ASTRO: Pal 14

Palomar 14 (Pal 14) is probably the least well known globular cluster in
Hercules. It is just over the border from Serpens Caput, in fact the
right 40% of image is in Serpens Caput. The cluster is one of the most
distant known in our galaxy being some 250,000 light-years away from us
and 230 thousand light-years from the galaxy's center (I found other
estimates that were slightly different). It was discovered by Sidney
van den Bergh while searching the Palomar survey plates and confirmed by
Halton Arp with the 200" scope. This is why it is also known as AvdB.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1960PASP...72...48A.

The cluster may have two one degree long tidal tails. At least this is
what one paper claims. This leads to the possibility it might have
belonged to a small galaxy the Milky Way digested many billions of years
ago. The cluster is considered to be about 3 billion years younger than
most in our galaxy. These two may oddities be related.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.6303

There are reports of it being seen in a 20" dob as a soft round glow at
magnitude 14.7 which seems rather bright to me. It certainly isn't much
to look at in my image. It is very sparse containing a mass of only
about 6000 solar masses. More the size of a rich open cluster than
globular. The estimates are likely low as it is hard to determine at
its vast distance. Consider these a lower limit. It is also known as
Arp 1. In fact if you use SIMBAD and enter Arp 1 you will get this
globular rather than the galaxy Arp 1. Enter Arp 01 and you get the
galaxy. This has confused more than one amateur trying to hunt down the
galaxy or globular. NED on the other hand returns the galaxy and
doesn't even know the globular exists. Not surprising as it is mostly
an extragalactic data base.

A few galaxies and galaxy clusters that are in my field have redshift
data so I did prepare a rather sparse annotated image.

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

Rick
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