1998A&A...332..523W

In recent years several dwarf galaxies belonging to the highly obscured Maffei-IC 342 group have been discovered. Due to its shape, colour and the presence of a few possible HII regions, one of these objects (l=129.6deg, b=+7.1deg) was suspected to be a dwarf irregular galaxy, named Cas 1. We have obtained optical spectra of the brightest HII candidate in Cas 1. By using the H_α/H_β emission line ratio we could, for the first time, determine a rather reliable foreground extinction of A_V=2.5 mag and thus cannot support Tikhonov's (1996AN....317..175T) view that Cas 1 is a member of the Local Group. For [OIII](5007Å)/H_β we obtained a ratio of 2.6, much higher than typical ratios for (galactic) HII regions. The nature of the emitting nebula is unclear: a supernova remnant seems to be implausible (there is an IRAS counterpart), but we might deal with an HII region, possibly excited by a WR star.