If it were not for the intervening dust in the outer disk of the
Milky Way, this would be among the brightest galaxies in the sky.
The dim reddish glow from the central regions of Maffei 1, a large
elliptical galaxy only about 5 megaparsecs way, is all that remains of
the galaxy's light
after traversing the clouds of our own galaxy. One of two such galaxies
discovered by Paolo Maffei, this is found only one degree from the
galactic plane in Cassiopeia. Maffei 1 and the neighboring spiral
Maffei 2 are so close that some workers, such as Gene Byrd and
collaborators, have calculated that these galaxies' gravitational
influence might have been significant in the early history of our
own Local Group galaxies.
This color composite is from images taken in blue, yellow-green, and
near-infrared (BVI) filters, using a CCD at the 61-cm Burrell Schmidt
telescope on Kitt Peak, by Ron Buta and Marshall McCall. The colors were
balanced so that an unreddened A0 star would appear white, with
a logarithmic intensity mapping to compress the dynamic range
The image covers an area about 0.30 degrees on a side, with
north at the top. A few bright stars show charge-bleeding trails,
a saturation effect often encountered with CCDs.
To the northeast of Maffei 1 is a small foreground reflection
nebula, whose unusual greenish hue results from a combination
of its blue intrinsic color and the reddening from intervening dust
in the outer arms of the MIlky Way.
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