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Spectroscopic sizing of interstellar icy grains with JWST

Nature Astronomy volume 8, pages 359–367 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Clouds of gas and dust in the Galaxy are nurseries in which stars and planetary systems are born. During their journey from the diffuse interstellar medium to the protoplanetary disks, molecular solids accumulate on cold dust grains by accretion and surface chemistry. These so-called icy grains will continuously evolve, notably by collision and aggregation processes, modifying their sizes. Our ‘Ice Age’ James Webb Space Telescope observations of the dense Chamaeleon I cloud reveal that this growth starts early, before the protostellar phase, substantially modifying the ice band profiles in the spectra. Spectral analysis confirms that the grains reach micrometre sizes, implying myriad changes in local microphysics, including mass transfer from small to large grains, reduction in the grain surface available for chemistry and modification of the penetration and propagation of radiation fields. Deformation of the observed profiles complicates the determination of chemical abundance. Observing the extensive icy grain growth in dense clouds quantitatively constrains the grain size evolution before star and planet formation.

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Fig. 1: Grain growth influences IR spectral profiles.
Fig. 2: Grain growth models for NIR38.
Fig. 3: Grain growth models for NIR38 and J110621, ice model 3.

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Data availability

Observational raw data are publicly available in the STScI MAST JWST archive. Text files of observed enhanced one-dimensional spectra, including error bars, are provided as part of our Early Release Science enabling product deliverables on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7501239. Data files of optical constants of amorphous carbon from ref. 39 are available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/545/C2; optical constants of silicates are described in ref. 38; pure carbon monoxide ice optical constants from ref. 43 can be retrieved from the Catania Experimental Astrophysics Laboratory at the URL http://www.ct.astro.it/lasp/optico.html. The optical constants of ice mixtures can be retrieved from the DREAM database at http://www.dream-database.fr/.

Code availability

The grain growth model was run using a custom code, incorporating publicly available elements, such as DDSCAT (v.7.3), as described in ref. 37 (http://www.ddscat.org), and RADMC-3D radiative transfer code, as described in ref. 48 (https://www.ita.uni-heidelberg.de/~dullemond/software/radmc-3d/). The POV-Ray tool was used for some illustrations (http://www.povray.org/).

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Acknowledgements

We dedicate this article to the memory of Professor Harold Linnartz, our dear friend and colleague, who will be sadly missed by the whole Ice Age team. E.D., J.A.N., A.T. and V.W. acknowledge the support from the French Programme National ‘Physique et Chimie du Milieu Interstellaire’ of the CNRS/INSU with the INC/INP, co-funded by the CEA and the CNES. I.J.-S. acknowledges the financial support from grant number PID2019-105552RB-C41 by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/State Agency of Research MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. B.M. and V.J.H. acknowledge funding from the Spanish MIC grant PID2020-113084GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. M.K.M. acknowledges the financial support from the Dutch Research Council (NWO; grant VI.Veni.192.241). Z.L.S. acknowledges financial support from the Royal Astronomical Society through the E. A. Milne Travelling Fellowships. A.C.A.B. and J.E. acknowledge support from the Space Telescope Science Institute for the programme JWST-ERS-01309.019. M.N.D. acknowledges the Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione grant number 180079, Center for Space and Habitability Fellowship and IAU Gruber Foundation Fellowship. D.H. is supported by the Center for Informatics and Computation in Astronomy grant and from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan (grant number 110J0353I9). D.H. acknowledges support from the National Technology and Science Council of Taiwan through grant number 111B3005191. S.I. and H.L. acknowledge support from the Danish National Research Foundation through the Center of Excellence ‘InterCat’ (grant agreement number DNRF150). W.R.M.R. acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 101019751 MOLDISK).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Deceased: H. Linnartz.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d’Orsay, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France

    E. Dartois

  2. Physique des Interactions Ioniques et Moléculaires, CNRS, Aix Marseille Univ., Marseille, France

    J. A. Noble

  3. Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching bei München, Germany

    P. Caselli

  4. School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    H. J. Fraser & Z. L. Smith

  5. Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, Torrejón de Ardoz, Spain

    I. Jiménez-Serra

  6. Instituto de Estructura de la Materia, IEM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain

    B. Maté & V. J. Herrero

  7. Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

    M. K. McClure & J. A. Sturm

  8. Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    G. J. Melnick

  9. Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Y. J. Pendleton

  10. Faculty of Science, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan

    T. Shimonishi

  11. Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux (LAB), Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, Pessac, France

    A. Taillard & V. Wakelam

  12. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    A. C. A. Boogert & J. Erkal

  13. Center for Space and Habitability, Universität Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    M. N. Drozdovskaya

  14. Institute of Astronomy, Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    D. Harsono

  15. Center for Interstellar Catalysis, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    S. Ioppolo

  16. Laboratory for Astrophysics, Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

    H. Linnartz & W. R. M. Rocha

  17. Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    B. A. McGuire

  18. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    B. A. McGuire

  19. Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

    G. Perotti

  20. Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA

    D. Qasim

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Contributions

Authorship is defined according to the CRediT taxonomy: E.D. was involved with conceptualisation, the methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing of the original draft, reviewing and editing, visualisation, supervision and project administration. J.A.N. was involved with conceptualisation, the methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing of the original draft, review and editing, visualisation, supervision, project administration and funding acquisition. P.C. was involved with investigation and writing of the original draft. H.J.F. was involved with methodology, validation, investigation, review and editing and project administration. I.J.-S. was involved with investigation, writing of the original draft and project administration. B.M. was involved with the methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation and writing of the original draft. M.K.M. was involved with the methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing of the original draft, supervision, project administration and funding acquisition. G.J.M. and Y.J.P. were involved in the investigation and writing of the original draft. T.S. and Z.L.S. were involved in the methodology, validation, formal analysis and investigation. J.A.S. was involved in the investigation and writing of the original draft. A.T. was involved in the investigation, writing of the original draft and visualisation. V.W. was involved in the investigation and writing of the original draft. A.C.A.B. reviewed and edited the paper and was involved with project administration. M.N.D., J.E., D.H., S.I., B.A.M., G.P., D.Q. and W.R.M.R. reviewed and edited the paper. V.J.H. was involved with validation, the investigation and writing of the original draft. H.L. reviewed and edited the paper and was involved with project administration.

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Correspondence to E. Dartois.

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Dartois, E., Noble, J.A., Caselli, P. et al. Spectroscopic sizing of interstellar icy grains with JWST. Nat Astron 8, 359–367 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02155-x

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