The distribution of molecular clouds along the Southern Galactic Plane

The survey covers a large region of the sky from l = 250^◦ to 355^◦ and |b| < 1^◦, with some extensions an area of 221 deg²in total.<br><br>These data have been taken at 0.6 arcminute spatial resolution and 0.1 km s⁻¹spectralresolution, providing an unprecedented view of the molecular gas clouds of the Southern Galactic Plane in the 109-115 GHz J = 1-0 transitions of ¹²CO, ¹³CO, C¹⁸O and C¹⁷O.The total measured ¹²CO and ¹³CO fluxes for the entire survey are found to be 1.5 x 10^{^}8 K km/s and 1.8 x 10^{^}7 K km/s, respectively.

The total molecular cloud mass value is then calculated using a canonical X-factor value. The total mass limits were determined assuming all the flux originates from the near and far distance solutions to the Galactic rotation curve. According to these analyses, the lowest and the highest mass limits of the molecular clouds were found to be 2.8 x 10^{^}8 M_solar and 1.5 x 10^{^}9 M_solar, respectively.<br><br>A new molecular cloud catalogue has been produced using a dendrogram-based algorithm.