NGC 6229

RA:

16:46:58.79

Dec:

+47:31:39.9

Distance from Sun:

99.4 kly

Distance from Galactic Center:

97.1 kly

Apparent Diameter:

4.5 arc min

Brightness:

9.39 mag vis

Radial Velocity:

-154.2 +/- 7.6 km/s

Diameter:

ly

Abs. Mag:

-8.06 Mag vis

Globular cluster NGC 6229 was discovered by William Herschel on May 12, 1787, and first taken for a planetary nebula from his visual impression. Thus he cataloged it as H IV.50. John Herschel apparently never observed it, and Admiral Smyth also saw it as a nebula, and mentions that tt was taken for a comet in 1819. William Huggins found its spectrum to be continuous. It was only revealed as a "very crowded cluster" by d'Arrest in the mid 19th century. Dreyer's NGC lists it as globular cluster.

The difficulty to resolve this cluster becomes reasonable when looking at its large distance of about 100,000 light years.

The image on the right was obtained by Chris and Dawn Schur from Payson, Arizona with their 12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian and SBIG 10XME NAGB CCD camera with enhanced cooling. This is an LRGB composite image, exposed LRGB = 60:20:20:20.