[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to the May 2026 episode of Astro Chemical Coffee. I'm your host, Brett McGuire, and on this month's episode I chat with Lukush, the Kaniak and Frankseller Krzysztebiksi of Lignam's territory. And we bring you our Gravengo papers and chalkboard announcements as usual. For all that, let me tell you that today's cup of Joe is a decaf latte and an enormous almond croissant from Cafe Lumiere in Niagara on the lake. After the most recent heat wave, being able to walk around with a warm beverage and the cool breeze off Lake Ontario was absolutely incredible. For being a decaf brew, it was exceptionally smooth but still had quite a depth of flavor. I recommend giving them a try next time you drop by the Quake Little Town. And just a quick note, I also have a postcard here from the percolator who is apparently enjoying a relaxing, de-scaling sauna in Finland. But promises to be back soon and with a tale of how Astro Chemistry helped track the spread of COVID-19. Click bait! Well, you'll have to wait and see. [Music] In today's coffee chat, I sat down with Franziola Krzysztebiksi in Lightning Observatory to chat about her journey through Astro Chemistry. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us. So first question we always like to ask folks is how did you get interested in Astro Chemistry to begin with? Because it is a very niche discipline, right? And everybody seems to have their own unique journey to Astro Chemistry. Yes, I think this is one of the questions that I like the most about the pochkais because exactly I like everyone has a different path. And I think for me to get to tell you about how my interest in Astro Chemistry was trigger, I have to tell you two stories and how they are connected. Absolutely. Because first I got interested in astronomy and then in chemistry. And my interest in astronomy started when I was around 10 and 11. And my sister started to buy magazines of National Geographic. And this was around when I was a kid in 2022 or three. And it was the last time that we had a solar peak. So the magazines were full of articles about the magnetic fields of the sun and the sun spots. So I actually also have this very cool poster of a zoom of the surface of the sun. With very detail and the dark spots. So I started to read these magazines and it was in my school drawing. So I started to draw this sun with this magnetic spot. Very cool. Yes. But astronomy was very distant from my perspective that I had growing up in Brazil. In a very small sea. Small town. So I never thought that I could do astronomy as in my studies. But then I got interested in chemistry because of a very good teacher that I had in high school. Happened to a lot of us. Yes. And I think it's very nice how teachers can have this influence on us in a very early stage. So instead of astronomy I started my bachelor in chemistry. And in the first semester of my studies. I had to give a seminar about nuclear synthesis in solar. Oh, she is. I found out that actually my interest in astronomy could be connected to chemistry. And then I started to find my ways of how to do research in astronomy. Very cool. So what projects did you work on for your masters then? Yeah. The first project that I had related to astronomy was the student in my bachelor's because the Brazilian government had this very cool initiative of funding bachelor's students to spend one year abroad. Oh, cool. So I got to spend one year in France to learn French and also to have an internship in astronomy because it was the field that I wanted. Yeah. Where did you end up going? It was a small city called Orléans and then they had one of the institutes there. They were working with the Jose Tamishian. So I did an internship related to the Cosima instruments in the Jose Tamishian was analyzing the solids particles in the comments. So that's super cool. Wow. Very nice. And how did you parlay that into, because these days you work on interstellar space, right? So how did your interests evolve into what you're working on now for your research full time? Yes. So this internship was related to the Jose Tamishian, but then it also had like a hands-on in the lab. So I was like, I think I should go to the lab to do my research. Okay. My master thesis was related to studying chlorobinzin in the interaction with X-rays. So I was also triggered by the detection of bins on my trial. So chlorobinzin is a chlorinated pH like a D, but with a single binsin. And then I got more involved with laboratory austrochemistry in this phase with my master thesis. And I knew that I wanted to do a PhD in astrochemistry and I wanted to move to Europe for that. So I applied for a position to do experiments in, yeah, to have a PhD that was partially in France in Germany. So I started to be more involved with astrochemistry and interstellar ISIS in the early stages of the start formation during my PhD. Yeah. So where did you work for your PhD and who did you work for and what's the most exciting result? Yes, so during my PhD I worked in different laboratories. One of them was in Ciergeu-Gieu-Pontouas, so in the laboratory of Francois de Rio. Oh, okay. Close to Paris. And his lab is specialized in understanding the formation of molecules also triggered by atoms. But my project was specifically to understand the absorption parameters of interstellar ISIS. So I have a paper, for example, one of my paper is to understand the binding energies of ammonium salts. And the second one was to understand how much trapping we could have in water ISIS. And then in Germany I was measuring optical constants of ISIS in the laboratory of Palakasselli and Indicass. Very cool. Yeah. So the first projects that you mentioned there, the binding energies, these would work TPD experiments where you ramp the temperature and look at the disorption rate. Exactly. And try to get a binding energy out of that. Yes. Okay. So you said you were looking at trapping. So is this the idea that the water ice, that these were trapped in water ice? And I remember that has say different porosity or different structures within it, depending on whether it's compact or not compact or crystalline. And your molecules are trapped inside those pores and just aren't allowed out at their normal disorption temperature. Exactly. So I was exploring a whole range of parameters like the deposition temperature to play with the compact, how much compact or porosity is the water matrix and also like the different ratios of water in a certain molecule like CO CO2. And then to see how much of this molecule or how much, how this parameters wouldn't influence the disorption of the second molecule, their normal temperature or how much it would get trapped inside water and just start the later. So did you find that the water did a really good job of trapping these, it was ammonium salts? So I also studied with ammonium salts and ammonium salts are interesting because at least the one that I studied, it has a higher disorption temperature so it's not trapped by water. Oh, okay. So it's a little later. Okay. And the other molecules, yeah, especially the porosity of the water ice plays a huge role with if the other molecules get trapped or not or how much it gets trapped. Is it then that the smaller the pore sizes, the more trapped the molecule becomes or is it not that simple of a relationship? The more compact the ice, the more it's going to get trapped. Because if you have a porosity from the beginning, you also have like pathways where these molecules can go and reach the surface. Okay. Very cool. Yeah. Excellent. And then you measured optical constants in Pallas lab. So what pretty was this using the tear hood setup or was this in the mid infrared, what were you looking at? We were doing both things actually. Oh, okay. So the cool thing about this optical constants project in Pallas lab is that they developed these standards, time domain spectroscopy where you could start measuring the optical constants of the ice without being reliant to the chromatic relations which is like introducing some of the other things. So we will put it on a certain day. Yes. And then with that hurts, time domain spectroscopy, you can directly meditate.
the reflective index of the ISIS. And then for my contribution to the project, let's re-extend the range of the measurements, not only in the TAHIRS, but also in the media infrareds, by combining with a Fourier transform in infrared spectroscopy. So that was my contribution to the project. And there's your like publishing papers with other molecules because I worked with CONCO2. And there are publishing some paper about the water, actual constants, which is very important. Very cool, yeah. So now you're in Leiden. Yes. How did you get here and what are you working on? Yeah, so my working line also involves these skills that I've developed when I was really making PhD. So I work on a set up called surferside, so it stands for surface reaction simulation device. And I use the techniques that I use during my PhD, like a TPD and also infrared spectra to understand how the complex develops in interstellar media, but especially in the solid state. So surferside, we have the trigger, the reactions in the solid state, but by the interaction of atomic hydrogen. So in the very stages of surferside, we work with the positive, for example, oxygen and hydrogen. And to understand the route of water formation via these molecules. Sure. Yeah. And over time, we got more complex. So now I'm trying to understand how complex organic molecules are triggered by these mechanisms. Awesome. Very cool. Well, as you well know, because you've been a co-host on the podcast before, this is not only a coffee podcast. So we always like to ask, what's your favorite cup of coffee or tea if you have to drink tea? No, I am a huge fan of coffee. Excellent. And now we are getting to summertime. And I think my favorite coffee, or what I ask when I go out, is a special tonic. And a special tonic? Yes. Is it sort of tonic water with a special? Exactly. No kidding. You never heard of this before. No. Oh, yeah. I can recommend some places in Lina if you want to try. Okay. It's my favorite summer drink. And this is over ice or something then to cool it down? Yes. Very cool. Excellent. All right. This is great. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. And now, a word from our sponsors. July is here, that glorious stretch of summer when the air is hot. The grill is working overtime and simply walking to the mailbox qualifies as outdoor exercise. Fortunately, Starbucks is helping everyone keep their cool with their new peak summer collection. From the firecracker fruit refresher to the campfire cold brew, served mercifully over a heaping helping of ice. They've got a drink for pool days, road trips, backyard barbecues, and those afternoons when the weather app simply says, "Good luck!" Whether you're watching fireworks chasing fireflies or trying to remember where you left your sunglasses for the third time today, Starbucks has a cup ready to make the hottest days of summer, just a little more refreshing. Because July isn't about beating the heap. It's about staying one sip ahead of it. [sizzling] This is the grabbing go because sometimes you just can't do more than skim the menu. We've got rapid fire overviews of 10 fantastic papers from this month's gastrochemical literature for you as usual, starting off with number one metamorphoses of Cartman and Oxygen in protoplanetary discs. How chemistry and radial drift transform inner disc Ceta O ratios, by Moliarova at all on the archive to appear in Munras. The authors couple a detailed gas phase and grain surface chemical network to a viscously evolving disc model with two population dust growth and radial drift of that dust, modeling a solar mass stars midplane to track how chemistry and pebble transport together set the inner disc carbon to oxygen ratio. They vary the drift efficiency of those grains, model dust trap locations, the cosmic ray ionization rate, cosmic ray driven dissociation of ISIS and refractory carbon grain destruction. They find that cosmic ray triggered ion chemistry destroys methane in the outer disc within about a million years, and this repartitions its carbon into heavier organic molecules that being far less volatile, remain frozen on grains, and therefore drift inward early with those pebbles. Because no methane rich gas survives to spread inward and deliver carbon later, the inner disc Ceta O stays near or below unity, unlike in Freeze Out Only models. Dust traps intercept both water and these carbon rich organic ISIS, lowering inner disc metalicity. However, if a sufficient fraction of ice dissociation products can react on grain surfaces, water and organics are converted into volatile O2 and CO, the absorb, escape the trap, and oxygen enrich the inner disc. The authors conclude that throughout all of this cosmic rays are the underlying decisive factor that sort of drives everything. Number two, non-detection of HCSSH, estimating upper limits and constraining chemistry by Sahu et al, on the archive to appear an app chain. This work examines a reported detection from another team of the doubly sulfur-bearing molecule, di-phyopharmic acid, that's HC double bond S, single bond S, H. Toward a hot carino, a target relevant to the butter puzzle of why so little interstellar sulfur is found in identified molecules. The authors reprocess the same archival interferometric data set, generating both higher and coarser resolution spectral cubes, and modeled the spectra assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium, LTE, after first building a thorough inventory of known abundant organic species. They show that the five previously claimed transitions share nearly identical upper-state energies, preventing a reliable temperature determination, and that the observed features are instead explained by blending with other molecules, such as glycolaldehyde, methylformate, and acetaldehyde. They derive an upper limit on the abundance well below the prior claim, detect only tentative signatures of the related oxygen-bearing analog, and present gas-grained chemical models predicting intrinsically low di-phyopharmic acid abundances, consistent with their non-detection. Number three, the cosmic ray ionization rate from H3+ observations can be overestimated, due to neglect of time-dependent chemistry, by whole at all on the archive. Cosmic ray's drive ionization, we just heard about that in a previous paper here, and chemistry deep inside molecular clouds and podiplinatory disks. And their influence is commonly captured by a single parameter, the cosmic ray ionization rate. In diffuse molecular gas, this rate is often inferred from H3+ observations coupled with a relatively simple chemical-canetic model, assuming steady state. Here, though, the office point out that H2, molecular hydrogen, can take longer to form than turbulent motions take to redistribute the gas. This leaves abundances out of equilibrium. You can't actually reach that steady state, meaning that those assumptions and those kinetic models might not be applicable. Using 3D, magnetohydrodynamic simulations with coupled chemistry and driven turbulence, they generate moxite mines and repeat the standard steady state fitting procedure, comparing inferred rates against the true input value. They find steady state fits overestimate the true rate by a factor of about 2 to 5. Number 4, detection of a four-carbon sugar in interstellar space, by Jimenez-Sera at all on the archive, out now in nature astronomy. Sugars are central to biology and prebiotic chemistry, yet how they arose on the early Earth remains unclear, and none had previously been identified in interstellar space, and no, glycolaldehyde is not a sugar. This work reports the discovery of a Rithru-lose, a chiral four-carbon ketose, toward the shock-milicular cloud G plus 0.693 minus 0.027, in the Galactic Center, using an ultra-sensitive broadband spectral survey from the Hiebs 40-meter telescope. The authors identify numerous unblended or only slightly blended transitions, consistent with a predicted spectrum, and assuming equilibrium conditions, drive its column density and abundance. Notably, a Rithru-lose appears more abundant than smaller three-carbon sugars, which remain undetected and at upper limit abundance ratios that are pretty constraining. And this is contrary to the usual trend of decreasing abundance with additional carbons, within at least molecular families. Quantum chemical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations suggest it forms
which is a form that is efficiently on icy dust screens by combining radicals derived from glycol aldehyde and ethylene glycol, which are both abundant in the cloud. And if you missed it, this work was actually featured on the front page of the New York Times today, that would be July 14th, which is absolutely insane, very cool to see astrochemistry in making headline news. So congratulations to his Ascone and the whole team. Number 5. Late in fall of molecular cloud material reshaped the outer solar system by Van Kuten at all on the archive. Condrites are primitive meteorites that preserve dust and pebbles from the early solar system, and their isotopic makeup records where and when that material formed. Here, the authors measure silicon, magnesium, iron, and chromium nucleosynthetic isotopes alongside some textural analyses in a range of unusual and typical carbonaceous conduits to trace how the outer protoplanetary discs of our solar system evolved. The authors find that carbonaceous conduits reflect mixing between two chemically similar but isotopically distinct dust reservoirs, a primordial component resembling 54 chromium-rich re-yubu particles, and outer disc dark clasts thought to be represented by cometary material. They interpret this as late in fall of molecular cloud material delivered by a streamer, contributing substantial mass to the gas giant accretion region. Arguing that the chromium carrier resides in interstellar ises, lost during thermal processing, they propose that sea-eye condrites, including re-yubu and benu, formed inward near the water-ice line rather than in the outer most disc. Terrestrial planets, accordingly, incorporate sea-eye-like, not cometary-like material. Number 6. First detection of HDO-ice in a protoplanetary disc by potapov at all on the archive to appear in A&A. Tracing how water's deuterium enrichment evolves from interstellar clouds through discs to planets helps reveal whether planet forming material is inherited or reprocessed. While deuterated water gas and more recently HDO-ice have been found around protostars, HDO-ice had never been confirmed in a protoplanetary disc. The authors analyzed JWST near-spec observations of the highly inclined Ejon disc 132-1832 in the Orion Nebula cluster, whose orientation favors ice-adorption studies. Using a spectral fitting tool together with dedicated laboratory ice measurements, they decompose the observed bands and report the first HDO-ice detection in a disc. Alongside water, CO2, its isotopologs, CO, Ocn- and tentatively Ocs as well. The infer-deta-H ratio in the HDO and water greatly exceeds values found in comets, condrites, and protostars, though the authors trade it as an upper limit, because saturation and scattering in inclined discs complicate column density estimates. They suggest isotopic exchange and preferential disorption of water could enhance the ratio, and this supports the laboratory predictions. Number 7. Detection of C60 combination bands in the near IR spectrum of TC1 by Geese at all on the archive. The planetary Nebula TC1 is famous for displaying the cleanest and strongest mid-inferred fullerene emission, making it an ideal target for probing how C60 forms and radiates in space. Using new JWST near-spec observations, the authors uncovered a set of previously unreported broad emission features between roughly 3.5 and 5.2 microns. By mapping these features across the Nebula, they found the emission peaks in the same asymmetric ring around the central star that traces the known C60 and C70 fullerene bands, strongly linking the carrier to these species. To identify the features, they carried out anachromonic quantum chemical calculation since combination bands arising from simultaneous excitation of multiple vibrational modes cannot be predicted from simpler harmonic methods. The computed spectrum matches the observations well, confirming the bands as C60 combination modes. These bands actually carry a substantial fraction almost 20% of the total fullerene emission, and this has implications for cooling models and for detecting C60 elsewhere. Number 8. UCL-KM 4.0, an open source gas grain astrochemistry simulation framework by Vermarian at all on the archive. This paper documents the latest release of UCL-KM, a time-dependent gas grain chemical model that tracks how molecular abundances evolved in interstellar environments by numerically solving coupled rate equations for each species. The authors described the chemistry module which handles gas phase reactions drawn from either the U-Mist or Keeta databases, along with separate treatments of ice on grain surfaces and in the bulk, including freeze-out, thermal and non-thermal disorption, grain surface reactions, and grain-assisted recombination. The physics module offers parameterized descriptions of cloud collapse, protostella warmup, and C-type and J-type shocks, plus new one-dimensional radiation modeling, and the ability to post-process hydrodynamical simulations using tracer particles. The detail adding heating and cooling processes that let gas and dust temperatures decoupled, and finally, they explain the numerical solver and a modernized object-oriented Python interface that supports sequential runs, parameter grids, and efficient data storage. Number 9. Probing outflow physics through CH3-CN and CH3-OH chemistry by Gianni at all on the archive. This study focuses on the relationship between Mephanol, CH3-OH, and Mepol cyanide, CH3-CN, also known as aceto-Nitrile, using it to probe the outflow driven by a Class-0 protostar S68N. The authors analyze high-resolution alma observations of both molecules, finding that they share a similar spatial distribution and velocity structure, suggesting they trace the same gas. Assuming equilibrium excitation and verifying this with a non-equilibrium analysis, they derive temperatures, column densities, and an abundance ratio that stays roughly constant along the outflow, resembling values seen in warm inner regions around other protostars. Comparing with an updated chemical model that forms Mephanol cyanide in the gas phase, they find that the observed ratio requires strongly enhanced cosmic ray ionization, and thus this ratio could potentially be used as a probe of this ionization of the Earth's temperature. The probe of this ionization rate in protosteller outflows. And finally, number 10, astrochemical study of early embedded disks by Bianchi at all on the archive to appear in frontiers. This perspective article introduces a research project aimed at understanding the physical and chemical properties of very young embedded protosteller disks, with recent observations suggest may already host the earliest stages of planet formation. The author explains that characterizing these disks is difficult, they are buried within their natal envelopes, their continuum emission is often optically thick, leading to underestimated masses, and separating disk emission from envelopes, outflows, and accretion streamers is challenging. The project proposes combining astrochemistry with data mining and machine learning to systematically analyze and underused archival data for major interferometers. It is organized around three themes, measuring disk mass, and the contribution of infalling streamers, characterizing chemical composition and molecular distributions, and assessing dust grain growth. Using multiple molecular tracers and modeling, the effort seeks to link disk conditions to eventual planetary composition, supporting interpretation of future exoplanet observations. And that's your grab and go for the month. We can of course only juggle so many cups for a more complete list of papers. We recommend checking out the amazing lists maintained by David Woon at theastrochemist.org, as well as subscribing to the astrochemical newsletter. Those are two different things. You can find links to these websites as well as each of the papers in this month's grab and go on our website, coffee.astrochem.net. And if you have a paper you think we should include in the next month's edition, you can shoot us an email with a link to the paper in a 4-6th set in summary at
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of humanity's simplest achievements. In today's single origin brew I spoke with Lukash Tekaniak of Lighting Observatory about just what makes a tracer molecule a tracer molecule among many other topics. All right, thanks for taking the time to chat with us Lukash. So one of the first things we like to ask folks on the podcast is how did you get interested in Astrochemistry to begin with? Because it's a small field. Right, yeah, thanks for having me. So I got involved when I was starting my masters in Poland and then freshly dampy HD student from Evina Van Dysub's book which I'm working on now. She was named Agata Karska. She just came from Poland from graduating in Lighting to Poland, starting a little group and like I was very excited because that was first time somebody offered me to work on data from space. That was her usual times. And of course the and the phased paper I got to read from her as a preparation was on water in the universe by Evina and that was 2013 Astrochemical Review. So basically wow, okay, so there's water in space, what does it trace, what does it look like? So very interesting and you know, perhaps at the very idea of probing the early conditions for formation of planets and stars, but then I didn't know much about any of these topics. So it's almost like, I think the first project I got involved was more Hymus star forming regions. So also a bunch of OH, H2, H2 photopdr regions, that kind of things. So but I slowly grew into it like learning, okay, so this is how CEO looks like in space, right? And then I got into Alma because then I realized, okay, so Alma now offers to zoom in on those right and that got me very excited because initially I wasn't very into radio astronomy because my affiliation was like, okay, so we listen like you know the contact famous scene right when she listens to something and I was like, okay, that's not really what I want to do, but then I realized what people do with Alma VLA images and that was, okay, so now I can kind of relate to it a bit better. And then I saw as many other people HLTOW image, very transformational also for like just getting a grasp of, you know, we are looking at where planets will be forming right when they are forming now. And I think that really shaped where I want to go. So maybe not as a strachemic or dusty perspective on things to start with. And that's also what led some of my first papers I've written that was about actually VLA survey of per se whose protestors. Okay. That was worked together with John Tobin. Is that the Van Dam? Exactly, exactly. So I did my summer research project here in Leiden actually during my masters which I started year ago with Agata and then she kindly suggested well apply it here. There's this nice summer program which I had no idea about. And then I learned about it and got selected. So got to spend the summer here in Leiden working on VLA data on disks in per se. And among other things we found a bunch of cool stuff like there's that there's free free emission in the jet so basically very ionized emission from low mass protestors with the dawn of the sea. They are more common seen in high mass stuff but also in those solar system solar like stars. So this is what I focused on pretty quickly on like how do we reform and assemble the stars that gonna look similar to the sun based here. So was this VLA data continuum observation? Yes, that was only continuum. Okay. So how did you get then interested in molecules? Was it I really want to find other probes of what I'm seeing in these specific sources? Yeah, I think so. There was certainly an aspect to that because when I studied free free emission in the jets and I realized, well those are really probing some very interesting conditions like in terms of physics. It's a very high ionization. It's also very fast for usually quiescent systems as we assist with protestors. So that's moving on from realizing that those jets are very fast, very dynamic origins. But what also came into picture was JWST that was then at the stage of being finalized, let's say, with a fixed deadline of 2018 which of course didn't happen. But I was supposed to start my PhD. So then I got in touch also already being in Liden and working with John who was in the Venus circle here. So I got in touch with Venus and she was just looking for a first PhD student to start preparing for JWST because the timing was getting close. So my promise was to start working on the JWST data still in my PhD which didn't happen sure. But one of my first tasks was actually looking at some of those targets. I already was familiar with lacking pursuits and to pick the best targets for JWST. And then what came after that we can go into that story later but what came after that was okay, so we know which targets more or less we want to. We have a long list which has the Alma data, right? And which what kind of tracers we will use with Alma. Because we have a couple of years to spare, of course, before JWST, what would be the best would be to characterize them with Alma. So we like to use this analogy that Alma is basically providing us with a map of those systems that we can take our JWST and walk in there and understand what's going on. Sure. Because JWST never has this kinematic resolution in Alma. Yeah, yeah. And also the systems are inherently cold until you get very close which also JWST doesn't trace very well except for the ISIS, of course. So you mentioned tracers here a few times. This might be one of your most famous, if not most famous, paper in the last few years is on what molecules trace what in the interstellar medium. So tracers can be a very loaded word in astrochemistry. So maybe you can give us your definition. What makes a molecule a tracer of something? Yeah, so I would say the definition is not very specific, right? We can think about it in the concept of biomarkers, right? It is a tracer of life and we literally realize it's not as simple as we thought. So I would say an astrochemistry would try to narrow things down. So perhaps we try to understand which molecule and which specific transition is seen in specific physical conditions. And then we can perhaps narrow it down to certain temperature regions. Then on top of that, of course, came different excitation mechanisms, right? You can have very cold regions still releasing, for example, methanol and you start to wonder where is that coming from, right? And so I think that was one of the important things from that paper was that we, when we zoom in on solar systems, we found the same molecules tracing different things. Depends where we look at what are their exciting conditions, right? So for example, one of my favorites, aspects of that was outflows where we found a lot of also complex organic molecules, quite cold, right? In terms of their excitation temperatures in those outflows, which are usually acid with hot, short gas, which I'm now studying with chain flip of H2. This is hot. This is 1000 Kelvin, right? And so we found a lot of those cosmic complex organic molecules at temperatures below 100K. And what was happening there is that you punch the outflow to the cloud. It's still the inner center is hot, but what happens on the outside is usually when it clashes with the envelope, there's a shock layer, but there's a bunch of stuff that's moving much slower. And that basically causes different rays to collide. And they release this cold ice as basically into the gas phase. I think that the bottom line here is that, I mean, well, maybe let's think about it a little bit. So I would say the bottom line on what defines the tracer is how well we can narrow the physical conditions of the specific transition. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think what you said at the beginning there was key is that you were particularly zooming in on these molecules in this region of stars in this particular mass range at this particular evolutionary stage and saying within this sphere of physical conditions and evolutionary stages, these molecules are telling us X, Y and Z, right? And I think one of the things that we have to be cautious about then is having folks take those and say, well, I'm going to go look at this molecule in a PDR and claim that it traces the same thing, right? And I guess that's the note of caution and where people sometimes get confused is, well, is methanol a tracer of UV, some places? Sure. Right? And other places not. So how do you go about thinking about when a molecule that you know traces something very well in one environment is translatable to another environment? Yeah, I mean, that's a very good point. And I think indeed, that's very correct that what we did was specifically for low mass protostars, right? And I think some of this can be generalized. So let's take an example of hot cores in a high mass star from the regions. We're pretty confident that what we are seeing in the low mass and high mass more or less scales up in many ways, right? Sure. So this is what we see. But and there, the conditions can be roughly similar, right? So we're talking about a few hundreds of Kelvin and in temperature, 10 to the 6 higher in terms of density sometimes, right? So those are the easy cases, but of course, perhaps the way to disentangle that is to understand also the physical conditions in the protostars and themselves, right? For example, we don't deal with such harsh radiations and since the high mass star from in regions in the PDRs, right? So so a bunch of those tracers that will be still quite popular, let's say in protostars won't be seen there, right? Just because of their radiations to harsh.
Sure. And a lot of the work I did afterwards was also related to trying to understand a bit better which traceers can be applicable, for example, using what's been widely used in many regions and neutral carbon to apply that to also the protestors. And maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I still was surprised that we find fairly little in the jets. So this is where I was trying to pin it down. Interesting. Yeah. Very little neutral carbon in the jets. Yeah. I mean, where were the neutral carbon becoming from in these other regions, from the destruction of grains or. So it turns out that the carbon basically goes through, well, the PDRs in general are from them, so the photo-situation layers, right? Yeah. So there's quite a narrow range of where neutral carbon will be present, because otherwise it gets ionized, other than that it will be seen in the molecule. Yeah. So I was hoping that the range where this natural carbon we see in jets will be a bit wider. And that doesn't, perhaps it's just too narrow range to. Because we kind of don't have a very easy way to tracing C+. Yeah. That's 150 transition in Herschel, which we're having kinematics, but not the surrounding resolution, and otherwise it's also kind of a screen on the face of a cloud, so it's not easy to detect that. Yeah, to punch all the way in. Yeah. Very cool. So what are you working on these days? What's got you excited about Astrochemistry in the last year or so? Yeah, so last year was very busy with some of the work I've been doing for the JWST Observations of Young Protestors, so this is called "Project Joyce", that is led by Evina, and it's basically what came from the Guaranteed Time Observations with JWST Mirror Instruments. Mirror Instruments was built by European Consortium plus the US Partners, and the European Consortium is basically a collective of institutes across Europe, including Netherlands would play a major role in building the instrument as well, and this kind of inner world for that, let's say, right, or as a contribution for the contribution for Mary, Netherlands also granted quite significant Guaranteed Time Observations, right? Part of that got assigned to study of Protestors, so let's say 55 hours. It's got a check of time. And that we had to spend, so as I said before, when I arrived in Leiden, it was my first project to what do we do with these 50 hours, right? We already knew what we're going to do is probably one large music of an outfit that was now famous, a Teach to Eleven. Ah, sure, which I think was a nature cover at some point at all. And what followed was also a survey of dozens of Protestors on the order of 15, I think, where we have both high and low mass, but with a large emphasis on low mass part. And there we did a lot of work on various aspects of it because each of the Mary, so Mary is an IEFU, is an integral fuel unit, which each pixel gives you a spectra, which is excellent for looking for different traces, right? So you get both eyes, you get shocks, you get discs, all in one cube, right? So we explored different aspects of that, and what I worked on the past year was to put on a paper on one particular source, this is called BHR71, it's a class zero protostar in one of the isolated clouds. And what we found there was, first of all, what struck me that was the very strange cone shape structure in H2. Okay. But what we found inside, so the cone strength kind of encapsulating what's inside inside is a high velocity jet. Okay. So for first of all, we resolved for the first time in the ionized state with the AWST. And what we found there was a lot of refractory material, so refractory elements. So nickel, iron, we know those, but we also found a lot of cobalt, which was quite a surprise to me. And this is from grain destruction. Yes. Okay. So so those small, this material will be normally on grains in the quiet ISM, but as soon as either, so there are different scenarios here, but one idea is that basically close to the protostar everything gets evaporated, right? And you release those purely atomic ionized gas into the gas phase with the jet. The other way to do it is, of course, you disrupt your grains, launch the grains and disrupt your grains on the way, release bunch of material there. So that's why so important was the second discovery that came after finding all those refractories. I think I spent already a good couple of months working on the data and starting looking a bit more carefully into the cube and was realizing that the continuum doesn't quite go off on those bullets. So the jet is resolved, so we can trace it in a cube quite well. This was also a mosaic, so not a single point it would have spent four hours of this 55, so I felt quite stressed about if it's actually going to come out right, because it was one of the sources we bet on, I think in the second, in terms of after the big HCH211 mosaic, which spent most of the time on so, it was very happy that it got over such a beautiful jet. And what we found there was that indeed there is a continuum emission from the dust in the bullets themselves. It leads us to think that those dusts actually been released with the jet from the Protostar. Right, so they're not being obliterated at the Protostar. They're being emitted out into the jet and then being eroded there. So then do you expect at some point when you get further away from that erosion region, the refractory material will condense back down into grains or is it just going to get ejected into the interstellar medium in its atomic form in a diffuse scattering process? I think it can go very different directions, because there are a bunch of shocks that happen on the way. So what we are actually observing are internal shocks. So there is of course a bow shock at the very end, if we look at HCH211 picture again at the very end, there's this beautiful bow shock where jet impacts the ceramic envelope, but what we also see on the way to it is the bunch of bullets, we call them, just blobs of material, which we think is caused by two layers of gas. One is moving slower, the other fast-launched, a bit closer, let it light around, sketching up to it and causing those internal shocks. So those could gradually keep eroding those grains. But what is also interesting perspective is that some of those grains might actually fall back. We're not sure if this is going to happen for the fastest jet, but we just have the whole wind around it, which is much slower. And this has fueled a lot of interesting theories over the past couple of years, where I think some of them will call ashfall or basically different ways of saying that something that was grown large in the inner disk was ejected and launched on the further out. And this is important, for example, for scenarios like how do we get terminally processed material rights further out in the solar system, right? So they're just reigning down from the jet back on the outer edges of this? Yeah, that would be the idea. I would say it's still, there are some good models to support. What kind of grains can be learned? And some of them can go quite large actually. So there's a thing model supporting the launch of millimeter size grains as well. Of course, the another thing is how do they actually survive, right? So that's an interesting prospect. But I think overall it's very interesting to follow up. There was also a very nice paper on another prototype that's variable, that they show that it goes through the periods of condensation and crystallization of material around it. And they think that could be then being launched. That paper specifically didn't find any dust in the launching jet. But they did find that there is material that's being crystallized very close to the burst. When the outburst happens, yeah, very cool, very cool. Well, we'll look forward to the results on that as you continue to work through that. As you might know, this is nominally a coffee podcast. So we'd like to end by asking, you know, what's your favorite cup of coffee or tea if you're not a coffee drinker? I am a coffee drinker. Excellent. I work for a couple of years as a barista. Oh, fantastic. Okay. Well, let's say I really write canyam coffees nowadays. Okay. So those are usually very floral. We talked about this in practice. Yeah. You know, I really like the floral, but also very fruity. So can you correct the rest of it? But it's very citric fruity, fruityness like orange or even sometimes lemon. So it's a bit punchy like this. And yeah, I really like those. We have a lot of great rosy resin lightened that I like to get supplied on. And yeah, probably gonna make a coffee of drip. Fantastic. Great. Well, thanks again for chatting with us. Amazing. Thank you. Taking a look at the chalkboard in online talk news, the July Astro Keminar will be Wednesday, July 22nd at 2 p.m. Eastern. And it will feature a talk by Alexia Simon, Fiko Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Departments of Astronomy and Chemistry at the University of Virginia. Entitled Laboratory Astrochemistry of Interstellar Ice's Volatiles, isotopes and complex organic molecules. This is a grand student sponsored event and we will have a link on the website. The third issue of the Laboratory Astro-6 newsletter has also been released. It focuses on astrophysical ises and includes an interview with Dr. Reggie Hudson, a description of three experimental facilities that conduct ice studies with a focus on interstellar and protoplanetary disc ises, a list of recent publications in the field of laboratory astrophysics, and a list of upcoming meetings and conferences. You can visit the website. We have a link on our website to read the newsletter and access the two previous issues as well. In conference news and NGVLA International Science Conference has been announced for November 10 to the 13 in Sendai, Japan. The conference will feature research from all areas of NGVLA science including Astrochemistry, which is a key science goal. Abstract and financial support deadline is July 31st. Registration is now open and early registration closes in September. Second, there will be an Alma at 15 years conference February 22 to the 26th, 2027 in Taipei, Taiwan. The conference will highlight Alma's latest results, especially since the last Pan Alma Conference held in 2021.
2023 and identify exciting directions for future Alma research. Abstract submission just opened and closes September 15th. Early bird registration will open shortly thereafter. And that's it for this month's AstroCam Coffee. Once again, you can find links to all the papers and meetings from today's episode on our website, coffee.astrocam.net. If you have ideas for the grabbing go or double shot, general thoughts or comments you can get in touch with us at
[email protected]. Don't forget you can now follow the show on blue sky, AstroCam Coffee.bsky.social. Special thanks as usual to our LLM overlords for their writing assistance. And until next time, stay safe. Keep your head in the molecular clouds. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
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