Cold gas properties of Herschel Reference Survey

We studied different recipes to correct single-beam observations of nearby galaxies of different sizes and inclinations for aperture effects. This was done by comparing single-beam and multiple-beam observations along the major axis, which were corrected for aperture effects using different empirical or analytical prescriptions, to integrated maps of several nearby galaxies, including edge-on systems observed by different surveys.

The resulting recipe is an analytical function determined by assuming that late-type galaxies are 3D exponentially declining discs with a characteristic scale length r_CO_=0.2r_24.5_, where r_24.5_ is the optical, g- (or B-) band isophotal radius at the 24.5mag/arcsec^2^ (25mag/arcsec^2^), as well as a scale height z_CO_=1/100r_24.5_. Our new CO data are then combined with those available in the literature to produce the most updated catalogue of CO observations for the HRS, now including 225 out of the 322 galaxies of the complete sample.