Solar System. Assuming that the comets have undergone no major processing, studying their composition provides insight in the pristine composition of…
We have used the Mopra Telescope to search for glycine and the simple chiral molecule propylene oxide in the Sgr B2 (LMH) and Orion KL, in the 3-mm band. We have not detected either species, but have been able to put sensitive upper limits…
This paper presents high-resolution ALMA observations of the massive young stellar object G25.65+1.05, which is known to host water maser super flares. To investigate the nature of compact continuum sources that have been previously…
The quasar Q0918+1636 (z=3.07) has an intervening high-metallicity Damped Lyman-alpha Absorber (DLA) along the line of sight, at a redshift of z=2.58. The DLA is located at a large impact parameter of 16.2 kpc, and has an almost solar…
The identification of complex prebiotic molecules using millimeter and submillimeter telescopes allows us to understand how the basic building blocks of life are formed in the universe. In the interstellar medium (ISM), ethylene glycol…
The high abundances of Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) with respect to methanol, the most abundant COM, detected towards low-mass protostars, tend to be underpredicted by astrochemical models. This discrepancy might come from the large…
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…
We report the results of our third survey for formaldehyde (H2CO) 6cm maser emission in the Galaxy. Using the Very Large Array, we detected two new H2CO maser sources (G23.01-0.41 and G25.83-0.18), thus increasing the sample of known H2CO…
Two decades on, the study of hypervelocity stars is still in its infancy. These stars can provide novel constraints on the total mass of the Galaxy and its Dark Matter distribution. However how these stars are accelerated to such high…