Observations of The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)

NGC 231

The last and largest in the small group of clusters.

The original description of the object was an "irregular train of stars and nebula". Upon looking at this cluster though I could only call this partly correct. The cluster is a scattering of mostly 13th and 14th magnitude stars in an irregular shape not well defined from the sky background. The cluster is 1½ arc minutes across and is located 2 arc minutes north east of NGC 222. The cluster should be visible in a 10" telescope and appears well resolved in larger scopes, as the fainter stars become visible. Upon checking the cluster with the UCH and O111 filter I was unable to find any associated nebula. In fact all 3 nebula we free of nebulosity. This group of 3 clusters can be seen in 10" scopes together when viewed at medium to high power. These clusters lie on the western edge of a fairly bright star cloud.