This is the second image out of a mini-project I am running around the Maffei Galaxy Group, using an IR sensitive color camera and a IR CUR Filter at 685nm.
This is the closest group to our Local Group, nevertheless it is barely visible in the optical range as all its members are heavily obscured by the equatorial dust. As mentioned in commentary to
my Maffei 2 spiral galaxy image, they appear in IR long exposure or in radio range.
Maffei 1 elliptical galaxy, portrayed here, was the first member to be discovered by the IR observation pioneer, the Italian astronomer Paolo Maffei, on September 29, 1967. At that time, recording IR data with chemical film was a challenge and a step forward in technology.
My image here was recorded during the night on December 13, 2022.
The location of Maffei 1 and Maffei 2 can be appreciated in
this large field image taken in September 2023.
Maffei1, Sh2-191, PGC009892 (excerpted from from astronomy.ua.edu)
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 Mpc 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.
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