12 - 5 minute exposures at 800 ISO on September 10, 2007 in Puimichel in the south of France.Dwingeloo 1 is a barred spiral galaxy about 10 million light-years away in the
constellation Casseopeia. This lies in the socalled Zone of Avoidance, so it is heavily obscured by the Milky Way. Dwingeloo 1 has a small satellite galaxy, known as Dwingeloo 2.
Dwingeloo 1 & 2 are members of the IC 342/Maffei Group.
The Dwingeloo galaxies were discovered in August 1994 by the "Dwingeloo Obscured Galaxy Survey" They are named after the 25m radio telescope in Dwingeloo, which first
detected them. They were detected at radio wavelengths by radiation from the 21cm emission line of neutral atomic hydrogen in the course of a 'blind' survey of the plane of the northern
Milky Way (Source: Wikipedia). It is remarkable that a famous instrument like the Dwingeloo telescope gets its name attached to a celestial object for the first time almost 40 years after its
opening. It is only fitting that it was a very special object, which would certainly have been detected more than 200 years ago by Messier, if it had not been "hidden" behind our own Galaxy.
This image was made with a modified Canon 350D, and a 20cm (8") f/2.75 ASA Astrograph.
This is a full size crop from the image above, the galaxy is the faint reddish blob.
