Speaker
Description
The formation of a solar type planetary system is characterized by several physical processes that start with the collapse of a cold (≤ 10 K) and dense (≥ 10$^5$cm$^{-3}$) prestellar core into a protostar, a protoplanetary disk and, eventually, a planetary system. These stages are also accompanied by the evolution of the chemical composition (e.g. Caselli & Ceccarelli 2012), which is a powerful diagnostic tool to recover the past and present conditions of a source.
The vast majority of the observations that led the recognition the chemical variety of solar type protostars has been obtained via millimeter wavelengths telescopes, where several relatively light molecules, like the iCOMs or the small carbon chains have their peak of emission. In contrast, the lines of heavy molecules (e.g. chains with more than seven C-atoms) at mm wavelengths are substantially weaker. Their observation could add an important piece of the overall puzzle as they might have a crucial role in the heritage of organic material from the pre- and proto- stellar phase to the objects of the newly formed planetary system, like asteroids and comets (e.g. Mumma & Charnley 2011, McGuire et al. 2019).
We will report the results obtained in a pilot study proposed using GBT to observe several crucial C-bearing chains in the 8.0 – 11.5 GHz and 14.0 – 15.4 GHz intervals, in L1544 and IRAS16293-2422, which are the two archetypes of prestellar cores and protostars, respectively. GBT observations, covering part of the frequency range of the future SKA1-MID, reveal an impressive molecular richness of C-chains (e.g. C$_4$H, C$_6$H, HC$_7$N, HC$_9$N, C$_3$S) and a chemical differentiation between the two sources at large angular scales. These preliminary results stress the importance of SKA observations to image the spatial distribution of the observed C-chains and to understand if large carbon chains and iCOMs coexist in the planets formation region.
| Reasearch area | Cradle of Life |
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