Calling All Globular Sleuths...

[bkm2304]

Hi all,

In my seemingly endless trawl for a new comet I thought I would whip over and make sure C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) was still afloat. You'll be pleased to know it is!

The purpose of my post is not to show the Deep Skyers a comet, but to ask if anyone knows the identity of the apparent globular cluster that is seen at about 2 o'clock to the comet in the image.

The coords of the object are: 00:03:57; -73:28:27
I have attached 2 Skyview images at 1 degree and 9 arc minutes field of view.

It is not an NGC or IC object, it is not seen on Sky Safari Pro or Skytools 3 Pro.

Can anyone help me with its identification?

Thanks

Richard.

[RickS]

I tried a plate solve and image annotation in PI. It named a bunch of objects but not the glob...

[bkm2304]

Hi Rick,

Yes, quite a mystery! Thanks for the effort.

Richard

[LewisM]

I tried 3 plate solvers, none identified the globular. Strange. Lets call it Globular bkm2304 :)

[bkm2304]

Cool!!!.....

[LewisM]

Wikisky tried telling me it was NGC104 aka 47 Tuc. Hmmmmmm

I am thinking it is NGC 362, but it's coords are 01:03 / -71° and the SMC SHOULD be visible. (47 Tuc's are 00:24 / -72° which is a little closer to your coords)

[Tony_]

It's ESO 28-8

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=%403275059&Name=ESO%20%2028-8&submit=submit#lab_plot

Regards,
Tony.

[MrB]

Nice work Tony!

[bkm2304]

Darn! I was going to make my own catalogue entry! THe funny thing is that it is not a particularly faint globular which makes it puzzling why it is not on the popular plate solvers or planetarium programs.

Thanks everyone for the great detective work.:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: :hi::hi::hi::hi:

Richard.

[mithrandir]

CdC lets you add more catalogs than you would ever want to know about:

Information from catalog: Bica
Catalogue of extended objects in Magellanic Clouds
Lindsay 1
Alt1: ESO28SC8
Dimension: 4.6 x 4.6 '
Description: Globular Cluster
Coordinates: Apparent
Apparent RA: 00h04m 40.5s DE:-73°23' 13"
Mean of the date RA: 00h04m 37.9s DE:-73°23' 25"
Mean J2000 RA: 00h03m 54.0s DE:-73°28' 19"