V. M. Rivilla, I. Jiménez-Serra, J. Martín-Pintado, C. Briones, L. F. Rodríguez-Almeida, F. Rico-Villas, B. Tercero, S. Zeng, L. Colzi, P. de Vicente, S. Martín, and M. A. Requena-Torres
reported on the
Discovery in space of ethanolamine, the simplest phospholipid head group
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 118 (2021), Art. No. e2101314118.
14 a-type rotational transitions of HOCH₂CH₂NH₂ with 3 ≤ J ≤ 10 and K_a ≤ 4 were unblended or slightly blended, many more were blended considerably. The observations were part of an unbiased molecular line survey of the quiescent giant molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027, about 1' north-east of Sagittarius B2(N), carried out with the Yebes 40 m dish at 7 mm and with the IRAM 30 m dish at 3 mm. The unblended lines were quite reasonably well employing an LTE fit with T_rot = 10.7 ± 0.7 K. The moderate signal-to-noise ratio limits the quality of this fit somewhat.
IRAM issued a press release.

Contributor(s): H. S. P. Müller; 05, 2021