A decidedly obscure constellation despite its size, it is the 28th largest of the 88 constellations. It was introduced by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687 to fill the gap between Ursa Major and Auriga. He named it Lynx because only the lynx eyed would be able to examine it.
Many of the stars that are in Lynx would have during the
times of the Greek astronomer Arato (315-240 BCE) have been placed in Ursa
Major the Great Bear.
Alpha magnitude 3.1 is an orange K class giant star lying at a distance of 203 light years, alpha has a magnitude of 3.1.
NGC 2419
Possibly the most distant globular cluster in our galaxy
lying at a distance of 300,000 light years, it can be seen as a magnitude 9.1.
It was discovered by William Herschel in 1788 and is often called the
intergalactic wanderer because at first astronomers thought it was not part of
our Milky Way galaxy, we know now that it is.
NGC 2419 would be the "best and brightest" for any
observers in the Andromeda Galaxy, looking for globular clusters in our galaxy
since it lies outside the obscuring density of the main disk.
www.theramblingastronomer.co.uk
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