ASTRO: Palomar 7 / IC 1276

PAL7/IC 1276 is a globular cluster in Serpens Cauda. It's about 17,600
light-years from us and about 12,100 light years from the center of the
galaxy. That makes it one of the closest Palomar globulars and one of
the brightest. It is the only one with an IC number though Pal 9 has a
NGC number. Unfortunately at -22 degrees Pal 9 is to low for me unless
the night is exceptional which hasn't happened as yet. While listed as
a IC object Pal 7 is considered to be "discovered" by George Abell in
1955 after study of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates. It's hard
to tell what the original IC catalog thought it was. The descriptions
didn't include that information. The description reads eeF, vL, v
diffic, D* close p. Translation "Most Extremely faint, very large, very
difficult, double star close to the west." I assume the double star
referred to is the pair of bright stars on the right edge of the cluster
in my image. I see nothing else. Since most open clusters and
globulars are far larger than this and it was considered large it
appears they saw no stars in it at the time so didn't consider it to be
a star cluster of any type. Back then there were just star clusters and
starless nebulae. While some of its brightest stars are at magnitude 15
apparently they weren't resolved against the glow of the cluster itself.

Seeing wasn't all that good for this one. That and the huge size of
even a highly compressed file at my normal 1" resolution caused me to
reduce it to 1.5" per pixel. The brought down the file size to more
reasonable limits for those on dial-up.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
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