Dwingeloo 1 is a barred spiral galaxy about 10 million light-years away from the Earth, in the constellation Cassiopeia. It lies in the Zone of Avoidance and is heavily obscured by the Milky Way. The size and mass of Dwingeloo 1 are comparable to those of Triangulum Galaxy.

Dwingeloo 1 has two smaller satellite galaxies – Dwingeloo 2 and MB 3 – and is a member of the IC 342/Maffei Group of galaxies.

The Dwingeloo 1 galaxy was discovered in 1994 by the Dwingeloo Obscured Galaxy Survey (DOGS) using the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory, which searched for neutral hydrogen (HI) radio emissions at the wavelength of 21 cm from objects in the Zone of Avoidance. In this zone gas and dust in the disk of the Milky Way galaxy block the light from the galaxies lying behind it.

The galaxy was, however, first noted as an unremarkable feature on Palomar Sky Survey plates earlier in the same year, but was not recognized as such. It was also independently discovered a few weeks later by another team of astronomers working with Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope.

Dwingeloo 1 was eventually named after the 25m radio telescope in the Netherlands that was used in the DOGS survey and first detected it.

Dwingeloo 1 is a highly obscured galaxy, which makes distance determination a difficult problem. The initial estimate, made soon after the discovery and based on the Tully–Fisher relation, was about 3 Mpc. Later, this value was slightly increased to 3.5–4 Mpc.

In 1999 another estimate was published, claiming a distance of more than 5 Mpc. It was based on the infrared Tully–Fisher relation. As of 2011, the distance to Dwingeloo 1 is thought to be approximately 3 Mpc, based on its likely membership in the IC 342/Maffei group.

Dwingeloo 1 has two smaller satellite galaxies. The first one, Dwingeloo 2, is an irregular galaxy, and the second, MB 3, is likely a dwarf spheroidal galaxy.