ACA [CI] observations of the starburst galaxy NGC 253

Abstract

Context. Carbon monoxide (CO) is widely used as a tracer of the molecular gas in almost all types of environments. However, several shortcomings of CO complicate usaging it as H2 tracer, such as its optical depth effects, the dependence of its abundance on metallicity, or its susceptibility to dissociation in highly irradiated regions. Neutral carbon emission has been proposed to overcome some of these shortcomings and hence to help revealing the limits of CO as a measure of the molecular gas.