Hodge 3 in NGC 147?

[Bill Weir]

Last new Moon I was at a star party in the dry mountians of southern British Columbia. http://www.merrittastronomical.com/index.html The conditions were good with SQM readings of around 21.64 and excellent seeing. I used those conditions to give my newish 20 Starmaster a good workout and went after the Palomar Globular clusters and some extra galactic globular clusters. The one I'm curious about though is Hodge 3 in NGC 147. I'm positive I was able to hold it fairly consistantly as stellar (>75% of the time) at 440X with a 7mm University Optics HD in a 1.6X barlow. Since then I've tried to find an online observation but can't find one. I find that odd considering the size of scopes out there now and the skilled eyes attached to them. I doubt I'm the first so are there any other observations of this faint globular?

On the whole it was a successful globular cluster quest. I found 13 out of 15 of the Palomars with only # 3 & 4 not seen and that was because they weren't above the horizon. The extra galactic ones seen were G1 and G78 in M31, G73 in M110, C39 in M33, Hodge 5 in NGC 185, and Hodge 3 in NGC 147. The only fail was the globular in the Wolf-Lundmark-Merlotte Dwarf galaxy. The galaxy itself was a fairly faint object on its own. I had hoped to go for some of the GCs in the Dwarf Fornax but forest fires Washington State to the south were laying waste to that area of the sky. Rumor is that a large one in that area took out the site of the Table Mountain Star Party.

Anyway, hoping to see any other observations on Hodge 3.

Bill

[Jimi Lowrey]

HI Bill,

I am a little confused here? NED says Hodge 3 is NGC 1049 in the Fornax dwarf AKA Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3 ?

[lamperti]

See image:308
or http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/gcextra.htm

Al

[Steve Gottlieb]

Unfortunately, the globulars in the Fornax Dwarf, NGC 185 and NGC 147 all have "Hodge" numbers, so the numbers are easily confused. The one in NGC 147 is shown on Adventures in Deep Space under the extragalactic globulars page (http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/gcextra.htm) as "Hodge 3", along with #1, #2 and #4. Jim Shields and I dug these four globulars out of Hodge's 1976 paper "The Structure of NGC 147" at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?1976AJ.....81...25H and the labeled image from Adventures in Deep Space is from plate 1 in the paper (see below). Actually in 1944, William Baade announced NGC 185 and 147 were members of the Local Group (Astrophysical Journal, vol. 100, p.147) and mentions two globulars in NGC 147, so he apparently was the discoverer of "Hodge 3"!

"Hodge 3" is listed in NED but under "NGC 0147:[H76a] 3", with the [H76a] designation referring to the Hodge paper above. But if you look in SIMBAD, you won't find it under that name. It's listed under "FJJ NGC 147 II" from a 1977 paper by Ford, Jacoby and Jenner (http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1977ApJ...213...18F) and that's the only designation you'll find in SIMBAD!

Whatever you want to call it, the coordinates for Hodge 3 are 00 33 15.2 +48 27 23

309

[Steve Gottlieb]

As far as the magnitude, Hodge's original paper gives a V magnitude of 16.98 and a more recent paper (http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.0589v2.pdf), which refers to the globular as Hodge 3, lists V = 16.8

[Bill Weir]

See image:308
or http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/gcextra.htm

Al

Yup that is the one I'm referring to. It is also from Astromomy Mall that I got the list I worked from although in a few cases I made a more detailed charts using Megastar to pinpoint locations. NGC 147 was one such case. The whole Hodge thing actually created a bit of a ruckus on the RASC email list awhile back as to which globular clusters could have the Hodge designation attached. That's the reason I tied their usage to a specific galaxy.

So, from the few responses so far I'm guessing there haven't been any other visual sightings. I'm very positive on mine.

Bill