[ASA] The Mopra Southern Galactic Plane CO Survey

[John O'Byrne]

The Mopra Southern Galactic Plane CO Survey

I am pleased to announce the first public data release from the Mopra Southern Galactic Plane Carbon Monoxide Survey.  This is now available through the ATNF online data archive at atoa.atnf.csiro.au (note that you also need an ATNF OPAL account to access it).

The Mopra CO survey is being conducted between l=305-345°, b=+/-0.5° of the principal isotopologues of the CO J=1-0 line, in particular 12CO 115 GHz and 13CO 110 GHz. The survey has 0.6 arcminute and 0.1 km/s resolution, representing an order of magnitude increase over previous CO surveys of this region.  It provides the highest-resolution, wide-field view of the molecular medium of the fourth quadrant of the Galaxy now available.

The first data release contains the data cubes from the first degree of the survey undertaken, of the G323 region.  Further information is available from the project website, at www.phys.unsw.edu.au/mopraco and also in a recently published paper in PASA (Burton et al, 2013, "The Mopra Southern Galactic Plane CO Survey", PASA, v30, e044 doi:10.1017/pasa.2013.22).

The survey itself is ongoing, with data from about 25 sq. deg of the Galactic plane obtained to date (l=317°-342°).  The data cubes from this work will be made publicly available through subsequent data releases, as they are analysed and published.  However, if you are interested in early access to the data set for a particular science project please contact the project PI.

Thank-you.

Michael Burton
m.burton at unsw.edu.au
www.phys.unsw.edu.au/mopraco