Using Scattered Near-Infrared Light to Map Water Ice in Prestellar Cores with SPHEREx

arXiv:2607.24934 · astro-ph.GA · Submitted 2026-07-27 · Read on arXiv

Tamojeet Roychowdhury, Jennifer B. Bergner, Jens Kauffmann, Thushara G. S. Pillai, Silvia Spezzano

astro-ph.GA

Submitted: 2026-07-27

Comments: 21 pages including Appendix, 10 figures, submitted to AAS Journals. Ice map data (and code) at https://github.com/tamojeetroychowdhury/SPHEREx-Prestellar-Cores

Code: https://github.com/tamojeetroychowdhury/SPHEREx-Prestellar-Cores

Project page: https://caltech-ipac.github.io/irsa-tutorials/spherex-intro

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Core — 151× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Abundance — 14× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Trace — 4× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Aperture — 3× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Anisotropy — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Consistency — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Aperture Photometry — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Robustness — 1× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes

Sources

• The SPHEREx Satellite Mission
• SPHEREx Wide-Field Infrared Spectral Mapping of Interstellar Ices and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
• An Observational Perspective of Low-Mass Dense Cores I: Internal Physical and Chemical Properties
• Interstellar Dust Scattering Properties
• The SPHEREx Ices Investigation: An Overview
• SPHEREx mapping of diffuse PAH and H II emission in the Galactic plane

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