Large-Scale Structures Behind the Southern Milky Way from Observations of Partially Obscured Galaxies
R.C. Kraan-Korteweg, P.A. Woudt, P.A. Henning, PASA, 14 (1), 15.

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Contents Page: Volume 14, Number 1

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Introduction

The Milky Way obscures about 25% of the extragalactic sky. This severely constrains studies of:

• Large-scale structures, particularly the connectivity of the Supergalactic Plane, other superclusters, walls and voids across the Milky Way.
• The origin of the peculiar motion of the Local Group (LG) with respect to the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB). Can the dipole in the CMB be explained by the gravity of the irregular mass/galaxy distribution in the whole sky?
• Other streaming motions. Is the predicted mass overdensity, the Great Attractor (GA) - as evidenced in a large-scale systematic flow of galaxies towards ( km ) (Kolatt et al. 1995) - in the form of galaxies, hence does light trace mass?
• Individual nearby galaxies. Could a nearby Andromeda-like galaxy lie hidden in the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA) - important for the internal dynamics of the LG, as well as mass derivations of the LG and the present density of the Universe from timing arguments (Peebles 1994). Moreover, the gravitational attraction of the nearest galaxies (v<300 km ) generate 20% of the total dipole moment (Kraan-Korteweg 1989).

In recent years various groups have initiated projects to unveil the galaxy distribution behind our Milky Way. The methods are manifold (cf., Unveiling of Large-Scale Structures behind the Milky Way, 1994, for a review). Here, we describe the results from a deep optical survey for galaxies in the southern Milky Way, a particularly interesting region because of the dipole in the CMB and the infall into the GA both of which point close to the southern Galactic Plane (cf., Fig. 1).

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© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997