5 Conclusions

We made follow-up spectroscopy of the fifth list of candidates from the Hamburg/SAO Survey for ELGs. Summarizing the results of the spectroscopy, the analysis of spectral information and the discussion above we draw the following conclusions:

• The intended methods to detect ELG candidates on the plates of the Hamburg Quasar Survey give a reasonably high detection rate of emission-line objects. In total, out of both priority categories, we observed 209 objects among which we found 166 emission-line objects corresponding to a detection rate of $\sim$79%.

• Besides the ELGs we found also 5 new quasars, mostly with Ly$\alpha$ in the wavelength region 4950-5100 Å ($z\sim3$), near the red boundary of the IIIa-J photoplates.

• The high fraction of BCG/H II galaxies among all observed ELGs (about 61% in this paper) is in line with our main goal - to pick up efficiently a statistically well selected and deep BCG sample in the sky region under analysis.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft No. 436 RUS 17/77/94. U.A.V. is very grateful to the staff of the Hamburg Observatory for their hospitality and kind assistance. Support by the INTAS grant No. 96-0500 was crucial to proceed with the Hamburg/SAO survey declination band centered on +37.5$^{\circ}$. SAO authors acknowledge also partial support from the INTAS grant No. 97-0033. We note that the use of APM facility was extremely valuable for selection methodology of additional candidates to BCGs from the 2nd priority list. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We have also used the Digitized Sky Survey, produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under government grant NAG W-2166.