Nearby Large-Scale Structures and the Zone of Avoidance: A Conference Summary and Assessment

This conference has brought together many of the world's `cosmographers', particularly those focussed on the mapping nearby large-scale structures. Not surprisingly, numerous portrayals of the Local Cosmic Web and its characteristics have been presented, with some reconciliation to the structures found by the much deeper 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In recent years, Near-infrared and H I surveys have greatly narrowed the `Zone of Avoidance' caused by the foreground obscuration of the Milky Way. There has been emphasis towards southern large-scale structures, with the particular need to identify the mass overdensities responsible for the dipole in the Cosmic Microwave Background. While the general consensus is that the Shapley Concentration is a greater overdensity than the Great Attractor, its far greater distance makes it unclear as to whether its gravitational effect could be larger. Furthermore, worries about residual bulk motion remain.