Related papers: Processing of hydroxylamine, NH2OH, an important p…

Hydroxyl (OH) is expected to be abundant in diffuse interstellar molecular gas as it forms along with $H_2$ under similar conditions and within a similar extinction range. We have analyzed absorption measurements of OH at 1665 MHz and 1667…

Water in Star-forming regions with Herschel (WISH) is a Herschel Key Program investigating the water chemistry in young stellar objects (YSOs) during protostellar evolution. Hydroxyl (OH) is one of the reactants in the chemical network most…

Gas-phase complex organic molecules have been detected toward a range of high- and low-mass star-forming regions at abundances which cannot be explained by any known gas-phase chemistry. Recent laboratory experiments show that UV…

We study the formation of molecular hydrogen on dust grain surfaces and apply our results to the high redshift universe. We find that a range of physical parameters, in particular dust temperature and gas temperature, but not so much dust…

Interstellar CO2 is an important reservoir of carbon and oxygen, and one of the major constituents of the icy mantles of dust grains, but it is not observable directly in the cold gas because has no permanent dipole moment. Its protonated…

The ULIRG Mrk 231 exhibits very strong water rotational lines between \lambda = 200-670\mu m, comparable to the strength of the CO rotational lines. High redshift quasars also show similar CO and H2O line properties, while starburst…

The low carbon content of Earth and primitive meteorites compared to the Sun and interstellar grains suggests that carbon-rich grains were destroyed in the inner few astronomical units of the young solar system. A promising mechanism to…

This review paper summarizes the state-of-the-art in laboratory based interstellar ice chemistry. The focus is on atom addition reactions, illustrating how water, carbon dioxide and methanol can form in the solid state at astronomically…

Investigating how formamide forms in the interstellar medium is a hot topic in astrochemistry, which can contribute to our understanding of the origin of life on Earth. We have constructed a QM/MM model to simulate the hydrogenation of…

Searches for the prebiotically-relevant cyanamide (NH$_2$CN) towards solar-type protostars have not been reported in the literature. We here present the first detection of this species in the warm gas surrounding two solar-type protostars,…

Water is an important reservoir species for oxygen in interstellar space and plays a key role in the physics of star formation through cooling by far-infrared emission. Whilst water vapour is present at high abundances in the outflows of…

We report the detection of widespread CH$_2$OHCHO and HOCH$_2$CH$_2$OH emission in Galactic center giant molecular cloud Sagittarius B2 using the Shanghai Tianma 65m Radio Telescope. Our observations show for the first time that the spatial…

Nitrogen oxides are thought to play a significant role as a nitrogen reservoir and to potentially participate in the formation of more complex species. Until now, only NO, N$_2$O and HNO have been detected in the interstellar medium. We…

Recent laboratory experiments on interstellar dust analogues have shown that H_2 formation on dust grain surfaces is efficient in a range of grain temperatures below 20 K. These results indicate that surface processes may account for the…

Recent interstellar detections include a significant number of molecules containing vinyl (C2H3) and ethyl (C2H5) groups in their structure. For several of these molecules, there is not a clear experimental or theoretical evidence that…

We carried out an observational search for the recently discovered molecule H2NC, and its more stable isomer H2CN, toward eight cold dense clouds (L1544, L134N, TMC-2, Lupus-1A, L1489, TMC-1 NH3, L1498, and L1641N) and two diffuse clouds…

Water is abundantly present in the Universe. It is the main component of interstellar ice mantles and a key ingredient for life. Water in space is mainly formed through surface reactions. Three formation routes have been proposed in the…

Snowlines are key ingredients for planet formation. Providing observational constraints on the locations of the major snowlines is therefore crucial for fully connecting planet compositions to their formation mechanism. Unfortunately, the…

Early results from the Herschel Space Observatory revealed the water cation H2O+ to be an abundant ingredient of the interstellar medium. Here we present new observations of the H2O and H2O+ lines at 1113.3 and 1115.2 GHz using the Herschel…

2-aminooxazole (2AO), a N-heterocyclic molecule, has been proposed as an intermediate in prebiotic syntheses. It has been demonstrated that it can be synthesized from small molecules such as cyanamide and glycoaldehyde, which are present in…