HERACLES: The HERA CO-Line Extragalactic Survey
A. K. Leroy, F. Walter, F. Bigiel, A. Usero, A. Weiss, E. Brinks,, W.J.G. de Blok, R.C. Kennicutt, K.-F. Schuster, C. Kramer, H.W. Wiesemeyer,, H. Roussel

TL;DR
HERACLES provides a detailed CO emission atlas for 18 nearby galaxies, revealing molecular gas distribution, ratios, and dynamics, enhancing understanding of galactic molecular content and its relation to other galaxy properties.
Contribution
This survey offers the first comprehensive CO J=2-1 emission maps for a diverse sample of nearby galaxies, combining high-resolution observations with detailed analysis of molecular gas properties.
Findings
H2 masses range from 7 million to 6 billion solar masses.
Integrated H2-to-HI ratios vary from 0.02 to 1.13.
CO emission scale lengths are 0.8 to 3.2 kpc.
Abstract
We present the HERA CO-Line Extragalactic Survey (HERACLES), an atlas of CO emission from 18 nearby galaxies that are also part of The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey (THINGS) and the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS). We used the HERA multi-pixel receiver on the IRAM 30-m telescope to map the CO J=2-1 line over the full optical disk (defined by the isophotal radius r_25) of each target, at 13" angular resolution and 2.6 km/s velocity resolution. Here we describe the observations and reduction of the data and show channel maps, azimuthally averaged profiles, integrated intensity maps, and peak intensity maps. The implied H2 masses range from 7 \times 10^6 to 6 \times 10^9 M_sun, with four low metallicity dwarf irregular galaxies yielding only upper limits. In the cases where CO is detected, the integrated H2-to-HI ratios range from 0.02 - 1.13 and H2-to-stellar mass ratios from…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomical Observations and Instrumentation · Astronomy and Astrophysical Research · Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
