A search for complex organic molecules in the interstellar medium using the Australia Telescope Compact Array and the Mopra radio telescope

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Copyright: Balnozan, Egon
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Abstract
We have undertaken a search for complex organic molecules by searching for their molecular line transitions in the interstellar medium (ISM), using the Australia National Telescope Facility (ATNF) Mopra single-dish radio telescope and the new Compact Array Broadband Backend (CABB) capabilities of the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). A selection of 10 “mm-only” radio sources suspected of being candidates for hot core star-forming regions were observed using the ATCA, searching over a total of 4 GHz in the 7-mm and 4 GHz in the 3-mm bandwidth. Over 1 500 molecular transitions have been detected, of which only a small percentage can be assigned to previous detections in the ISM. This is partly due to the extended coverage provided by the ATCA’s CABB upgrade, which allows a sixteen-fold improvement to simultaneously observable bandwidth in comparison to previous capabilities. We have been able to identify numerous known transitions belonging to previously discovered species as well as observe many new transitions of complex organic molecules known to exist in the ISM. We have been able to identify at least one line frequency that has not previously been catalogued and which may belong to an undiscovered interstellar species. We also record several 100s of transitions that we cannot yet assign with confidence to potentially new transitions, of which a portion may originate from yet to be discovered molecules.
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Author(s)
Balnozan, Egon
Supervisor(s)
Cunningham, Maria
Jones, Paul
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Publication Year
2012
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
Masters Thesis
UNSW Faculty
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