NGC 2419

[alan4908]

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.

Alan

 

LIGHTS: L:23, R:22, G:10, B:13 x 600s, BIAS:100, DARKS:30, FLATS:40 all at -20C.

[Graham Darke]

That is lovely that Alan. This object is on my list to capture.  I've seen it visually a number of times but don't have an image of it yet. 

[alan4908]

23 hours ago, Graham Darke said:

That is lovely that Alan. This object is on my list to capture.  I've seen it visually a number of times but don't have an image of it yet. 

Thanks for the comment Graham - good luck with your capture. 

Beware that it has a small apparent size,  I was imaging at 0.7 arc seconds/pixel but even at that level I decided to crop the image down to focus the viewers attention on the cluster.

Alan

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nice image with the contrasting colours in the cluster, and appreciated the write-up.

[alan4908]

23 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Nice image with the contrasting colours in the cluster, and appreciated the write-up.

Thanks - glad that you liked the end result. 

(I discovered that I had  a red glow around all my stars due to my FWHM of my red channel stars being much larger than the other colour channels. This was due to the fact that I acquired the majority of the subframes in non ideal conditions. However, I corrected for this effect by eroding the red channel through a star halo mask)

Alan

[orionoffelt]

Nice capture on a difficult target.

[alan4908]

18 hours ago, orionoffelt said:

Nice capture on a difficult target.

Thanks !

Alan

[peter shah]

star colour is great...nice work

[ultranova]

Nice to see this cluster, not that often taken.

nice star colors .

well done 

Paul

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice capture. I should try this one with my 6" F/5 Schmidt-Newton 

[alan4908]

23 hours ago, peter shah said:

star colour is great...nice work

Thanks for the comment Peter. I did spend quite a lot of time on the star field colours, mainly because I acquired quite a few sub frames in non ideal conditions.  However, I agree, I think the end result looks OK - it is amazing what you can do in post processing !

Alan

22 hours ago, ultranova said:

Nice to see this cluster, not that often taken.

nice star colors .

well done 

Paul

Thanks Paul - yes, not often see here - which probably due to its small apparent size.  As I mentioned above, even at 0.7 arc seconds/pixel, I decided to crop the image to create more visual impact.

12 hours ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Very nice capture. I should try this one with my 6" F/5 Schmidt-Newton 

Thanks Michael  - good luck with your forthcoming capture.

Alan