RESULTS OF A SEARCH FOR EMISSION-LINE GALAXIES TOWARDS NEARBY VOIDS -THE SPATIAL-DISTRIBUTION

We present the results of a search for emission-line galaxies (ELGs) t owards nearby voids, based on a sample selected on the HQS (Hamburg Qu asar Survey)(Hagen et al. 1995) - III-aJ objective-prism plates. The s urvey was based on the presence of emission-lines and therefore has th e advantage to detect very faint objects (with all the flux in the emi ssion-lines and almost no continuum), that would be missed by an appar ent magnitude limited survey. We found objects as faint as B=20.5 and M-B = (-15.0, -12.0). The relevant brightness parameters of the sample are: (1) the sum of the flux in the emission-lines and of the continu um flux under the line, and (2) the equivalent widths (EW); the corres ponding completeness limits are 6.7 x 10(-14) erg sec(-1)cm(-2) and 8 Angstrom, respectively. The observational data are given in Popescu et al. (1996) and in the present paper we consider a complete subsample from these data. We analyse the spatial distribution of our sample of ELGs in comparison with the distribution of normal galaxies. Overall b oth distributions trace the same structures. Nevertheless we also foun d a few ELGs in voids, from which at least 8 lie in the very well defi ned nearby voids. The isolated galaxies seem to form fainter structure s that devide the larger voids into smaller ones. From our estimates o f the expected number of void galaxies we conclude that we did not fin d an underlying homogenous void population.