Observational results of a multi-telescope campaign in search of interstellar urea [(NH{sub 2}){sub 2}CO]
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VA 22903 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61801 (United States)
- Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Sensor Science Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 (United States)
- Institute of Radio Astronomy of NASU, Chervonopraporna 4, 61002 Kharkov (Ukraine)
- Departments of Chemistry and Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61801 (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
In this paper, we present the results of an observational search for gas phase urea [(NH{sub 2}){sub 2}CO] observed toward the Sgr B2(N-LMH) region. We show data covering urea transitions from ∼100 GHz to 250 GHz from five different observational facilities: the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland-Association (BIMA) Array, the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA), the NRAO 12 m telescope, the IRAM 30 m telescope, and the Swedish-ESO Submillimeter Telescope (SEST). The results show that the features ascribed to urea can be reproduced across the entire observed bandwidth and all facilities by best-fit column density, temperature, and source size parameters which vary by less than a factor of two between observations merely by adjusting for telescope-specific parameters. Interferometric observations show that the emission arising from these transitions is cospatial and compact, consistent with the derived source sizes and emission from a single species. Despite this evidence, the spectral complexity of both (NH{sub 2}){sub 2}CO and of Sgr B2(N) makes the definitive identification of this molecule challenging. We present observational spectra, laboratory data, and models, and discuss our results in the context of a possible molecular detection of urea.
- OSTI ID:
- 22351606
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 783, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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