1 Introduction

As it is well known, our view of the extragalactic space at low Galactic latitudes is obscured by a patchy layer of dust, whose inner part ( $\vert b\vert \la 10$$^\circ$) is called Zone of Avoidance (ZoA). However, numerous multi-wavelength surveys carried out by different research groups (e.g. Nakanishi et al. 1997; Kraan-Korteweg & Lahav 2000; Weinberger et al. 2000, and references therein) in the last decades led to the detection of tens of thousand of galaxies in this band of the Milky Way. Such a huge galaxy database has a high potential both for extragalactic studies and for studies of our own Galaxy. In particular we started a project (S. Temporin et al., in preparation) devoted to investigate the dust distribution in the Milky Way in dependence on Galactic longitude and latitude. This purpose will be achieved by evaluating the total foreground Galactic extinction along many lines-of-sight to galaxies in the ZoA and its vicinity through BVRI CCD-photometry. Indeed, depending on their morphological type, galaxies have well-defined intrinsic total and effective optical colors (Buta & Williams 1995), which can be used to determine the color excess and then the visual absorption $A_{\rm V}$. In order to largely avoid the fine-scale structure of Galactic dust (clumpiness) we selected close pairs and/or multiple systems of galaxies to reduce the errors in the determination of Galactic extinction along a specific line-of-sight.

As an aside we have performed a spectroscopic follow-up of these selected systems, whose physical properties are still widely unknown, in order to establish, through the determination of their radial velocities, which of them are physically bound and not only chance projections on the plane of the sky. We have identified in this way a new compact galaxy group at low galactic latitude ( $l=143^{\circ}.64$, $b=-13^{\circ}.29$), to which we refer here as CG J0247+44.9, containing six members. Two of them form a close interacting pair, already known as IRAS 02443+4437, other three galaxies are cataloged in the 2MASS survey (Huchra et al. 2000) and the last one is uncataloged. We present here the analysis of photometric (Sect. 2) and spectroscopic data (Sect. 3) of this group. We discuss the individual properties of its members in Sect. 4 and the global properties of the group in Sect. 5. The main results are summarized in Sect. 6.

 

 

Table 1: Observation logs.

Telescope	Instrument	Filter/Grism	Date	$T_{\rm exp}$	Seeing	Scale	Slit
				(s)	( $^{\prime \prime }$)	( $^{\prime \prime }$/px)	( $^{\prime \prime }$)
Calar Alto 1.23 m	CCD-camera	Johnson B	1999-01-06	2100	1.4	0.5	...
Calar Alto 1.23 m	CCD-camera	Johnson V	1999-01-06	1200	1.1	0.5	...
Calar Alto 1.23 m	CCD-camera	Cousins R	1999-01-06	900	1.0	0.5	...
Calar Alto 1.23 m	CCD-camera	Cousins I	1999-01-06	300	1.1	0.5	...
Asiago 1.82 m	AFOSC	#4	2001-09-13	1800	1.2	0.47	1.26
Asiago 1.82 m	AFOSC	#4	2001-11-25	1800	2.2	0.47	2.10
Asiago 1.82 m	AFOSC	#4	2001-11-26	2x1800	2.2	0.47	2.10