First ISO Results from the US Key Project on the Interstellar Medium Of Normal Galaxies

Session 52 - First Results from the Infrared Space Observatory.
Oral session, Wednesday, June 12
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[52.08] First ISO Results from the US Key Project on the Interstellar Medium Of Normal Galaxies

G. Helou, S. Lord, C. A. Beichman, N. Lu, S. Malhotra (IPAC), D. J. Hollenbach, R. H. Rubin (NASA-ARC), H. Thronson (U. Wyoming), G. Stacey (Cornell), H. Dinerstein (U. Texas), M. W. Werner (JPL), D. A. Hunter (Lowell Obs.), K. Y. Lo (U. Illinois)

The US Key Project on the ISM of normal galaxies uses ESA's ISO satellite as part of the NASA guaranteed time allocation. The goal of this project is to derive the physical properties of the interstellar gas (temperature, pressure, clumping), dust (abundance, size distribution) and radiation field (intensity, hardness) in a broad sample of ``normal'' disk galaxies, and to study star formation as a global process in galaxies. The project targets various regions in ten nearby galaxies (e.g. NGC6946, M101, IC10), and about sixty distant, unresolved disk galaxies spanning a wide range of morphology, luminosity, and infrared-to-blue ratio. We observe several ionic and atomic fine-structure lines with ISO-LWS, map the continuum emission at 7 and 15 microns with ISO-CAM at 6 arcsec resolution, and obtain spectro-photometry between 3 and 12 microns for the brightest sources using ISO-PHOT.

We will outline the updated observing plans, present early data sets, and discuss their interpretation.

Program listing for Wednesday