The Discovery of 25 um Interstellar Methanol

We report the detection of methanol in the torsional band near 25 um towards a massive protostar, five Class 0 and Class I low mass protostars, and eleven Class II protoplanetary disks in JWST/MIRI archival data. The detection of this methanol feature through three stages of protostellar evolution suggests that this molecule has been directly inherited from the icy, natal cloud phase. The access to this methanol band will enable further exploration of how complex organic molecules could be inherited from the earliest protostellar disks and survive to the central regions of planet forming disks, where future planets will reside.