Cosmological Structures behind the Milky Way

Abstract

This paper provides an update to the review on extragalactic large-scale structures uncovered in the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA) by Kraan-Korteweg & Lahav 2000, in particular in the Great Attractor region. Emphasis is given to the penetration of the ZOA with the in 2003 released NIR 2MASX Catalog. The distribution is little affected by the foreground dust. Galaxies can be identified to extinction levels of over A(B) < 10m except in the wider Galactic Bulge region (see Fig. 9) where star density is a strong delimiting factor. The shape of the NIR-ZOA is quite asymmetric due to Galactic features such as spiral arms and the Bulge, something that should not be ignored when using NIR samples for studies such as dipole determinations. Results are presented from the deep blind HI ZOA survey performed with the Multibeam Receiver at the Parkes telescope (v < 12700km/s). The distribution of the roughly one thousand discovered spiral galaxies in the optically and NIR impenetratable part of the ZOA clearly depict the prominence of the Norma Supercluster. With the optically identified galaxies in the ZOA, a picture emerges that bears a striking resemblance to the Coma cluster in the Great Wall: the rich Norma cluster (ACO 3627) lies within a great-wall like structure that can be traced at the redshift range of the cluster over 90dg on the sky, with two foreground filaments - reminiscent of the legs in the famous stick man - that merge in an overdensity at slightly lower redshifts around the radio galaxy PKS 1343-601 (see Figs. 14 & 16). (abridged)

Invited Review at the joint conference of the Czech Astron. Society and the Astron. Gesellschaft. To appear in Reviews in Modern Astronomy 18, on ``From Cosmological Structures to the Milky Way'', ed. S. Roeser, 30pages, 16 ps-figures. Full resolution gzipped ps-version (16Mb) available at http://mensa.ast.uct.ac.za/~kraan/AGreview/AGreview.ps.gz

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• The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). Never mind the gaps: comparing techniques to restore homogeneous sky coverage
• The highly obscured region around PKS1343-601 - I. Galactic interstellar extinctions using DENIS galaxy colours
• The Nancay HI Zone of Avoidance survey of 2MASS bright galaxies
• A Massive Spiral Galaxy in the Zone of Avoidance
• The Norma cluster (ACO3627): II. The near infrared K_s-band luminosity function
• Outlining the Local Void with the Parkes HI ZOA and Galactic Bulge Surveys
• Deep NIR photometry of HI galaxies in the Zone of Avoidance
• NIR Tully-Fisher in the Zone of Avoidance. -- III. Deep NIR catalogue of the HIZOA galaxies
• Parkes HI observations of galaxies behind the southern Milky Way. II. The Crux and Great Attractor regions (l ~ 289 degree to 338 degree)
• On How to Extend the NIR Tully-Fisher Relation to be Truly All-Sky
• Galaxy flows within 8,000 km/s from Numerical Action methods
• Discovery of Two Galaxies Deeply Embedded in the Great Attractor Wall
• A galaxy cluster in the innermost Zone of Avoidance, close to the radio phoenix VLSSJ2217.5+594
• Hiding behind a curtain of dust: Gas and dust properties of an ultra-luminous strongly-lensed z = 3.75 galaxy behind the Milky Way disk