Interstellar medium spectroscopy

K. Narahad Rao and A. Weber, eds.. Spectroscopy of the Earth s Atmosphere and Interstellar Medium, Academic Press, Inc., Boston, Mass., 1992. 

Thietane compounds could occur in space especially when one considers that sulfine, a commonly observed pyrolysis fragmentation product of thietane oxide, has been detected in the interstellar medium by microwave spectroscopy. Thietane derivatives have been isolated from the plant and animal kingdom, and it seems likely that much still remains untapped. In such plants as Tribus Arctotideae, the thioacetylene structure 13 containing a 3-... 

In recent decades, spectroscopy has revealed that the elemental and isotopic abundances in the galaxy vary with radial position and that the Sun has a somewhat different composition than the molecular clouds and diffuse interstellar medium in the solar neighborhood. For this reason, we can no longer think of the solar system abundances as truly cosmic abundances. 

Ethynyl radicals have recently been detected in interstellar medium by microwave spectroscopy [Tucker et al. (980a)]. 

Formaldehyde has been detected recently in the interstellar medium by microwave spectroscopy (593), It is a combustion product of hydrocarbons. The photolysis of H2CO by sunlight in the troposphere may produce H02 radicals by reactions such as... 

Various forms of molecular carbon, from ions to radicals, have been detected in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) using electronic, rotational, and vibrational spectroscopies (Henning and Salama 1998 Snow and Witt 1995). Discrete absorption and emission bands seen toward diffuse interstellar clouds indicate the presence of numerous two-atom molecules such as CO, CN and C2. In addition to these interstellar features, a large family of spectral bands observed from the far-UV to the far-IR still defies explanation. Currently, it is the general consensus that many of the unidentified spectral features are formed by a complex, carbonaceous species that show rich chemistry in interstellar dust clouds (Ehrenfreund... 

Mixtures of fulleranes produced by hydrogenation of solid C60 films under atomic H flux have revealed spectral features that bear striking similarity to those observed in the diffuse interstellar medium, both in the far IR and in the UV spectral windows. Of course, one must be cautious not to overextend the interpretation of laboratory data, for a number of reasons firstly, because electron spectroscopy, the experimental technique used in these studies, differs in several important aspects from the spectroscopic methods employed in observational astronomy, and secondly, because of the specifics of specimen preparation and environmental conditions. In this regard, there is a need to explore the stability of fulleranes to energetic and corpuscular radiation (Cataldo et al. 2009). Nonetheless, our findings lend support to the suggestion of fulleranes as candidates for unidentified emission and absorption features of interstellar and circumstellar media. Whether or not they exist in sufficient abundance is still unclear however, their spectral features make them undoubtedly an ideal model system for laboratory studies of these fascinating astrophysical phenomena. 

Spectroscopy covers a very wide area which has been widened further since the mid-1960s by the development of lasers and such techniques as photoelectron spectroscopy and other closely related spectroscopies. The importance of spectroscopy in the physical and chemical processes going on in planets, stars, comets and the interstellar medium has continued to grow as a result of the use of satellites and the building of radiotelescopes for the microwave and millimetre wave regions. 

It should be noted that the rotational spectroscopy of CO confined to a single vibrational level, usually the ground v = 0 level, provides only a limited amount of information about molecular structure. In the field of vibration-rotation spectroscopy, however, CO has been studied extensively and particular attention paid to the variation of the rotational and centrifugal distortion constants with vibrational quantum number. Vibrational transitions involving v up to 37 have been studied with high accuracy [78, 79, 80], and the measurements extended to other isotopic species [81] to test the conventional isotopic relationships. CO is, however, an extremely important and widespread molecule in the interstellar medium. CO distribution maps are now commonplace and with the advent of far-inffared telescopes, it is also an important... 

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