We present fully sampled maps of 
CO(1 
0) emission from a
section of the Large Magellanic Cloud, made with the SEST. At the
distance of the LMC, the 43'' angular resolution of the SEST
corresponds to 10 pc. The region studied is part of the molecular
cloud complex that extends 2 kpc south of 30Dor. The observations
presented here are of the Central and Southern parts of that
complex.
The appearance of the spectra, and their variation with position,
is very much like those seen in Milky Way giant molecular clouds.
The emission also comes from well defined molecular clouds, rather
than from a low level diffuse emission. The most significant
difference is that the LMC lines are weaker, with the strongest 
and the largest 
km s
. Line temperatures
both at the peaks and in the cloud envelopes are a factor of 
3 to
5 weaker than those found for Milky Way GMCs even when the
resolution of the Milky Way observations is degraded to 10 pc.
In the Central region, the emission comes from an extended feature
that has the appearance of a section of an arc. The arc is some
600 pc long. Even in peak or 
, the arc breaks into
several sub structures. There is a definite break between the
Central and Southern regions. In the Southern region, the
emission is on some 150 pc in extent. Using channel maps in 5
km s
steps, we have been able to separate the emission in these
regions into well defined clouds. In the Central region, there
are 22 clouds and in the Southern region there are 5 clouds. The
cloud properties (size, velocity dispersion, virial mass and CO
luminosity) will be discussed in a future paper.
Acknowledgements
M.L.K. would like to acknowledge travel support from an AAS Small Research Grant, and the NRAO Fund for Travel to Unique Foreign Telescopes, NASA grants NAG 2-677, NAG 5-1631, NAG 5-2302. We would also like to thank Dr. Jean Chiar for assistance in the data reduction. M.R. would like to acknowledge support from FONDECYT(CHILE) through grant #1930928.