Galaxy Dwingeloo 1 Emerges
Credit:
S. Hughes & S. Maddox
(IoA, Cambridge)
et al., Isaac Newton Telescope
Sometimes you can't see the forest for the
trees.
But if you look closely at the center of the above photograph,
you will see a whole
spiral galaxy
behind the field of stars.
Named Dwingeloo 1,
this nearby galaxy was only discovered recently
(1994) because much of its light was obscured by
dust,
gas and
bright stars
of our own Milky Way Galaxy.
In fact, all the individually discernible stars
in the above photograph
are in our Galaxy.
Dwingeloo 1 turned out to be a large galaxy
located only five times as distant
as the closest major galaxy -
M31.