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Project Summary

Dense clouds provide the natal molecular inventory for the formation of stars and planets. A serious caveat through is that the majority of the focus has been directed at clouds that are not analogous to the molecular cloud from which the solar nebula formed. The Sun formed in a high-mass star-forming cloud where at least one, and most likely manly, supernova event occurred resulting in intense ultra-violet radiation throughout the cloud complex. Understanding the nature of the material in our early solar nebula means understanding an environment dominated by massive stars. The Rosette molecular cloud provides the perfect laboratory analog for the early solar nebula molecular cloud. This project is a comparative study of the ultra-violet processing of the ices toward several embedded stellar clusters in the Rosette molecular cloud