An infrared determination of the reddening and distance to Dwingeloo 1

present the first published infrared observations of the nearby, highly obs cured galaxy Dwingeloo 1 (Dw 1), including deep II-band imaging covering a total of 4.' 9 x 4.' 9, together with J and K-s, imaging of the central 2.' 5 x 2.' 5. We used the small dispersion of the intrinsic infrared colors o f spiral galaxies to determine an infrared II-band extinction of A(H) = 0.4 7 +/- 0.11 mag toward Dw 1. Using infrared colors reduces the uncertainties in the reddening and distance by a factor of 3. The II-band magnitude, cor rected for extinction, and the infrared Tully-Fisher relation are then used to estimate a distance modulus of (m - M)(0) = 28.62 +/- 0.27 and, thus, a distance of d = 5.3(-0.6)(+0.7) Mpc, which places Dw 1 at the far end of t he IC 342/Maffei 1-2 group of galaxies. Our result is largely independent o f the nature of the reddening law because we estimated both the reddening a nd the distance at the same wavelength range.