The asterism Czernik 11 pictured here, lies within the myriad stars in Cassiopeia, a constellation with the Milky Way running through it. It acts as a signpost to the galaxy Maffei 1. All that's visible is a nuclear region of a nearby galaxy, appearing as a diffuse 11th magnitude glow, very difficult to find or see among so many stars. Here I stumbled across it in April, after looking at comet PANSTARRS. It is hidden directly behind the Milky Way's dust and 98.6% of its light is blocked by it. In near Infra Red it appears as a huge galaxy stretching up to 23 arc minutes and were it not in the plane of our Galaxy, we would be able to see it well in binoculars on a dark night.
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