The HERA CO Line Extragalactic Survey

The HERA CO-Line Extragalactic Survey (HERACLES) is a Large Program that used the IRAM 30-m telescope to produce sensitive CO emission maps from 48 nearby galaxies. HERACLES is an international collaboration led by Adam Leroy (NRAO) and Fabian Walter (MPIA). 

HERACLES covered an area in each target out to the optical (B-band) edge. It was built to complement THINGS, SINGS, and associated surveys and to advance knowledge on star formation from molecular gas, the assembly of molecular clouds out of atomic gas, the distribution of matter (dark, light, stellar, and gaseous) in galaxies, and the dynamics and structure of the interstellar medium.

The official HERACLES repositories are at IRAM.

For basic details on the data processing see Leroy et al. (2009). The links above provide access to the baseline data products: data cubes, integrated intensity maps ('moment 0’) and associated uncertainty, and intensity-weighted velocity ('moment 1’) maps. The README file provides a detailed description of the data release.

Please do not hesitate to contact Adam Leroy and Fabian Walter to tell them about your use of the data for scientific analysis. The following acknowledgement would be appreciated: "This work made use of HERACLES, 'The HERA CO-Line Extragalactic Survey’ (Leroy et al. 2009)." Acknowledgment of the HERACLES project is also appreciated if data are used in public presentations.

Last updated:  December 13, 2011