The WSRT ZoA Perseus-Pisces filament wide-field HI imaging survey - I. HI catalogue and atlas.

We present results of a blind 21cm HI-line imaging survey of a galaxy overdensity located behind the Milky Way at ℓ, b≈ 160°, 0.5°. The overdensity corresponds to a zone-of-avoidance crossing of the Perseus-Pisces Supercluster filament. Although it is known that this filament contains an X-ray galaxy cluster (3C 129) hosting two strong radio galaxies, little is known about galaxies associated with this potentially rich cluster because of the high Galactic dust extinction. We mapped a sky area of ∼9.6 deg2 using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in a hexagonal mosaic of 35 pointings observed for 12 h each, in the radial velocity range cz = 2400-16 600 km s-1. The survey has a sensitivity of 0.36 mJy beam-1 rms at a velocity resolution of 16.5 km s-1.We detected 211 galaxies, 62 per cent of which have a near-infrared counterpart in the UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey. We present a catalogue of the HI properties and an HI atlas containing total intensity maps, position-velocity diagrams, global HI profiles and UKIDSS counterpart images. For the resolved galaxies we also present HI velocity fields and radial HI surface density profiles. A brief analysis of the structures outlined by these galaxies finds that 87 of them lie at the distance of the Perseus-Pisces Supercluster (cz ∼ 4000-8000 km s-1) and seem to form part of the 3C 129 cluster. Further 72 detections trace an overdensity at a velocity of cz ≈ 10 000 km s-1 and seem to coincide with a structure predicted from mass density reconstructions in the first 2MASS Redshift Survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]