drdavies07
NGC 2419, The Intergalactic Wanderer
The generally cloudy weather of recent weeks gave few possibilities for imaging, so on the odd cloudless evening, I will tackle a subject that I can capture in a single evening.
The image is of NGC 2419, The Intergalactic Wanderer, a globular cluster that has proved to be something of an enigma to understand. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788, and it differs from most other globular clusters in that it is so distant from the centre of the galaxy that it was thought to be not in orbit about the galaxy and thus earned the nickname 'The Intergalactic Wanderer'.
Studies of it now reveal that its orbit takes it out beyond the Magellanic Clouds and it takes three billion years to make one trip around the galaxy. It is at a distance of about 300,000 light-years from the solar system and at the same distance from the galactic centre. It presents a dim disc 4.5' across and has a magnitude of around 10. The brightest foreground stars in this image are around magnitude 8 but the brightest individual stars in the cluster itself are around magnitude 15.
The data comprise 15 x five-minutes of RGB captured on the evening of 5th February 2021.
Telescope: 200mm Ritchey-Chretien at 1660mm focal length
Camera: QSI 683 with Astrodon filters and a Lodestar as an off-axis guide camera
Mount: Skywatcher EQ8
Location: Cambridge, UK
Data capture: NINA, processing PixInsight including photometric colour calibration, Photoshop
NGC 2419, The Intergalactic Wanderer
The generally cloudy weather of recent weeks gave few possibilities for imaging, so on the odd cloudless evening, I will tackle a subject that I can capture in a single evening.
The image is of NGC 2419, The Intergalactic Wanderer, a globular cluster that has proved to be something of an enigma to understand. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788, and it differs from most other globular clusters in that it is so distant from the centre of the galaxy that it was thought to be not in orbit about the galaxy and thus earned the nickname 'The Intergalactic Wanderer'.
Studies of it now reveal that its orbit takes it out beyond the Magellanic Clouds and it takes three billion years to make one trip around the galaxy. It is at a distance of about 300,000 light-years from the solar system and at the same distance from the galactic centre. It presents a dim disc 4.5' across and has a magnitude of around 10. The brightest foreground stars in this image are around magnitude 8 but the brightest individual stars in the cluster itself are around magnitude 15.
The data comprise 15 x five-minutes of RGB captured on the evening of 5th February 2021.
Telescope: 200mm Ritchey-Chretien at 1660mm focal length
Camera: QSI 683 with Astrodon filters and a Lodestar as an off-axis guide camera
Mount: Skywatcher EQ8
Location: Cambridge, UK
Data capture: NINA, processing PixInsight including photometric colour calibration, Photoshop