Related papers: The Carbon content in the Galactic CygnusX/DR21 st…
Cygnus X is one of the closest and most active high-mass star-forming regions in our Galaxy, making it one of the best laboratories for studying massive star formation. As part of the GLOSTAR Galactic plane survey, we performed large scale…
Cygnus X is one of the most complex areas in the sky. This complicates interpretation, but also creates the opportunity to investigate accretion into molecular clouds and many subsequent stages of star formation, all within one small field…
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 [CII] fine--structure line at 158um is an excellent tracer of the warm diffuse gas in the ISM and the interfaces between molecular clouds and their surrounding atomic and ionized envelopes. Here we present the initial results from…
Based on the occurrence rates implied by the discoveries of 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, the forthcoming Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) should detect $\ge1$ interstellar objects every year (Hoover et al. 2021). We…
Observations of ionised carbon at 158 micron ([CII]) from luminous star-forming galaxies at z~0 show that their ratios of [CII] to far infrared (FIR) luminosity are systematically lower than those of more modestly star-forming galaxies. In…
Context: While star formation on large molecular cloud scales and on small core and disk scales has been investigated intensely over the past decades, the connection of the large-scale interstellar material with the densest small-scale…
The chemical inventory of protoplanetary midplanes is the basis for forming planetesimals. Among them, solid-state reactions based on CO/CO$_2$ toward molecular complexity on interstellar dust grains have been studied in theoretical and…
We present observations of molecular high-energy radiation probes and report the first detections of CO+ toward W3 IRS5, a source containing ultracompact HII regions. UV radiation and X-rays from the central objects may enhance molecules…
The H3+ and H2D+ ions are important probes of the physical and chemical conditions in regions of the interstellar medium where new stars are forming. This paper reviews how observations of these species and of heavier ions such as HCO+ and…
We have used the KOSMA 3m telescope to map the core 7'x5' of the Galactic massive star forming region W3Main in the two fine structure lines of atomic carbon and four mid-J transitions of CO and 13CO. In combination with a map of singly…
Knowledge of the molecular component of the ISM is fundamental to understand star formation. The H2 component appears to dominate the gas mass in the inner parts of galaxies, while the HI component dominates in the outer parts. Observation…
The formation of stars in massive clusters is one of the main modes of the star formation process. However, the study of massive star forming regions is hampered by their typically large distances to the Sun. One exception to this is the…
The cosmological origin of carbon, the fourth most abundant element in the Universe, is not well known and matter of heavy debate. We investigate the behavior of C/O to O/H in order to constrain the production mechanism of carbon. We…
The chemistry of the diffuse interstellar medium is driven by the combined influences of cosmic rays, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and turbulence. Previously detected at the outer edges of photodissociation regions (PDRs) and formed from the…
Gas in protostellar disks provides the raw material for giant planet formation and controls the dynamics of the planetesimal-building dust grains. Accurate gas mass measurements help map the observed properties of planet-forming disks onto…
We present an overview of a high-mass star formation region through the major (sub-)mm, and far-infrared cooling lines to gain insight into the physical conditions and the energy budget of the molecular cloud. We used the KOSMA 3m telescope…
We found that in regions of high mass star formation the CS emission correlates well with the dust continuum emission and is therefore a good tracer of the total mass while the N$_2$H$^+$ distribution is frequently very different. This is…
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a key chemical species that is found in a wide range of planetary atmospheres. In the context of exoplanets, CO2 is an indicator of the metal enrichment (i.e., elements heavier than helium, also called…
Molecular hydrogen clouds are a key component of the interstellar medium because they are the birthplaces for stars. They are embedded in atomic gas that pervades the interstellar space. However, the details of how molecular clouds assemble…