A&A Supplement series, Vol. 127, February I 1998, 463-470
Received January 20; accepted May 20, 1997
A.P. Fairall
- P.A. Woudt
- R.C. Kraan-Korteweg
Send offprint request: A.P. Fairall
Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town,
Rondebosch, 7700, South Africa
Observatoire de Paris, DAEC, Unité associée au CNRS, D0173, et à
l'Université Paris 7, 92195 Meudon Cedex, France
In our systematic optical galaxy search behind the southern Milky Way,
3760 (mostly unknown) galaxies with diameters 
were
identified in the Crux region (
, Woudt & Kraan-Korteweg 1997).
Prior to this investigation, only 65 of these galaxies had known
redshifts. In order to map the galaxy
distribution in redshift space we obtained spectra for 226
bright (
) objects with the 1.9 m
telescope of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO).
Redshifts could be determined for 209 objects, of which 173 have good signal-to-noise ratios. Of the 36 tentative redshifts, four are confirmed through independent values in the literature. The redshifts of three objects indicate them to be galactic in origin. One of these confirms a suspected Planetary Nebula. For 17 of the galaxies, no redshift could be determined due to poor signal-to-noise ratios.
In addition, 26 redshifts have have been measured in the Hydra-Antlia region investigated earlier (Kraan-Korteweg et al. 1995), of which one is a tentative estimate.
Two main structures crossing the Galactic Plane in the Crux region have now
become clear. A narrow, nearby filament from (
to the Centaurus cluster can be traced. This filament runs almost
parallel to the extension of the Hydra-Antlia clusters found earlier and
is part of what we have earlier termed the "Centaurus Wall'' extending in
redshift-space between 
6000 km s-1
(Fairall & Paverd 1995). The main outcome of this survey
however, is the recognition of another massive extended structure between
km s-1.
This broad structure, dubbed the Norma Supercluster (Woudt et al.
1997), runs nearly parallel to the Galactic Plane from Vela to ACO
3627 (its centre) from where it continues to the Pavo cluster.
This massive structure is believed to be associated with the Great Attractor.
The survey has furthermore revealed a set of cellular structures, similar to those seen in redshift space at higher galactic latitudes, but never before seen so clearly behind the Milky Way.
keywords: galaxies: redshifts -- galaxies: clusters of -- large-scale structure of the Universe