New Moon, Dark Skies
Take advantage of the dark skies provided by the New Moon on March 17th to scope out the many star clusters, galaxies and other deep-sky gems on display in March.
Challenge Object, NGC 2419, “The Intergalactic Wanderer”
In the constellation Lynx, from a location with dark skies using a good 4.5″ or larger telescope, try to find globular cluster NGC 2419. NGC 2419 is a very distant cluster located approximately 300,000 light-years from the galactic center of the Milky Way, which is almost twice as far away as the Large Magellanic Cloud satellite galaxy. In fact, the star cluster earned its “Intergalactic Wanderer” nickname when its distance caused astronomers to mistakenly think the cluster wasn’t part of the Milky Way galaxy.