THE DISTRIBUTION OF DEUTERATED FORMALDEHYDE WITHIN ORION-KL
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (United States)
- California Institute of Technology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, MS 150-21, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
We report the first high angular resolution imaging (3.″4 × 3.″0) of deuterated formaldehyde (HDCO) toward Orion-KL, carried out with the Submillimeter Array. We find that the spatial distribution of the formaldehyde emission systematically differs from that of methanol: while methanol is found toward the inner part of the region, HDCO is found in colder gas that wraps around the methanol emission on four sides. The HDCO/H{sub 2}CO ratios are determined to be 0.003–0.009 within the region, up to an order of magnitude higher than the D/H measured for methanol. These findings strengthen the previously suggested hypothesis that there are differences in the chemical pathways leading to HDCO (via deuterated gas-phase chemistry) and deuterated methanol (through conversion of formaldehyde into methanol on the surface of icy grain mantles)
- OSTI ID:
- 22525666
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 808, 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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