The ALMA Project is embarking on a partner-wide initiative to at least double, and ultimately quadruple the correlated bandwidth of ALMA by @2030. This initiative is called the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU). In this contribution, I briefly describe the main aspects of the upgrade and status. Then I provide several examples of how the WSU will enhance (sub)millimeter maser science by affording the ability to observe more diagnostic maser transitions (and thermal lines) with a single observation.

Imaging the bright maser emission produced by the various molecular species from 1.6 to 116 GHz provides a way to probe the kinematics of dense molecular gas at high angular resolution. Unimpeded by the high dust optical depths that affect shorter wavelength (sub)mm observations, the high brightness temperature of these emission lines have become an essential tool for understanding the process of massive star formation. Operating from 1.2–116 GHz, the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) of 263 antennas will provide the capabilities needed to fully exploit these powerful tracers, including the ability to resolve accretion and outflow motions down to scales as fine as ∼1-10 au in deeply embedded Galactic star-forming regions, and at sub-pc scales in nearby galaxies. I will summarize the proposed specifications of the ngVLA, describe the current status of the project, and offer examples of future experiments designed to image the vicinity of massive protostars in continuum, thermal lines, and maser lines simultaneously.

The EDGE-CALIFA collaboration has obtained resolved IFU and CO spectroscopy for 126 nearby galaxies, selected from the CALIFA main sample. We have assembled the spatially resolved products of the survey into Astropy-compatible pixel tables that reduce the oversampling in the original FITS images and facilitate comparison of pixels across different images. By joining these pixel tables to lower dimensional tables that provide profiles, integrated spectra, or global properties, it is possible to investigate the dependence of star formation rate on both local and global conditions. In this short video talk I provide an overview of EDGE, with examples of the use of the database to conduct analysis and generate plots.

We introduce hydrodynamic simulations in which a protostar captures a cloudlet with a relatively small angular momentum. The cloudlet accretes onto the protostar and perturbs the gas disk rotating around the protostar. This cloudlet capture can reproduce some features observed in the molecular emission lines from TMC-1A. First, the cloudlet can reproduce the blue asymmetry observed in the CS emission. Second, the cloudlet can explain the slow infall observed in the C18O emission. Third, the impact of the cloudlet can explain the offset of the SO emission from the disk center. We also argue that a warm gas should confine the cloudlet through pressure. A protostar may obtain substantial mass by capturing cloudlets.

Experimental and theoretical studies have shown that Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) can be formed on icy dusty grains in molecular clouds and protoplanetary disks. The number of astronomical detections of solid COMs, however, is very limited. With the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) this should change, but in order to identify solid state features of COMs, accurate laboratory data are needed. Here we present high resolution (0.5 cm–1) infrared ice spectra of acetone (C3H6O) and methyl formate (HCOOCH3), two molecules already identified in astronomical gas phase surveys, whose interstellar synthesis is expected to follow solid state pathways.

The interstellar absorption band centred on 2175 Å that is conventionally attributed to monodisperse graphite spheres of radii 0.02 μm is more plausibly explained as arising from biologically derived aromatic molecules. On the basis of panspermia models, interstellar dust includes a substantial fraction of biomaterial in various stages of degradation. We have modeled such an ensemble of degraded biomaterial with laboratory spectroscopy of algae, grass pigments, bituminous coal and anthracite. The average ulrtraviolet absorption profile for these materials is centred at 2175 Å with a full width at half maximum of 250 Å, in precise agreement with the interstellar extinction observations. Mid-infrared spectra also display general concordance with the unidentified interstellar absorption features found in a wide variety of astronomoical sources.

The latest table of molecular abundances in the cold, dark clouds TMC-1 and L134N is presented. Molecular abundance variations between TMC-1 and L134N, those within TMC-1 and L134N, and those among 49 dark cloud cores surveyed by Suzuki et al. (1991) are interpreted as an effect of chemical evolution.