The S-band Polarisation All-Sky Survey has observed the entire southern sky using the 64-m Parkes radio telescope at 2.3 GHz with an effective bandwidth of 184 MHz. The surveyed sky area covers all declinations δ ⩽ 0°. To analyse compact sources, the survey data have been re-processed to produce a set of 107 Stokes I maps with 10.75 arcmin resolution and the large scale emission contribution filtered out. In this paper, we use these Stokes I images to create a total intensity southern-sky extragalactic source catalogue at 2.3 GHz. The source catalogue contains 23 389 sources and covers a sky area of 16 600 deg2, excluding the Galactic plane for latitudes |b| < 10°. Approximately, 8% of catalogued sources are resolved. S-band Polarisation All-Sky Survey source positions are typically accurate to within 35 arcsec. At a flux density of 225 mJy, the S-band Polarisation All-Sky Survey source catalogue is more than 95% complete, and ~ 94% of S-band Polarisation All-Sky Survey sources brighter than 500 mJy beam−1 have a counterpart at lower frequencies.

Superluminous supernovae are beginning to be discovered at redshifts as early as the epoch of reionisation. A number of candidate mechanisms is reviewed, together with the discovery programmes.

The overall goal of the ESA Rosetta mission was to help decipher the origin and evolution of our solar system. Looking at the chemical composition of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one way of doing this. The amount of very volatile species found and the insight into their isotopic abundances show that at least some presolar ice has survived the formation of the solar system. It shows that the solar nebula was not homogenized in the region where comets formed. The D/H ratio in water furthermore indicates that Jupiter family comets and Oort cloud comets probably formed in the same regions and their difference is then purely due to their different dynamical history. The organics found in 67P are very diverse, with abundant CH- and CHO- bearing species. Sulphur bearing species like S3 and S4 and others show evidence of dust grain chemistry in molecular clouds.

The chemical evolution of a star- and planet-forming system begins in the prestellar phase and proceeds across the subsequent evolutionary phases. The chemical trail from cores to protoplanetary disks to planetary embryos can be studied by comparing distant young protostars and comets in our Solar System. One particularly chemically rich system that is thought to be analogous to our own is the low-mass IRAS 16293-2422. ALMA-PILS observations have made the study of chemistry on the disk scales (<100 AU) of this system possible. Under the assumption that comets are pristine tracers of the outer parts of the innate protosolar disk, it is possible to compare the composition of our infant Solar System to that of IRAS 16293-2422. The Rosetta mission has yielded a wealth of unique in situ measurements on comet 67P/C-G, making it the best probe to date. Herein, the initial comparisons in terms of the chemical composition and isotopic ratios are summarized. Much work is still to be carried out in the future as the analysis of both of these data sets is still ongoing.

Phosphorus is a crucial element in prebiotic chemistry, especially the P−O bond, which is key for the formation of the backbone of the deoxyribonucleic acid. So far, PO had only been detected towards the envelope of evolved stars, and never towards star-forming regions. We report the first detection of PO towards two massive star-forming regions, W51 e1/e2 and W3(OH), using data from the IRAM 30m telescope. PN has also been detected towards the two regions. The abundance ratio PO/PN is 1.8 and 3 for W51 and W3(OH), respectively. Our chemical model indicates that the two molecules are chemically related and are formed via gas-phase ion-molecule and neutral-neutral reactions during the cold collapse. The molecules freeze out onto grains at the end of the collapse and desorb during the warm-up phase once the temperature reaches ~35 K. The observed molecular abundances of 10−10 are predicted by the model if a relatively high initial abundance of 5× 10−9 of initial phosphorus is assumed.

I review massive star formation in our Galaxy, focussing on initial conditions in Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs), including the search for massive pre-stellar cores (PSCs), and modeling of later stages of massive protostars, i.e., hot molecular cores (HMCs). I highlight how developments in astrochemistry, coupled with rapidly improving theoretical/computational and observational capabilities are helping to improve our understanding of the complex process of massive star formation.

Planets form in disks around young stars. The planet formation process may start when the protostar and disk are still deeply embedded within their infalling envelope. However, unlike more evolved protoplanetary disks, the physical and chemical structure of these young embedded disks are still poorly constrained. We have analyzed ALMA data for 13CO, C18O and N2D+ to constrain the temperature structure, one of the critical unknowns, in the disk around L1527. The spatial distribution of 13CO and C18O, together with the kinetic temperature derived from the optically thick 13CO emission and the non-detection of N2D+, suggest that this disk is warm enough (≳ 20 K) to prevent CO freeze-out.

The physical evolution of low-mass protostars is relatively well-established, however, there are many open questions on the chemical structure of protostars. The chemical fingerprint generated in the early embedded phase of star formation may be transmitted to the later stages of star, planet and comet formation. The factors that influence the chemical fingerprint are then of interest to study, and determine whether the chemical structure is inherited from the parent cloud or product of the physical processes during star formation. Results of observations and modelling of molecules that trace the cold and warm extended structures of embedded protostars are briefly presented here. Two multiple protostellar systems are studied, IRAS 16293-2422 and VLA 1623-2417, both located in ρ Ophiuchus. We find that the physical structure of the protostars, that is the disk(-like) strucutres, outflow cavity and different luminosities, are important factors in determining the chemical structure of these embedded protostars.

Complex organic molecules (COMs) have been observed in comets, hot cores and cold dense regions of the interstellar medium. It is generally accepted that these COMs form on icy dust grain through the recombination reaction of radicals triggered by either energetic UV-photon or non-energetic H-atom addition processing. In this work, we present for the first time laboratory studies that allow for quantitative comparison of hydrogenation and UV-induced reactions as well as their cumulative effect in astronomically relevant CO:CH3OH=4:1 ice analogues. The formation of glycolaldehyde (GA) and ethylene glycol (EG) is confirmed in pure hydrogenation experiments at 14 K, except methyl formate (MF), which is only clearly observed in photolysis. The fractions for MF:GA:EG are 0 : (0.2-0.4) : (0.8-0.6) for pure hydrogenation, and 0.2 : 0.3 : 0.5 for UV involving experiments and can offer a diagnostic tool to derive the chemical origin of these species. The GA/EG ratios in the laboratory (0.3-1.5) compare well with observations toward different objects.

Core-accretion theory predicts that the formation of giant planets predominantly occurs at the dense mid-plane of the inner ∼50 AU of protoplanetary disks. However, due to observational limitation, this critical region remains to be the least charted area in protoplanetary disks. With its great sensitivity, ALMA recently started to image optically thin line emissions arisen from the mid-plane of the inner 50AU in nearby disks, which unlocks an exciting new path to directly constrain the physical properties of the giant planet formation zone through gas tracers. Here we present the first spatially resolved observations of the 13C18O J=3-2 line emission in the TW Hya disk. We show that this emission is optically thin even inside the CO mid-plane snowline. Combining it with the C18O J=3-2 images and the previously detected HD J=1-0 flux, we directly constrain the mid-plane temperature and optical depths of the CO gas and dust. We report a mid-plane CO snowline at 20.5 ± 1.3 AU, a mid-plane temperature distribution of 27+4−3×(R/20.5AU)-0.47+0.06−0.07 K, and a gas mass distribution of 13+8−5×(R/20.5AU)-0.9+0.4−0.3 g cm−2 between 5-20.5 AU in the TW Hya protoplanetary disk. We find a total gas/mm-sized dust mass ratio of 140 ± 40 in this region, suggesting that ∼2.4 earth mass of dust aggregates have grown to > cm sizes (and perhaps much larger).

Determining the locations of the major snowlines in protostellar environments is crucial to fully understand the planet formation process and its outcome. Despite being located far enough from the central star to be spatially resolved with ALMA, the CO snowline remains difficult to detect directly in protoplanetary disks. Instead, its location can be derived from N2H+ emission, when chemical effects like photodissociation of CO and N2 are taken into account. The water snowline is even harder to observe than that for CO, because in disks it is located only a few AU from the protostar, and from the ground only the less abundant isotopologue H218O can be observed. Therefore, using an indirect chemical tracer, as done for CO, may be the best way to locate the water snowline. A good candidate tracer is HCO+, which is expected to be particularly abundant when its main destructor, H2O, is frozen out. Comparison of H218O and H13CO+ emission toward the envelope of the Class 0 protostar IRAS2A shows that the emission from both molecules is spatially anticorrelated, providing a proof of concept that H13CO+ can indeed be used to trace the water snowline in systems where it cannot be imaged directly.

We present the results of a survey of several tens of dense high mass star forming (HMSF) cores in three transitions of the SO molecule at 30 and 100 GHz with the 100-m Effelsberg and 20-m Onsala radio telescopes. The physical parameters of the cores are estimated from the line ratios and column densities. Relative abundances are derived as well.