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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2017
AROME∗ is a balloon-borne experiment which was built to carry out measurements of IR emission features in the diffuse galactic flux. The field of view is 0.5° and surface brightness gradients are detected through azimuthal scanning at a constant elevation angle. The detection of a feature is done by comparison of the fluxes measured in narrow and wide photometric bands centered on the feature's wavelength. Two flights have been performed (August 1987, October 1988), which detected a 3.3 μm feature in the direction of the galactic plane −6° < b < 6°, 60° > l > −50°. Since this feature is characteristic of aromatic C-H bonds, we assigned it to the emission of transiently heated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules (PAHs). With this assumption, AROME measurements show that PAHs are an ubiquitous component of the interstellar matter which contain about 10% of the available cosmic carbon.