Description
Ices in molecular clouds play a key role in star and subsequent planet formation. One of the leading questions in this field of research is how the chemical complexity and abundance of ice species vary across different molecular clouds and at different stages of the star formation process. Addressing this will help to understand the solid-state molecular budget of key elements such as carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, often locked up in ices such as water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The properties of these ices are measured using absorption against background stellar spectra. Doing this allows astronomers to effectively constrain the aforementioned, solid-state, elemental abundances.
The unparalleled sensitivity of JWST has enabled astronomers to observe towards multiple sources behind and inside molecular clouds concurrently, obtaining spectra at high spatial and spectral resolution. Consequently, ice mapping – the process of spatially plotting an ice species across a molecular cloud - has been improved by the unprecedented number of sources available.
Here, I will present the first results of background source spectra obtained with JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) Wide Field Slitless Spectroscopy (WFSS) mode, along lines of sight toward the molecular cloud B335 and its Class-0 protostar. I will discuss how these observations compare to previous studies and present the first ice maps of B335 composed of thousands of sight lines, ushering in a new era of Wide-Field Slitless Spectroscopy using JWST.
