ISOCAM SURVEY OF THE INNER GALAXY COMPLETION OF THE ISOGAL 7-15MICRON SURVEY

> in this proposal, more time is being requested for aomont.isogalin > this proposal requests an upgrade from priority 3 for aomont.isogalin isogal is the first detailed midir imaging survey of the inner galaxy, tracing galactic structure and stellar populations. it combines 715mu data with the ijk denis survey which has already completely observed the isogal fields. we have three main goals: trace the large scale disk structure using primarily red giant (gm) old stars; detect many dusty young stars and map the ism star formation regions through diffuse emission and extinction; study the stellar populations and the structure of the bulge. the central regions of the milky way contain the most extreme stellar cluster known, the majority of the stellar mass, most of the spiral structure, much of the star formation, the disk bar, the mysterious central bulge, the molecular ring, and many examples of rare and extreme stellar and dynamical states. most of these are confused in projection and are heavily obscured even in the nearir. multicolour midir data are essential to analyse these features. isogal quantifies the distribution of the stellar populations, especially of young dusty, old (gm), and agb, stars, of low luminosity starformation regions, uchii regions, and both diffuse and dense interstellar material. the 70 hours allocated and successfully observed have, as proposed, been devoted almost exclusively to 15mu observations, to maximise originality with respect to ground nearir (half our 15mu sources seem to be dusty ysos not detectable at ijk) and avoid saturation. our first isogal results combined with denis provide adequate photometry and extinction on gms at several kpc, as well as two major results beyond our expectations: we see even more young, lowmass stars and very many more extremely highextinction clouds than expected. besides the many major goals already achievable with these 1 truncated!, [truncated!, Please see actual data for full text]