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The Caldwell Objects

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ters it has had thus far<br />

with the galactic center.<br />

Only the concentrated<br />

clusters like NGC 362 can<br />

survive repeated closerange<br />

encounters with our<br />

galactic bulge. A looser<br />

cluster would have been<br />

ripped apart by tidal<br />

forces, its members tossed<br />

helter-skelter into the<br />

galactic halo. Presently<br />

NGC 362 is approaching<br />

us at 220 km per second<br />

and is 30,000 light-years<br />

from the galactic center, so<br />

we are not witnessing one<br />

of its close encounters<br />

with the galactic bulge,<br />

nor will we in our<br />

lifetimes.<br />

In photographs taken with large telescopes it is<br />

difficult to appreciate NGC 362's dense core<br />

because it is usually overexposed. <strong>The</strong> cluster's<br />

faint outliers appear to be fizzing off that burnedout<br />

ball like gas bubbles from an Alka-Seltzer<br />

tablet in water. <strong>The</strong> only way to truly appreciate<br />

the cluster's dynamic beauty is to go out and see<br />

it through the eyepiece of a telescope. My view of<br />

NGC 362, from Wellington, New Zealand, was<br />

spectacular. I used an 8-inch Celestron Schmidt-<br />

Cassegrain telescope that Rob and Lesley Hall<br />

had set up for me in their Wellington backyard. I<br />

almost didn't get to see NGC 362. New Zealand is<br />

noted for its clouds, and my <strong>Caldwell</strong>-hunting<br />

trip was nearly at an end. In fact, I was returning<br />

to Hawaii the next morning. But I still hadn't<br />

studied this cluster in any detail. Fortunately, the<br />

sky cleared in the wee hours of the morning, just<br />

hours before my flight. Rob woke me up,<br />

104 & 106<br />

pointed to the sky, and I was outside in a flash.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Small Magellanic Cloud is dimly visible to<br />

the naked eye even from Wellington. I had no<br />

trouble spotting the cluster in the telescope's<br />

finder. I simply directed it 1½° due north of NGC<br />

346 and voilá! At low power, the cluster<br />

displayed a perfectly round sphere of stars<br />

packed into a tight ball that became increasingly<br />

denser toward the center, until it burned with<br />

what appeared to be the light of a single intense<br />

star. NGC 362 has a relatively faint horizontalbranch<br />

magnitude of 15.4, so it is not easily<br />

resolved even with the 8-inch. I saw a suggestion<br />

of resolution toward the center, but no more.<br />

Trying to resolve stars in the cluster's outer halo<br />

was like trying to track a piece of dust in a<br />

sunbeam; it's all but impossible from a suburban<br />

site with a moderately sized telescope. But I bet if<br />

I had had the time, I could have eked out more<br />

and more of the<br />

<strong>The</strong> <strong>Caldwell</strong> <strong>Objects</strong> 411

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