APEX SV projects

Molecular gas in Local Group dwarf irregular galaxies

Coordinator: P. Buyle, S. De Rijcke, D. Michielsen, H. Dejonghe

Abstract:
Like in the Milky Way, star formation in dwarf irregulars most likely takes place in molecular clouds. If molecular clouds form within cold HI regions, a correlation should exist between the amount of cold HI gas and the star formation rate. However, so far no such relation has been observed for dIrrs. CO is a much better tracer of star formation than HI and should give an excellent picture of where the stellar nurseries are located. We propose to investigate the relation between the molecular ISM and star formation in a nearby Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy. On the technical side, this observation allows to test the capability of the APEX antenna to map faint and extended structures.

Data:
Program is available and data products can be downloaded

CLASS file
MBFITS data package
MBFITS file-by-file