Scientific news

C–H stretches of the fundamental ions CH⁺ and ¹³CH⁺, which have long been searched for, have been observed for the first time in the laboratory. The state-dependent attachment of He atoms to these ions at cryogenic temperatures has been exploited to obtain high-resolution rovibrational data. In addition, the lowest rotational transitions of CH⁺, ¹³CH⁺ and CD⁺ have been revisited and their rest frequency values have improved substantially.

https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aab36a

We report rest frequencies for rotational transitions of the deuterated ammonium isotopologues NH₃D⁺, NH₂D₂⁺, and NHD₃⁺, measured in a cryogenic ion trap machine. For the symmetric tops NH₃D⁺ and NHD₃⁺, one and three transitions are detected, respectively, and five transitions are detected for the asymmetric top NH₂D₂⁺. While the lowest frequency transition of NH₃D⁺ was already known in the laboratory and space, this work enables the future radio astronomical detection of the two other isotopologues.

https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aadf83

Geometry of S235 resolved from SOFIA observations of ionized carbon

Velocity-resolved observations of ionized carbon in the HII-region S235 show that, although most of the radiation comes from the direction of ionized hydrogen, it has a different velocity than the ionized hydrogen. Practically the emission does not come from the same gas, but from photon-dominated dense gas behind the HII region.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.12029.pdf (accepted by ApJ)

We report the first velocity-resolved observations of atomic oxygen in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) seen in emission lines at a wavelength of 63 and 145 micrometers. The line profiles neither match those from ionized carbon nor from carbon monoxide. This confirms that clouds in very different physical conditions co-exist within the observing beam.

https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833398

Laboratory spectroscopic data of large and complex molecules are of upmost importance for the astronomy community to detect new molecular species in space and to achieve a greater understanding of the chemistry involved in star forming regions and processes. In our publication we present high-resolution rotational spectroscopy of the two higher energy conformers of 2- cyanobutane (C4H9CN), a a member of a larger family of cyanides.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jms.2018.11.009

The large telescope ALMA has been used to discover for the first time a number of filaments converging to the center of the very massive star-forming region named Sagittarius B2 (North). These filaments transport mass at a high rate resulting in the formation of star like the Sun every 6 years. With our results we propose that Sagittarius B2 (North) can represent the first example of a super stellar cluster in the making. More details can be found in the link below.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.10979