We present for the first time infrared observations of the nearby highly obscured galaxy Dwingeloo 1 ( Dw1 ) , including deep H -band imaging covering a total of 4.9 \arcmin \times 4.9 \arcmin , together with J and K _ { s } imaging of the central 2.5 \arcmin \times 2.5 \arcmin .
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 \pm 0.11 mag towards Dw1 .
In using infrared colors , the uncertainties in the reddening and distance are reduced by a factor of three .
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 \pm 0.27 , and thus a distance of d = 5.3 ^ { +0.7 } _ { -0.6 } Mpc , which puts Dw1 at the far end of the IC 342/Maffei 1 & 2 group .
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 .