(click for larger image)
| Catalogue and alternative designations | UKS1
(UK Schmidt 1)
|
| Type | Globular cluster |
| Position | 17 54 27.7, -24 08 44 |
| Constellation | Sagittarius |
| Camera and Telescope | STL6303E and 31.75 cm Ritchey Chretien |
| Focal Ratio | F9 |
| Exposure Details | LRGB = 70:60:70:70 All binned 1x1 with Astrodon NIR filters. Red is assigned to a band peaking at about 850nm, Green peaking at about 830nm and Blue at 750nm. The luminance is "visible blocked" with zero response shorter than 700nm. |
| Description | UKS1
was discovered on infrared
plates taken by the 48" UK
Schmidt telescope. It has
the incredible visual magnitude
of 17.3 but still has been
glimpsed in very large
Dobsonians. It has long
been called the faintest
globular in the milky way but
recently discovered globulars in
the 2MASS survey are even
fainter. The following
description is from the 2MASS
image caption.
This cluster, in the Galactic bulge and near the Galactic center (l=5.1°, b=0.8°), is quite reddened and in a very crowded stellar field. Ortolani, Bica, & Barbuy (1997, A&AS, 126, 319) present optical photometry of the cluster and find that the extinction is nearly 11 visual magnitudes, that the distance to the cluster is 7.4 kpc (24,124 light years), and that the cluster may be metal-rich. Near-infrared photometry was previously obtained for the stars in the cluster, along with those for 19 other bulge clusters, by Minniti, Olszewski, & Rieke (1995, AJ, 110, 1686). For a comparison with a recent VISTA infrared image of this area showing the newly discovered globular cluster VVV GL001 click here |
