  We describe a sample of thirteen bright (18.5<Bj<20.1) compact galaxies at
low redshift (0.05<z<0.21) behind the Fornax Cluster. These galaxies are
unresolved on UK Schmidt sky survey plates, so would be missing from most
galaxy catalogs compiled from this material. The objects were found during
initial observations of The Fornax Spectroscopic Survey. This project is using
the Two-degree Field spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope to obtain
spectra for a complete sample of all 14000 objects, stellar and non-stellar,
with 16.5<Bj<19.7, in a 12 square degree area centered on the Fornax cluster of
galaxies. The surface density of compact galaxies with magnitudes 16.5<Bj<19.7
is 7+/-3 /sq.deg., representing 2.8+/-1.6% of all local (z<0.2) galaxies to
this limit. There are 12+/-3 /sq.deg. with 16.5<Bj<20.2. They are luminous
(-21.5<Mb<-18.0, for H0=50 km/s/mpc) and most have strong emission lines (H
alpha equivalent widths of 40-200 A) and small sizes typical of luminous HII
galaxies and compact narrow emission line galaxies. Four out of thirteen have
red colors and early-type spectra, so are unlikely to have been detected in any
previous surveys.
