Conclusion

The multibeam HI Parkes all-sky survey will provide a new HI view of the sky, unbiased by optical selection. It will no doubt detect large numbers of galaxies with normal optical counterparts. But we can also expect it to discover other classes of objects. These include (1) intergalactic HI clouds; (2) very low surface brightness gas-rich galaxies (giants and dwarfs), which may come from the high tail of the distribution of protogalaxies; (3) small HI clouds in nearby groups of galaxies, which may represent the primordial building blocks of galaxies.

© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997