Constellation Chart

The Wild Cat

At around the zenith in late winter to spring, you'll notice that you can hardly find out bright stars in where squeezed between Auriga and Ursa Major. For the purpose of filling up the void in sky, Hevelius, an astronomer in Germany invented the constellation of Lynx. He invented many other minor constellations to fill in the blanks like Vulpecula, Leo Minor, etc. Lynx is one of new constellations, it has neither myths nor legend.

Globular Cluster In Lynx

NGC2419

A compact globular cluster positioned in southwest edge of Lynx is NGC2419. This field is equivalent squeezed by three constellations of Lynx, Gemini and Auriga, it can hardly be found out good guide star around here. You can catch the cluster by tracing your scope about 7 degrees north from Castor in Gemini. This image shows you that two stars with 7th and 8th magnitude are paralleling with the cluster about 3 arc minutes in interval. This globular cluster has no striking features, having an apparent size of 4 arc minutes or so and 10th magnitude, but the cluster has a nickname of "Intergalactic Wanderer", Actually it's estimated that NGC2419 is surprisingly about 300 thousand light years away, this distance is farther than the Magellanic Clouds. It's considered that the cluster is positioned near limit of gravitational sphere of the Galaxy, and it can be regarded that the cluster is floating in the empty space solitarily without belonging to any galaxies. Of course NGC2419 is the most distant one in all globular clusters discovered till now.

Galaxy In Lynx

NGC 2683

NGC2683 is a spiral galaxy lying between constellations of Lynx and Cancer. You can find it about 6 degrees west of alpha Lyn, the southernmost star of Lynx, or 5 degrees north of iota Cnc, the northernmost one in Cancer. The galaxy has a visual brightness of 10.4 and a long axis of about 9 arc minutes. You're appreciating the galaxy being nearly edge-on, detectable as a dimmed line of light through medium-sized telescopes. But the galaxy is a bit slanted differs from the case of NGC4565, large telescopes can catch arms coiled up and central bulge. And this image shows you the galaxy being somewhat bended. The galaxy of NGC2683 can be said that it's almost only one deep sky object included in a minor spring constellation of Lynx.