Serendipitous detection of galaxies behind the Milky Way from the DENIS survey ^*,**

¹ CRAL-Observatoire de Lyon, 69561 Saint-Genis Laval Cedex, France
² Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, 98 bis Bld Arago, 75014 Paris, France
³ Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Dept. Fresnel, 06304 Nice Cedex, France
⁴ European Southern Observatory, Casilla 19001, Santiago 19, Chile
⁵ Institut für Astronomie, Innsbruck University, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
⁶ Observatoire de Paris, 61 Av. de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
⁷ Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, 5 place Jules-Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France

Corresponding author: I. Vauglin, vauglin@obs.univ-lyon1.fr

Received: 27 June 2001
Accepted: 31 January 2002

Abstract

A search has been undertaken at Lyon Observatory to identify, by eye, galaxy candidates at galactic latitudes lower than ±15 degrees on the DENIS J and K-band images. This paper presents a list of 2028 objects that were serendipitously detected throughout the DENIS survey. Cross-identification with galaxy entries in the LEDA Database has been performed. Comparison with the second release of the 2MASS survey led to a satisfactory agreement of J band magnitudes (std. dev. = 0.3 mag). The distribution of galaxy candidates along the Galactic Plane shows a concentration near the galactic longitude . As a by product of this inspection of J and K images some interesting galactic objects were found (star clusters and nebulae).