H [CSC]i[/CSC]–bright Galaxies in the Southern Zone of Avoidance

A blind survey for HI bright galaxies in the southern Zone of Avoidance, (212deg < l < 36 deg; |b| < 5 deg), has been made with the 21 cm multibeam receiveron the Parkes 64 m radiotelescope. The survey, sensitive to normal spiralgalaxies to a distance of about 40 Mpc and more nearby dwarfs, detected 110galaxies. Of these, 67 have no counterparts in the NASA/IPAC ExtragalacticDatabase. In general, the uncataloged galaxies lie behind thicker obscurationthan do the cataloged objects. All of the newly-discovered galaxies have HIflux integrals more than an order of magnitude lower than the Circinus galaxy.The survey recovers the Puppis cluster and foreground group (Kraan-Korteweg &Huchtmeier 1992), and the Local Void remains empty. The HI mass functionderived for the sample is satisfactorily fit by a Schechter function withparameters alpha = 1.51 +- 0.12, Phi* = 0.006 +- 0.003, and log M* = 9.7 +-0.10.Comment: To appear in The Astronomical Journa