An infrared determination of the reddening and distance to dwingeloo 1

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 × 4′.9, together with J and K_s imaging of the central 2′.5 × 2′.5. We used the small dispersion of the intrinsic infrared colors of spiral galaxies to determine an infrared H-band extinction of A_H = 0.47 ± 0.11 mag toward Dw 1. Using infrared colors reduces 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 modulus of (m - M)₀ = 28.62 ± 0.27 and, thus, a distance of d = 5.3^+0.7_-0.6 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.