Near the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) you can find this 6.4mag. bright and 12.9 arcmin.sized Globular Cluster,which was first seen by James Dunlop in 1826.Its distance to us amounts to about 27.000.light-years.It has a very dense core with a diameter of 13 light-years.
Under very good sky conditions you can detect it with the naked eye and with a telescope it´s a very pretty object.Unfortunately it is outperformed by its even brighter and bigger neighbour 47 Tucanae.
The Cluster is rich in metals,which indicates,that it is relatively young.
position (epoch2000):
RA.: 01h 03m 14.26s
Decl.:−70° 50´ 55.6"
image data:
LRGB image with L = synth.of all, RGB = 7x1200s each,a total of 7.0 hours
80cm f/7 AstroOptik Keller corrected cassegrain
FLI Proline 16803 Astrodon LRGB GenII filters
Prompt 7 CTIO/UNC Chile,remote controlled
image processing: Bernd Flach-Wilken
this picturw shows a 89% FOV-look to this GC.Click here for full resolution.
hera is a larger look to NGC362:
click here for a look to NGC362 with the HST