Detection of CO₂ ice in the planetary nebula NGC 6302

Charmi Bhatt (1 , 2) , Simon W. Cao (1) , Jan Cami (1 , Nicholas Clark (1) , Pascale Ehrenfreund (3 , 4) , Els Peeters (1

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Mikako Matsuura (5) G. C. Sloan (6 7) Harriet L. Dinerstein (8) Patrick Kavanagh (9) Kevin Volk (6) Isabel Aleman (10) Michael J. Barlow (11) Kay Justannont (12) Kathleen E. Kraemer (13) Joel H. Kastner (14 15 16) Francisca Kemper (17 18 19) Hektor Monteiro (5 20) Raghvendra Sahai (21) N. C. Sterling (22) Jeremy R. Walsh (23) L. B. F. M. Waters (24 25) Albert Zijlstra (26) ((1) Department of Physics Astronomy University of Western Ontario London Ontario Canada (2) Institute for Earth Space Exploration (3) Leiden Observatory Leiden University Leiden The Netherlands (4) Space Policy Institute George Washington University Washington DC USA (5) Cardiff Hub for Astrophysics Research Technology School of Physics Cardiff University Cardiff UK (6) Space Telescope Science Institute Baltimore MD (7) Department of Physics University of North Carolina Chapel Hill NC (8) Department of Astronomy University of Texas at Austin Austin TX (9) Department of Physics Maynooth University Maynooth Ireland (10) Laboratorio Nacional de Astrofisica Itajuba MG Brazil (11) Department of Physics University College London (12) Chalmers University of Technology Onsala Space Observatory Onsala Sweden (13) Institute for Scientific Research Boston College Chestnut Hill MA (14) Center for Imaging Science Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester NY (15) School of Physics (16) Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics (17) Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai (ICE CSIC) Barcelona Spain (18) ICREA (19) Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) (20) Instituto de Fisica e Quimica Universidade Federal de Itajuba (21) Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA (22) University of West Georgia Carrollton GA (23) European Southern Observatory Garching Germany (24) Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP Radboud University Nijmegen (25) SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research (26) Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics Department of Physics The University of Manchester Manchester UK)

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classification 🌌 astro-ph.GA

keywords detectionplanetarydustynebulaprofilestellartorusabsorption

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Using JWST/MIRI observations, we report the detection of CO$_2$ ice in the dusty torus of the planetary nebula NGC 6302, an environment generally considered hostile to fragile molecular species and ices due to intense UV irradiation. This detection accompanies cold (20-50 K) gas-phase CO$_2$ along the same sightlines. The ice absorption profile exhibits a double-peak profile, a characteristic of pure, crystalline CO$_2$ ice. The CO$_2$ gas-to-ice ratio is more than an order of magnitude higher than in young stellar objects, pointing to distinct ice formation or processing mechanisms in evolved stellar environments. This discovery demonstrates that the dusty torus provides sufficient shielding to harbour ice chemistry, and that ice-mediated surface reactions must be incorporated into chemical models of planetary nebulae.

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Detection of CO₂ ice in the planetary nebula NGC 6302

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