Astrochemistry revealed

Astrochemistry and Observations

The past few years has seen dramatic improvements in our ability to extract chemical information from molecular line observations. These advances have been driven by new observational platforms and techniques. In the following I will outline the various methods and uncertainties in computing chemical information from observations across the spectrum of star formation activity (from diffuse clou...

Cosmic-ray astrochemistry.

Gas-phase chemistry in the interstellar medium is driven by fast ion-molecule reactions. This, of course, demands a mechanism for ionization, and cosmic rays are the ideal candidate as they can operate throughout the majority of both diffuse and dense interstellar clouds. Aside from driving interstellar chemistry via ionization, cosmic rays also interact with the interstellar medium in ways tha...

Astrochemistry in an Ion Storage Ring

Storage ring studies of low energy electron collisions with molecular ions have been carried out for dissociative recombination (DR) of fluorine-bearing molecules. Here we report on work aiming to improve the understanding of astrochemistry involving HF, a possible spectroscopic tracer of interstellar H2. For CF + the rate coefficient was obtained for temperatures down to 10 K. For D2F + the DR...

The UMIST database for astrochemistry 1999 ⋆

We report a new version of the UMIST database for astrochemistry. The previous (1995) version has been updated and its format has been revised. The database contains the rate coefficients, temperature ranges and – where available – the temperature dependence of 4113 gas-phase reactions important in astrophysical environments. The data involve 396 species and 12 elements. We have also tabulated ...

Heavy-molecule Astrochemistry: Precursors to Life?