A NEAR-INFRARED IMAGING SEARCH FOR INVISIBLE GALAXIES BEHIND THE MILKY-WAY

We carried out a near-infrared imaging search for optically obscured g alaxies behind the Milky Way. The imagings were made for a 4' x 4' fie ld on each of 58 IRAS point sources, located within a region of 90 deg rees < l < 240 degrees, \b\ < 10 degrees and having reliable flux dens ities at 25, 60, and 100 mu m but no Galactic CO emission. The results revealed that 16 of these IRAS point sources can be associated with g alaxies or possible galaxies, and another 16 can be associated with st ars or H II regions; however, the remaining 26 are 'empty' objects wit hout any optical and near-infrared counterpart. The empty objects are colder than galaxies and seem to be Galactic objects.