Object of the Week, February 2, 2014 NGC 2419 (The intergalactic Wanderer)

[Jimi Lowrey]

NGC 2419 (The Intergalactic Wanderer)

LYNX

RA
07 38 08
DEC
+38 52 54

Type Globular Cluster ???

MAG 10.3



This is one very unique object it was discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788 and is at a distance of about 300 000 light years from the center of our galaxy. It is is one of the most distance known globular cluster. It is at nearly twice the distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud from us. The image below will put it in prospective of it to other globular cluster in our galaxy.

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I ran across this paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.2705) that thinks that NGC 2419 is not a globular cluster but is a striped out core of a dwarf galaxy. I have thought for many years thought that this was the case as it makes no since that a globular cluster would be this far out in the halo of our galaxy. What do you think?

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Dose anyone know who named NGC 2419 the Intergalactic Wanderer? I have also seen it called the Intergalactic Tramp?

Next time you have a clear winter night be sure to check out the Intergalactic Wanderer and remember how distant it is. And as always,

"GIVE IT A GO AND LET US KNOW"

GOOD LUCK AND GREAT VIEWING!

[Paul Alsing]

Nice object, Jimi, and one that can be seen in smaller telescopes, too.

Here are my comments from our 2006 trip to McDonald Observatory's 82"...

"NGC 2419, Lynx

The Intergalactic Wanderer is among the 4 or 5 farthest globular clusters in our galaxy, and when viewed with most amateur telescopes no individual stars can be seen. Using 82" of glass I counted 8 or 9 stars in one quadrant, so maybe 3 dozen stars were seen overall. Other than that, just another pretty globular, very uniform in appearance... "

I think that many globular clusters are left-over cores of dwarf galaxies that got too close to the Milky Way and stripped of their outer stars and gas, or were otherwise "formed in very massive star-forming complexes in protogalactic subsystems that may have resembled the present ‘blue compact dwarf’ galaxies", as outlined in this interesting paper...

http://www.astro.yale.edu/larson/papers/Tucson95.pdf

[Steve Gottlieb]

"Dose anyone know who named NGC 2419 the Intergalactic Wanderer? I have also seen it called the Intergalactic Tramp?"

This goes back to at least 1944, when Harlow Shapley used the phrase "intergalactic tramp" in his paper "Revision of the Distances of 30 high-latitude Globular Clusters (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcontent%2F30%2F3%2 F61.full.pdf&ei=RPr3UsL6FcyEogSu6ILQDg&usg=AFQjCNFfvNqPSuG8iibQ6cGktu7DqhoqxA&bvm=bv.60983673,d.cGU)" (footnote on the last page). "Intergalactic Tramp" probably morphed into "Intergalactic Wanderer".

[Uwe Glahn]

Very interesting Paul, that you mention the resolving of individual stars. I was short before to ask for that. You often hear, that people say, that they resolve NGC 2419 with aperture under 20". I read about 17.3mag for the brightest individual star (don't find the paper) and with the 27" under very good seeing the glob was clearly mottled but except the foreground stars I could pick up no individual star. Good to hear, that you had more luck with the "little bit" bigger aperture.

[reiner]

I looked at the Intergalactic Wanderer last night with my 22", as I could not remember its precise appearance from previous observations.

Last night, the globular appeared absolutely smooth, no mottling or hints of resolution. I noticed, however, that the globular did not appear fully round, in particular distal of the neighboring star. I was not fully convinced, yet another observer confirmed this judgement. Looking at the image in Jimi's post and on other images of the globular, there appears to be an indentation or star-less region at the NE edge of the globular (at the eyepiece: distal and to the right of that bright neighbouring star).

[svdwal]

I have looked at NGC 2419 with a C8 on 3 Jan 2014, from within the city, SQM 18.3. 10 mm Pentax XW, 203x.

NGC 2419 is weak, but visible with direct sight most of the time. It is next to three bright stars, two of them are visible in the sketch. I used the Astronomik CLS filter to boost the contrast a bit, having a black cloth over my head helped a lot more.

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