Extragalactic large-scale structures behind the southern Milky Way. IV. Redshifts obtained with MEFOS

As part of our efforts to unveil extragalactic large-scale structures behind the southern Milky Way, we here present redshifts for 764 galaxies in the Hydra/Antlia, Crux and Great Attractor region (266^o ≤ℓ ≤338^o, | b | ⪉ 10^o), obtained with the Meudon-ESO Fibre Object Spectrograph (MEFOS) at the 3.6-m telescope of ESO. The observations are part of a redshift survey of partially obscured galaxies recorded in the course of a deep optical galaxy search behind the southern Milky Way (Kraan-Korteweg \cite{Kra00a}; Woudt & Kraan-Korteweg \cite{Wou01}). A total of 947 galaxies have been observed, a small percentage of the spectra (N = 109, 11.5%) were contaminated by foreground stars, and 74 galaxies (7.8%) were too faint to allow a reliable redshift determination. With MEFOS we obtained spectra down to the faintest galaxies of our optical galaxy survey, and hence probe large-scale structures out to larger distances (v ⪉ 30 000 km s^-1) than our other redshift follow-ups using the 1.9-m telescope at the South African Astronomical Observatory (Kraan-Korteweg et al. \cite{Kra95}; Fairall et al. \cite{Fai98}; Woudt et al. \cite{Wou99}) and the 64-m Parkes radio telescope (Kraan-Korteweg et al. \cite{Kra02}). The most distinct large-scale structures revealed in the southern Zone of Avoidance are discussed in context to known structures adjacent to the Milky Way.

Tables 1 and 2 are only available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/415/9 Based on observations taken at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile.