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C42

NGC 7006

In the sky, the globular cluster C42 or NGC 7006 lies eastward of the rhombus of stars making up the body of the Dolphin, near Delphinus' border with neighbouring Pegasus. It is a much more distant body than the foreground stars of these constellations, forming part of the Milky Way's halo of globular clusters.

C42, one of two prominent globular clusters in Delphinus (the other being C47). Faintly visible in this image to the south and west of C42 is the distant spiral galaxy PGC 65907, nearly four hundred million light years from the Milky Way. Imagery provided by Aladin sky atlas

C42 is unusually distant even for a globular cluster, falling well outside the main spiral disc of the Galaxy. It lies some 135,000 light years from the Solar System, and about 127,000 light years from the centre of the Galaxy. This cluster has an unusually eccentric orbit around the Milky Way Galaxy, which may suggest that it originally formed in association with another galaxy, and was later captured by the gravity of the more massive Milky Way.

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