THE PYXIS CLUSTER - A NEWLY IDENTIFIED GALACTIC GLOBULAR-CLUSTER

One of the ''interesting'' objects identified by Weinberger during an eyeball search of sky survey plates for planetary nebulae is a previou sly unrecognized distant Galactic halo globular cluster. Deep B, R, an d I CCD frames of the object to R = 23 reveal it to be a cluster of st ars some 2' in core size, with a well-defined main sequence with a tur noff at R = 22 and a sparsely populated subgiant branch leading to a s tubby red horizontal branch at R = 18.7. With a reddening-corrected di stance modulus of 18.0, corresponding to a distance of 40 kpc, the Pyx is globular cluster is the latest addition to an exclusive club of dis tant Galactic satellites. Pyxis is similar in morphological appearance to other outer halo globular clusters and lies tantalizingly close to the plane of the Magellanic Clouds orbit (Jones and coworkers), sugge sting it might be a detached cluster of this system.