Discovery of Interstellar Propylene (CH2CHCH3): Missing Links in Interstellar Gas-Phase Chemistry

By N. Marcelino, J. Cernicharo, M. Agúndez, È. Roueff, M. Gerin, J. Martín-Pintado, R. Mauersberger, C. T. DAMIR-IEM-CSIC, Spain., Luth and 5 more. 2007

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report the discovery of propylene (also called propene, CH2CHCH 3) with the IRAM 30 m radio telescope toward the dark cloud TMC-1. Propylene is the most saturated hydrocarbon ever detected in space through radio astronomical techniques. In spite of its weak dipole moment, six doublets (A and E species) plus another line from the A species have been observed with main-beam temperatures above 20 mK. The derived total column density of propylene is 4 × 1013 cm-2, which corresponds to an abundance relative to H2 of 4 × 10-9, i.e., comparable to that of other well-known and abundant hydrocarbons in this cloud, such as c-C3H2. Although this isomer of C3H6 could play an important role in interstellar chemistry, it has been ignored by previous chemical models of dark clouds as there seems to be no obvious formation pathway in gas phase. The discovery of this species in a dark cloud indicates that a thorough analysis of the completeness of gas-phase chemistry has to be done.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c8bb63864053c68f677147ba0c4b858d075dd25

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Cecilia Ceccarelli
2. P. Caselli
3. B. McGuire
4. E. Herbst
5. E. Bergin
6. M. Tafalla
7. K. Oberg
8. P. Myers

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. B. McGuire
2. Cecilia Ceccarelli
3. P. Caselli

In Spectroscopy

1. Cecilia Ceccarelli
2. P. Caselli
3. B. McGuire
4. E. Bergin
5. K. Oberg

Citations in the corpus

• Our astrochemical heritage (2012, background): “Since the ’80s, organic molecules have been discovered in the TMC-1 dark cloud, part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud complex: methyl cyanide (CH3CN; [290]), methylcyanoacetylene (CH3C3N, [67]), acetaldehyde (CH3CHO; [289]), ketene (CH2CO; [222]), methanol (CH3OH; [159]), methylcyanodiacetylene (CH3C5N”
• 2018 Census of Interstellar, Circumstellar, Extragalactic, Protoplanetary Disk, and Exoplanetary Molecules (2018, methodology): “CH2CHCH3 (propylene) The detection of CH2CHCH3, also referred to as propene, was reported by Marcelino et al. (2007) in IRAM 30-m observations of TMC-1.”