TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of molecular gas in galaxy evolution
T2 - Insights from BIMA song
AU - Thornley, Michele
AU - Regan, Michael
AU - Helfer, Tamara
AU - Sheth, Kartik
AU - Vogel, Stuart
AU - Harris, Andy
AU - Wong, Tony
AU - Blitz, Leo
AU - Bock, Douglas
PY - 1999
Y1 - 1999
N2 - We discuss the latest results from the BIMA Survey of Nearby Galaxies (BIMA SONG), which was completed in the summer of 1999. By imaging the CO emission in the inner disks of 44 nearby spirals, we are creating a consistent database of information on the spatial and kinematic distributions of cold molecular gas in nearby spiral galaxies. The SONG images emphasize the clumpy nature of molecular gas and show that molecular gas in galaxies generally does not follow an exponential profile as might be expected from the stellar light distribution. In addition, by comparison with multiwavelength broadband images, we show that the CO morphology is well correlated with the dust distribution in galaxies, indicating that the observed morphology is due to the true distribution of molecular gas and not simply the emissivity variations of CO. However, we note that the issue of how to convert CO emission to H2 column density quantitatively is still under debate: with the uniform SONG dataset we are exploring this issue systematically.
AB - We discuss the latest results from the BIMA Survey of Nearby Galaxies (BIMA SONG), which was completed in the summer of 1999. By imaging the CO emission in the inner disks of 44 nearby spirals, we are creating a consistent database of information on the spatial and kinematic distributions of cold molecular gas in nearby spiral galaxies. The SONG images emphasize the clumpy nature of molecular gas and show that molecular gas in galaxies generally does not follow an exponential profile as might be expected from the stellar light distribution. In addition, by comparison with multiwavelength broadband images, we show that the CO morphology is well correlated with the dust distribution in galaxies, indicating that the observed morphology is due to the true distribution of molecular gas and not simply the emissivity variations of CO. However, we note that the issue of how to convert CO emission to H2 column density quantitatively is still under debate: with the uniform SONG dataset we are exploring this issue systematically.
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U2 - 10.1023/a:1017065517475
DO - 10.1023/a:1017065517475
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0007018724
SN - 0004-640X
VL - 269-270
SP - 391
EP - 398
JO - Astrophysics and Space Science
JF - Astrophysics and Space Science
IS - 1-4
ER -