The 22 m diameter Mopra telescope in Australia is being used to undertake an improved survey of the CO J = 1-0 line at 3mm along the 4th quadrant of the Galaxy, achieving an order of magnitude better spatial and spectral resolution (i.e. 0.6 and 0.1 km/s) than the Dame et al. (2001) survey that is publically available for the Southern Galactic plane. Furthermore, the Mopra CO survey includes the four principal isotopologues of the CO molecule (i.e. 12CO, 13CO, C18O and C17O). The survey makes use of an 8 GHz-wide spectrometer and a fast mode of on-the- y mapping developed for the Mopra telescope, where the cycle time has been reduced to just 1=4 of a second. 38 square degrees of the Galaxy, from l = 306-344°, b = ±0:5° have currently been surveyed, together with additional 9 sq. deg. regions around the Carina complex and the Central Molecular Zone. We present new results from the survey (see also Burton et al., 2013, 2014). The Mopra CO data are being made publically available as they are published; for the latest release see the project website at www.phys.unsw.edu.au/mopraco.

A plane-parallel model of the diffuse Galactic light (DGL) is calculated assuming exponential disks of interstellar dust and OB stars, by solving exactly the radiative transfer equation using an iterative method. We perform a radiative transfer calculation for a model with generally accepted scale heights of stellar and dust distribution and compare the results with those of van de Hulst & de Jong for a constant slab model. We also find that the intensity extrapolated to zero dust optical depth has a negative value, against to the usual expectation.

We report on our Galactic plane searches for magnetars in the archival Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) data. We summarize the properties of known magnetars and use them to establish a procedure for magnetar searches. The procedure includes four steps: source finding, spectral characterization, optical counterpart checks, and period searches. We searched 1,282 archival CXO observations, found 32,838 X-ray sources, and selected 25 intriguing candidates using the developed procedure. Although we do not firmly identify a magnetar among them, we significantly reduced the number of targets in future magnetar searches to be done with better X-ray telescopes.