New H I-detected galaxies in the zone of avoidance

We present the first results of a blind H I survey for galaxies in the sout hern zone of avoidance with a multibeam receiver on the Parkes telescope. T his survey is expected to eventually catalog several thousand galaxies with in Galactic latitude \b\ < 5 degrees, mostly unrecognized before because of Galactic extinction and confusion. We present here the results of the firs t three detections to have been imaged with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. All the galaxies lie near Galactic longitude 325 degrees and were s elected because of their large angular sizes, up to 1.degrees 3. Linear siz es range from 53 to 108 kpc. The first galaxy is a massive 5.7 x 10(11) M-. disk galaxy with a faint optical counterpart, SGC 1511.1-5249. The second is probably an interacting group of galaxies straddling the Galactic equato r. No optical identification is possible. The third object appears to be an interacting pair of low column density galaxies, possibly belonging to an extended Circinus or Centaurus A galaxy group. No optical counterpart has b een seen despite the predicted extinction (A(B) = 2.7-4.4 mag) not being ex cessive. We discuss the implications of the results, in particular, the low H I column densities (similar to 10(19) atoms cm(-2)) found for two of the three galaxies.