Laboratory measurement of the 2-centimeter, 2/11/-2/12/ transition of normal formaldehyde and its carbon-13 and oxygen-18 species.

Beam-maser spectrometric measurements to an accuracy of about 100 Hz have been conducted of the 2(11)-2(12) transition for the isotopic species of greatest astronomical interest - i.e., H2CO, H2(13)CO, and H2C(18)O. The samples used were not isotopically enriched, monomeric formaldehyde vapors. For these species, all the coupling constants required to calculate the hyperfine structure of any rotational transition have been determined.