M100 Band3

M100 Introduction Page.

Science Target Overview

M100 (NGC 4321; RA 12h 22m 54.8s, Dec +15 49' 19") is a nearby (~16 Mpc) 'grand-design' barred spiral galaxy in the Virgo cluster. It has long spiral arms dominating its optical disk and an abundance of molecular gas in its center. It has a relatively face-on inclination of ~30 degrees.

In the 1990s, M100 was mapped at an angular resolution of 6" using the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) millimeter interferometer as part of the BIMA SONG survey (Regan et al. 2001; Helfer et al. 2003; Sheth et al. 2002). Using the Nobeyama mm-wave Array (NMA), the central 1' was mapped by Sakamoto et al. (1995, 1999) at 2.5" resolution. Its nucleus has also been mapped in CO using the IRAM interferometer (Garcia-Burillo et al. 1998).