This globular cluster in the constellation Lynx (also catalogued Caldwell 25) was discovered by William Herschel on December 31st 1788. It has brightness of 10.3 and a diameter of 4 ' and is located at a distance of about 300,000 light years from the Galactic center, which makes it one of the most distant globular clusters. Sometimes NGC 2419 is called "Intergalactic Wanderer". This is a very appropriate name, considering that the distance to a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud is “only” about 160,000 light-years. NGC 2419 is quite similar to other big globular clusters, such as Omega Centauri or M 13. NGC 2419 has a very high luminosity, but looks weak, as it is very far away from us. Perhaps this cluster actually has an extragalactic origin, for example, it may be the remains of a small galaxy absorbed and destroyed by the Milky Way. However, because of its remoteness is difficult to study in order to compare its properties with other globular clusters that populate the cluster’s halo of our Milky Way galaxy.
This project has started as photometric standard stars test, which explains the far insufficient exposure times (18 min total exp.time). I will return later on this object with longer times (3+ hours), but I’d like to publish this image because of the uniqueness of the object. Bellow you can find a small graphic showing the Milky Way, the Magellanic clouds and NGC 2419. This gives a good idea how distant this cluster is. The image was remotely acquired from the remote controlled IRIDA Observatory .