Dwingeloo 1 - Discovery

Discovery

The Dwingeloo 1 galaxy was discovered in 1994 by the Dwingeloo Obscured Galaxy Survey (DOGS), which searched for neutral hydrogen (HI) radio emissions at the wavelength of 21 cm from objects in the Zone of Avoidance. In this zone gas and dust in the disk of the Milky Way galaxy block the light from the galaxies lying behind it.

The galaxy was, however, first noted as an unremarkable feature on Palomar Sky Survey plates earlier in the same year, but was not recognized as such. It was also independently discovered a few weeks later by another team of astronomers working with Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope.

After the discovery Dwingeloo 1 was classified as a barred spiral galaxy. The distance to it was found to be approximately 3 Mpc(Megaparsecs). In its overall size and mass the galaxy is comparable to Triangulum Galaxy.

Dwingeloo 1 was eventually named after the 25m radio telescope in the Netherlands that was used in the DOGS survey and first detected it.

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