Target: NGC4372 Camera: Canon 350d modified Exposure Capture: DLSR Focus Scope: SV80ED Mount: EQ6 Pro Exposure Setting: Prime focus, ISO800 ICNR off Daylight WB Exposures: 20 x 90s 13/03/09 Seeing: Average although 90% Gibbous moon Guiding: Orion Starshoot Autoguider using PHD, although my alignment was out Focus: DSLR Focus Stacking: DSS, 10 darks, 5 flats applied Processing: PS7
Info: Situated in the Musca
RA: 12:25:45.4
Dec: -72:39:33
Distance from Sun: 18.9 kly
Distance from GalacticCenter: 23.2 kly
Apparent Diameter: 18.6 arc min
Brightness: 7.24 mag vis
:
Discovered by James Dunlop on April 30, 1826.
Globular cluster NGC 4372 was discovered by James Dunlop on April 30, 1826, and cataloged as Dunlop 67.
NGC 4372, a southern globular cluster of very low metallicity and very low central concentration, was chosen for a CCD photometric search for short-period binaries and SX Phe variables. We report the discovery of 19 variable stars with well-determined light curves and periods. Eight of these belong to the SX Phe class, and eight are contact binaries. All the SX Phe variables are concentrated towards the centre of the cluster and are blue stragglers, while contact binaries occupy various locations in the cluster colour-magnitude diagram. Half of the SX Phe stars pulsate in the fundamental mode, and the other half probably pulsate in the first overtone. An eclipsing variable that is either a short-period detached main-sequence binary or a cataclysmic binary is discovered
Great shot Trevor.
Here is Dunlop's description of NGC4372. A star of the 6th magnitude, with a beautiful well-defined milky ray proceeding from it south following; the ray is conical, and the star appears in the point of the cone, and the broad or south following extremity is circular, or rounded off. The ray is about 7' in length, and nearly 2' in breadth at the broadest part, near the southern extremity. With the sweeping power this appears like a star with a very faint milky ray south following, the ray gradually spreading in breadth from the star, and rounded off at the broader end. But with a higher power it is not a star with a ray, but a very faint nebula, and the star is not involved or connected with it: I should call it a very faint, nebula of a long oval shape, the smaller end towards the star; this is easily resolvable into extremely minute points or stars, but I cannot discover the slightest indications of attraction or condensation towards any part of it. I certainly had not the least suspicion of this object being resolvable when I discovered it with the sweeping power, nor even when I examined it a second time; it is a beautiful object, of a uniform faint light.
NGC 4372 is an often overlooked gem and it's in such a nice field with a lovely bright star next to to it too. I like your FOV, that dark doodad makes it an even more interesting field.
