Abstract
We present the first published infrared observations of the nearby, highly obscured galaxy Dwingeloo 1 (Dw 1), including deep H-band imaging covering a total of 4
9 × 49, together with J and Ks imagingof the central 25 × 25. We used the small dispersion of the intrinsic infrared colors of spiral galaxies to determine an infrared H-band extinction of AH = 0.47 ± 0.11 mag toward Dw 1. Using infrared colorsreduces the uncertainties in the reddening and distance by a factor of 3. The H-band magnitude, corrected for extinction, and the infrared Tully-Fisher relation are then used to estimate a distance modulusof (m - M)0 = 28.62 ± 0.27 and, thus, a distance of d = 5.3
Mpc, which places Dw 1 at the far end of the IC 342/Maffei 1-2 group of galaxies. Our result is largely independent of the nature of the reddening law because we estimated both the reddening and the distance at the same wavelength range.
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