The H I Parkes All-Sky Survey (HIPASS) catalogue forms the largest uniform catalogue of H I sources compiled to date, with 4315 sources identified purely by their H I content. The catalogue data comprise the southern region δ < + 2 • of HIPASS, the first blind H I survey to cover the entire southern sky. The rms noise for this survey is 13 mJy beam −1 and the velocity range is −1280 to 12 700 km s −1 . Data search, verification and parametrization methods are discussed along with a description of measured quantities. Full catalogue data are made available to the astronomical community including positions, velocities, velocity widths, integrated fluxes and peak flux densities. Also available are on-sky moment maps, position-velocity moment maps and spectra of catalogue sources. A number of local large-scale features are observed in the space distribution of sources, including the super-Galactic plane and the Local Void. Notably, large-scale structure is seen at low Galactic latitudes, a region normally obscured at optical wavelengths.

We present the HIPASS Bright Galaxy Catalog (BGC), which contains the 1000 H i brightest galaxies in the southern sky as obtained from the H i Parkes All-Sky Survey (HIPASS). The selection of the brightest sources is based on their H i peak flux density (S peak k116 mJy) as measured from the spatially integrated HIPASS spectrum. The derived H i masses range from $10 7 to 4 ; 10 10 M . While the BGC (z < 0:03) is complete in S peak , only a subset of $500 sources can be considered complete in integrated H i flux density (F H i k 25 Jy km s À1 ). The HIPASS BGC contains a total of 158 new redshifts. These belong to 91 new sources for which no optical or infrared counterparts have previously been cataloged, an additional 51 galaxies for which no redshifts were previously known, and 16 galaxies for which the cataloged optical velocities disagree. Of the 91 newly cataloged BGC sources, only four are definite H i clouds: while three are likely Magellanic debris with velocities around 400 km s À1 , one is a tidal cloud associated with the NGC 2442 galaxy group. The remaining 87 new BGC sources, the majority of which lie in the zone of avoidance, appear to be galaxies. We identified optical counterparts to all but one of the 30 new galaxies at Galactic latitudes jbj > 10 . Therefore, the BGC yields no evidence for a population of ''free-floating'' intergalactic H i clouds without associated optical counterparts. HIPASS provides a clear view of the local large-scale structure. The dominant features in the sky distribution of the BGC are the Supergalactic Plane and the Local Void. In addition, one can clearly see the Centaurus Wall, which connects via the Hydra and Antlia Clusters to the Puppis Filament. Some previously hardly noticable galaxy groups stand out quite distinctly in the H i sky distribution. Several new structures, including some not behind the Milky Way, are seen for the first time.

The UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) of the Anglo-Australian Observatory completed a narrowband Hα plus [N II] 6548, 6584-Å survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Magellanic Clouds in late 2003. The survey, which was the last UKST wide-field photographic survey and the only one undertaken in a narrow-band, is now an online digital data product of the Wide-Field Astronomy Unit of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE). The survey utilized a high specification, monolithic Hα interference bandpass filter of exceptional quality. In conjunction with the fine-grained Tech-Pan film as a detector it has produced a survey with a powerful combination of area coverage (4000 square degrees), resolution (∼1 arcsec) and sensitivity ( 5 Rayleighs), reaching a depth for continuum point sources of R 20.5. The main survey consists of 233 individual fields on a grid of centres separated by 4 • at declinations below +2 • and covers a swathe approximately 20 • wide about the Southern Galactic Plane. The original survey films were scanned by the SuperCOSMOS measuring machine at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, to provide the online digital atlas called the SuperCOSMOS Hα Survey (SHS). We present the background of the survey, the key survey characteristics, details and examples of the data product, calibration process, comparison with other surveys and a brief description of its potential for scientific exploitation.

We present a new accurate measurement of the H I mass function of galaxies from the HIPASS Bright Galaxy Catalog, a sample of 1000 galaxies with the highest H I peak flux densities in the southern (δ < 0 • ) hemisphere (Koribalski et al. 2003). This sample spans nearly four orders of magnitude in H I mass (from log(M HI ⁄ M ⊙ ) + 2 log h 75 = 6.8 to 10.6) and is the largest sample of H I selected galaxies to date. We develop a bivariate maximum likelihood technique to measure the space density of galaxies, and show that this is a robust method, insensitive to the effects of large scale structure. The resulting H I mass function can be fitted satisfactorily with a Schechter function with faint-end slope α = −1.30. This slope is found to be dependent on morphological type, with later type galaxies giving steeper slopes. We extensively test various effects that potentially bias the determination of the H I mass function, including peculiar motions of galaxies, large scale structure, selection bias, and inclination effects, and quantify these biases. The large sample of galaxies enables an accurate measurement of the cosmological mass density of neutral gas: Ω HI = (3.8 ± 0.6) × 10 −4 h −1 75 . Low surface brightness galaxies contribute only ∼ 15% to this value, consistent with previous findings.