Southeast – Chart 2

SE Chart 2

LH OB Associations: –

NGC Objects: NGC 2144, 2199, 2203, 2209

Southeast Region Chart 2

Steve Gottlieb's observations

SL 832 (Open Cluster)

RA 06 04 24.0 Dec -73 30 36 Mag – Size 1.3′

16″ at 228x: SL 832 is an exceeding faint, diffuse, round glow, ~15″ in diameter.

SL 832

NGC 2203 (Open Cluster)

RA 06 04 42.0 Dec -75 26 18 Mag 11.3 Size 3.2′

16″ at 228x: Lying in these barren outskirts of the Cloud, NGC 2203 is easy to find as it lies 46′ SSW of mag 5.1 Alpha Mensae in a field lightly sprinkled with ~mag 12 stars. It appears fairly bright, round, ~1.4′ in diameter. No stars are resolved although the cluster has a tantalising grittiness to it that hints of masses of stars just beyond the capacity of my telescope to resolve. A mag 12.4 star lies off the NW side, 1.6′ from centre, and a mag 14.5 star lies off the south side, also 1.6′ from centre. The background galaxy IC 2164 lies 9′ NE.

NGC 2203

NGC 2199 (Background Galaxies)

RA 06 04 45.0 Dec -73 24 00 Mag 12.8 Size 1.9′ x 0.8′ SB 13.1 PA 37°

16″ at 228x: This background galaxy has a very small, brightish core surrounded by a faint halo elongated SW-NE, 50″ x 25″, with slightly tapered ends.

NGC 2199

IC 2164 (Background Galaxy)

RA 06 06 52.2 Dec -75 21 52 Mag 13.7 Size 1.1′ x 0.9′ SB 13.6 PA 122°

16″ at 228x: IC 2164 lies an astounding 500 million light-years behind the Cloud! It appears faint, round, 35″ in diameter, a smooth, even and pale glow. A mag 14 star lies 1′ SE.

IC 2164

NGC 2209 (Young Globular Cluster)

RA 06 08 34.0 Dec -73 50 30 Mag 13.2 Size 2.8′ Age 800 million -1 billion years

16″ at 228x: This young globular appears as a fairly bright, round glow, 1.5′ in diameter, diffuse and even, with no brightening to the centre. No stars are resolved. It lies in a pretty field of stars.

NGC 2209

SL 870 (Open Cluster)

RA 06 14 28.0 Dec -72 36 36 Mag 13.4 Size 1.2 x 1.1

16″ at 228x: SL 870 appears as a fairly faint, off-round glow, with no stars resolved. A mag 12.5 star lies 31″ from centre.

SL 870

Lindsay-Shapley Ring (Galaxy)

RA 06 43 06.06 Dec -74 14 10 Mag 12.9 Size 0.9′ x 0.7′ SB – PA –

16″ at 228x: Although it resides beyond the boundary of the LMC, I have included the utterly gorgeous Lindsay-Shapley Ring because Eric Lindsay and Harlow Shapley discovered it in a cluster survey of the LMC and believed it to be a nebulous oval and part of the LMC. As they wrote in their 1960 paper, “It seems therefore to be a member of the Large Cloud but near its boundary”. What they didn’t know was that in actual fact it is a very exotic creature… a galaxy showing the aftermath of a hit-and-run event by a celestial neighbour (the culprit lies outside the field of view of the image).

The galaxy resides 300 million light years away. The ring of brilliant blue star clusters are wrapped around the yellowish nucleus of what was once a normal spiral galaxy, and is an immense 150,000 light-years in diameter. It is the brightest in a small group of 4 galaxies within a 6′ circle, but alas, to see anything beyond an exceedingly faint and small smudge of galactic light is the territory of the very large Dobs.