PAL7/IC 1276 is a globular cluster in Serpens Cauda. It's about 17,600 light-years from us and about 12,100 light years from the center of the galaxy. That makes it one of the closest Palomar globulars and one of the brightest. It is the only one with an IC number though Pal 9 has a NGC number. Unfortunately at -22 degrees Pal 9 is to low for me unless the night is exceptional which hasn't happened as yet. While listed as a IC object Pal 7 is considered to be "discovered" by George Abell in 1955 after study of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates. It's hard to tell what the original IC catalog thought it was. The description doesn't include that information. It reads eeF, vL, v diffic, D* close p. Translation "Most Extremely faint, very large, very difficult, double star close to the west." I assume the double star referred to is the pair of bright stars on the right side of the cluster in my image. I see nothing else. Since most open clusters and globulars are far larger than this and it was considered large it appears they saw no stars in it at the time so didn't consider it to be a star cluster of any type. Back then there were just star clusters and starless nebulae. While some of its brightest stars are at magnitude 15 apparently they weren't resolved against the glow of the cluster itself.
Seeing wasn't all that good for this one. That and the huge size of even a highly compressed file at my normal 1" resolution caused me to reduce it to 1.5" per pixel. This brought down the file size to more reasonable limits for those on dial-up.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME
No way I could fit anything but this small crop into the bandwidth limits here.
Rick
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