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Type: open cluster
Mag: B=11.93, V=11.75
Size: ?
PA: ?
Discovered by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope with an 18-inch f/13 speculum telescope. He recorded it as "pF, R, lbM, 50 arcseconds." On a second occassion he called it "vF, L, R, gbM, 2'."
Shapley and Lindsay ("A Catalogue of Clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud", Irish Astronomical Journal, Vol. 6, 1963) give a diameter of 70'' and remark "condensed centre, outer resolved."
The RNGC (Sulentic and Tifft 1973) notes that this is a open cluster in the LMC.
15cm - mod f 40" cl w/mod concen. part res w/m14 * in SW side., about a doz others m14.5+. BS, 19Nov1993, LCO.
Date: 2010 February 12/13 (first session).
Location: "Sterland", Sutherland.
Telescope: "Bertha" 12-inch f/4.8 Dobsonian.
Sky conditions: Dark sky, seeing very good, transparency high.
Star chart: MSA 484
90x: One of five objects together in the field; this is the 4th brightest. Looks like a tiny globular cluster (similar to NGC 2156 and NGC 2159).
Together, NGC 2164 - NGC 2156 - NGC 2159 - NGC 2172 make a rough diamond shape gathering of nebulae, reminiscent of a galaxy field in, say, Virgo.
Lacaille's catalogue
The Messier objects
Dunlop's catalogue
The Bennett objects
The Caldwell list
Named DSOs
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