Studies have suggested that hydroxylamine (NH₂OH) should be formed under various astrophysical processing conditions, but a recent search for it by Pulliam et al. in 2012 toward a number of sources, including IRC+10216, Orion KL, Orion S, Sgr B2(N), Sgr B2(OH), W3IRS5, and W51M, was unsuccessful. Observations were made with the NRAO 12m telescope on Kitt Peak of 14 rotational transitions. A modeling study by Garrod, Widicus Weaver, and Herbst predicted that sufficient hydroxylamine should be produced by grain surface reactions, but upper detection limit determined by Pulliam et al. is about a million times less than the predicted abundance.

An preliminary report from 2013 suggested that hydroyxlamine had been detected toward the protostar L1157 with CARMA, but a recent conference abstract by Dollhopf et al. only notes non-detection of three rotational transitions.