NGC2419

Discovered in 1788 by William Herschel, NGC 2419 is one of the most massive and brightest globular clusters but appears as a dim 9^th Magnitude object due to its large (275,000 light years) distance from Earth. The bright blue star to the left of NGC 2419 in the image below is HD60771, which is much closer, being only 350 light years distant.

In 1944, the American astronomer named it the “Intergalactic Tramp”, since it was once (erroneously) thought not to be orbit around our galaxy but rather wandering the space between Earth and the even more distant galaxies.

More recent observations have confirmed that although NGC 2419 is very distant, it is still trapped by our galaxy’s gravity well, taking 3 billion years to complete an orbit.  The orbit places it even further away that the Milky Way’s most famous satellite, the Large Magellenic Cloud and even further away that the Small Magellenic Cloud.

The image below was taken with my Esprit 150 and represents 11.3 hours integration time.