Recently in the Astrochemistry Category

Small hydrocarbons are an important organic reservoir in protostellar and protoplanetary environments. Constraints on desorption temperatures and binding energies of such hydrocarbons are needed for accurate predictions of where these molecules exist in the ice vs. gas-phase during the different stages of star and planet formation.

Nitrogen oxides are thought to play a significant role as a nitrogen reservoir and to potentially participate in the formation of more complex species.

Typically, H3+ is formed by collisions involving hydrogen gas, but its chemistry at the molecular level is relatively unknown. When organic molecules are hit by a laser pulse, they are ionized and the reaction begins.

Some of the exoplanets so far observed show featureless or flat transmission spectra, possibly indicating the existence of clouds and/or haze in their atmospheres.

Water ice is abundant in protoplanetary disks. Its sticking properties are therefore important during phases of collisional growth. In this work, we study the sticking and rolling of 1.1 mm ice grains at different temperatures. We find a strong increase in sticking between 175 K to 200 K which levels off at higher temperatures.

In the laboratory, the photo-and thermochemical evolution of ices, made of simple molecules of astrophysical relevance, always leads to the formation of semi-refractory water-soluble organic residues.

We report a computational study of the stability and infrared (IR) vibrational spectra of neutral and singly ionised fullerene cages containing between 44 and 70 carbon atoms.

Young stars are often surrounded by a protoplanetary disk where planets are forming. Astronomers study the composition of protoplanetary disks to better understand how planets, like Earth, formed and evolved into their modern chemical composition.

Protoplanetary disks are dust-rich structures around young stars. The crystalline and amorphous materials contained within these disks are variably thermally processed and accreted to make bodies of a wide range of sizes and compositions, depending on the heliocentric distance of formation.

An organic molecule detected in the material from which a star forms could shed light on how life emerged on Earth, according to new research led by Queen Mary University of London.