A catalogue of galaxies behind the southern Milky Way. - II. The Crux and Great Attractor regions (l = 289deg - 338deg)

In this second paper of the catalogue series of galaxies behind the southern Milky Way, we report on the deep optical galaxy search in the Crux region (289deg <= l <= 318deg and -10deg <= b <= 10deg) and the Great Attractor region (316deg <= l <= 338deg and -10deg <= b <= 10deg). The galaxy catalogues are presented, a brief description of the galaxy search given, as well as a discussion on the distribution and characteristics of the uncovered galaxies. A total of 8182 galaxies with major diameters D >= 0.2 arcmin were identified in this ~850 square degree area: 3759 galaxies in the Crux region and 4423 galaxies in the Great Attractor region. Of the 8182 galaxies, 229 (2.8%) were catalogued before in the optical (3 in radio) and 251 galaxies have a reliable (159), or likely (92) cross-identification in the IRAS Point Source Catalogue (3.1%). A number of prominent overdensities and filaments of galaxies are identified. They are not correlated with the Galactic foreground extinction and hence indicative of extragalactic large-scale structures. Redshifts obtained at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) for 518 of the newly catalogued galaxies in the Crux and Great Attractor regions (Fairall et al. 1998; Woudt et al. 1999) confirm distinct voids and clusters in the area here surveyed. With this optical galaxy search, we have reduced the width of the optical `Zone of Avoidance' for galaxies with extinction-corrected diameters larger than 1.3 arcmin from extinction levels A_B >= 1.0 mag to A_B >= 3.0 mag: the remaining optical Zone of Avoidance is now limited by |b| <= 3deg (see Fig. 16).Comment: 19 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in A&A. Tables will shortly be available in electronic version at the CDS. Full resolution (colour) copies of Figures 1, 2, 3 and 16 are available at http://mensa.ast.uct.ac.za/~pwoud