C$_{60}^+$ - looking for the bucky-ball in interstellar space

G. A. Galazutdinov; V. V. Shimansky; A. Bondar; G. Valyavin; J. Krelowski

doi:10.1093/mnras/stw2948

paper

C $_{60}^{+}$ - looking for the bucky-ball in interstellar space

arXiv:1612.08898 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw2948

Abstract

The laboratory gas phase spectrum recently published by Campbell et al. has reinvigorated attempts to confirm the presence of the C $_{60}^{+}$ cation in the interstellar medium, thorough an analysis of the spectra of hot, reddened stars. This search is hindered by at least two issues that need to be addressed: (i) the wavelength range of interest is severely polluted by strong water- vapour lines coming from the Earth's atmosphere; (ii) one of the major bands attributed to C $_{60}^{+}$ , at 9633 Å, is blended with the stellar Mg{\sc ii} line, which is susceptible to non-local-thermodynamic equilibrium effects in hot stellar atmospheres. Both these issues are here carefully considered here for the first time, based on high-resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio echellé spectra for 19 lines of sight. The result is that the presence of C $_{60}^{+}$ in interstellar clouds is brought into question.

10 pages, 11 figures

C $_{60}^{+}$ - looking for the bucky-ball in interstellar space

Abstract

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C60+​ - looking for the bucky-ball in interstellar space

Abstract

References in corpus (3)

Cited by in corpus (13)

C $_{60}^{+}$ - looking for the bucky-ball in interstellar space