In the interstellar medium[edit]
Acetic acid was discovered in the interstellar medium in 1996 by a team led by David Mehringer[60] who detected it using the former Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association array at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory and the former Millimeter Array located at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory. It was first detected in the Sagittarius B2 North molecular cloud (also known as the Sgr B2 Large Molecule Heimat source). Acetic acid has the distinction of being the first molecule discovered in the interstellar medium using solely radio interferometers; in all previous ISM molecular discoveries made in the millimeter and centimeter wavelength regimes, single dish radio telescopes were at least partly responsible for the detections.[60