Daily Image
24-08-2007
Dwingeloo 1 Galaxy
| Submitter: | Albert van Duin |
| Description: | 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" (DOGS http://www.astron.nl/wsrt/WSRTproj/dogs.htm). 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. The image above was made on August 12, 2007 with a 20cm F2.75 ASA Astrograph from Beilen (near Dwingeloo) in an attempt to detect it with amateur equipment. The galaxy is faintly visible as a fuzzy reddish spot. The integration was only 24 minutes at 1600 ISO with a modified Canon 350D Digital SLR camera. I will try to make a deeper integration in the near future. http://www.astropix.nl |
| Copyright: | Albert van Duin |
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