Blog#
News, updates, and announcements from the UCLCHEM team.
29 Jul 2025 - UCLCHEM anno 2025
Want to receive updates on UCLCHEM and our modeling efforts? Sign up to our mailing list here and get some free UCLCHEM stickers!
29 Apr 2022 - UCLCHEM v3.0
UCLCHEM has had a major update! The new version is v3.0 and has many changes. Here are some of the key updates:
14 Apr 2022 - The Cosmic-ray Ionization Rate in NGC 253
NGC 253 is a nearby starburst galaxy which hosts several large clouds of gas in its central molecular zone. These clouds are similar to GMCs but orders of magnitude more massive and much hotter, where the star formation rate is very high. The temperature of this gas is important because the star formation efficiency will be determined by how much internal energy that gas has.
06 Feb 2022 - HITs - History Independent Tracers
Interpreting molecular observations through chemical and radiative transfer models is a common but complex practice. Whilst many uncertainties affect chemical models, one in particular is addressed in this work: the issue of time dependence. When modelling a molecular cloud or protostellar disk, how do we initialize the abundances? When is an appropriate time to compare our model to the observed object? Our paper on History Independent Tracers (HITs) side steps this issue by producing a list of molecules which are insensitive to the chemical history of the gas, essentially reaching steady state very quickly across a very wide range of gas conditions.
07 Dec 2020 - First measurement of nitrogen fractionation in shocked clumps of the L1157 protostellar outflow. SOLIS XI
As part of the SOLIS observational programme, various isotopologues of HCN were observed towards L1157 in order to study the nitrogen fractionation in a protostellar outflow. The modelling work for this study was done using UCLCHEM. You can find the paper here and the abstract below.
14 Feb 2020 - New Website
We’re replacing our old website! The old site was essentially just a poster for UCLCHEM with some github links. The new website has a similar landing page but importantly, we’ve moved all the documentation for UCLCHEM online. We’ll keep that up to date and are open to comments from users as we’re keen to make UCLCHEM as easy to use as possible.
10 Dec 2019 - Tracing shock type with chemical diagnostics - an application to L1157
The physical structure of a shock wave may take a form unique to its shock type, implying that the chemistry of each shock type is unique as well. In our recent paper, we investigate the different chemistries of J-type and C-type shocks using parameterised forms of their physical structures in order to identify unique molecular tracers of both shock types. We apply these diagnostics to the protostellar outflow L1157 to establish whether the B2 clump could host shocks exhibiting type-specific behaviour.
13 Aug 2019 - A chemical study of carbon fractionation in external galaxies
UCLCHEM has recently been used to study carbon fractionation in external galaxies. You can find the paper here and the abstract below.
08 Jul 2019 - Ambipolar diffusion and the molecular abundances inprestellar cores
Felix Priestley has used UCLCHEM in an investigation of the chemical differences caused by the magnetic fields in prestellar cores. You can find the paper here and the abstract below.
19 Apr 2019 - Nitrogen fractionation in external galaxies
UCLCHEM has recently been used to study nitrogen fractionation in external galaxies. You can find the paper here and the abstract below.
12 Jul 2018 - Collapsing Prestellar Cores - a new physics module
Felix Priestley has used UCLCHEM to study the collapse of prestellar cores. In the process, he’s created a new physics module
collapse.f90which follows a sphere of gas collapsing in different ways. The paper can be found here and the abstract is below.20 Jun 2018 - The Chemistry of Phosphorus-bearing Molecules under Energetic Phenomena
Izaskun Jimenez-Serra has published a study of the chemistry of phosophorus bearing species using UCLCHEM. The paper can be found here and the abstract is below.
27 Mar 2018 - Chemical modelling of glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol in star-forming regions
Audrey Coutens has published modelling work on glycoaldehyde and ethylene glycol using UCLCHEM. You can find the paper here and the abstract below.
05 Feb 2018 - Chemical modelling of complex organic molecules with peptide-like bonds in star-forming regions
David Quenard just published an update to the UCLCHEM with an application to COMs in prestellar cores you can find the paper here and the abstract below.
Archive#
Subscribe#
Stay updated with UCLCHEM developments:
Mailing List: Sign up here and get some free UCLCHEM stickers!
GitHub: Watch the repository for releases
Contributing Blog Posts#
Interested in writing about your UCLCHEM research?
Contact the development team via GitHub
Submit your post as a pull request
We’ll review and publish it!
See also
Papers for published research
GitHub Releases for version history