IRAS Bright Galaxy Survey. II

Source positions, radial velocities, optical magnitudes, and total flux densities, peak flux densities, and spatial extents at 12, 25, and 100um are reported for 288 sources having 60um flux densities >5.24Jy, the completeness limit of the original Bright Galaxy Survey [Soifer et al. (1989AJ.....98..766S)], hereafter referred to as BGS1.

These new data represent the extension of the IRAS Bright Galaxy Survey to southern declinations, Dec<~-30deg, and low Galactic latitudes, 5deg<|b|<=30deg. Although the sky coverage of the BGS2 (~19935deg^2) is 37% larger than the sky coverage of the BGS1, the number of sources is 8% smaller due primarily to large scale structure in the local distribution of galaxies. Otherwise, the sources in the BGS2 show similar relationships between number counts and flux density as observed for the 313 sources in the BGS1.