A Zone of Avoidance catalogue of 2MASS bright galaxies. I. Sample
  description and analysis
  We present a homogeneous 2MASS bright galaxy catalogue at low Galactic
latitudes ($|b| \le 10.0^{\rm o}$, called Zone of Avoidance) which is complete
to a Galactic extinction-corrected magnitude of $K^o_s \le 11.25^{\rm m}$. It
also includes galaxies in regions of high foreground extinctions ($E(B-V) >
0.95^{\rm m}$) situated at higher latitudes. This catalogue forms the basis of
studies of large-scale structures, flow fields and extinction across the ZoA
and complements the ongoing 2MASS Redshift and Tully-Fisher surveys. It
comprises 3763 galaxies, 70% of which have at least one radial velocity
measurement in the literature. The catalogue is complete up to star density
levels of $\log N_*/{\rm deg}^2 <4.5$ and at least for $A_K < 0.6^{\rm m}$ and
likely as high as $A_K = 20^{\rm m}$. Thus the ZoA in terms of bright NIR
galaxies covers only $2.5-4$% of the whole sky. We use a diameter-dependent
extinction correction to compare our sample with an unobscured, high-latitude
sample. While the correction to the $K_s$ -band magnitude is sufficient, the
corrected diameters are too small by about $4''$ on average. The omission of
applying such a diameter-dependent extinction correction may lead to a biased
flow field even at intermediate extinction values as found in the 2MRS survey.
A slight dependence of galaxy colour with stellar density indicates that
unsubtracted foreground stars make galaxies appear bluer. Furthermore,
far-infrared sources in the DIRBE/IRAS extinction maps that were not removed at
low latitudes affect the foreground extinction corrections of three galaxies
and may weakly affect a further estimated $\approx 20$% of our galaxies.
