Discovery of emission from the J = 1 to J = 0 transition of CO toward the central regions of external galaxies is reported. Preliminary results are presented for two galaxies with active nuclei, M82 and NGC 253, in which the observed emission features are surprisingly strong. In the directions of the nuclear continuum peaks, the velocity range of CO emission is roughly the same as that of 21-cm absorption. For each galaxy, the CO features are spatially extended, and the velocity shift of the emission centroid along the major axis is in the sense of the galactic rotation.
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Rickard et al. (1975) studied this question.