Green Bank Telescope Observations of Interstellar Glycolaldehyde: Low Temperature Sugar

摘要

Interstellar glycolaldehyde (CH2OHCHO), the simplest possible aldehyde sugar, remains based on the emission spectra of six rotational transitions in the mm-wave range observed with the NRAO 12-m telescope (Hollis, Low, & Jewel1 2000) while pointed at the hot molecular core SgrB2(N-LMH). Since our original spectral detections contained no spatial mapping information, we attempted to image the emission from the strongest transition (8(sub 08)-7(sub 17)) at 82.4 GHz with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) Array. We expected to find the spatial distribution of glycolaldehyde to be largely confined within the approx. 5 inches diameter of the hot molecular core known as the Large Molecule Heimat (LMH) that contains other large molecules.