I have recorded this image on November 26 and 27, 2022 from my backyard in Vienna.
The location of Maffei 1 and Maffei 2 can be appreciated in
this large field image taken in September 2023.
Maffei galaxies are rarely imaged, as they are hidden behind the dust present in the equatorial plane of our Milky Way, therefore practically invisible in the optical range. They appear only in long exposure Infrared (IR) photographs, and this is how the Italian Astronomer Paolo Maffei, a pioneer in IR astronomy, discovered Maffei 1 on September 29, 1967. Maffei 2 was discovered by him later in 1968.
Some time ago, I came across to one of the extremely rare amateur images of this subject, the beautiful one by
@Lorenzo Siciliano, and since then I was fascinated by the Maffei galaxy group, so close to us, nevertheless practically invisible.
I have recorded the data with a color planetary camera with all RGB channels sensitive in the IR range, coupled with a band pass IR-cut filter at 685nm. The superficial details of the galaxy were barely visible on the individual subs, and appeared nearly magically during the processing.
In the starless revision proposed here the galactic details of Maffei 2 are more clearly visible.
Maffei 2 (Sh2-197, PGC010217) is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 10 million light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, visually not far away from the Soul Nebula complex. Soon after its discovery it was suspected that that Maffei 2 might be a member of the Local Group, but it is now thought to be a member of the separate IC 342/Maffei Group, the closest to our Local one.
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