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Nobeyama CO Galactic Plane Survey (FOREST Ultra-wide Galactic plane survey In Nobeyama: FUGIN) project is one of the legacy projects of Nobeyama Radio Observatory using the 45-m Telescope and the new four-beam 100 GHz-Band receiver FOREST. This project aims to investigate the fundamental nature of molecular gas in the Galaxy and star formation in them. We, therefore, are carrying out the survey observation along the Galactic plane by the J = 1-0 transitions of 12CO, 13CO, and C18O simultaneously at the highest angular resolution (~18") to date. This survey is providing invaluable data set for investigating the physical process and the evolution of ISM from large galactic scale to small filament/clump/core scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present 12CO(J = 3-2) and 12CO(J = 1-0) observations of the supergiant HII region NGC 604 in the nearest face-on spiral galaxy M 33 using the Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) 10-m and the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) 45-m telescopes. We found high 12CO(J = 3-2)/12CO(J = 1-0) ratio gas with an arc-like distribution ("high-ratio gas arc") surrounding the central star cluster of NGC 604. Our results suggest that dense gas formation and second-generation star formation occur in the surrounding gas compressed by the stellar wind and/or supernova of the first-generation stars of NGC 604, i.e., the central star cluster of NGC 604. Thus, NGC 604 is an example of large-scale sequential star formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) is a joint project between Japan and Chile for installing and operating a 10 m high precision telescope in the Atacama Desert in order to explore the southern sky through the submillimeter wavelength. We have achieved an accuracy of 19 μm (rms) for the main reflector surface and a stable radio pointing accuracy of about 2 arcsec (rms). A 350 GHz cartridge type SIS mixer receiver achieves good performance with a typical system noise temperature of 150 ~ 250 K in DSB and a main beam efficiency of 0.6 ~ 0.7 during winter nights.A large scale CO(3-2) imaging survey of nearby galaxies using ASTE is now in progress. One of our goals is to compare our wide area CO(3-2) images with existing CO(1-0) data as well as distributions of massive star formation tracers (i.e., Hα and radio continuum emission) in order to understand the physical mechanism which controls the global star formation properties such as star formation efficiency. Initial CO(3-2) maps of some sample galaxies (M 83, NGC 604 in M 33, NGC 1672, & NGC 7130) are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]