DENIS Galaxies in the Zone of Avoidance

We investigated the potential of using DENIS for studies of galaxies behind the obscuration layer of our Milky Way, and mapping the Galactic extinction. As a pilot study, we examined DENIS I-, J-, and K-band images of heavily obscured galaxies from a deep optical (B_J-band) galaxy survey in the Zone of Avoidance. We tried to uncover additional galaxies at latitudes where the Milky Way remains fully opaque, i.e. we conducted a `blind' search at |b| < 5deg and A_B > 4-5 mag. Furthermore, we determined the I, J and K magnitudes of galaxies in the low-latitude, nearby, rich cluster Abell 3627 and compared the resulting colour-colour diagram with that of an unobscured cluster.