12co(J=1-0) on-the-Fly Mapping Survey of the Virgo Cluster Spirals. I. Data and Atlas

TL;DR

This survey provides comprehensive CO emission maps of 28 Virgo spiral galaxies, revealing their distribution and kinematics, and compares these results with previous studies to improve understanding of molecular gas in cluster environments.

Contribution

First large-scale On-The-Fly CO mapping survey of Virgo spirals covering entire stellar disks, providing detailed data and an atlas for 20 detected galaxies.

Findings

CO emission detected in 20 of 28 galaxies

OTF-derived CO properties generally agree with previous surveys

Discrepancies in CO measurements suggest need for further analysis

Abstract

We have performed an On-The-Fly (OTF) mapping survey of ${\rm ^{12}{CO(J=1-0)}}$ emission in 28 Virgo cluster spiral galaxies using the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory (FCRAO) 14-m telescope. This survey aims to characterize the CO distribution, kinematics, and luminosity of a large sample of galaxies covering the full extents of stellar disks, rather than sampling only the inner disks or the major axis as was done by many previous single dish and interferometric CO surveys. CO emission is detected in 20 galaxies among the 28 Virgo spirals observed. An atlas consisting of global measures, radial measures, and maps, is presented for each detected galaxy. A note summarizing the CO data is also presented along with relevant information from the literature. The CO properties derived from our OTF observations are presented and compared with the results from the FCRAO Extragalactic CO Survey by Young et al. (1995) which utilized position-switching observations along the major axis and a model fitting method. We find that our OTF derived CO properties agree well with the Young et al. results in many cases, but the Young et al. measurements are larger by a factor of 1.4 - 2.4 for seven (out of 18) cases. We will explore further the possible causes for the discrepancy in the analysis paper currently under preparation.