Maffei galaxies

Two galaxies discovered by Paolo Maffei in 1968. They are visible only in the red and infrared. Maffei I is a giant elliptical galaxy about four million light years away, and might be an outlying member of the Local Group. It is a large galaxy with a mass 200 billion times that of the Sun. Its position in the sky means that it is viewed through the dust clouds of the Milky Way, which dims its light by a factor of one hundred. Maffei II, an average spiral galaxy, lies beyond the Local Group, five times further away than Maffei I.