Interstellar formaldehyde

Interstellar formaldehyde (a topic relevant to astrochemistry) was first discovered in 1969 by L. Snyder et al. using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

[1] On 11 August 2014, astronomers released studies, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) for the first time, that detailed the distribution of HCN, HNC, H2CO, and dust inside the comae of comets C/2012 F6 (Lemmon) and C/2012 S1 (ISON).

[6] Formaldehyde has been used to map out kinematic features of dark clouds located near Gould's Belt of local bright stars.

[8] It was a short duration outburst in IRAS 18566 + 0408 that produced a line profile consistent with the superposition of two Gaussian components, which leads to the belief that an event outside the maser gas triggered simultaneous flares at two different locations.

[16] Reactions involving formaldehyde have been observed to produce molecules containing C-H, C-O, O-H, and C-N bonds.

Formaldehyde is believed to be the primary precursor for most of the complex organic material in the interstellar medium, including amino acids.

Formaldehyde appears to be a useful probe for astrochemists due to its low reactivity in the gas phase and to the fact that the 110 - 111 and 211 - 212 K-doublet transitions are rather clear.