The highly obscured radio-bright galaxy PKS 1343-601 at Galactic coordinates of (l,b)=(309.7,+1.8) has been suspected to mark the centre of a hitherto unknown cluster in the wider Great Attractor region. As such it presents an ideal region for a search of galaxies in the near-infrared (NIR) and an in-depth study of their colours as a function of extinction. A visual search of a ~30 square-degree area centred on this radio galaxy on images of the NIR DENIS survey (IJK) revealed 83 galaxies (including two AGNs) and 39 possible candidates. Of these, 49 are also listed in the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog 2MASX. Taking the IRAS/DIRBE extinction values (Schlegel et al., 1998ApJ...500..525S) at face value, the absorption in the optical (AB) ranges from ~2mag to over 100mag across the Galactic Plane. Comparing the detections with other systematic surveys, we conclude that this search is highly complete up to the detection limits of the DENIS survey and certainly surpasses any automatic galaxy finding algorithm applied to crowded areas.
Cone search capability for table J/A+A/466/481/galaxies (Galaxies in the search area, with cross-identications)
Cone search capability for table J/A+A/466/481/table3 (Galactic objects detected in the search area)
