A survey of formaldehyde in high Galactic latitudes

The discovery of formaldehyde (H2CO) in four out of 15 CO-clouds observed in high Galactic latitudes is reported. For one of these a velocity-integrated formaldehyde map is presented. The clouds are clearly connected to CO clouds described by de Vries et al. (1986), to Lynds bright and dark nebulae (Lynds, 1963), and to the Galactic infrared cirrus (Low et al., 1984). The distribution of CO and H2CO clouds is compared. The depths of the l(10-11)H2CO lines show no correlation to the integrated J = l-0(C-12)O line intensities.