A Pilot Survey for the H2O Southern Galactic Plane Survey

We describe observations with the Mopra radiotelescope designed to assess the feasibility of the H₂O Maser Southern Galactic Plane Survey. We mapped two one-square-degree regions along the Galactic plane using the new 12-mm receiver and the UNSW Mopra spectrometer. We covered the entire spectrum between 19.5 and 27.5 GHz using this setup with the main aim of finding out which spectral lines can be detected with a quick mapping survey. We report on detected emission from H₂O masers, NH₃ inversion transitions (1,1), (2,2) and (3,3), HC₃N (3-2), as well as several radio recombination lines.