Predicting Structures in the Zone of Avoidance
  The Zone of Avoidance (ZOA), whose emptiness is an artifact of our Galaxy
dust, has been challenging observers as well as theorists for many years.
Multiple attempts have been made on the observational side to map this region
in order to better understand the local flows. On the theoretical side,
however, this region is often simply statistically populated with structures
but no real attempt has been made to confront theoretical and observed matter
distributions. This paper takes a step forward using constrained realizations
of the local Universe shown to be perfect substitutes of local Universe-like
simulations for smoothed high density peak studies. Far from generating
completely `random' structures in the ZOA, the reconstruction technique
arranges matter according to the surrounding environment of this region. More
precisely, the mean distributions of structures in a series of constrained and
random realizations differ: while densities annihilate each other when
averaging over 200 random realizations, structures persist when summing 200
constrained realizations. The probability distribution function of ZOA grid
cells to be highly overdense is a Gaussian with a 15% mean in the random case,
while that of the constrained case exhibits large tails. This implies that
areas with the largest probabilities host most likely a structure. Comparisons
between these predictions and observations, like those of the Puppis 3 cluster,
show a remarkable agreement and allow us to assert the presence of the,
recently highlighted by observations, Vela supercluster at about 180 Mpc/h,
right behind the thickest dust layers of our Galaxy.
