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Dwingeloo 1 is a barred spiral galaxy about 10 million light-years away in the constellation Casseopeia. Dwingeloo lies in the Zone of Avoidance and 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.
Discovery The Dwingeloo galaxies were discovered in 1994 by the "Dwingeloo Obscured Galaxy Survey" (DOGS). They are named after the 25m radio telescope in the Netherlands that first detected it. It was first detected at radio wavelengths by radiation from the 21cm emission line of neutral atomic hydrogen (known to astronomers as HI) in the course of a 'blind' survey of the plane of the northern Milky Way. Appearance The disk of the Milky Way contains a lot of gas and dust, which obscures about 20% of the extragalactic sky. Galaxies hidden behind the Milky Way may have an important influence on the dynamics of the Local Group and its peculiar motion relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation. Dwingeloo 1 might be one of these galaxies, although we don't even know what it looks like. The only idea we have is that it's a barred spiral galaxy with a radius of 46,000 ly., with a companion galaxy. If you were to compare Dwingeloo 1 to another galaxy, the best 'Dwingeloo 1 twin' would be the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51). It's companion (M51B) interacts with one of M51A's arms, Dwingeloo 2 might do this to Dwingeloo 1. M51 orbits counterclockwise like Dwingeloo 1. The only difference from Whirlpool and Dwingeloo 1 is that Whirlpool is a normal spiral galaxy. See also | ||||||||
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