Horizontal Branch Star: A Planet-like Object Found on ALADIN

[liometopum]

In researching a planned post about M87's globular clusters, I again have been diverted. Being a rank amateur, I was studying how to use Aladin. Looking at some YouTube videos, I found this odd one, "Planet Like Object Found on ALADIN". The object looks bizarre, like the guy drew it in the picture. See the image below.

I fixed up his coordinates to be 329.96625000 -11.17102778 and plugged them into Aladin, at http://cdsportal.u-strasbg.fr/

Click on "Object identifiers, measurements and bibliography" (it is at the top)

takes you to the SIMBAD Astronomical Database

click on basic search (at very top of Queries column. I don't know why the coordinate search does not work. Maybe some Aladin expert here can answer that.)

which takes you to SIMBAD: basic query

Paste in the coordinates, and click on "SIMBAD search"

And you get the report. IF YOU HAVE Aladin Lite installed, you can click on the image enlarging arrows and you get the image shown below. (You can easily install Aladin.)

So the YouTube image is real, and the image shown on this post is direct from Aladin. SIMBAD tells us it is a likely "Possible Horizontal Branch Star". See http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/H/Horizontal+Branch+stars

Please feel free to share other images of Horizontal Branch Stars, or any thoughts on all this.

 

[Drakkith]

Looks like an image artifact or nebula to me. Stars simply don't look like that at all.

 

[Drakkith]

Found the following image of the same location in the CDS Portal: http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/java/alapre-ok.pl?out=image&-c=21+59+51.90000+-11+10+15.7000&fmt=JPEG&resolution=FULL&qual=SERC%20ER%20DSS2

Notice that the object isn't there at all. It only appears in two images, both of which were taken on September 21st, 1979. I'd bet it's an image artifact or a problem with one of the filters or some other technical error.

 

[liometopum]

I like that, Drakkith.
Here is another image, that is clearly an artifact.