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Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are organic molecules containing adjacent aromatic rings. Infrared emission bands show that PAHs are abundant in space, but only a few specific PAHs have been detected in the interstellar medium. We detected 1-cyanopyrene, a cyano-substituted derivative of the related four-ring PAH pyrene, in radio observations of the dense cloud TMC-1, using the Green Bank Telescope. The measured column density of 1-cyanopyrene is [Formula: see text] cm -2 , from which we estimate that pyrene contains up to 0.1% of the carbon in TMC-1. This abundance indicates that interstellar PAH chemistry favors the production of pyrene. We suggest that some of the carbon supplied to young planetary systems is carried by PAHs that originate in cold molecular clouds.

Most low-mass stars form in stellar clusters that also contain massive stars, which are sources of far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation. Theoretical models predict that this FUV radiation produces photodissociation regions (PDRs) on the surfaces of protoplanetary disks around low-mass stars, which affects planet formation within the disks. We report James Webb Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations of a FUV-irradiated protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula. Emission lines are detected from the PDR; modeling their kinematics and excitation allowed us to constrain the physical conditions within the gas. We quantified the mass-loss rate induced by the FUV irradiation and found that it is sufficient to remove gas from the disk in less than a million years. This is rapid enough to affect giant planet formation in the disk.

Nearly half of all stars similar to our Sun are in binary or multiple systems 1 , which may affect the evolution of the stars and their protoplanetary disks during their earliest stages. NGC 1333-IRAS2A is a young, Class 0, low-mass protostellar system located in the Perseus molecular cloud 2 . It is known to drive two bipolar outflows that are almost perpendicular to each other on the sky 3,4 and is resolved into binary components, VLA1 and VLA2, through long wavelength continuum observations 5 . Here we report spatially and spectrally resolved observations of a range of molecular species. We compare these to detailed magnetohydrodynamic simulations: the comparisons show that inhomogeneous accretion onto the circumstellar disks occurs in episodic bursts, driving a wobbling jet. We conclude that binarity and multiplicity in general strongly affect the properties of the emerging stars, as well as the physical and chemical structures of the protoplanetary disks and therefore potentially any emerging planetary systems., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Carbon is an essential element for life, but its behavior during Earth's accretion is not well understood. Carbonaceous grains in meteoritic and cometary materials suggest that irreversible sublimation, and not condensation, governs carbon acquisition by terrestrial worlds. Through astronomical observations and modeling, we show that the sublimation front of carbon carriers in the solar nebula, or the soot line, moved inward quickly so that carbon-rich ingredients would be available for accretion at 1 astronomical unit after the first million years. On the other hand, geological constraints firmly establish a severe carbon deficit in Earth, requiring the destruction of inherited carbonaceous organics in the majority of its building blocks. The carbon-poor nature of Earth thus implies carbon loss in its precursor material through sublimation within the first million years., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).)

During the formation of terrestrial planets, volatile loss may occur through nebular processing, planetesimal differentiation, and planetary accretion. We investigate iron meteorites as an archive of volatile loss during planetesimal processing. The carbon contents of the parent bodies of magmatic iron meteorites are reconstructed by thermodynamic modeling. Calculated solid/molten alloy partitioning of C increases greatly with liquid S concentration, and inferred parent body C concentrations range from 0.0004 to 0.11 wt%. Parent bodies fall into two compositional clusters characterized by cores with medium and low C/S. Both of these require significant planetesimal degassing, as metamorphic devolatilization on chondrite-like precursors is insufficient to account for their C depletions. Planetesimal core formation models, ranging from closed-system extraction to degassing of a wholly molten body, show that significant open-system silicate melting and volatile loss are required to match medium and low C/S parent body core compositions. Greater depletion in C relative to S is the hallmark of silicate degassing, indicating that parent body core compositions record processes that affect composite silicate/iron planetesimals. Degassing of bare cores stripped of their silicate mantles would deplete S with negligible C loss and could not account for inferred parent body core compositions. Devolatilization during small-body differentiation is thus a key process in shaping the volatile inventory of terrestrial planets derived from planetesimals and planetary embryos., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest., (Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

Protoplanetary disks are known to possess a variety of substructures in the distribution of their millimetre-sized grains, predominantly seen as rings and gaps 1 , which are frequently interpreted as arising from the shepherding of large grains by either hidden, still-forming planets within the disk 2 or (magneto-)hydrodynamic instabilities 3 . The velocity structure of the gas offers a unique probe of both the underlying mechanisms driving the evolution of the disk-such as movement of planet-building material from volatile-rich regions to the chemically inert midplane-and the details of the required removal of angular momentum. Here we report radial profiles of the three velocity components of gas in the upper layers of the disk of the young star HD 163296, as traced by emission from 12 CO molecules. These velocities reveal substantial flows from the surface of the disk towards its midplane at the radial locations of gaps that have been argued to be opened by embedded planets 4-7 : these flows bear a striking resemblance to meridional flows, long predicted to occur during the early stages of planet formation 8-12 . In addition, a persistent radial outflow is seen at the outer edge of the disk that is potentially the base of a wind associated with previously detected extended emission 12 .

Context: In bright photodissociation regions (PDRs) associated to massive star formation, the presence of dense "clumps" that are immersed in a less dense interclump medium is often proposed to explain the difficulty of models to account for the observed gas emission in high-excitation lines., Aims: We aim at presenting a comprehensive view of the modeling of the CO rotational ladder in PDRs, including the high-J lines that trace warm molecular gas at PDR interfaces., Methods: We observed the 12 CO and 13 CO ladders in two prototypical PDRs, the Orion Bar and NGC 7023 NW using the instruments onboard Herschel . We also considered line emission from key species in the gas cooling of PDRs (C + , O, H 2 ) and other tracers of PDR edges such as OH and CH + . All the intensities are collected from Herschel observations, the literature and the Spitzer archive and are analyzed using the Meudon PDR code., Results: A grid of models was run to explore the parameter space of only two parameters: thermal gas pressure and a global scaling factor that corrects for approximations in the assumed geometry. We conclude that the emission in the high-J CO lines, which were observed up to J up =23 in the Orion Bar (J up =19 in NGC 7023), can only originate from small structures of typical thickness of a few 10 -3 pc and at high thermal pressures ( P th ~ 10 8 K cm -3 )., Conclusions: Compiling data from the literature, we found that the gas thermal pressure increases with the intensity of the UV radiation field given by G 0 , following a trend in line with recent simulations of the photoevaporation of illuminated edges of molecular clouds. This relation can help rationalising the analysis of high-J CO emission in massive star formation and provides an observational constraint for models that study stellar feedback on molecular clouds.

We present results from a comprehensive submillimeter spectral survey toward the source Orion South, based on data obtained with the HIFI instrument aboard the Herschel Space Observatory , covering the frequency range 480 to 1900 GHz. We detect 685 spectral lines with S/N > 3 σ , originating from 52 different molecular and atomic species. We model each of the detected species assuming conditions of Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium. This analysis provides an estimate of the physical conditions of Orion South (column density, temperature, source size, & V LSR ). We find evidence for three different cloud components: a cool (T ex ~ 20 - 40 K), spatially extended (> 60″), and quiescent (Δ V FWHM ~ 4 km s -1 ) component; a warmer (T ex ~ 80 - 100 K), less spatially extended (~ 30″), and dynamic (Δ V FWHM ~ 8 km s -1 ) component, which is likely affected by embedded outflows; and a kinematically distinct region (T ex > 100 K; V LSR ~ 8 km s -1 ), dominated by emission from species which trace ultraviolet irradiation, likely at the surface of the cloud. We find little evidence for the existence of a chemically distinct "hot core" component, likely due to the small filling factor of the hot core or hot cores within the Herschel beam. We find that the chemical composition of the gas in the cooler, quiescent component of Orion South more closely resembles that of the quiescent ridge in Orion-KL. The gas in the warmer, dynamic component, however, more closely resembles that of the Compact Ridge and Plateau regions of Orion-KL, suggesting that higher temperatures and shocks also have an influence on the overall chemistry of Orion South.

Deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) enrichments in molecular species provide clues about their original formation environment. The organic materials in primitive solar system bodies generally have higher D/H ratios and show greater D/H variation when compared to D/H in solar system water. We propose this difference arises at least in part due to (1) the availability of additional chemical fractionation pathways for organics beyond that for water, and (2) the higher volatility of key carbon reservoirs compared to oxygen. We test this hypothesis using detailed disk models, including a sophisticated, new disk ionization treatment with a low cosmic-ray ionization rate, and find that disk chemistry leads to higher deuterium enrichment in organics compared to water, helped especially by fractionation via the precursors CH 2 D + / CH 3 + . We also find that the D/H ratio in individual species varies significantly depending on their particular formation pathways. For example, from ~20-40 au, CH 4 can reach D/H ~ 2 × 10 -3 , while D/H in CH 3 OH remains locally unaltered. Finally, while the global organic D/H in our models can reproduce intermediately elevated D/H in the bulk hydrocarbon reservoir, our models are unable to reproduce the most deuterium-enriched organic materials in the solar system, and thus our model requires some inheritance from the cold interstellar medium from which the Sun formed.

We present the first ~7.5'×11.5' velocity-resolved (~0.2 km s -1 ) map of the [C ii] 158 μ m line toward the Orion molecular cloud 1 (OMC 1) taken with the Herschel /HIFI instrument. In combination with far-infrared (FIR) photometric images and velocity-resolved maps of the H41 α hydrogen recombination and CO J =2-1 lines, this data set provides an unprecedented view of the intricate small-scale kinematics of the ionized/PDR/molecular gas interfaces and of the radiative feedback from massive stars. The main contribution to the [C ii] luminosity (~85 %) is from the extended, FUV-illuminated face of the cloud ( G 0 >500, n H >5×10 3 cm -3 ) and from dense PDRs ( G ≳10 4 , n H ≳10 5 cm -3 ) at the interface between OMC 1 and the H ii region surrounding the Trapezium cluster. Around ~15 % of the [C ii] emission arises from a different gas component without CO counterpart. The [C ii] excitation, PDR gas turbulence, line opacity (from [ 13 C ii]) and role of the geometry of the illuminating stars with respect to the cloud are investigated. We construct maps of the L [C ii]/ L FIR and L FIR / M Gas ratios and show that L [C ii]/ L FIR decreases from the extended cloud component (~10 -2 -10 -3 ) to the more opaque star-forming cores (~10 -3 -10 -4 ). The lowest values are reminiscent of the "[C ii] deficit" seen in local ultra-luminous IR galaxies hosting vigorous star formation. Spatial correlation analysis shows that the decreasing L [C ii]/ L FIR ratio correlates better with the column density of dust through the molecular cloud than with L FIR / M Gas . We conclude that the [C ii] emitting column relative to the total dust column along each line of sight is responsible for the observed L [C ii]/ L FIR variations through the cloud.

We use the C/N ratio as a monitor of the delivery of key ingredients of life to nascent terrestrial worlds. Total elemental C and N contents, and their ratio, are examined for the interstellar medium, comets, chondritic meteorites, and terrestrial planets; we include an updated estimate for the bulk silicate Earth (C/N = 49.0 ± 9.3). Using a kinetic model of disk chemistry, and the sublimation/condensation temperatures of primitive molecules, we suggest that organic ices and macromolecular (refractory or carbonaceous dust) organic material are the likely initial C and N carriers. Chemical reactions in the disk can produce nebular C/N ratios of ∼1-12, comparable to those of comets and the low end estimated for planetesimals. An increase of the C/N ratio is traced between volatile-rich pristine bodies and larger volatile-depleted objects subjected to thermal/accretional metamorphism. The C/N ratios of the dominant materials accreted to terrestrial planets should therefore be higher than those seen in carbonaceous chondrites or comets. During planetary formation, we explore scenarios leading to further volatile loss and associated C/N variations owing to core formation and atmospheric escape. Key processes include relative enrichment of nitrogen in the atmosphere and preferential sequestration of carbon by the core. The high C/N bulk silicate Earth ratio therefore is best satisfied by accretion of thermally processed objects followed by large-scale atmospheric loss. These two effects must be more profound if volatile sequestration in the core is effective. The stochastic nature of these processes hints that the surface/atmospheric abundances of biosphere-essential materials will likely be variable.

Identifying the source of Earth's water is central to understanding the origins of life-fostering environments and to assessing the prevalence of such environments in space. Water throughout the solar system exhibits deuterium-to-hydrogen enrichments, a fossil relic of low-temperature, ion-derived chemistry within either (i) the parent molecular cloud or (ii) the solar nebula protoplanetary disk. Using a comprehensive treatment of disk ionization, we find that ion-driven deuterium pathways are inefficient, which curtails the disk's deuterated water formation and its viability as the sole source for the solar system's water. This finding implies that, if the solar system's formation was typical, abundant interstellar ices are available to all nascent planetary systems., (Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

The HIFI instrument aboard the Herschel satellite has allowed the observation and characterization of light hydrides, the building blocks of interstellar chemistry. In this article, we revisit the ortho/para ratio for H2O(+) toward the Sgr B2(M) cloud core. The line of sight toward this star forming region passes through several spiral arms and the gas in the Bar potential in the inner Galaxy. In contrast to earlier findings, which used fewer lines to constrain the ratio, we find a ratio of 3, which is uniformly consistent with high-temperature formation of the species. In view of the reactivity of this ion, this matches the expectations.

The determination of the water ortho-to-para ratio (OPR) is of great interest for studies of the formation and thermal history of water ices in the interstellar medium and protoplanetary disk environments. We present new Herschel observations of the fundamental rotational transitions of ortho- and para-water on the sightline toward Sagittarius B2(N), which allow improved estimates of the measurement uncertainties due to instrumental effects and assumptions about the excitation of water molecules. These new measurements, suggesting a spin temperature of 24-32 K, confirm the earlier findings of an OPR below the high-temperature value on the nearby sightline toward Sagittarius B2(M). The exact implications of the low OPR in the galactic center molecular gas remain unclear and will greatly benefit from future laboratory measurements involving water freeze-out and evaporation processes under low-temperature conditions, similar to those present in the galactic interstellar medium. Given the specific conditions in the central region of the Milky Way, akin to those encountered in active Galactic nuclei, gas-phase processes under the influence of strong X-ray and cosmic ray ionization also have to be carefully considered. We summarize some of the latest laboratory measurements and their implications here.

From the masses of the planets orbiting the Sun, and the abundance of elements relative to hydrogen, it is estimated that when the Solar System formed, the circumstellar disk must have had a minimum mass of around 0.01 solar masses within about 100 astronomical units of the star. (One astronomical unit is the Earth-Sun distance.) The main constituent of the disk, gaseous molecular hydrogen, does not efficiently emit radiation from the disk mass reservoir, and so the most common measure of the disk mass is dust thermal emission and lines of gaseous carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide emission generally indicates properties of the disk surface, and the conversion from dust emission to gas mass requires knowledge of the grain properties and the gas-to-dust mass ratio, which probably differ from their interstellar values. As a result, mass estimates vary by orders of magnitude, as exemplified by the relatively old (3-10 million years) star TW Hydrae, for which the range is 0.0005-0.06 solar masses. Here we report the detection of the fundamental rotational transition of hydrogen deuteride from the direction of TW Hydrae. Hydrogen deuteride is a good tracer of disk gas because it follows the distribution of molecular hydrogen and its emission is sensitive to the total mass. The detection of hydrogen deuteride, combined with existing observations and detailed models, implies a disk mass of more than 0.05 solar masses, which is enough to form a planetary system like our own.

With a 3.5 m diameter telescope passively cooled to approximately 80 K, and a science payload comprising two direct detection cameras/medium resolution imaging spectrometers (PACS and SPIRE) and a very high spectral resolution heterodyne spectrometer (HIFI), the Herschel Space Observatory is providing extraordinary observational opportunities in the 55-670 μm spectral range. HIFI has opened for the first time to high-resolution spectroscopy the submillimetre band that includes the fundamental rotational transitions of interstellar hydrides, the basic building blocks of astrochemistry. We discuss a recent HIFI discovery of metastable rotational transitions of the hydronium ion (protonated water, H(3)O(+)), with rotational level energies up to 1200 K above the ground state, in absorption towards Sagittarius B2(N) in the Galactic centre. Hydronium is an important molecular ion in the oxygen chemical network. Earlier HIFI observations have indicated a general deficiency of H(3)O(+) in the diffuse gas in the Galactic disc. The presence of hot H(3)O(+) towards Sagittarius B2(N) thus appears to be related to the unique physical conditions in the central molecular zone, manifested, for example, by the widespread presence of abundant H(3)(+). One intriguing theory for the high rotational temperature characterizing the population of the H(3)O(+) metastable levels may be formation pumping in molecular gas irradiated by X-rays emitted by the Galactic centre black hole. Alternatively, the pervasive presence of enhanced turbulence in the central molecular zone may give rise to shocks in the lower-density medium that is exposed to energetic radiation.

In this paper, we discuss the astronomical search for water vapour in order to understand the disposition of water in all its phases throughout the processes of star and planet formation. Our ability to detect and study water vapour has recently received a tremendous boost with the successful launch and operation of the Herschel Space Observatory. Herschel spectroscopic detections of numerous transitions in a variety of astronomical objects, along with previous work by other space-based observatories, will be threaded throughout this paper. In particular, we present observations of water tracing the earliest stage of star birth where it is predominantly frozen as ice. When a star is born, the local energy release by radiation liberates ices in its surrounding envelope and powers energetic outflows that appear to be water factories. In these regions, water plays an important role in the gas physics. Finally, we end with an exploration of water in planet-forming discs surrounding young stars. The availability of accurate molecular data (frequencies, collisional rate coefficients and chemical reaction rates) is crucial to analyse the observations at each of these steps.

Icy bodies may have delivered the oceans to the early Earth, yet little is known about water in the ice-dominated regions of extrasolar planet-forming disks. The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared on board the Herschel Space Observatory has detected emission lines from both spin isomers of cold water vapor from the disk around the young star TW Hydrae. This water vapor likely originates from ice-coated solids near the disk surface, hinting at a water ice reservoir equivalent to several thousand Earth oceans in mass. The water's ortho-to-para ratio falls well below that of solar system comets, suggesting that comets contain heterogeneous ice mixtures collected across the entire solar nebula during the early stages of planetary birth.

For decades, the source of Earth's volatiles, especially water with a deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio (D/H) of (1.558 ± 0.001) × 10(-4), has been a subject of debate. The similarity of Earth's bulk composition to that of meteorites known as enstatite chondrites suggests a dry proto-Earth with subsequent delivery of volatiles by local accretion or impacts of asteroids or comets. Previous measurements in six comets from the Oort cloud yielded a mean D/H ratio of (2.96 ± 0.25) × 10(-4). The D/H value in carbonaceous chondrites, (1.4 ± 0.1) × 10(-4), together with dynamical simulations, led to models in which asteroids were the main source of Earth's water, with ≤10 per cent being delivered by comets. Here we report that the D/H ratio in the Jupiter-family comet 103P/Hartley 2, which originated in the Kuiper belt, is (1.61 ± 0.24) × 10(-4). This result substantially expands the reservoir of Earth ocean-like water to include some comets, and is consistent with the emerging picture of a complex dynamical evolution of the early Solar System.

Nitrogen is the fifth most abundant element in the Universe. In the interstellar medium, it has been thought to be mostly molecular (N2). However, N2 has no observable rotational or vibrational transitions, so its abundance in the interstellar medium remains poorly known. In comets, the N2 abundance is very low, while the elemental nitrogen abundance is deficient with respect to the solar value. Moreover, large nitrogen isotopic anomalies are observed in meteorites and interstellar dust particles. Here we report the N2H+ (and by inference the N2) abundance inside a cold dark molecular cloud. We find that only a small fraction of nitrogen in the gas phase is molecular, with most of it being atomic. Because the compositions of comets probably reflect those of dark clouds, this result explains the low N2 abundance in comets. We argue that the elemental nitrogen abundance deficiency in comets can be understood if the atomic oxygen abundance is lower than predicted by present chemical models. Furthermore, the lack of molecular nitrogen in molecular clouds explains the nitrogen anomalies in meteorites and interstellar dust particles, as nitrogen fractionation is enhanced if gaseous nitrogen is atomic.

The discovery of hydrogen isocyanide (HNC) in comet Hyakutake with an abundance (relative to hydrogen cyanide, HCN) similar to that seen in dense interstellar clouds raised the possibility that these molecules might be surviving interstellar material. The preservation of material from the Sun's parent molecular cloud would provide important constraints on the processes that took place in the protostellar nebula. But another possibility is that HNC is produced by photochemical processes in the coma, which means that its abundance could not be used as a direct constraint on conditions in the early Solar System. Here we show that the HNC/HCN ratio determined for comet Hale-Bopp varied with heliocentric distance in a way that matches the predictions of models of gas-phase chemical production of HNC in the coma, but cannot be explained if the HNC molecules were coming from the comet's nucleus. We conclude that HNC forms mainly by chemical reactions in the coma, and that such reactions need to be considered when attempting to deduce the composition of the nucleus from observations of the coma.

Significant gas-phase chemistry occurs in the comae of bright comets, as is demonstrated here for the case of Comet Hale-Bopp. The abundance ratio of the two isomers, hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen isocyanide, is shown to vary with heliocentric distance in a way that is consistent with production of HNC by ion-molecule chemistry initiated by the photoionization of water. Likewise, the first maps of emission from HCO+ show an abundance and an extended distribution that are consistent with the same chemical model.

We present a comprehensive study of the physical and chemical conditions along the TMC-1 ridge. Temperatures were estimated from observations of CH3CCH, NH3, and CO. Densities were obtained from a multitransition study of HC3N. The values of the density and temperature allow column densities for 13 molecular species to be estimated from statistical equilibrium calculations, using observations of rarer isotopomers where possible, to minimize opacity effects. The most striking abundance variations relative to HCO+ along the ridge were seen for HC3N, CH3CCH, and SO, while smaller variations were seen in CS, C2H, and HCN. On the other hand, the NH3, HNC, and N2H+ abundances relative to HCO+ were determined to be constant, indicating that the so-called NH3 peak in TMC-1 is probably a peak in the ammonia column density rather than a relative abundance peak. In contrast, the well-studied cyanopolyyne peak is most likely due to an enhancement in the abundance of long-chain carbon species. Comparisons of the derived abundances to the results of time-dependent chemical models show good overall agreement for chemical timescales around 10(5) yr. We find that the observed abundance gradients can be explained either by a small variation in the chemical timescale from 1.2 x 10(5) to 1.8 x 10(5) yr or by a factor of 2 change in the density along the ridge. Alternatively, a variation in the C/O ratio from 0.4 to 0.5 along the ridge produces an abundance gradient similar to that observed.

We present a survey of the distribution of 20 chemical and isotopic molecular species along the central ridge of the Orion molecular cloud from 6' north to 6' south of BN-KL observed with the QUARRY focal plane array on the FCRAO 14 m telescope, which provides an angular resolution of approximately 50" in the 3 mm wavelength region. We use standard tools of multivariate analysis for a systematic investigation of the similarities and differences among the maps of integrated intensities of the 32 lines observed. The maps fall in three broad classes: first, those strongly peaked toward BN-KL; second, those having rather flat distributions along the ridge; and third, those with a clear north-south gradient or contrast. We identify six positions or regions where we calculate relative abundances. Line velocities and line widths indicate that the optically thin lines generally trace the same volume of dense gas, except in the molecular bar, where C18O, C34S, H13CO+, CN, C2H, SO, and C3H2 have velocities characteristic of the bar itself, whereas the emission from other detected species is dominated by the background cloud. The strongest abundance variations in our data are the well-known enhancements seen in HCN, CH3OH, HC3N, and SO toward BN-KL and, less strongly, toward the Orion-South outflow 1'.3S. The principal result of this study is that along the extended quiescent ridge the chemical abundances, within factors of 3-4, exhibit an impressive degree of uniformity. The northern part of the ridge has a chemistry closest to that found in quiescent dense clouds. While temperature and density are similar around the northern radical-ion peak near 3'.5N and in the southern core near 4'.2S, some abundances, in particular, those of the ions HCO+ and N2H+, are significantly lower toward 4'.2S. The areas near 4.'2S and the molecular bar itself around (1'.7E, 2'.4S) stand out with peculiar and similar properties probably caused by stronger UV fields penetrating deeper into the clumpy molecular gas. This leads to higher electron abundances and thereby reduced abundances of the ions, as well as a lack of complex molecules.

We present the results of a systematic survey of the chemical properties of two giant molecular cloud (GMC) cores in M17 and Cepheus A. In all, we have mapped the emission from 32 molecular transitions of 13 molecules and seven isotopic variants over a 4' x 5' region in each core. Each map includes known sites of massive star formation, as well as the more extended quiescent material. In M17 most molecules have emission peaks away from the H II region/molecular cloud interface, while two species, HC3N and CH3C2H, deviate from this structure with sharp maxima closer to this interface. In Cepheus A the core is influenced by a compact high-velocity molecular outflow and a more extended low-velocity flow. The molecular emission distributions in this source are generally quite similar, with most molecules peaking near the center of the core to the east of the compact H II region HW 2. A few molecules, SO, CH3OH, H13CN, and C18O, have more extended emission. Only two molecules, CO and HCO+, appear to trace the high- and low-velocity outflows; all other species are tracing the quiescent core. We have used the results of previous studies of the density and temperature of the dense gas in the same cloud cores to derive accurate abundances relative to CO for several positions in each core. The principal result is that the chemical composition of all the cores we have surveyed (which include OMC-1 as well as M17 and Cepheus A) show remarkable similarity, both within a given core and among the cores. This suggests that the chemical processes are similar in quiescent GMC core material. In M17 the lack of variation of molecular abundances is remarkable because the radiation field and the gas temperature are known to vary appreciably throughout the surveyed region, suggesting that the bulk of the emission arises from gas that is well shielded from radiation.

The abundance ratio of the isomers HCN and HNC has been investigated in comet Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1) through observations of the J = 4-3 rotational transitions of both species for heliocentric distances 0.93 < r < 3 AU, both pre- and post-perihelion. After correcting for the optical depth of the stronger HCN line, we find that the column density ratio of HNC/HCN in our telescope beam increases significantly as the comet approaches the Sun. We compare this behavior to that predicted from an ion-molecule chemical model and conclude that the HNC is produced in significant measure by chemical processes in the coma; i.e., for comet Hale-Bopp, HNC is not a parent molecule sublimating from the nucleus.

Maps of comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) in the millimeter-wave emission of the ion HCO+ revealed a local minimum near the nucleus position, with a maximum about 100,000 km in the antisolar direction. These observed features of the HCO+ emission require a low abundance of HCO+ due to enhanced destruction in the inner coma of the comet, within a region of low electron temperature (Te). To set constraints on the formation of HCO+ in the coma, as well as the location and magnitude of the transition to higher Te, the data are compared with the results of ion-molecule chemistry models.