The Superconducting Submillimeter‐Wave Limb‐Emission Sounder (SMILES) was successfully launched and attached to the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) on the International Space Station (ISS) on 25 September 2009. It has been making atmospheric observations since 12 October 2009 with the aid of a 4 K mechanical cooler and superconducting mixers for submillimeter limb‐emission sounding in the frequency bands of 624.32–626.32 GHz and 649.12–650.32 GHz . On the basis of the observed spectra, the data processing has been retrieving vertical profiles for the atmospheric minor constituents in the middle atmosphere, such as O3 with isotopes, HCl, ClO, HO2, BrO, and HNO3. Results from SMILES have demonstrated its high potential to observe atmospheric minor constituents in the middle atmosphere. Unfortunately, SMILES observations have been suspended since 21 April 2010 owing to the failure of a critical component.

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Molecular gas toward the supernova remnant (SNR) W44 (G34.7À0.4) was extensively mapped in CO J ¼ 1 0 emission with the 17 0 beam of the Nobeyama 45 m radio telescope. We detected high-velocity (>25 km s À1 ) CO line wings. They are confined to compact (%1.5 pc) spots, and they are located adjacent to bright radio filaments or knots. The low 13 CO/ 12 CO intensity ratio of 0.03 and high HCO + / 12 CO intensity ratio of 0.3 suggest that the wing-emitting gas has a moderate 12 CO opacity of %1 and a high density of n(H 2 ) > 10 5 cm À3 . This gas might be shocked molecular gas that has been accelerated and compressed by the expanding blast waves of W44. In addition, the high spatial resolution CO maps reveal several other features that may reveal the interaction between the SNR and the surrounding interstellar gas. The giant molecular cloud CO G34.8À0.6 (v LSR ¼ 48 km s À1 ) has a sharp edge coincident with the eastern radio continuum rim of W44, which may indicate that we observe the SNR/cloud interaction almost edge-on. The existence of the ''edge'' suggests that most of the molecular mass resides in smaller clumps that evaporate rapidly after the passage of the supernova blast wave. We also find spatially extended moderately broad emission (SEMBE) with a moderately large intensity of %30 K km s À1 in CO J ¼ 1 0 and a typical line width of %10 km s À1 (FWHM). Its extent coincides with the brighter region of the radio synchrotron emission. We discuss the SEMBE in terms of molecular clumps shocked and disturbed by the compressed shell of the SNR.

The FOREST Unbiased Galactic plane Imaging survey with the Nobeyama 45-m telescope (FUGIN) project is one of the legacy projects using the new multi-beam FOREST receiver installed on the Nobeyama 45-m telescope. This project aims to investigate the distribution, kinematics, and physical properties of both diffuse and dense molecular gas in the Galaxy at once by observing 12 CO, 13 CO, and C 18 O J = 1 − 0 lines simultaneously. The mapping regions are a part of the 1st quadrant (10• ) of the Galaxy, where spiral arms, bar structure, and the molecular gas ring are included. This survey achieves the highest angular resolution to date (∼20 ′′ ) for the Galactic plane survey in the CO J = 1 − 0 lines, which makes it possible to find dense clumps located farther away than the previous surveys. FUGIN will provide us with an invaluable dataset for investigating the physics of the galactic interstellar medium (ISM), particularly the evolution of interstellar gas covering galactic scale structures to the internal structures of giant molecular clouds, such as small filament/clump/core. We present an overview of the FUGIN project, observation plan, and initial results, which reveal wide-field and detailed structures of molecular clouds, such as entangled filaments that have not been obvious in previous surveys, and large-scale kinematics of molecular gas such as spiral arms.

We present 850 µm imaging polarimetry data of the ρ Oph-A core taken with the Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array-2 (SCUBA-2) and its polarimeter (POL-2), as part of our ongoing survey project, BISTRO (Bfields In STar forming RegiOns). The polarization vectors are used to identify the orientation of the magnetic field projected on the plane of the sky at a resolution of 0.01 pc. We identify 10 subregions with distinct polarization fractions and angles in the 0.2 pc ρ Oph A core; some of them can be part of a coherent magnetic field structure in the ρ Oph region. The results are consistent with previous observations of the brightest regions of ρ Oph-A, where the degrees of polarization are at a level of a few percents, but our data reveal for the first time the magnetic field structures in the fainter regions surrounding the core where the degree of polarization is much higher (> 5%). A comparison with previous near-infrared polarimetric data shows that there are several magnetic field components which are consistent at near-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. Using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, we also derive magnetic field strengths in several sub-core regions, which range from approximately 0.2 to 5 mG. We also find a correlation between the magnetic field orientations projected on the sky with the core centroid velocity components.