THURSDAY 17:00
MOLECULAR TRACERS USED FOR STUDYING THE SPACE PHYSICS
Jairo Armijos
Observatorio Astronómico de Quito, Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ecuador
ABSTRACT
Many molecules have been discovered since 1931, when Karl Jansky first detected radio emission from the Milky Way. CO is considered a good mass tracer in the interstellar medium (ISM) because this molecule is the second most abundant molecule in the ISM after molecular hydrogen (H2). In this talk, I will review many molecules, which are used to characterize physical parameters such as mass, kinetic temperature, H2 density, among others, as well as gas kinematics and molecular content of astrophysical sources.