Where and how did stars form in galaxies? This question must be answered for a full understanding of the star formation process in galaxies. Since stars form in molecular clouds, CO observations that trace molecular gas are necessary. However, CO imaging observations covering an entire galaxy have not been performed extensively, and our knowledge of the spatially resolved physical conditions of molecular gas has been limited. The situation strongly motivated us to conduct multi-CO line mapping observations for more than 200 galaxies. We observed nearby galaxies with the Nobeyama 45-m radio telescope in ¹²CO J=1-0 in On-The-Fly mode. The final observed sample consists of 147 galaxies because of the long delay in setting up the instrument.

The targets of the survey were selected from FIR-bright galaxies that are expected to be detected with higher probability, based on IRAS 100 µm flux or AKARI 140 µm flux. The original samples were 238 providing higher priority to galaxies observed with CARMA and lower priority to galaxies observed with the 45-m telescope and elliptical galaxies.

• ¹²CO J=1-0 (115.271202 GHz)
• ¹³CO J=1-0 (110.201354 GHz)
• C¹⁸O J=1-0 (109.782176 GHz)

• ⊿T^A* = 30mK @ 10 km s^-1resolution in ¹²CO