NGC 2419

Right Ascension	07 : 38.1 (h:m)
Declination	+38 : 53 (deg:m)
Distance	295.0 (kly)
Visual Brightness	10.4 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	4.1 (arc min)

Discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788.

This globular cluster is one of the most remote globulars of our Milky Way galaxy, both from our solar system and from the galactic center, at nearly 300,000 light years from each. It is thus nearly double as far out as the Large Magellanic Cloud. As it is intrinsically luminous (with Mag -9.48 according to Harris' database, it ranks on place four after Omega Centauri, southern NGC 6388 in Scorpius, and M54 in absolute brightness), it is however in the range of medium-sized amateur telescopes, and the most remote Milky Way object visible in moderately-sized scopes. From the galactic center, it is lying "beyond us", so that we see it in the scarcely populated hemisphere of the galactic anticenter (as one of the 13 globulars there).

NGC 2419 is approaching us at about 20 km/sec.

Our image was obtained by the University of Arizona Astro Club.

In the RASC's Deep Sky Challenge Objects list. Caldwell 25 in Patrick Moore's list.

NGC Online data for NGC 2419

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Hartmut Frommert
Christine Kronberg
[contact]

Last Modification: March 12, 1998