Mystery of the Most Isolated Globular Cluster in the Local Universe

We present a discovery of two new globular clusters in the Hubble Space Telescope archive images of the M81 group. They are located much farther from both M81 and M82 in the sky, compared with previously known star clusters in these galaxies. Both clusters show that higher luminosity and larger effective radius than typical globular clusters in Milky Way and M81. Using the available spectroscopic data provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we derive a low metallicity with [Fe/H] ${\approx}$ -2.3 and an old age ~14 Gyr for GC-2. The I-band magnitude of the tip of the RGB for GC-1 is consistent with that of the halo stars in the GC-1 and GC-2 field. However, that of GC-2 is 0.26 mag fainter than its field. It shows that GC-2 is about 400 kpc behind the M81 halo along our line of sight. The deprojected distance to GC-2 from M81 is much larger than any other known globular clusters in the local universe. We discuss the possible scenarios to explain the existence of globular cluster in such an extremely isolated environment.