Observations of The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)

NGC 330

Andrew Murrell

NGC330 is one of the brightest clusters in the entire SMC. It is easily visible in a pair of 10X50 binoculars, and can be found 20 arc minutes Southwest of NGC 346.

E.J.Hartung described it as "a very bright knot of stars, irregularly round.....in a field sown with faint stars; it is well resolved with sufficient magnification and 7.5cm shows it plainly with some star sparkle.....the stars must be very luminous to be evident in such a remote object".

NGC330 is about 1.5 arc minutes across an the outer stars are easily resolved in an 8" telescope. The brightest stars approach 12.5 magnitude, and the cluster is fully resolved in a 12" scope. The centre of the cluster shows a strong condensation of stars, with loops and chains of stars leading away, most particularly a chain of stars on the south eastern side. The cluster is easy to pick from the background even though it lies almost in the middle of the cloud. NGC 330 has a total integrated magnitude of 8. This cluster is also interesting in that a number of the SMC's brighter variable stars can be found in the area.

If the telescope that you are using is able to show 1.5 degrees of the sky you may be able to fit NGC 371, NGC 346, and NGC 330 in the one field of view. Be sure to scan around the area as there are numerous other objects in this area that I have not described.

Timo Karhula

Observed with 20x80 binoculars and described as pretty bright and small.

The colour photo is a combination of a UV frame (blue),V and a narrowband Halpha filter (red). It was taken by the Hubble space telescope and is made available by Stefan Keller.