AAS 197, January 2001
Session 28. Kinematics, ISM and Star Formation in the Local Group
Oral, Monday, January 8, 2001, 1:30-3:00pm, Pacific One

## [28.02] BIMA Survey of GMCs in the Optical Disk of M\,33

G. Engargiola, R. L. Plambeck, L. Blitz (UC Berkeley), BIMA Collaboration

We present the results of an unbiased interferometric survey of the whole optical disk of M\,33 in CO J = 1 \rightarrow 0 made at 13'' angular resolution with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association Array. We find molecular clouds down to the mass of Taurus-Auriga (0.5 \times 105 M\sun). We present the CO luminosity function, rotation profile, and cloud-cloud velocity dispersion for molecular clouds isolated in our mosaic map, which covers the region R < 7~kpc. Our beam is well matched to the linear size of a Galactic-type GMC, neither resolving out nor seriously diluting the molecular emission. Therefore, our study should yield accurate flux and velocity dispersion information for these sources, which are analyzed statistically in relation to stellar radial and spiral structure. Our survey requires nearly 1000 telescope pointings which generate a grid of fields covering almost half a square degree. The noise level is 0.3 K in a 2~km/sec velocity channel.

This work was supported in part by NSF grant AST 99-81308.