The Nancay HI Zone of Avoidance survey of 2MASS bright galaxies
  To complement the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) and the 2MASS Tully-Fisher
survey (2MTF) a search for 21cm HI line emission of 2MASS bright galaxy
candidates has been pursued along the dust-obscured plane of the Milky Way with
the 100m Nancay Radio Telescope. For our sample selection we adopted an
isophotal extinction-corrected K-band magnitude limit of $K_s^o = 11.25$mag,
corresponding to the first 2MRS data release and 2MTF, for which the 2MASX
completeness level remains fairly constant deep into the Zone of Avoidance
(ZoA). About one thousand galaxies without prior redshift measurement
accessible from Nancay (Dec > -40\deg) were observed to an rms noise level of
~3 mJy for the velocity range -250 to 10'600 km/s. This resulted in 220 clear
and 12 marginal detections of the target sample. Only few detections have
redshifts above 8000 km/s due to recurring radio frequency interference (RFI).
A further 29 detections and 6 marginals have their origin in non-target
galaxies in the telescope beam. The newly detected galaxies are on average
considerably more \HI-rich (mostly $10^9 - 10^{10}$M$_\odot$) compared to
systematic (blind) HI surveys. The HI detections reveal various new filaments
crossing the mostly uncharted northern ZoA (e.g. at $\ell \sim 90\deg, 130\deg,
160\deg$), whilst consolidating galaxy agglomerations in Monoceros and Puppis
($\ell \sim 220\deg, 240\deg$). Considerably new insight has been gained about
the extent of the Perseus-Pisces Supercluster through the confirmation of a
ridge ($\ell \sim 160\deg$) encompassing the 3C129 cluster that links
Perseus-Pisces to Lynx, and the continuation of the second Perseus-Pisces arm
($\ell \sim 90\deg$) across the ZoA.
