NGC 1. See NGC 7839. ===== NGC 2. See NGC 7839. ===== NGC 3. See NGC 4 and NGC 7830. ===== NGC 4. This really is the very faint galaxy about an arcminute south of Marth's position. He was observing with a 48-inch reflector, the second largest telescope in the world at the time, so he really could see very faint objects like this. LEDA took NPM1G +07.0004 as NGC 4. This is brighter, yes, but it is nearly 21 arcmin away from Marth's position, and by random numbers in both RA and Dec (52 seconds of time, and 16.5 arcmin). No digit errors there. Also, Marth's relative position from NGC 3 pins this object down. He found both on the same night in November of 1864, so the telescope was zeroed the same for both galaxies. Marth's offset from NGC 3 to NGC 4 is just 10 seconds in RA and 5 arcmin in Dec. The offsets from modern positions are 7.6 seconds in RA and 4 arcmin 20 arcsec in Dec. This is well within the errors of Marth's usual accuracy, so the identification is secure. Also see NGC 7830, another very faint object that Marth found the same night. The total V magnitude of NGC 4 (around V = 15.5) bears on the identification of NGC 7830. ===== NGC 6 = NGC 20. On the night of 20 September 1885, Lewis Swift found six objects. Four of these (NGC 19, NGC 21, NGC 7831, and NGC 7836; see the notes for these, too) have mean offsets in their positions as published by Swift, from the correct positions, of -1m 10s in RA and -8m 08s in Dec. A fifth found later in the night, NGC 801, has offsets of +19s and +0.9m; Swift clearly "re-zeroed" his telescope in the interim. The sixth object, NGC 6, shares the right ascension offsets of the first four, but its declination is about 45 arcmin too small. Its identity with NGC 20 is secured by Swift's note "... one of 5 sts which point to it is pretty near." The unmistakeable line of five stars stretches about 2 arcmin to the east; Swift's "pretty near" star is about 15 arcsec east of the galaxy. ===== NGC 8 is a double star about 3 arcmin northwest of NGC 9. Both objects were found by Otto Sturve in September 1865, NGC 9 on the 27th, and NGC 8 on the 29th. Struve's relative positions for the two are good, though his absolute positions are -12 sec and -2 arcmin off. His measurement of the 10th mag star about 6 arcmin east-southeast of NGC 9, however, clearly identifies the two objects he saw. ===== NGC 9 is a peculiar spiral with a bright blue patch on its southern arm, found by Otto Struve. Though Struve's position is about 3 arcmin off, his measurement of the star 6 arcmin east of the galaxy insures the identification. See NGC 8 for more on Struve's observations. This galaxy may be a ring galaxy similar to NGC 985, though seen almost edge-on. The SDSS image (see e.g. Courtney Seligman's pages) doesn't conflict with this idea, though my initial thought that the blue knot on the southern side is an interacting companion now seems far less likely. ===== NGC 14. See NGC 7555. ===== NGC 16 = H IV 15 = h 4 = h 5. Here is a peculiar case where both WH and JH have enough problems in their observations that Wolfgang Steinicke has suggested that JH actually saw NGC 22 in one of his observations rather than the much brighter galaxy that his father found. Courtney Seligman brought this to my attention in April 2015; see his web page on the object for his take on the problems. WH first saw this on 8 September 1784 and put it 2 minutes 6 seconds east of, and 1 degree 21 arcminutes south of alpha Andromedae. There is nothing there. But about 1 minute and 24 seconds west is found a galaxy more or less matching his description in CH's fair copy: "Stellar, or rather like a faint star with a small chevelure and two burs [sic]. F, S." There are a couple of additional things to note. First, there is another star in the sweep, 85 Pegasi that gives a different RA zero point. Using that, the position for WH's object becomes just 1 minute 6 seconds west of the galaxy. This is strongly suggestive of a simple digit error in WH's observation. The next observation was by JH on 5 September 1828. This pinned down the galaxy very well, but JH added a note in parentheses to his observation, "(? [query] if not IV 15)", well aware that his position was well off his father's. JH went over the field again on 16 September of the same year, but recorded only an approximate position for the object, calling it "A star 15m with a burr AR [sic] from Cat." So, he accepted that he had seen the same object in this sweep that his father had, even to the extent of adopting the RA from his father's list. There is, of course, nothing in this position. And this is where the trouble really sets in. JH enters the two observations in his own 1833 list as two separate objects, and copies both into the GC. d'A comments that he cannot find GC 12 = h 5 on three of the five nights that he observed an object which he called H IV 15 = h 4, not following JH's own list where he (JH) put IV 15 = h 5. JH has a rather peeved note in GC about this: "D'Arrest says, 'h. II. positio cert erronea,' but gives no indication of the correction required in R.A. or P.D." Dreyer finally sorts it all out for the NGC by making IV 15 = h 4 = h 5, adopting something of a mean of JH's and d'A's positions, and adding a note, "h 5 was not seen by d'A [3 nights] and St[ephan] (XIII) [2 nights]; it is = h 4 as they were observed in different sweeps." In his 1912 edition of WH's complete scientific papers, he adds "IV 15 is = h 4, 1m 20s p[receding] H's place. Some error in recording the transit, probably of 1m; reductions correct." So there matters stood until Wolfgang went over the field during his re-evaluation of WH's observations and decided that IV 15 = NGC 22. He also, in his re-evaluation of JH's observations, has h 5 identical to a star at 00 10 28.0, +27 42 00 (there are neither stars nor galaxies there). I have not yet had any correspondence with him about this; but given that WH's declination is off NGC 22 by 7 arcmin, and that a simple 1 minute of time RA error will explain the difference in position with NGC 16 -- well, I find myself agreeing with Dreyer on this one. ===== NGC 17 = NGC 34. This galaxy is clearly identified by its discovers' (Muller and Swift) descriptions of nearby stars, in particular the double star two arcmin west-northwest. Along with many other of the Leander McCormick nebulae, its approximate position is about 2 minutes of time too far east. Herbert Howe was the first to suggest the identity, again based on the clear descriptions of the double star, which he observed just where Muller and Swift claimed it to be. ===== NGC 18 is a double star 4 arcmin east of NGC 16. It was found by Herman Schultz whose micrometric position, measured on two nights, is within 3 arcsec of the GSC position. Dreyer notes that N18 was not seen by either d'Arrest or by Lord Rosse. ===== NGC 19. As with NGC 6 (which see), NGC 19 is unambiguously identified by Swift's note about the surrounding star field: "... in center of 3 very faint stars forming an equilateral triangle, two of them double." The double stars are northwest and southwest of the galaxy, with the third star being east- southeast. Swift's position for the galaxy also shares the systematic offset of NGC 21, NGC 7831, and NGC 7836 from the true position. Concidentally, Swift's position for NGC 21 (which see), while closer to NGC 20 (as pointed out by Courtney Seligman), has been mistakenly applied to NGC 19 in RNGC, UGC, and UZC. ===== NGC 20 is also = NGC 6 (which see). NGC 20's original NGC position is correct. ===== NGC 21 = NGC 29. Though Swift makes no comment about the surrounding star field, the identity of his object with Herschel's is clinched by the offset of his (Swift's) position from the true position: NGC 19, 7831, and 7836 share the same offset (see NGC 6 for more information). The NGC position for NGC 29 is correct. ===== NGC 22 was found by Stephan in August or September of 1883. He measured it micrometrically, so his position is good. However, it is not, as Wolfgang has suggested, H IV 15. See NGC 16 for that story. ===== NGC 28 and NGC 31. Found by John Herschel during his stay at Cape Town in the mid-1830's, the identifications of these two galaxies are unequivocal. This has not prevented PGC from equivocating: it claims that the SGC identifications are wrong. Balderdash and bull feathers! Unfortunately, ESO missed the galaxies (and NGC 37 as well), so that NGC 28 is not even in ESO. ESO 149-G020 is NGC 31, and ESO 149-G022 is NGC 37. All this is probably why the PGC folks were misled. The PGC error also crept over into RC3; the galaxy identified there as NGC 28 is actually NGC 31. ===== NGC 29. See NGC 21. ===== NGC 30 is a double star. This was recorded only once by Marth in late 1864 as a "nebulous star 13th magnitude." There are no galaxies within 10 arcmin of Marth's position, but the double star is within an arcmin. On a night of less than perfect seeing, it would probably appear as Marth described it. ===== NGC 31. See NGC 28. ===== NGC 32 is apparently the northeastern of a pair of stars separated by about 30 arcsec. It was found by Julius Schmidt on 10 Oct 1861, probably from Athens (where Schmidt had become director of the observatory 3 years earlier) with a 6.2-inch Ploessl refractor. He made a micrometric measurement of it, and provided a generic description, "A faint nebula." Auwers lists this as the first object in his appendix of nebulae discovered since the Herschels. Schmidt's position is within 3 arcsec of the star, so it is almost certainly the object he saw. ===== NGC 33 is a double star. The comment for NGC 30 fits this perfectly, too. The only difference is Marth's description: "eF, vS; or nebulous star." ===== NGC 34 = NGC 17, which see. ===== NGC 37. See NGC 28. ===== NGC 44 is a double star found by John Herschel. He describes it as "eF, vS; not to be seen but in the clearest night." There is a very faint galaxy 8.4 arcmin south of Herschel's position, but the double is within 15 arcsec and fits his description. ===== NGC 46 is a single star. Included as a nebula in the Markree Catalogue, it was reobserved twice in its catalogued place by Auwers who notes it as "... a completely sharp nebulous star 11th magnitude (9 arcmin north and 1 min 29 sec preceding a star 7.8 mag)." The 7.8 mag star is SAO 109091 which is exactly where Auwers says it is with respect to NGC 46. This positively identifies N46 as the star, as does the Markree position which is within 4 arcsec of the GSC position. ===== NGC 47 = NGC 58, which see. ===== NGC 50. See NGC 58. ===== NGC 54. See NGC 58. ===== NGC 55. See IC 1537. ===== NGC 56 is lost. It may have been the edge of the gegenschein, or another part of the zodiacal dust, but I think that is unlikely. Dave Riddle has also suggested that it could be part of the infrared "cirrus" in the area (the IRAS 100-micron image shows it well), mirrored by a recent (2006) observation of carbon monoxide there. However, I don't think that this will work, either. Whatever happened, there is certainly more to the story than I typed in a few years ago. Here is what I previously wrote: NGC 56 does not exist. John Herschel recorded it only once very early in his observing career (Sweep 14 in 1825), saying, "About this place a considerable space seems affected with nebulosity." There is a possibility that he saw a reflection of the bright star 2 degrees north, but there is no other reasonable explanation for the observation. The other objects that he recorded in Sweep 14 (including M 15) are all in the same area of the sky, so there is no gross error in the position. JH's observation took place on 13 October 1825. Assuming that what he saw was indeed the gegenschein, and that its peak brightness is exactly opposite the sun, it would have an ecliptic longitude of 19d 58min on that date, corresponding to RA 01 13.7 and Dec +07 49 (B1950.0). The nominal position of NGC 56 puts that 15d 38min away. Since the gegenschein is typically seen to be about 10d across, it probably was not affecting Herschel's field that night. If it was, it is also reasonable to ask why JH did not put the center of his nebulosity nearer the gegenschein's peak. Similar objections can be made to the IR cirrus hypothesis. The nearest bright knot in the cirrus is about 5 degrees south and a bit east of NGC 56's nominal position, but there is nothing at all to be seen on the visual wavelength sky surveys anywhere in the area. Since JH was observing visually, we want to find a visual source corresponding to his observation. It's not there, unfortunately, so we are pretty well stuck for an explanation. Dave also points out that there are three of WH's "extensive diffused Nebulosity's" in the area. Is NGC 56 perhaps one of them? JH called it a "nova" and did not mention, with respect to it, any of his father's large, faint nebulae in notes to either his 1833 catalogue, nor in the GC of 31 years later. The nearest of WH's nebulae to NGC 56 is 2.5 degrees away (WH's number 2 in his 1811 list published in Phil. Trans. 74, page 269). Since WH has his estimated size at 3.3 degrees, the edge of the nebulosity is still 1.4 degrees from the center of NGC 56. So, I would have to agree with JH that his apparent nebulosity is not the same as that recorded by his father. Are there more recent observations here? Dave points to several by Arthur Searle reported in the Harvard Annals in 1900 which seems to trace the IRAS nebulosity. But this is still well off NGC 56, so it seems unlikely to be the same object. Similarly, IC 14 (Bigourdan 104) is sometimes suggested as a part of JH's object. But it is clearly a faint double star; see the IC file for that story. Bigourdan, by the way, did not find NGC 56, noting only a 13.3 mag star near the nominal place. In the end, my conclusion is the same as it was earlier -- NGC 56 is lost. But the story is a lot more interesting now. Thanks, Dave! (Also see NGC 7088, "Baxendell's Unphotographable Nebula", for a similar large non-existent object.) ===== NGC 58 = NGC 47. The brightest (N50) of the three nebulae (N47 and N54 are the others) in this group was found in 1866 by Brother Ferrari at the Collegio Romano. It is one of only two in his short list, published in a note in AN 1571 by Father Secchi (the Observatory's director), which has a fairly accurate position. See NGC 7667 for more information about Secchi's note. Sometime later, Tempel went over the field and found Ferrari's nebula as well as a second nearby, N47. It seems likely that Tempel actually saw all three galaxies here, though Dreyer credits Tempel with observing only two of them (Wolfgang suggests that this might be one of Dreyer's rare errors). There is, by the way, no record of any of these in any of Tempel's ten published notes. So, he must have "announced" them in a letter to Dreyer. His position for N47 is good. Finally, on 21 October 1886, Lewis Swift saw all three nebulae. Since Secchi's position for the brightest is not exactly on the galaxy, and having no way to know of Tempel's observation, Swift included the three as new in his fifth list. Curiously, Dreyer credits only Secchi for N50, though he lists Swift as having observed the other two. Though Swift calls N58 the "3rd of 3," it is actually west of the other two. Swift's RA is in error by about 1 minute of time. This was noticed first by Herbert Howe who could not find N58, and suggested that Tempel's object, N47, is also the object seen by Swift. This, of course, makes it the "1st of 3," and suggests that Swift added the comments based on the positions in his list, rather than on his actual observations. ===== NGC 59 is one of the nebulae found by Ormond Stone with the 26-inch refractor at the Leander McCormick Observatory in the mid-1880s. While most of the positions for these first nebulae found at LM are pretty poor, we have in this case (and about 190 others) a sketch to confirm the object in its surrounding star field. In addition, Stone has written the discovery date on the sketch cover sheet: November 10.4 1885. Bob Erdmann was curious about that "10.4": Was that really the date -- and time -- of the discovery? That set me to pondering, and this is what I eventually sent to Bob. The ".4" is indeed 4/10 of a day, or 9h 36m. I do not know if this is UT or local time, though. But I suspose we could work it out: I don't think they observed the thing at 9:36 in the morning, and since L-M is 6hr behind Greenwich, that would make local time at 10.4 UT something like 10:15 or 3:15+-AM local, which sort of makes sense for an observation of an object at RA = 0h 10m, -22d 03m (1890) in November. We can check that: Let's see ... on November 10, N59 crosses the meridian at about 3+ hours before midnight, so its hour angle at 3:15AM local time is about 3h25m which puts it pretty deep into the southwestern sky. Assuming they did not have a right-angle prism on the 26-inch, that would make for pretty comfortable observing, which at that time on a cool, fall night would be important. The LM observers wrote the RA and Dec on the cover sheets, too, providing an additional check on the identities. Finally, they gave us the page number and "book" number, probably an observing or log book, along with the power at which they observed the object. In this case, the power is 250, as it is for most of the observations. Some of the smaller and fainter nebulae, though, were observed at magnifications of up to 500. ===== NGC 61 is the brighter, southern component of a double galaxy found by WH. His description, "irregular figure," suggests that he might have glimpsed the fainter component to the north, too. The MCG position (copied into RNGC) is incorrect, SEGC (in RC3) is correct. ===== NGC 67 is the westernmost and faintest of at least seven nebulae found by LdR in what we now call the NGC 68 group. His fine sketch, published in his 1861 monograph, clearly shows that the object that most of us have been calling NGC 67A is, in fact, the object LdR sketched as one of the nebulae. The object we've been calling NGC 67 is shown on LdR's sketch as a star. So, I've reassigned NGC 67 to the correct galaxy to properly reflect the history. The other NGC objects in the group (N68, 69, 70, 71, 72, and 74) are brighter and have been correctly identified in the major catalogues. ===== NGC 68 is the brightest galaxy in a compact group. WH listed one of his fifth class ("large") nebulae here, so I think it likely that he saw the merged light of at least NGC 68, 70, and 71, the three brightest in the group. Several of the stars in the vicinity probably also added to the "object" that WH catalogued. LdR picked out seven of the nebulae here, and suspected at least two others. His sketch shows the seven, along with several stars, two of which turn out to be galaxies. See NGC 67, IC 1538, and IC 1539 for more on this group. ===== NGC 69. See NGC 67. ===== NGC 70 = IC 1539, which see. Also see NGC 67 and 68. ===== NGC 71. See NGC 67 and NGC 68. ===== NGC 72. See NGC 67. ===== NGC 74. See NGC 67. ===== NGC 78. This is usually taken as the northeastern of a close pair of galaxies, because that galaxy is brighter and has a higher surface brightness. However, I'd like to be sure that this is the case as the differences between the two galaxies are not large. I am hoping that Pechule's discovery paper will tell us which of the two nebulae he found, but am not hopeful -- nebulae were definitely not Pechule's main interest (see e.g. NGC 4239). In any event, we have not yet tracked down Pechule's paper (and Dreyer does not give us any more reference than Pechule's name), but it must have appeared between 1864 and 1879, the publication dates for the GC and the GC Supplement. The object is listed only in the Supplement. (Wolfgang is looking for the paper, too; November 2005). ----- Note added in February 2017: Wolfgang, in his 2010 book "Observing and Cataloguing Nebulae and Star Clusters", states that Pechule did not in fact publish this discovery. So, it must have been brought to Dreyer's attention in a letter or other private communication. ----- While I was adding Gaia DR2 positions in November 2018, I changed the names for these two galaxies to "NGC 0078" (the northeastern component) and "NGC 0078 comp" (the southwestern component) to match the more usual naming conventions that I've adopted for the objects. I apologize for any confusion that this might cause. ===== NGC 81. Even though Bigourdan mistook the star northwest of the galaxy as NGC 81, Copeland's offsets from NGC 83 are very good and point unambiguously at the galaxy as the correct object. ===== NGC 82. Bigourdan's offsets just as unambiguously point to a star in this case as in his mistaken observation of a star for NGC 81. ===== NGC 83. See NGC 81. ===== NGC 84. As with Bigourdan's measurements of NGC 81 and 82, this, too, is a star, nailed exactly by those measurements. ===== NGC 85. I admit to caving in to the inevitable on this one. There is no problem with the NGC identification -- Copeland's offsets from NGC 83 are accurate, and just as accurately pin down the galaxy he measured. Similarly, Javelle's offsets from SAO 073902 are good and pin down IC 1546. The "A" and "B" suffixes for NGC 85 come from MCG, and confuse the simplicity of the history. I was tempted to ignore the suffixes altogether, but they have already been copied into the literature. So, I have to note that "N85B" is the same as IC 1546. ===== NGC 90, 91, and NGC 93. Dreyer has confused the observations of these objects. Lord Rosse's observations make it clear that he and his assistants saw only two nebulous objects here, so one of the "Ld R"'s has to be striken from the "Other Observers" column of the NGC. The offsets make it clear that the Irish observers saw what we now call NGC 90 and NGC 93. What do the observations of Schultz and d'Arrest have to say? Schultz's positions for all three objects -- not just one as the NGC credits -- precessed from the published equinox of 1865.0, agree to within two or three arcseconds in all three cases with modern data. These pin down the three objects and show that NGC 91 is a star (Bigourdan also called the same star NGC 91 in his Observations). D'Arrest's positions are not quite as good, but fall within 20 arcsec of the galaxies. His descriptions of the locations and magnitudes of the nearby stars are also good, and confirm the identifications. So, NGC 90 should be credited to Lord Rosse, Schultz, and d'Arrest (rather than just Lord Rosse and Schultz), NGC 91 to Schultz alone (Lord Rosse and d'Arrest never commented on this star), and NGC 93 again to all three observers. To the description for NGC 90 should be added "* 13 sp." There are several other identification problems in the NGC 80/83 Group, too. See NGC 81, 82, and 84, as well as IC 1547. ===== NGC 91. See NGC 90. ===== NGC 93. See NGC 90. ===== NGC 103. Even though this cluster is credited to JH in NGC, Yann Pothier points out that WH saw it on 26 November 1788. Steve Gottlieb has uncovered the object in WH's sweep 887 of that night where he (WH) describes it simply as "Clustering S. stars considerably rich." WH also mentions the cluster in a paper in the 1817 Philosophical Transactions (Vol. 107, page 302); this is where Yann first found it. ===== NGC 110. Is this a true cluster, or just a part of the northern Milky Way that is randomly richer? JH found the grouping in late October 1831, and described it as "A very loose, pretty rich cluster; stars 9th to 12th magnitude; 9th magnitude star in the middle taken." Assuming that JH's position is correctly reduced and printed, the 9th magnitude star is GSC 4303-1643 at 00 27 25.4, +71 23 27 (J2000.0). I've adopted this position -- rounded off -- as the position of the cluster. Looking at the object on the POSS1 does not show much beyond a group of 50-60 stars scattered over an area about 20 x 15 arcmin across. Had this not been included in the Alter-Ruprecht catalogue, I suspect that it would have been one of the RNGC's "nonexistent" clusters. There is the possibility of a mistake in JH's single position, but I don't see any other grouping in the area that would fit his description as well. I think this is a candidate for visual observation. ----- Note added in October 2003. Bob Erdmann and I examined the cluster a couple of weeks ago under good skies in Prescott, AZ with 8-inch and 16-inch telescopes. JH's description from the eyepiece is more appropriate than mine from the POSS. The "cluster" is just a bit more than a random scattering of 15-20 stars from the 9th to the 12th magnitudes in an area about 20 arcmin across. It doesn't stand out very well from the field, but we can still see why JH recorded it. ----- Looking at the DSS2 red image in December 2016 simply confirms what I say above about this "cluster". However, I put the center of the cluster about three arcminutes northwest of the GSC star. The recent cluster compilations based on proper motions and photometry (e.g. Dias et al 2014 and online at http://www.wilton.unifei.edu.br/ocdb/; Karchenko et al 2013, available through SIMBAD) make the cluster a bit smaller (12 to 14 arcminutes) and put the center close to the GSC star that JH noted. So, as before, I've simply adopted that position for the object. ===== NGC 111. I cannot see anything within 5 degrees of Leavenworth's position that agrees with his description of a "vF, vS, R, lbM; * 8.5 p 36 sec, n 2 arcmin. [alpha] doubtful." There is a very faint, peculiar pair of galaxies (MCG -01-02-013) at the approximate offsets he gives from the nearby star -- but the star is 10th or 11th magnitude, and his description of the galaxy does not match the relatively low surface brightness twisted streamers that contribute most of the light of the pair. There is no sketch included in Stone's papers at the University of Virginia. The galaxy may not be irretrieveably lost, however. Since the declinations in the first two Leander McCormick lists are generally (though not always!) reliable to within a couple of arcminutes, it may be possible to scan around the sky at Leavenworth's declination to find the object (see e.g. NGC 331). I haven't tried yet, however. ----- In July 2016, John Ponting sent around an email suggesting that this object may be identical to NGC 758 (coincidentally also found by Leavenworth). The descriptions are very similar ("vF, vS, R?; [alpha] doubtful"), and the star is there. The problem, of course, is that the (doubtful!) RA is 1.5 hours different, and the declination is 20 arcminutes off, too. John suggests that Leavenworth confused his hour angle reading at the telescope making it positive instead of negative. This could have added 1.5 hours to the RA. NGC 758 has a star of the right magnitude at the right distance to the west-northwest which gives further confidence in the identity. This all strikes me as reasonable, so I have listed the identity as a possibility. ===== NGC 116 is the last of fourteen new nebulae found by Brother Ferrari at the College Romain during the winter of 1865-1866. They were announced by Father Secchi, and Dreyer incorrectly credits him with their discovery. See NGC 7667 for more information about Father Secchi, Brother Ferrari, and their nebulae. This particular nebula is unusual in the list in having a candidate galaxy nearby (about 15 arcmin north of the nominal position), MCG -01-02-017. There is another galaxy about eight arcmin southeast (MCG -01-02-018), closer to the nominal position, but fainter. Finally, Courtney Seligman adds an even fainter object, PGC 169989, which is about six arcminutes west of the nominal position. Most of us take the brighter, northwestern galaxy, but given the poor discovery position, that is obviously unsure. ===== NGC 120 is correctly described as being about 10 arcmin north of the comparison star in Tempel's original paper. However, as noted first by Bigourdan, the NGC position is about 5 arcmin off. This is apparently one of the positions that Tempel sent to Dreyer as a private communication since only the description is published. See NGC 122 and NGC 123 for a bit more. ===== NGC 122 (and NGC 123, which see) is probably a star. Tempel published only the sparce descriptions; the NGC positions are apparently among those that he sent directly to Dreyer. There is certainly nothing at these positions except a faint star in the case of NGC 122 (which Bigourdan measured). Ironically, I think that this star may be the northeast of Tempel's "nebulae," so that it would be NGC 123 and not NGC 122. NGC 122 may be the equally faint star about an arcminute southwest of Bigourdan's star. See NGC 123 for more. ===== NGC 123 is probably one of two 15th magnitude stars, both in GSC, near Tempel's positions (see NGC 122 for more on this) in roughly the correct relative positions. Since there are no nebulae anywhere in the area, I've tentatively identified these two stars with the objects he described. A brighter galaxy, NGC 120 (which see) is further on to the northwest, again in the correct relative position which Tempel described in his paper. Bigourdan measured this star, but gave it the number NGC 122; there is nothing at all at his one measured place for NGC 123. Finally, in his early lists, Wolfgang made the star I've chosen as NGC 123, "NGC 122", and put "NGC 123" on another star. However, the relative positions are not accordant with those given in the NGC, so I have given those possible identifications lower weight. ===== NGC 128 is the prototype of the edgewise early-type galaxy with a "box/peanut" central bulge. See e.g. the entry in the "notngc" files under "NGC 7556 companion" for another example. ===== NGC 135 = IC 26. There is no doubt about the identity of IC 26 -- Javelle's position agrees to within 2 arcsec of that measured on the DSS. The problem comes from Leavenworth's position for NGC 135. Like many of the positions in the two lists of new nebulae from Leander McCormick Observatory, that one is over a minute of time off in RA, though much closer in declination (less than 2 arcmin off). Herbert Howe went after the object around the turn of the century (19th to 20th) and said simply, "The position is 00h 26m 43s, -13d 53.3m [1900.0]." This agrees exactly with the position for IC 26. Leavenworth has left us a sketch that verifies Howe's object, so the identity is secure. It's interesting to note, too, that the cover sheet for the sketch has the RA given to a tenth of a minute (00h 24.8m), while the RA in the published paper is rounded off to 00h 25m. I won't even speculate on why this was done. ===== NGC 151 = NGC 153, which see. ===== NGC 153 = NGC 151. Swift found four nebulae on the night of 9 August 1886 (N163, N217, and N7774 as well as N153) -- all have RA's in his list that are 10 - 15 seconds of time too large, though his declinations are pretty good. As it happens, all but N7774 had been previously seen. Dreyer caught the identities for two of the nebulae (N163 and N217), but not for N153. So, the galaxy now has two NGC numbers. N153 is sometimes taken to be the star just northeast of the galaxy. But this can't be because Swift mentions that star in his description of the galaxy. There is also a faint galaxy just southwest of the star; this is presumeably a background object. ===== NGC 156 is probably the northern of the pair of stars, northwest of NGC 157, that Wolfgang and I have pointed to in the past. Tempel has mistaken several other single stars near galaxies as nebulous (see e.g. NGC 122/123, NGC 4315, NGC 4322, NGC 4768/9), and this is probably another. We can't tell for sure, though, as he has not measured this micrometrically, and his description is scanty: "Very small". The NGC tells us all that Tempel did in his brief note. There is, of course, the possibility that his object refers to both stars, so I've included that in the table, too. ===== NGC 157. See NGC 7667 where this galaxy -- NGC 157 -- figures in the Father Secchi mysteries. ===== NGC 158. Though this is 4 arcmin from the NGC position, this single star (not a close double; see the next paragraph) is probably Tempel's object. It is northeast of NGC 157, and is similar to many other of Tempel's stars that he mistook as nebulous. I'm a bit more confident of this one than I am of NGC 156, which see. ----- Having looked at this again (August 2015), I no longer think that this is a double star. The SDSS image -- the highest resolution image I've found online -- is resolutely single when compared to other single stars nearby. The other images I've looked at today are also single stars, so I've changed the position table to reflect this. Sorry to have misled you all this time. ===== NGC 160 is not NGC 162, which see. ===== NGC 161. See IC 1557. ===== NGC 162 is a star about 75 arcsec northeast of NGC 160. It was initially found and measured by Schultz at Uppsala (he calls it "G.C. 80" in his tables and notes), though Lord Rosse also noted it at least twice. In addition, the star was thought to be nebulous on Heidelberg and Lick plates, though the Mt. Wilson astronomers -- not finding a nebula at the place -- hypothesized that N162 = N160. The small galaxy 2.7 arcminutes southeast of N160 has also been mistaken for NGC 162, once by yrs trly. Live and learn. Also see Dreyer's NGC note for N160. He had this all figured out in 1888. ===== NGC 163. This is not H III 954; see NGC 165 for the short story. Also see NGC 153 = NGC 151 where this figures in the identification of NGC 151. ===== NGC 164. See IC 1560. ===== NGC 165. Steve Gottlieb, re-reducing WH's observation, has found that H III 954 is probably not NGC 163 as Dreyer supposed, but could well be this galaxy, the following of a pair. WH's reduced position falls much closer to this than to NGC 163, though a little doubt remains as WH's description is sparse: "eF, S, excessively F". WH has another galaxy (NGC 153) in the same sweep, with offsets from the same star (8 Ceti). WH's position for that galaxy is good, so we can presume that -- barring a blunder -- his position for III 954 is also good. NGC 163 was found by d'A and measured by him on two nights in Sept 1865; his position is accurate. He assumed that he saw the same galaxy as WH, and notes the 32 second difference in the RAs. Both galaxies were seen by Tempel. In his paper (in AN 102, 225, 1882 = AN 2439) he says, "Following III 954 -- observed by [WH] and d'A -- by 30 [seconds of time] is a larger though fainter nebula with a star in the middle; a small star follows the nebula close to the north." Tempel clearly thought that WH and d'A had seen the same galaxy, and that his second object was a "nova". Dreyer adopted this interpretation for the NGC. Finally, Swift has an observation of one nebula here on 9 August 1886. His position, 00 36 14, -10 07.3 (precessed to J2000), is a almost exactly midway between the two galaxies. Note, however, that the RA's of the galaxies found on this night are 10-15 seconds of time too large, so this is almost certainly an observation of NGC 163, as assumed by Dreyer. Swift's description "eF, vS, R; v diff; only 1 * v near" could apply to either object, but fits NGC 163 well enough. So, to summarize, WH and Tempel saw NGC 165; while d'A, Tempel, and Swift saw NGC 163. ===== NGC 171 = NGC 175. Dreyer (1912, WH's collected papers) tells us that CH made a 1 degree error while reducing the position of III 223. There is certainly nothing in the place given in NGC, though the identity with III 223 carries two question marks. Auwers has the correct declination in his published reduction of WH's observations. The spare number comes from GC. Unfortunately, JH has no note there telling us why he put the number in. However, in CGH, he notes the 1 degree difference in the polar distances between III 223 and h2334 (N175) while again putting a question mark on the number from his father's catalogue. Enough doubt apparently remained in his mind about the identity that he put two entries into GC, both of which Dreyer copied into the NGC. Dreyer checked back into WH's manuscripts while working on the Collected Papers, and found CH's error. ===== NGC 175 = NGC 171, which see. ===== NGC 178 = IC 39. The IC identity is not in doubt. Javelle's micrometric measurement reduces to within a few arcsec of the modern position. The NGC number, though, comes from one of Ormond Stone's Leander McCormick discoveries with its typically bad RA. Stone's declination is fortunately close, and his description "F, S, mE 0 deg, bM, faint wing sp" fits the galaxy perfectly. The "faint wing" is, in fact, one of the arms of this object. I wonder if this is a superposition of two galaxies, or an interacting system. Stone has left a sketch of his nebula -- my rather poor copy of it shows the "wing" faintly. Unfortunately, the sketch shows only the galaxy; no nearby stars are included, so the identity is not quite pinned down. At least the galaxy itself is oriented along the north-south axis of the sketch with the "wing" apparently stretching off towards the southwest. Herbert Howe found the galaxy 1min 37sec following Stone's position, so the corrected position made it into the IC2 Notes. Unfortunately, Dreyer did not notice that the object is the same as IC 39, so the identity of the two numbers was not published until one of the Helwan observers noticed it. ===== NGC 203 = NGC 211, which see. ===== NGC 206 is a star cloud in NGC 224 = M 31, the Andromeda Galaxy. There is another similar star cloud at the opposite end of M 31; see its story in the "notngc" files where I call it the "Barnard And SC". ===== NGC 211 = NGC 203. Stephan misidentified his comparison star as BD +2 92; his star is actually GSC 0014-1250, not in BD. Within his mean errors, Stephan's offsets, applied to the correct star, point exactly to NGC 203. This was later picked up by Copeland with LdR's 72-inch, and was correctly positioned by him. A star that I had earlier pegged as the possible object that Stephan saw is about 0.5 arcmin south-southeast of Stephan's incorrect position used in NGC. Though I've not reduced Bigourdan's two measurements of "NGC 211," I suspect they refer to this same star. ===== NGC 213. See IC 1572. ===== NGC 217. See NGC 153. ===== NGC 218. Steve Gottlieb found that Esmiol has listed this discovery of Stephan's with a different RA offset. Once the correction is made, Stephan's offsets point exactly to UGC 480, the brighter of an interacting pair (VV 527). UGC 440, the galaxy that we all previously took to be NGC 218, is not only not at Stephan's offsets (even the wrong ones), but is nearly two magnitudes fainter than UGC 480. Steve has finally found the correct galaxy. Stephan found nine galaxies that Esmiol listed as "Anonyme" (without NGC number); six have turned out to be NGC objects, while three did not make it into the catalogue. See the discussions under UGC 3840 in the "notngc" files for more on Stephan's observations of these galaxies. ===== NGC 219. See IC 44. ===== NGC 220. JH has this in three sweeps with accordant positions. That position is also close to the cluster we usually put this number on, so the identity is not in question. He may also have picked up the cluster in a fourth sweep as well; see NGC 222 for that speculation. What interests me is the relationship of this cluster to two others in the area which have traditionally carried the numbers NGC 222 and NGC 231, both of which see. JH refers to these in his description in Sweep 625 on 20+- September 1835 (see my comment at the end of this note about the uncertain date): "The first of an irregular string of nebulae and stars which descends at an angle of about 45 degrees from the centre to the edge of the field (i.e. in a northeastern direction)." The string of stars is certainly there (see my notes about NGC 222 and NGC 231), though there is no nebulosity involved, at least in the DSSR2 image of the area -- JH was probably seeing the unresolved background light of the SMC. Archinal and Hynes also have a discussion of this string of clusters, noting that it is probably Dunlop's number 2 in his 1826 list. Finally, I see that in his table of Sweeps, JH has "no such sweep" noted in place of a date for Sweep 625. Sweep 624 was made on 19 September 1835, and Sweep 626 on 21 September. The date I've adopted is an interpolation, of course, but it may have been on either of the adjoining dates. Another possibility is that the Sweep is indeed non-existent, and those objects marked with its number may be from other sweeps. ----- In May 2016, I checked JH's sweeps in the Herschel Archive and find his comment "Sweep 625 No[.] omitted by mistake -- no such Sweep exists." On the right-hand page, he also writes, "625 = 626". He notes the date as 21 September 1835. So much for the mysterious "no such sweep"! ===== NGC 222, though usually taken as a smaller, fainter cluster northeast of NGC 220 (which see), may in fact be a fourth observation of NGC 220 itself. The other three observations are from Sweeps 482, 625=626 (see my comment about this sweep in the note for NGC 220), and 745. These have reasonably accordant positions and descriptions. NGC 222, on the other hand, was picked up in a single sweep (441 on 11 March 1834), and -- if it is NGC 220 -- has a discordant position (all these positions are given in the big table). JH notes that this sweep was "below the pole" in the descriptions of several other objects including NGC 242, 248, 294, 346, and 371. Some of these are also noted as having uncertain positions in the sweep which adds to my own uncertainty about the observation of NGC 222. JH made its position 3-4 seconds east and 4 arcmin south of NGC 220. His description reads simply "vF, R, outlying". I suspect the "outlying" refers to its position in the SMC. The faint cluster, ESO 029-SC004, usually carrying the number "NGC 222" is 14 seconds of time east and 1.1 arcminutes north of NGC 220, not a good match at all for JH's object. That position, and the fact that JH did not record NGC 220 in Sweep 442, leads to my skepticism in accepting the faint cluster as a genuine discovery by JH. So, I've put my usual question marks on the numbers in question. See Archinal and Hynes for a similar discussion, though they eventually accept the modern identification. Jenni Kay, in her "A Visual Atlas of the Magellanic Clouds" also accepts the modern identification of NGC 222, but without question. Using an 8-inch Schmit-Cassegrain telescope at 110X, she found it "small, round, faint" and "noticeably fainter [than] its neighbour NGC 220." ----- In May 2016, I re-reduced JH's observation from the sweep, using the previous object in the sweep, HD 3719, as a reference star. There is no mistake in JH's own reduction, but I wondered if a wire error might be possible. He has wire "2" recorded in the sweep. If he, in fact, used wire "1", then the RA of NGC 222 would be 00 38 31 (J2000) -- there is nothing in that RA at his recorded declination (-73 27.9; J2000). If he had actually recorded the object leaving the field, the RA would be 00 44 01 (also J2000); this position lands about 2.4 arcminutes southeast of NGC 242 = NGC 241 (which see for problems of its own). However, NGC 242 is the next object in Sweep 441, so it is not NGC 222. JH has a curious note at the end of the sweep: "[Vision?] bad objects faint and much light cut off by tree tops (to be cut away)". There is another line at the bottom of the page, but it is mostly illegible in the high-contrast Herschel Archive reproduction. The "tree tops" comment is fascinating, though JH notes in CGH under his entry for NGC 242 in this sweep, "(in a sweep below the pole and ill-seen) the RA is probably also in error." All of this reinforces the idea that NGC 222 is actually a fourth observation of NGC 220. So, I've replaced the question mark on this possibility with a colon, raising the identity to a probability, if not a certainty. ===== NGC 223 = IC 44, which see. ===== NGC 224 = M 31, the Andromeda Galaxy. This may well be the most famous galaxy in the northern sky. A vital stepping stone in the extragalactic distance scale, it is the brightest galaxy in the Local Group -- our own Milky Way is the second brightest. Curiously, in spite of its proximity, M 31 contains only one other NGC object, the star cloud NGC 206. There is another star cloud at the other end of the galaxy that could have been included in the NGC, but wasn't. See that story in the "notngc" files where I label the "missing" object the "Barnard And SC." ===== NGC 225. This cluster has a loose concentration in its southeast side that is usually taken as the center of the cluster. I've kept the position (from Brian Skiff) that clearly refers to this concentration, but looking at the field, I put the center a few arcminutes to the northeast. This is a little closer to the positions that WH and JH have left us. I also note that a star on the northwestern side has a patch of nebulosity associated with it. ===== NGC 231. JH describes this as "An irregular train of stars and nebulosity in the Nubecula Minor. (Evidently that referred to in Sweep 625 [NGC 220, which see].)" Given this, I think it is very doubtful that JH was seeing just the small cluster which we have taken as his object ever since. So, bucking tradition, I have used this number to include all of the clusters in the "irregular train", NGC 220, the traditional NGC 222 (but see that for some uncertainty of its own), as well as the small one which has carried the NGC number for many years. I call that little cluster "NGC 231 core" to distinguish it from the overall "irregular train". By the way, I make the entire size of the "train" roughly 6.5 x 2.5 arcmin. It may extend further northwest and southeast, but this is its obvious size at first glance. ===== NGC 241 = NGC 242. Earlier, I had a long discussion of the pros and cons of this. What that ignored was JH's own correction to the NPD of NGC 241 = h 2342; on the "Errata" page of CGH, he corrects the minutes of NPD from "31" to "21". This brings it right into line with the rest of the observations of the cluster from different sweeps. Here are the relevant positions and descriptions for NGC 242: Sweep 441: "pL; vF; R; vgbM; (in a sweep below the pole and ill seen) the RA is probably also in error." 00 37 13.7:, 164 21 50. Sweep 625: "A binuclear nebula, or two, vS, R, running together." 00 37 07.2, 164 22 22. Sweep 738: "A small irresolvable knot in the bright part of Nubec. Min." 00 37 09.9, 164 22 18. Compare these with his description and corrected position for NGC 241: Sweep 482: "A vF, R nebula or group. (We are now fairly in the Nubecula Minor, and the field begins to be full of a faint perfectly irresolvable nebulous light)." 00 37 05.1, 164 21 32 The only question that remains is why JH himself did not notice that the two objects are identical. That would have given us just one GC and one NGC number for the object rather than two. ----- Finally, this object figures peripherally in the identity of NGC 222, which see. There is also an interesting note there about the telescope being aimed so low that some of the light of the objects in Sweep 441 was lost in tree tops! ===== NGC 242 = NGC 241, which see. Also see NGC 222. ===== NGC 246. The central star (HIP 3678 = BD -12 134) is a triple. The white dwarf itself (HIP 3678A) has two companions, one visible on the DSS2 red and infrared images; it is lost in the lower resolution of the scan of the southern IIIa-J plate, but must be visible on the plate itself. Adam and Mugrauer, MNRAS 444, 3459, 2014 have details about the triple star. Sometimes called the "Skull Nebula", NGC 246 has several other stars superposed on it. I've adopted the Hipparcos position for the white dwarf. Curiously, the first Gaia data release includes the brighter of the two companions, HIP 3678B, but not the white dwarf itself. ===== NGC 247. While there is no mistaking this large galaxy -- one of the nearest in our sky -- the position I've chosen still carries a whiff of doubt in my mind. Is the object at that position the stellar nucleus, or is it a superposed star? Concensus at the moment (December 2013), from various notes and abstracts in NED, suggests it is indeed the nucleus. But I was unable to dig out a spectrum of the object to be sure. Even if it is a star, though, it is still a good proxy for the galaxy. ===== NGC 248. See NGC 222. ===== NGC 250. Swift's position is over 4 arcmin to the east of the galaxy. But his description of the galaxy, "eF, vS, R; in center of 3 sts in form of a right triangle" is exact and points us to the correct object. ===== NGC 252, NGC 258, and NGC 260. Lord Rosse and/or his observers described this field differently on different nights. On 22 Dec 1848, the three objects appeared to be in a line; on 23 Oct 1856, they formed a triangle. He has two sketches, one showing the line, the second the triangle. Since the second has no field stars shown, it's difficult to determine the orientation. My guess, however, is that the third "nebula" shown there is a faint star about 2 arcmin south of the NGC position of N258. On the sky, the three objects are in a line. This is the orientation that Dreyer adopted, and the NGC positions are relatively accurate. Incidentally, only NGC 258 is credited to "LdR" in the NGC; that credit also needs to be added to NGC 260 (which see for a bit more). ===== NGC 258. See NGC 252. ===== NGC 260. Steve Gottlieb has pointed out that this object was first discovered by Johnstone Stoney on 22 December 1848, one of two objects accompanying NGC 252 (which see). In his monograph, even d'A notes "One of Rosse's." So the missing NGC credit must be a simple oversight by Dreyer. ===== NGC 272 is an asterism of perhaps as many as eight or ten stars, but maybe just five or six. d'A says of it, Lucidissima stella (9-10 magn.) coacervationis cujusdam, ad normam lineae curvae miro modo adornatae. Google Translate makes a mess of this, but the basic idea is of a 9-10th magnitude star accompanied by a curved line of fainter (my interpretation) stars. This is pretty much what we see on the sky today. However, Dreyer interpreted d'A's description as "Cl, L, lC". I suppose that this is as close to the original as Dreyer could manage without actually seeing the object. In any case, d'A's stars are nothing more than an asterism a few arcminutes across; his original position is pretty good. The positions I've listed depend on how many stars are included in the object. While I'm inclined to go with just the bright star and the half-circle of four stars (one double) to the southeast, there are two other similarly bright stars to the north that Brian has picked up for one of his positions. In the end -- not seeing much reason to omit the northern stars -- I've taken that position of Brian's for the asterism. ===== NGC 276 = IC 1591. There is no doubt about which galaxy the IC number belongs to -- Stewart has it well-placed and perfectly described from a Harvard plate. N276, however, is one of the Leander McCormick nebulae first found by Muller, and published with a very poor position. Muller's description, however, is as detailed and as accurate as Stewart's. Herbert Howe found the galaxy 1 minute 13 seconds following Muller's position with the bright star north-northeast just as Muller had it. Unfortunately, Dreyer did not catch the connection to IC 1591 when he wrote the IC2 note, so the object now has two numbers. ===== NGC 281 = IC 11, which see. Also see IC 1590. ===== NGC 292 is the main body of the Small Magellanic Cloud. It's somewhat curious that the Small Cloud has an entry in the NGC while the Large Cloud does not. See the "notngc" file's entry on the LMC for more about this. ===== NGC 294. The CGH, GC, and NGC RA's are -1 minute of time in error. Curiously, JH notes the correct RA in his description in Sweep 441: "eF. (This obs. gives 47 [instead of 46] for the [1830] minute of R.A. The earlier minute is preferred.) In a sweep below the Pole." Also see NGC 222 where the other uncertain positions from Sweep 441 have a bearing on the identification of that object. ===== NGC 295 is no longer lost, thanks to Yann Pothier. By way of background, here is what I had to say about it earlier. This object was found by Copeland with LdR's 72-inch reflector while he was examining what he thought was NGC 296. His description of the field is precise: "[NGC 296] F, R, *10m (yellow) Pos 29.6 deg, Dist 123.1 arcsec. Nova [NGC 295], S, R, and with a * or another neb 10 arcsec n. Pos from [296] 242.0 deg, Dist 314.6 arcsec or 21.6 seconds p, 147.6 arcsec s." Unfortunately, this configuration of objects is nowhere to be found near NGC 296 (which see for more). I've searched the POSS1 +30 deg 00h 52m field, but could find no galaxies with neighboring stars as Copeland describes. Perhaps a search of the adjacent fields would turn up something. Yann succeeded where I failed. I suspect that I was looking for a relatively bright galaxy; the actual object that Copeland thought was NGC 296 turns out to be CGCG 501-058 = Markarian 352 with a V magnitude of 15.2 about a degree away from the real NGC 296. When the CGCG galaxy is used, all of Copeland's measurements and comments are easily verified, so the mystery of the identity of NGC 295 is finally solved. ===== NGC 296. WH's position is about 20 seconds too large and an arcmin too far north. That alone would not have caused people to miss the identification with the brightest galaxy in a group of five. What caused the problem was NGC 295 (which see). Copeland misidentified the field with N296, found a second object near it, and Dreyer put that into NGC as number 295. Unfortunately, with WH's position being off, the nominal position of N295 is very close to the actual position for N296. Hence, the confusion. The description in NGC is an "average" of WH's and Copeland's for the galaxy he thought was N296. WH's original description "F, E, preceding a B star", is closer, but the GC description (apparently taken from one of his father's observing logs by JH) is even better: "F, E, a B* f, vnr." Just about everyone has the wrong identification for this, but the correct one is not in doubt. Malcolm found this one, too. Good catch! ===== NGC 297 is an extremely faint companion to NGC 298. Both were found by Albert Marth with Lassell's 48-inch reflector during one of their Malta stays. When I first went over the field for SEGC, I found it hard to believe that such a faint galaxy could be seen visually. However, more experience in looking at some of the other objects Marth found has convinced me that he could indeed have picked this one up, especially since the brighter galaxy would have already caught his attention. In earlier versions of the position table, I suggested that N297 might be the double star at 00 52 29.6, -07 37 50 (B1950; HCo), but that is unlikely as the relative position of the two galaxies as given by Marth is very good. The double is almost straight south of N298, putting it about an arcmin off Marth's relative offset from N298. ===== NGC 298. See NGC 297. ===== NGC 301. See NGC 302. ===== NGC 302 is a probably the star 1.8 arcmin east-northeast of NGC 301. The pair was found by Frank Muller, and has a typically poor RA in the first list of nebulae from Leander McCormick. The declinations, though, seem to be close. Though there is no sketch, the objects can be tentatively identified by Muller's comment "* 8 p 30 seconds" in the description of NGC 301. There are, in fact, two stars of about 8th magnitude roughly 30 seconds preceding the galaxy. The northern star is slightly closer than 30 seconds, the southern is slightly further. It's possible that neither is the correct star, but this is the only configuration in the area that fits Muller's note. In any event, there is no object at his given offset from the galaxy (his note reads "Neb? f ([No.] 18 [in the first list = N301]), P 75 deg, dist 1.0 [arcmin]." The actual distance is 1.8 arcmin, though the position angle is about right. Unfortunately, 20th century versions of my position lists pointed to the wrong object as N302 (the faint star or compact galaxy 0.3 southeast of N301). The first 21st century version finally got the right star -- assuming, of course, that it is the object Muller saw. ===== NGC 303. For some time, I had this as a double galaxy with the brighter of the pair to the north. Looking at this again in August 2015, I now believe that this is a single object with distorted arms to the south, a bright central bulge, and a single knot to the northwest. The positions in the table now reflect this thinking. Unfortunately, there seem to be no high-resolution images of the galaxy available. Courtney Seligman has given us color images from the DSS, and also suggests that this is a single galaxy. But this is outside the SDSS footprint and there are no HST images available, either. But this does indeed look like a single peculiar galaxy, at least based on the DSS2 images. ===== NGC 305 is a small asterism of six or eight stars at JH's discovery position; his description, "A small cluster of p closely scattered stars" confirms the identification. RNGC incorrectly placed the NGC number on a nearby CGCG galaxy. Unfortunately, PGC followed RNGC, so this number crept into RC3 as well. Sigh. The position depends a bit on exactly which stars are taken as members of the asterism. Tom DeMary includes a few more than caught my eye at first, so his position is about an arcminute different. But the identification as an asterism is not in doubt. ----- Coming across this again in March 2017, I dug out positions and proper motions for the eight stars that constitute the main "body" of the asterism, hoping to answer the following question: Could this be a real, albeit poor, cluster? A definitive answer will have to await the arrival of the Gaia proper motions a few years from now, but the tentative answer is "No, it is indeed no more than a random collection of stars at different distances." The problem is that the proper motions, with a few exceptions, are well within the errors of being zero. For your information and edification, I've listed in the big table a sampling of the proper motions that I found in the various star catalogues. For most of the stars, the motions effectively scatter around zero. I've calculated the means and standard deviations to satisfy my own curiosity. These show that the stars I label "m" and "mw" are probably a physical pair, but the others are scattered along the line of sight. ===== NGC 307. See the "notngc" files as well as NGC 308 in this file. ===== NGC 308 and NGC 310 are both stars. [All this is from a July 1989 letter to Malcolm Thomson; it's a bit wordy, but I've saved it like this since it has a few details in it about my pre-DSS working methods.] Since Lord Rosse measured the positions of NGC 308 and 310 in relation to NGC 307, I decided to do the same. Using a comparator with a millimeter scale and an "angle fan" scale, I measured the distances and position angles of objects surrounding NGC 307 on the Palomar Sky Survey print. Since the scale of the paper prints is different in the x and y directions by about 0.9%, the measurements are liable to be a bit off from what would be measured on a glass plate. Estimating the center of NGC 307 was also a problem, and the resulting errors probably swamped the print scale problem. Nevertheless, the measurements are adequate to unambiguously identify the objects in question. So, here is a table of the objects identified and measured by Lord Rosse and myself. I've also included [Malcolm Thomson's] measurement of the galaxy that the RNGC calls NGC 310. Object Observer PA Dist Date Notes (deg) (arcsec) GC 5126 Ld. R. 147 60 31 Dec 1866 Measure obviously approximate = N308 Ld. R. 149.7 52 23 Oct 1876 Mean of two measures = star HC 150+- 52 14 Jul 1989 PA approx GC 5128 Ld. R. 81 225 31 Dec 1866 "Another neb. susp. near." = N310 Ld. R. 84.8 239 23 Oct 1876 One measure only = star HC 84 231 14 Jul 1989 --- HC -- --- 25 Oct 1983 "Both novae are stars." eF nova Ld. R. ssf 3-4 min 8 Nov 1866 Estimated position Stars HC (same) (same) 14 Jul 1989 "Only stars here" Star Ld. R. 199 225 31 Dec 1866 Ld. R. 201.6 240.1 23 Oct 1876 "* 11m. sp [GC] 172" HC 201 235 14 Jul 1989 On [Thomson's] sketch Star Ld. R. 0+- 3.25min 23 Oct 1876 "* 11.12m, 3.25min exactly north of [GC] 172." HC 357 170 14 Jul 1989 On [Thomson's] sketch Gal B HC 91 303 14 Jul 1989 On [Thomson's] sketch MT 90+- 4min Jun 1989? Gal C HC 215 185 14 Jul 1989 On [Thomson's] sketch Gal "D" HC 338 92 14 Jul 1989 On [Thomson's] sketch, unlabeled That's all the observations there are, aside from the modern work on NGC 307 (photometry, spectroscopy, etc.). Dreyer's NGC positions (and the offsets from NGC 307) are derived from Lord Rosse's measurements, so don't give us any new data. As you can see, my measurements agree (within the errors, a few arc seconds, and about 2 deg in PA) exactly with Lord Rosse's, and pinpoint the two stars as the "nebulae" that he found. Adding to my conviction that this must be correct is the fact that the galaxies C and D are approximately the same brightness as B, yet Lord Rosse mentions neither, in spite of the fact that he noticed the star further to the north of D and NGC 307. I also suspect that [Thomson] is correct that the "...2st., 13.14 m. sf" Lord Rosse's "...similar object, more stellar" seen during the 1876 observation are probably the two that [Thomson] mentioned, but that he (LdR) again missed the real nebula (B). There is a faint possibility that Lord Rosse actually saw the nucleus of B and just one of the sf stars, but this would need confirmation. I think he also may have glimpsed the faint star very close sff NGC 307 on 8 Nov 1866: "...on the p side is either a * close or some other appearance different to the f. side." However, since there is no star on the western side that I can see on the print, it is only the "some other appearance to the f. side" that offers evidence of this, so I wouldn't want to push this. In sum, I have no choice but to stand by my original conclusion that both NGC 308 and 310 are stars mistaken for nebulae. The agreement in the distances and position angles from NGC 307 allows no other conclusion. ----- In March 2016, I received from Yann Pothier a list of "novae" in LdR's monograph that included a galaxy near NGC 307. That galaxy is the one called "eF nova" in the list above. Yann suggested that the object is actually the faint galaxy south-southwest of NGC 307. Following up on this, I noticed what at first I took to be a superposed star on the eastern side of the bright galaxy -- above I quote the observation from 8 Nov 1866 (actually by R.S. Ball, LdR's observer at the time) noting a star on the west side of the galaxy. Since Ball was also responsible for the discovery of the "eF nova" three or four arcminutes south-southeast, I'm going to suggest that he had his directions reversed. So, if the superposed object -- actually a background galaxy -- that he saw is on the eastern side of NGC 307, then the "eF nova" is probably three or four arcminutes south-southwest. Indeed it is. See the "notngc" files for a bit more. ===== NGC 310. See NGC 308. ===== NGC 311. See NGC 313. ===== NGC 313 is a triple star (the third star is very close to the northern of the brighter two) about an arcminute northwest of NGC 315. Lord Rosse and his observers saw the group (NGC 311 and NGC 318 are the other two bona fide galaxies in it) on six different nights, and saw the triple as nebulous on all but one night when it was noted as a double star (the sketch was apparently made on that night as it shows N313 as a double star). Micrometric offsets, the final set by Dreyer, from N315 on three of the six nights point exactly to the triple. In deriving the position from these measures, I've given Dreyer's observations double weight; by the time of his measurements, LdR's micrometer was a well-calibrated instrument, and Dreyer was skilled in its use. The southern star of the triple is just bright enough that it was picked up in GSC. The position I adopted when I first went over the field is midway between this and the image of the northern two stars. By March 2017 when I reduced LdR's measurments, SDSS DR13 and Gaia DR1 positions were available for all three stars. Until Gaia releases proper motions for the stars, I have adopted the SDSS positions. ===== NGC 315. See NGC 313, NGC 316, and NGC 318. ===== NGC 316 is a single star 45 arcsec east of NGC 315. The Parsonstown observers have four micrometric measurements of it, all referred to N315, so there is no confusion as to which object they were looking at. See NGC 313 for more on the observations of the field made with the 72-inch reflector. ===== NGC 318. Even though Lord Rosse or R.J. Mitchell, his observer at the time, saw this on just one of the six nights on which he observed the group around NGC 315, it is nevertheless correctly placed in his diagram, and is correctly described by him. The NGC position is pretty good. ===== NGC 321. The mess with this number is partly my fault. While working on RC2, I noticed that there is nothing at the (incorrect) RC1 position of "A0055." However, MCG -01-03-041 is just one degree south and 0.1 minute east of the RC1 position. I immediately jumped at this, and followed MCG in misidentifying the galaxy as N321. Early versions of SEGC perpetuate the error. However, the real NGC 321 is actually MCG -01-03-043 (which MCG calls N325, but that is MCG -01-03-45; are we confused yet?!). It was found by Marth in August or September of 1864, and is the first -- and faintest -- of four. The others are NGC 325 = MCG -01-03-045, N327 = MCG -01-03-047, and N329 = MCG -01-03-048. Marth's positions are very good, and his brief descriptions are appropriate. Even so, MCG managed to misidentify the first two of the four. By the way: the galaxy called "A0055" in RC1 is MCG -01-03-041 (I got the correct object, but put the wrong name on it). This object is the parent galaxy of SN 1939D, discovered by Zwicky (see Harvard Announcement Card #518), and included in his sample in ApJ 96, 28, 1942. He gives a relatively coarse position (00h 54m, -05d 20m; labeled "1938.0" in the ApJ paper, but "1939.0" in the HAC) which is nevertheless good enough to pinpoint MCG -01-03-041 as the correct galaxy. He notes the type as "Sb" in ApJ; he classified it on the 18-inch Schmidt film on which the supernova was found. SEGC calls it "SB(r)c pec" from a glass copy of the 48-inch POSS1 plate, in pretty good agreement. Zwicky also says in the HAC, "The spiral in which [the supernova] appears belongs to a small group of nebulae including N321, N325, N327, [and] N329 at the estimated distance of 7 million parsecs." Thus, the galaxy cannot be N321, so we can take his position as correct and pointing at MCG -01-03-041. (MCG -01-03-042 = Mark 966 is 4.0 arcmin on to the northeast, and is compact and overexposed on the POSS1, showing little trace of spiral structure; it would have been nearly stellar on the 18-inch films.) ===== NGC 324. John Herschel's observation reads: "F; S; Stellar; the bad definition of a south-easter prevents certainty, but I think it is not a star." His position (precessed to 1950.0): 00 54 55 -40 43.2. There is nothing here, but just 30 arcmin south at 00 54 56 -41 13.8 is a galaxy that agrees with Herschel's description, and was taken by ESO and RC3 as N324. I1609 (chosen by RNGC) at 00 57 28 -40 36.1 is also a possibility, but there is no easy digit error in the position that could account for Herschel's position. Therefore, I'm pretty sure that there is simply a 30 arcmin error in Herschel's position. ===== NGC 325 is MCG -01-03-045, not MCG -01-03-043. See NGC 321 for more. ===== NGC 327. See NGC 321. ===== NGC 329. See NGC 321. ===== NGC 331 may be MCG -01-03-012 which is 11m 30s west of the very rough position given by Leavenworth, who notes the RA as "doubtful." If we make a -10 minute correction to the RA, that places Leavenworth's nebula 1m 30s east of the MCG object. This is within the errors of being at the +2 minute systematic offset that many of the Leander McCormick nebulae show in their RAs. The declinations are usually within an arcminute, and there is a star (somewhat fainter than Leavenworth's rough estimate of 12th mag) three arcmin northeast of the galaxy. Since there is no other reasonable candidate object in the area, I've tentatively adopted the identification. There is apparently no extant sketch. Another suggested identification for N331 is MCG -01-03-039. But this has a very bright star just 5 arcmin west-northwest. Leavenworth would almost certainly have mentioned this, but does not. So, I think that is a less likely candidate than MCG -01-03-012, even though it is closer to the nominal position. ----- Doing a search along a 1-degree wide declination belt at NGC 331's J2000 Dec from 23 hours to 2 hours in RA turned up nothing at all that matched Leavenworth's description better than MCG -01-03-012. ===== NGC 333. See IC 1604. ===== NGC 336 is not, as I supposed earlier, a double star. Thanks to the efforts of Doug Wereb, Bob Bunge, and Brent Archinal, I have a notebook full of copies of the discovery sketches of about a third of the nebulae found at Leander McCormick. These are apparently all the sketches that still exist, and may be all there ever were. In any event, NGC 336 is included among these sketches. It is shown as a small, faint, circular nebula in a field including 3 stars. Fairly close to the (very inaccurate) L-M position is ESO 541-IG002, a faint, peculiar galaxy, perhaps a colliding pair, with the three stars shown in the correct relative positions. The objects suggested as NGC 336 by ESO and RNGC do not have stars nearby matching those in the sketch. Thus, they cannot be NGC 336. ===== NGC 339 is a globular (or rich open) cluster in the SMC. Its core is a bit eccentric, being displaced about 10 arcsec to the northwest from the center of the outer isophotes. Thus, the positions do not agree as well as might be expected from the cluster's relatively small apparent size. This is a feature shared by many clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. In general, the positions I've adopted for the NGC and IC objects are meant to be representative of the object as seen by the discoverer. Where the "feature" becomes a problem, I've explicitely named the part of the object to which the position applies. Thus, N339 has positions for its "core" as well as the "entire cluster." Finally, I have classified the SMC and LMC clusters purely on morphological grounds. Thus, N339 is a "globular" cluster because of its richness, compactness, and relative symmetry. An H-R diagram might tell a different story. Folks interested in the astrophysics of these things will do well to consult the literature to be sure about the classification of any given object. ===== NGC 340. See NGC 347 and IC 71. ===== NGC 342. See NGC 347 and IC 71. ===== NGC 343 and NGC 344 are a pair of faint galaxies superimposed on the western outskirts of a poor cluster of galaxies. Muller's position is about 4 minutes of time too far west -- the same direction, though about twice as far, as many other Leander McCormick objects are from their true positions -- but his declination is good, and his descriptions are appropriate. The galaxy and star taken as this pair in ESO are too far apart to match Muller's relative positions, the star is too bright, and the galaxy has too low a surface brightness and too faint a nucleus to warrant Muller's notation "sbMN." RNGC also incorrectly picked this galaxy as NGC 344, and ESO may have been following their lead. ===== NGC 344. See NGC 343. ===== NGC 345. See NGC 347 and IC 71. ===== NGC 346. See NGC 222. ===== NGC 347. This is one of a group of six nebulae found by Albert Marth (the others are NGC 340, 342, 345, 349, and 350). There are other fainter nebulae in the area, but Marth has picked out the six brightest. In particular, RNGC got a somewhat larger, but fainter, galaxy about 4 arcmin to the south. This is a spiral with low surface brightness arms, but with a bright nucleus. It is not large enough to have made it into SEGC. I would guess that only the nucleus would be visible at the eyepiece, and the proximity to the 7th magnitude HD 6031 = BD -07 159 = SAO 129088 would make it even harder to spot. The real NGC 347, which I picked up for SEGC, looks like a pair of interacting ellipticals close to Marth's position (however, it could well be simply a peculiar S0 with a dust lane, so I've retained just the single entry in SEGC). The total magnitude is about the same as the RNGC object, but since this has a much higher average surface brightness, it is more likely to be seen visually. A couple of additional comments: Marth's positions are so good here that they actually surprised me a bit. His positions have not impressed me in other areas of the sky (e.g. NGC 1474, which see, and the other galaxies found that same night -- five out of the ten are more than 5 arcmin off the true positions). But in this area, the positions do seem to be pretty good, so I followed them for the identifications. Bigourdan's observation of NGC 347 may also be relevant. He observed it only once (on 21 Nov 1889), but did not measure its position. His description points clearly to the correct object, however: "I suspect an exceedingly faint object which could be nebulous, and which is situated toward [PA =] 3 deg , d = 4 arcmin, with respect to BD -7 159." This is just where Marth's position places NGC 347, another indication that this really is the object which Marth saw. ===== NGC 349. See NGC 347 and IC 71. ===== NGC 350. See NGC 347 and IC 71. ===== NGC 358. We've taken this as just the four stars near the d'A's position. Dreyer's summary description "Cl, vl Ri" seems appropriate, given d'Arrest's brief comment: Compluscularum stellarum congeries -- levissimi momenti. Capta cum inspicerem cumulum h. 83, qui ejusdem fere indolis. For those, like me, who don't know Latin, the web offers several translators. I tried a couple of them, and was finally able to come up with this: A cluster of several stars -- not many members. Found when observing the cluster h 83 [NGC 366], which is nearly of the same nature. With all due respect to d'A, NGC 366 is a much more populous and impressive cluster. However, I suppose it is possible that d'A was including more stars in the area in his own object. His position is about 1.2 arcmin north of the center of gravity of the four stars. However, I don't want to make too much of this, and will look to the visual observers for guidance beyond the asterism we've chosen. By the way, this probably is indeed an asterism. Given their lack of significant proper motions, the two eastern stars are well in the background, while the western stars have different proper motions from each other. ===== NGC 366. See NGC 358. ===== NGC 370. Is this NGC 372 (which see)? D'Arrest's description reads (my translation), "Faint and diffuse, nucleus not condensed, * 13mag 15 arcsec s." There is nothing at his position (accurately transcribed into the NGC), but just 9 seconds of time east, and about 1 arcmin north is NGC 372 (which see), a triple star. On a night of bad seeing, I suspect that N372 might indeed match d'Arrest's description, though the 13th magnitude star -- which is 10.1 arcsec from the other two in the triplet -- is east-northeast, not south. Thus, it could well be that d'A's object is really just the western two stars of the triplet, rather than all three. d'A's position is also well off; other nebulae in the group that he measured the same night (7 October 1861) are close to his positions. So, I remain skeptical, and there are question marks on this number in the table. ----- Going over this again in August 2016, I see that d'A did not include this night (nor 12 October 1861) among his numbered nights which start at "1" on 27 October 1861. There is no obvious reason for this that I can see from his table. Perhaps he mentions it in the introduction to his observations, though since I do not know Latin, I am clearly not the one to scan that. ----- Stumbling over this once again in March 2017, I tried looking at offsets from d'A's position for possible digit errors. I found nothing that matched his description, particularly at one hour offsets (a few other of his positions are one hour out). I did notice, however, that all the objects that d'A observed on that October 1861 night are in the same area of the sky. In particular, the declinations are all in the range of +29 to +32. Any future searches probably don't need to go much further south or north. I have also sorted out the stars, their positions, and their names. I had made a bit of a mess of them earlier; my apologies! ===== NGC 371. See NGC 222. ===== NGC 372. This is a triple star west of the NGC 383 galaxy group. It was found the night of 12 Dec 1876 by Lord Rosse or his observing assistant at the time (Dreyer). The measured PA and distance from a star near the middle of the galaxy group unambiguously identifies the object, as does the note in its description about another 12th magnitude star at PA 166.5 deg with a distance of 74.0 arcsec. The description itself is telling: "The last nova looks at first sight like a hazy *, the higher power seems to resolve it, at all events sev. luminous points were seen." The triple, or perhaps the southwestern two stars, may also be one of d'Arrest's "novae" (NGC 370, which see). I don't think this is the case, but it is a possibility. See NGC 370 for the story. ===== NGC 377 is positively identified as MCG -04-03-053 by Leavenworth's sketch and description. His position is well off the galaxy, so both ESO and SGC missed the identification. ===== NGC 383. See NGC 372. ===== NGC 390 is a star. Bigourdan's offsets point exactly to a star at 01 05 08.6 +32 09 58 (B1950.0, reduced using the GSC coordinates for Bigourdan's comparison star), and his description "vF, stellar" is that which he gives to almost all of the stars which he mistook for nebulae. Hubble made the same identification in his 1917 thesis, but gave no position for the star. ===== NGC 396. RNGC places this object more than a degree away from Marth's position. Yet just 5 seconds of time east of the original position is a faint galaxy that Marth could well have seen with the 48-inch reflector. Unfortunately, Marth rarely mentions stars near his nebulae; had he done so in this case, the identity would have been clinched as there is a star just 10 or 12 arcsec northeast of the nucleus of the galaxy. Other than that, however, I see no reason not to identify this galaxy as N396. The GSC position is likely a blend of the galaxy and the star, and thus a few arcsec northeast of the true place. However, my own measurement puts the position a few arcsec north of the GSC position, so perhaps the GSC is OK. There is also a faint double star at 01 05 20 +04 15.7. I doubt that this is the object that Marth saw, but it could be. Still, I'll stick with the faint galaxy. ===== NGC 399. See NGC 400. ===== NGC 400, 401, and 402 are stars at Lord Rosse's measured offsets from NGC 403 and from a nearby star (his distance of N401 from N403 is an estimate, slightly too large). His fourth nova, NGC 399, is a galaxy, also at his measured offset. He also has a sketch showing N403, five nearby stars, and N400 and N401, all in their correct relative positions. ===== NGC 401 is a star. See NGC 400 for a discussion. ===== NGC 402 is a star. See NGC 400 for a discussion. ===== NGC 403. See NGC 400. ===== NGC 404 is only 6 3/4 arcminutes nnw of beta Andromedae; it is often not easy to pick up visually because of the glare of the star. This is one of the nearest early-type galaxies, only 3.5 Mpc distant, not too far beyond the edge of the Local Group. See NGC 537 where this object figures peripherally in the identification of several galaxies found the same night by WH. ===== NGC 405 is a double star. It was found by John Herschel and is h2380 in his Cape Observations. He has this to say about it: `[RA] 01 00 45.1: [NPD] 137 35 13 (1830.0). A star 7m? After a long and obstinate examination with all powers and apertures, I cannot bring it to a sharp disc and leave it, in doubt whether it be a star or not. The star B 137 immediately preceding offered no such difficulty, giving a good disc with 320. [JH's italics:] No doubt a "Stellar Nebula."' I noted earlier, "JH's object is clearly a double star on the Southern Sky Survey (was it closer together in JH's time?), and I put it in the SGC Notes as such." However, on the DSS image, the two stars are not resolved. SIMBAD has the separation as 1.2 arcsec at 191 degrees (measured in 1954), and has another fainter star (component "C") at 47.5 arcsec and 81 degrees in 1913. That fainter star is partially covered by the diffraction spike on the Schmidt plate. In any event, we now know why JH could not bring the star to a "sharp disc". ===== NGC 407. See NGC 408. ===== NGC 408, Schultz's "Nova III," is a star at his carefully measured position. It is just 8 seconds west of NGC 410 = H II 220, which Schultz also measured. Note that he has reversed the names of "Nova III" and H II 219 = NGC 407 in his 1875 MN paper. Dreyer has sorted them out for the NGC, however. Schultz's other discovery ("Nova IV" = NGC 414) in the area, is a peculiar interacting galaxy. His position for it is excellent, as are those for NGC 407 and NGC 410. ===== NGC 410. See NGC 408. ===== NGC 411 is also = NGC 422, which see. ===== NGC 412. Leavenworth has left us a sketch of this nebula, as well as the usual poor position and brief description. Unfortunately, his sketch shows only one star in the field, about 5 arcmin southwest of the nebula, so the field will not be easy to recognize. The sketch is one of the few to have the orientation marked, so that is not a problem here as it is with some of the LM nebulae. In fact, I can't find Leavenworth's object anywhere near his position. Nor are there any other nebula/star pairs within several degrees of that position that match the sketch, either. The galaxy chosen by ESO, 3.8 minutes preceding and 19 arcmin south of Leavenworth's position does not match the sketch, so that cannot be the object, either. Leavenworth added a note "Neb?" to his description, so it is possible that the object is simply a star. However, I could not even find two stars in the correct relative orientation in the area that would match the sketch. The sketch is dated 15 Oct 1885. Leavenworth made at least four other sketches that same night. They are of N377, N540, N635, and N872 (all of which see). Of these, N540's identification is unsure, and N635 is three degrees south of its nominal position. Assuming all four identities, though, the average offset of Leavenworth's positions in RA is +25.3 seconds of time with a mean error of +-32.2 seconds, and a standard deviation in one observation of +-64.5 seconds (all are at roughly the same declination, so the conversion to arcseconds can be ignored given the size of these numbers). In Dec, the equivalent numbers are -5.3 arcmin, +-4.2 arcmin, and +-8.4 arcmin. Given offsets and errors of this size, and the three-degree accidental error for N635, NGC 412 could be ANYwhere within several degrees of Leavenworth's nominal position. But I still can't find it. So, unless other folks want to spend more time on the field, NGC 412 is probably irretrieveably lost. ===== NGC 414. See NGC 408. ===== NGC 420. See NGC 421. ===== NGC 421 may be one of the several faint stars or wide double stars west of NGC 420. WH found the objects on 12 Sept 1784, describing them as "Two. Both eF, vS. The following is the largest." The field was examined again by JH, LdR, d'Arrest, and Bigourdan, none of whom found NGC 421, but all of whom placed NGC 420 within 5 seconds of time of WH's position for the pair. Dreyer has a curious statement in his note in the Scientific Papers (1912). Citing the observers above as having "... seen only one nebula," he goes on with "no doubt the following one." Yet all the observers have assigned the preceding number (H III 154 = N420) to the object. Dreyer himself followed JH's lead in this, giving the earlier number to the object that JH, d'A, and LdR all saw. In any case, there is no nebula in the area that might be N421. Since assigning the number to one of the stellar objects mentioned above is pure speculation, I'm not going to do it. Thus, N421 is "Not found." ===== NGC 422 is an accidental duplicate entry for NGC 411. There is nothing at the place of this SMC object on the sky, and the faint cluster (IC 1641) 30+ seconds of time to the east is almost certainly too faint for JH to have picked up. This piqued my curiosity, and I found that NGC 422 comes from JH's table of "Stars, Nebulae, and Clusters in the Nubecula Minor" where it is number 162. (Dreyer has correctly copied the position and class -- "III" = vF nebula -- into the NGC.) In that table, JH also has a sweep symbol in the "Zone" column indicating that the object comes from the sweeps with the 20-foot reflector rather than from his zone sweeps with a five-inch achromatic refractor (IC 1641 is certainly too faint to have been seen in the five-inch). However, no such object exists in JH's big table of "Reduced Observations of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars". There is, however, an entry in the "Reduced Observations ..." table, for NGC 411 (= h 2384) at just one minute of time preceding the position for NGC 422. Furthermore, it has two positions given, the first of which has become number 157 in the Nubecula Minor table, while the second position is, as we've seen, that for number 162 in the same table but with the RA increased by exactly one minute of time; the north polar distance is correctly copied. It's clear, then, that the object was accidentally duplicated in the SMC table, and therefore eventually given two NGC numbers. One other note: Delisle Stewart, working off plates taken at Harvard's Arequipa "observing station" in Peru, noted for this object "Only 3 eF, sts, close together, not a neb." Close to the position he gives (the NGC place precessed to 1900), there is indeed a triangle of three stars. I make the position of the center of gravity of the triangle 01 07 06, -72 02.0 (B1950). I'm not certain that these are the stars that Stewart was referring to, but it seems likely. In any case, I don't believe that Stewart's note helps in locating NGC 422, but wanted to mention his remark so that it causes no future confusion. (Note, too, that Stewart has another faint cluster just a minute of time on east of his three stars -- this is IC 1641 [which see], a separate object with a story of its own.) ===== NGC 430. See IC 85. ===== NGC 443 = IC 1653. D'Arrest has a single observation of the galaxy from the night of 8 October 1861. He published it in AN 1500, and again in his big monograph. The declination is 0.5 arcmin greater in the monograph, but it is still nine arcmin too small. I suspect a digit error in the arcminute 10's place. With that, the position would be within an arcmin or so of the true position. D'A's note about the 15th magnitude star 8.3 seconds of time preceding the galaxy is correct -- the actual distance is 7.9 seconds. Javelle rediscovered the galaxy over 40 years later in 1903. His micrometric observation, re-reduced with respect to a modern position for his comparison star, is within a couple of arcseconds of the modern positions. ===== NGC 444 = IC 1658. Lord Rosse discovered NGC 444, observing it on four separate nights. He placed it roughly five arcmin west of NGC 452, but did not make any micrometric measurements of it. The NGC position is probably from Dreyer himself, and is about 30 seconds west of the actual position. The identity is secure, however -- the galaxy and surrounding star field are exactly described by LdR and his observers. Javelle's position for IC 1658 is within a few arcsec of the GSC position, so the identity of this object is also secure. Javelle's comparison star, BD +30 192, is, not coincidentally (it is the brightest star in the area), mentioned by Lord Rosse who notes that NGC 444 is about twice as far from NGC 452 as the star. ===== NGC 446 = IC 89. Found by Marth in 1864, this is one of his objects that he "verified" -- that is, reobserved. Nevertheless, his RA (and therefore, the NGC's) is just one minute of time off the true position. This is probably a transcription or typographical error. The declination is within an arcminute of being correct, however. IC 89 has a good micrometrically measured position in IC1 from Javelle's first list. RNGC has suggested that UGC 794 is NGC 446. That galaxy, though, is considerably fainter than the real N446, and its position is off by odd amounts from Marth's: 13 seconds of time, and 7 arcminutes. That identity is therefore unlikely. ===== NGC 447 = IC 1656. This is misnamed "NGC 449" in CGCG, and that has unfortunately carried over into several other catalogues. The galaxy was found by d'Arrest who observed it on four different nights, each time measuring its position with a micrometer. His position is good, as is his description, especially concerning an 11th magnitude star 9.2 seconds of time east and 110 arcseconds north of the nebula -- the star is there, so the identification is secure. IC 1656 was found about 40 years later by Barnard. Since this is one of the nebulae which he "published" in a private communication to Dreyer, we have only the position and description in the second IC to guide us. His RA is good, but the declination is about 1.4 arcmin north of the galaxy. His description is similarly confused, "Neb, S * close sf, *9 sf 3 arcmin." The "S * close sf" is indeed superposed on the southeastern edge side of the galaxy (the GSC position is a blend of this and the galaxy), but the "* 9 sf 3 arcmin" is actually northwest by three minutes. It is the same star that d'Arrest called 11th magnitude. Still, the are no other galaxies in the area with quite that arrangement of stars around them, so Barnard's object is certainly the same one that d'Arrest had seen earlier. See NGC 451 = IC 1661 for more about Barnard's observations in the area. ===== NGC 449. Mislabeled "NGC 447" in CGCG, this galaxy (Markarian 1) has had its incorrect name unfortunately carried over into several other catalogues. There is, however, no doubt as to the correct number as the NGC position (from a micrometric measurement by Stephan) is within a few arcsec of the GSC position. This is the first of three new "nebulae" in the area that Stephan found late in 1881 using the large refractor at Marseille. The other two are NGC 451 and NGC 453, both of which see for more information. ===== NGC 451 = IC 1661, and is another of Barnard's IC discoveries sent directly to Dreyer (Stephan discovered the object, and his observation led to the NGC entry). It is also the second of two nebulae which Barnard found in the area. Like the first (NGC 447, which see), there is possible confusion about its identification. In this case, Barnard's description is sparce, "eF, S, R" and his position has the RA of NGC 451, but is closer in declination to NGC 449. Two things convince me that Barnard reobserved NGC 451 (which is just where Stephan measured it to be): 1) this galaxy is brighter than N449 by at least a magnitude, and it is larger, too. 2) Barnard's declination is about 1.2 arcmin north of the true place of NGC 451, just as his declination of N447 is about 1.4 arcmin north of that galaxy. If he observed both objects on the same night, as seems likely, then the offset will be systematic. Since we know the identification of N447 = I1656 is solid, it follows that N451 must be I1661. ===== NGC 452. See NGC 444. ===== NGC 453 is a linear triple star found by Stephan. The stars are exactly where Stephan measured them to be, and his description mentions "one or two" vF stars involved. On a night of less than perfect seeing, the three stars must indeed resemble a faint nebula laced with even fainter stars. ===== NGC 456. See NGC 460. ===== NGC 460 is the second of at least three HII regions/stellar associations in the SMC. JH's position coincides with a bright knot on the southern edge of a nebulous mass with several bright stars nearby. I've taken this as the object that JH saw. About 2 arcmin southeast is another double-lobed nebula involved with many stars. JH does not have any entry in his CGH list that corresponds to this, though it should have been bright enough for him to pick out. Other objects in the area that he saw include NGC 456 (similar to N460, but larger), NGC 465 (a stellar association without nebulosity), and h2398 (not in the NGC) which JH places 2 minutes of time west of NGC 460 where there are no nebulae or clusters he could have seen. His description makes this last object sound like it is NGC 460, but it could be NGC 456 with a one minute error. Here is what he had to say about it: "Chief centre of condensation at southern edge of an irreg[ularly-] figured nebulous mass 2' diameter." Since he saw this in one of the same sweeps in which he picked up NGC 460, I'm inclined to believe that this is NGC 456 with a one-minute error in the RA. JH may have come to the same conclusion. There is certainly no note in either GC or NGC that mentions the missing CGH object. ===== NGC 464 is clearly just a double star (see the 2MASS J-band image, and the SDSS g-band image), though I noted it earlier as (first) a double, then as a triple. I should have just left well enough alone ... Here is the historical note. Though credited to Tempel (in his fifth list of observations of nebulae), it was actually found by the BD observers as they swept the field. Tempel has only this to say about it: "Im Atlas vom Argelander einen kleinen neuen Nebel verzeichnet in: 01 11 25, +34 12" [In Argelander's Atlas, there is a small, new nebula plotted at ...]. Since the BD was made with a 78-mm refractor, Argelander's observer could not have seen the faint galaxy fingered by RNGC. ----- Checking the BD (both the original version from Bonn in 1903, and the ADC's 1993 publication of their digitization), I do not find the "nebula" -- or indeed any star -- at the position given by Tempel. Dreyer made the same assumption -- that the object was from the BD with an equinox of B1855 -- when he precessed the position given by Tempel. The nebulae shown on the BD charts may not be listed in the catalogue itself. Brian Skiff tells me that Lowell Observatory's 1954 "Third Corrected" edition of the BD charts does not show the nebula. So, we need to dig out earlier editions -- preferably the first edition from the 1860s -- to check further on this. Brian additionally sends along some data for the double star, apparently an optical pair: the combined V magnitude is 12.1, pretty faint for the BD observers, but not unheard of. The position angle and distance of the two stars is changing slowly and smoothly from 334.8 deg, 8.98 arcsec in 1947.86 (AC2000) to 336.6 deg, 10.13 arcsec in 2015.0 (Gaia DR1). ===== NGC 465. See NGC 460. ===== NGC 468 is not IC 92, as I have long supposed. Courtney Seligman wrote in March 2015 suggesting that the NGC object might be identical with NGC 472, a brighter galaxy than IC 92, and at the same declination. After looking at JH's Sweeps for a day, I wrote back to Courtney, "The short answer is that you're right: NGC 468 is almost certainly a second observation of NGC 472." Here is a somewhat condensed version of the longer answer: At first, I was as puzzled as you were by the fact that JH had apparently swept up a fainter galaxy instead of a brighter one. But this is indeed possible because of the way that both Herschels swept the sky -- they used their telescopes as meridian instruments, "sweeping" north and south in short arcs of typically 2.5 to 3 degrees, while the diurnal motion carried the sky westward across the meridian through their field of view. It's possible to miss objects if the north-south arcs are too long and the diurnal motion carries the sky too far west. I thought that this might have happened here. Wolfgang Steinicke has found cases in William Herschel's sweeps where it actually accounts for missing nebulae. With this kind of sweeping, errors in RA are just as likely as those in Dec. Indeed, in both the Herschels' observations, there are many RA errors of not just digits (e.g. 1 minute, 10 minutes, etc), but of seemingly odd amounts like 18 seconds, 46 seconds, and other strange numbers. That's the case here where, as Courtney noted, the Dec is correct for N472, but the RA is off by 37 seconds. This inspired me to dig into JH's Sweep 106 on 22 November 1827. I did a rough "reduction" of his observation w.r.t. one of the stars in the sweep, sigma Trianguli. That got me to within a few arcminutes of the position in the NGC, but not close enough to really verify JH's position. So, I had to ask how he did his reductions, a question that I've been curious about, but never had to answer before. (JH, by the way, describes his reduction technique in detail in one of his early papers on double stars. This paper, unfortunately, does not seem to be currently on-line.) After reading through many of his early sweeps -- which are preserved in a "fair copy" up to Sweep 107 so they are more legible than the actual observing logs -- I worked out what the entries in the logbooks mean. Here is the observation of NGC 468: 01 12 45 -29 2 01 10 00 The first three numbers are a clock or watch reading, the 4th is a count on a chronometer ticking off 130 (*not* 120) "beats" per minute, the fifth is the eyepiece wire -- there were two of them (though JH also occasionally used the trailing edge of the eyepiece field as a third "wire") with which he timed the meridian passage, and the last three numbers are the NPD "index" on a scale marked in degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc. To reduce the RA, JH applies various corrections to these measurements, the main ones being the clock correction for each wire, along with the difference between the transit and the count of the chronometer "beat." (All this, incidentally, must have been recorded by JH's assistant, usually John Stone, finally mentioned by name in the Cape of Good Hope Observations, so that JH would not have had to ruin his night vision.) The clock corrections, as well as the index zero points are worked out by using known star positions, of course. For this sweep, JH has clock corrections of -1m 37.0s for wire 1, -2m 13.5s for wire 2, and -2m 45.9s for the trailing edge of the field. Applying the number for wire 2, along with 13.4 seconds for the 29 chronometer "beats" to the 01 12 45 clock reading gives an RA of 01 10 18.1 for the date of observation (in this case, JH simply took 1828, close enough given his usual accuracy). Similarly, the mean NPD zero point is +57d 02' 36" for the sweep, so the NPD is 58 12 36, again for epoch 1828. JH then precessed this to 1830 with his precession tables (which I haven't uncovered yet), but using the modern precession, these come close to the numbers that JH included on his reduction pages, that he copied into his published papers, and that Dreyer eventually copied into the NGC. Going through the reduction again shows that there is no large error in JH's calculations or the resulting positions, in either RA or NPD. But, looking at the log, I noticed that the "2" notation for the wire number appears to have a "1" written over it. It's not very clear, and could well be the result of the photocopying process as the RAS people were copying the page for the Herschel Archive. But the "-29" has a similarly overstruck "2", so I wondered what would happen if the wire number actually was "1" and not "2". Going through that reduction gave me the RA as 01 10 54.6, with the same NPD, 58 12 36, for 1828. This becomes 01 20 30.2, +32 41 45 for J2000. Compare this with the modern value of 01 20 28.7, +32 42 33 from UCAC for NGC 472 -- there it is. So, it looks to me like the wrong wire was recorded in the Sweep. If this is the only mistake, it seems reasonable to simply adopt JH's published position and correct it by the +36.5 seconds of time between the first and second wires at the same declination. The agreement in position between the two observations is even closer with this easy fix. All this makes additional sense if JH actually saw the brighter NGC 472 rather than the fainter IC 92. We can't be absolutely sure that this is the correct explanation, of course, but this looks like another kind of "digit error" that could happen fairly commonly. I will re-examine other of JH's apparent RA errors to see if the same reasoning can recover other "lost" or misidentified objects that he observed. (A couple of additional cases of possibly mistaken wires are the clusters NGC 6396 and NGC 6400, both of which see. Their identifications are not in doubt, but the RA's are off.) ===== NGC 469. See NGC 475. ===== NGC 471. See NGC 475. ===== NGC 474 is an example of a "shell" galaxy, perhaps the result of a merger of two or more individual galaxies. See Turnbull, Bridges, and Carter, MNRAS 307, 967, 1999 for a recent photometric investigation of this object. ===== NGC 475 = IC 97. Marth discovered three galaxies here (NGC 469, 471, and 475), and his positions are pretty good. Two of his positions got changed for the NGC, however -- for the worse. Dreyer credits Peters for N475 as well as Marth, and it is apparently Peters's position which throws off the NGC. Marth's original position is within a minute of Bigourdan's measured place for IC 97, so the identity is certain. The object which Bigourdan calls N475 is a star near the incorrect NGC position. ===== NGC 480. The identification is not quite sure since there is no sketch of the object and its field. Nevertheless, the faint galaxy I've assigned the number to is not too far from Leavenworth's position, and matches his description. ----- Note, too, that Leavenworth's RA is east of his RA for NGC 481 (which see), a brighter galaxy about 45 arcminutes to the northeast. Even though his relative declinations, sizes, and magnitudes are correct, his RAs are not. Fortunately, Swift (and later Howe) picked up the brighter object, so it has a good position. This does, however, switch the order of the two objects in the NGC compared with the Leander McCormick list, a potential source of confusion. ===== NGC 481. The stars that Leavenworth describes in his Note, "*12.5, np 1'; *12, nf 2'" are just where he says they are, and his position is not too far off. As with NGC 480, there is no sketch, but the description of the star field is clear and correct, so there is no problem with this identification. On 20 November 1886, Lewis Swift also picked up this object. He noted a "F * nr np"; this must be the first of the two stars that Leavenworth mentions. Even though Leavenworth's place is not too bad in this case, Swift's is a bit closer to the galaxy. This was fortunate as Dreyer adopted Swift's position for the NGC. Finally, in the first of his Monthly Notices articles (MN 58, 356, 1898), Herbert Howe provides a micrometrically measured position that Dreyer included in the IC2 Notes. Howe's place is within a few arcseconds of the modern position for the galaxy. ===== NGC 483. See NGC 499. ===== NGC 486, about 5 arcmin north-northwest of NGC 488, is a compact galaxy with a faint star superposed on its eastern side. LdR's sketch is accurate, as are his offsets. ===== NGC 488. See NGC 486. ===== NGC 490. See NGC 492. ===== NGC 492 has a somewhat fainter companion about an arcmin southwest. LdR does not mention two objects here, and his micrometric offset of N492 from N490 is exactly on the brighter object, so there is no possible confusion of identities here. ===== NGC 495. This is one of three -- the others are NGC 496 and NGC 499 -- that WH found on the night of 13 September 1784, and for which he measured only a single position. In the fair copy of the sweep, he (or CH?) comments in parentheses, "I believe the time should be -,5". If this is so, then the RAs should be 30 seconds of time less than he entered. This, however, would put his position 30 seconds of time west of the galaxies; his published offsets (from beta And) are very close to being correct as they are. So, we can't do much about his suggestion of an uncertain time aside from noting it. At least he flags the RA with double colons in the sweep, though he did not carry that uncertainty over into the published paper. For more on the field around beta And, and the uncertainties in WH's data there, see NGC 499 and NGC 537. ===== NGC 496. This is a companion to NGC 495 and NGC 499 (see both of these for more), also found by WH. He measured a single position for the three objects, and flagged the RA offset with double colons in the sweep. Those colons did not make it into his published list. ===== NGC 498 is the object labeled "D" in the first two of LdR's diagrams of the group around NGC 499. Though he has no measured offsets for it, he clearly saw it the second night: "vvF, but certain" and the diagrams leave no doubt as to the correct object. ===== NGC 499 = IC 1686 is the brightest of a moderately compact group of galaxies in a cluster of which NGC 507 is the dominant member. It, with six others in the cluster, was found by WH (see NGC 495 for a bit more on WH's observation of NGC's 495, 496, and NGC 499, which he treated as a triplet with a single position). JH reobserved five of the six, but mislabeled a "nova" (NGC 483) as the first of his father's objects (d'Arrest makes the same mistake). Lord Rosse has observations on 8 different nights, and -- with the exception of NGC 483 in the first observation -- got the identifications correct. Schultz also got the correct objects, and Dreyer sorted the field out well for the NGC. Javelle swept over the field late in 1899, finding and measuring a dozen objects in the area that he took to be previously uncatalogued. However, his accurate position and exact description of one of those "novae" points directly at NGC 499 -- in spite of the fact that he has a footnote on the object saying that "NGC 499 was also measured." He has clearly misidentified the object in the crowded field. Since he unfortunately does not publish his measurements of the NGC objects, we cannot now be sure just which galaxy he mistook for NGC 499. Dreyer did not catch Javelle's error (Javelle's absolute declination is about 1.7 arcmin off since he used the BD position, also 1.7 arcmin off, for his comparison star), so the galaxy now carries the IC, as well as the NGC, number. ===== NGC 506 is a NOT the star just over an arcmin southwest of NGC 507 that I mistakenly fingered years ago. I finally reduced Dreyer's micrometric measurements (made with the 72-inch at Birr Castle in November 1874), and found that the star is the preceding, and slightly brighter, of a pair. Dreyer's position is about a second of time off the star, but nearby galaxies have the same offsets in his measurements. I'm not sure now what led to my misidentifying the star in NGC 507's corona, but it is certainly NOT NGC 506. The remainder of my earlier note, however, is more or less correct: It was found and its offsets measured on one night by LdR. The offsets are good and the identity is sure. This statement obviously now applies to the correct star, finally identified. My apologies! ===== NGC 507 is the brightest of a relatively poor, though nearby cluster of galaxies. There are several notes about the area; see e.g. NGC 499 = IC 1686, and NGC 506. ===== NGC 510 is a double star found by Schultz. His micrometrically measured position is within a few arcseconds of being correct. There are no other objects that he could have seen within two arcminutes of his position, so the identity is secure. ===== NGC 513. This is one of the galaxies that WH found the night of 13 Sept 1784. This, along all but one of the others, have poor positions in NGC. RC3 managed to get the correct position, however. See NGC 537 for the story. ===== NGC 515. See NGC 537. ===== NGC 517. See NGC 537. ===== NGC 520 is apparently an interacting galaxy. Classified as an I0 by de Vaucouleurs, the distorted dust lane and unresolved bulge with plumes may be the result of a collision. Vorontsov-Velyaminov marks three components in his Atlas of Interacting Galaxies; I've provided positions for them in the table. However, in the near-infrared, the structure is simpler with a bright peak at the center connected by a bridge to a somewhat fainter knot to the northwest (this fainter knot has no optical counterpart). The central peak breaks up into at least three hot spots in the 2MASS J-band. The J2000.0 positions are Central peak, K-band: 01 24 34.89 +03 47 30.1 Central peak, H-band: 01 24 34.86 +03 47 29.9 Central peak, J-band: 01 24 34.86 +03 47 28.3 southeast spot Central peak, J-band: 01 24 34.65 +03 47 35.0 northwest spot Central peak, J-band: 01 24 35.04 +03 47 33.1 northeast spot Northwestern knot: 01 24 33.33 +03 48 02.8 The southern of the three optical components (VV 231b) corresponds most closely to the position of the infrared/radio nucleus. ===== NGC 523 = NGC 537, which see. I have chosen the position of the middle knot of this peculiar system as representing the object. It is the faintest of the knots, and the one probably not seen by d'A, but is close to the mean position of the two he did record. Also see NGC 5765 for a note on objects noted as double by WH or JH yet given just a single position. ===== NGC 529. See NGC 531 and NGC 537. ===== NGC 530 = IC 106, which see. Also see IC 1696 which is a different galaxy. ===== NGC 531 and NGC 542 are positively identified by LdR's sketch and offsets from NGC 536. However, Dreyer, apparently thinking that NGC 529 was the bright object reobserved by LdR, used an incorrect position for the reference object. So, the positions he gives in LdR's 1880 paper, and in the NGC, are off by about 40 arcsec. ===== NGC 534. See NGC 549. ===== NGC 536. See NGC 531 and NGC 537. ===== NGC 537 = NGC 523, and the surroundings. The night of 13 September 1784 was not a good one for WH's clock readings. With one exception (H II 224 = NGC 404), all eight objects for which he used Beta Andromedae as a comparison star are off in RA, and -- as it has turned out -- by different amounts. In the sweep, which I finally got to in July 2016, WH noted uncertainty in the RAs of five of the objects (NGC 495, 496, 499, 515, and 517), and recorded transit times for four others (NGC 515, 517, 536 and 537) only to a full minute of time (Dreyer, as we'll see below, was well aware of all of this). In addition, his descriptions -- with a few exceptions -- are scanty, so identifying his nebulae has proved problematical over the years. Here is the story, roughly in chronological order, as I first presented it years ago. Note that Wolfgang has recently (July 2014) reanalyzed the field in light of WH's sweeping path; a summary of his results is at the end of this note. WH's seven questionable objects (III 167 through III 173; NGC 515, 517, 513, 523, 536, 552, and 553, respectively -- yes, NGC 513 is out of order) all appeared in his sweep within 3 minutes of each other. Given the rush, he determined the positions for only five of them, lumping four together into two pairs, and treating the remaining three individually. In addition, Dreyer (as I pointed out above) noted that WH recorded three transits -- III 167/8, 170, and 171 -- to only a full minute of time. Finally, WH himself noted the final two as "a little doubtful." Of all this uncertainty, only that phrase made it into WH's first catalogue of nebulae where these were presented. JH has only five nebulae here. He claimed one (h120) to be the same as his father's III 171, and the western of that pair (h118) to be a nova. Auwers, and later d'Arrest, agreed with JH in making H III 171 = h 120, but noted the difficulties in WH's RAs for some of the nebulae. d'Arrest in particular pointed out discrepancies of about 40 seconds of time between his own RA's and WH's in several cases, and found what he thought was a new double nebula in the field (NGC 523). However, while assembling the GC, JH reinterpreted the field and chose to regard the nebulae that his father discovered as separate objects from his own. Dreyer, too, was aware of the problem when he compiled the NGC, and attempted to sort things out based primarily on d'A's observations. It's clear, however, that he was a bit uncertain about the state of the field as he wrote NGC notes for some of the objects, and commented again on all of them in his 1912 edition of WH's Scientific Papers. How can we make sense out of the two Herschels' observations? Let's start by assuming that WH's nebulae are properly ordered by RA, and that their polar distances (Declinations) are also relatively correct. Doing this, and looking at JH's and d'A's later observations, we can make some tentative identifications for NGC 513, 515, 517, and 536. Plotting the difference in RA (WH minus "true") for these, we see that as the time went on, WH's RA's got worse. Plotting a straight line through the data points, and putting a mark at WH's RA for III 170 = NGC 537 suggests an RA correction of about 0.9 minutes of time for it. This moves the RA back to within 0.2 arcmin of NGC 523, and confirms Dreyer's suspicion in the NGC Notes that WH's number belongs on this NGC number. Adding this point to the plot actually suggests that the slope might be even steeper. But what about N536 = III 171? Did WH really see that, or did he perhaps see its brighter, higher surface brightness companion, N529, which precedes it by about 40 seconds? (N536's two fainter companions found by Lord Rosse, N531 and N542, have problems of their own; they have a seperate note here under N531). Assuming WH in fact did see the western of the two objects, we can then draw a new line through the points on the plot (this steeper relationship suggests that WH's clock was running at about half speed, which it, of course, was not!) in a desperate attempt to recover his final two objects, N552 and N553. If we correct WH's RA accordingly, the position of these two objects falls close to CGCG 502-084 and an equally bright 15th magnitude star just west of it. Finally, I note that -- with the exception of NGC 513, the first object in the series -- all of WH's declinations here are 3-4 arcmin too large. Correcting those puts his positions near enough the galaxies I've noted in the table below. This lends a bit more support to the hypothesis I've sketched out. In the end, then, I'm suggesting these identifications for the nebulae in the area (the CGCG names added for verification): RA (2000.0) Dec NGC WH JH d'A CGCG III WH JH 01 24 26.81 +33 47 58.2 513 169 111 --- --- 521-020 01 24 38.50 +33 28 21.8 515 167 113 167 113 502-077 01 24 43.80 +33 25 46.5 517 168 114 168 114 502-079 01 25 20.76 +34 01 29.9 523=537 170 --- (Nova) 521-022 01 25 40.29 +34 42 46.8 529 171 118 --- 118 521-023 01 26 21.76 +34 42 11.1 536 --- 120 171 120 521-025 01 26 10.01 +33 24 20.5 552 172 --- --- --- --- = * 01 26 12.52 +33 24 18.5 553 173 --- --- --- 502-084 The careful reader will have already seen that the RA's for N552 and N553 are smaller than that for N536. This adds more weight to the idea that Herschel saw N529 rather than N536. A postscript: Both Auwers and d'Arrest comment on WH's insecure RA's for these objects. However, d'A apparently goes on to suggest that some of JH's RA's are off, too. But they aren't, so I clearly need to take the time to translate d'A's comments (that remains to be done as of July 2016). ----- There it stood until the summer of 2014 when Wolfgang went back to CH's fair copy of the sweep and reanalyzed it, making careful and justified assumptions about WH's sweeping methods related to the size of his field through his eyepiece. Rather than suggest a clock running at the wrong rate, Wolfgang showed that the crowding of the nebulae contributed to several inexactly recorded times. His detailed report will appear in his forthcoming book on WH's nebulae, but his conclusions are as follows: RA (2000.0) Dec NGC WH JH d'A CGCG III WH JH 01 24 26.81 +33 47 58.2 513 169 111 --- --- 521-020 01 24 38.50 +33 28 21.8 515 167 113 167 113 502-077 01 24 43.80 +33 25 46.5 517 168 114 168 114 502-079 01 25 20.76 +34 01 29.9 523=537 170 --- (Nova) 521-022 01 25 40.29 +34 42 46.8 529 --- 118 --- 118 521-023 01 26 21.76 +34 42 11.1 536 171 120 171 120 521-025 01 26 57.0 +33 33 28 552 172 --- --- --- --- = * 01 27 03.0 +33 32 55 553 173 --- --- --- --- = ** Note that only two of the NGC identifications are changed from my initial sorting out, and that only one of the WH numbers had to be moved for this particular group of nebulae. Wolfgang also looked closely at other of the Herschels' nebulae in the area. I'll comment on those as needed. ===== NGC 539 = NGC 563, which see. ===== NGC 540 is one of the 170 or so nebulae found at Leander McCormick in the mid-1880s to have a sketch. Unfortunately, the sketch shows only one star in addition to the nebula. However, that field is fairly well matched by ESO 542- G012 1 minute and 50 seconds east and about 5 arcmin south. I've taken that as a tentative identification for N540. See NGC 412 for another LM nebula with a sketch that did not work out so well. ===== NGC 542. See NGC 531. ===== NGC 544. See NGC 549. ===== NGC 546. See NGC 549. ===== NGC 549. Steve Gottlieb has suggested that the SGC and ESOB identification of this galaxy is incorrect. He is almost certainly right, in spite of the poor right ascension from John Herschel (18 seconds of time off); Herschel's declination is correct, though. The ESO/SGC galaxy is 15 arcminutes south and 4 seconds of time east of Herschel's position. Though this is brighter, it does not match Herschel's description ("eeeF, S, R, vgbM. The 4th of a group of 4."). Instead, this matches very closely what I'd expect him to see based on his descriptions of the other three galaxies in the group (NGC 534, 544, and 546, all "eeF, S, R, vgbM"). Accepting Steve's identification, the only error is in Herschel's RA. For each of the other three galaxies, Herschel has two observations, but only lists one for N549. There are no significant zero point offsets in the differences between the raw positions for the other three galaxies. This means that we have no reasonable way to "correct" the original position of N549 as given by Herschel. This in turn means that we are left with only the description to help us identify the galaxy. And that points directly to the object which Steve (and the original ESO list 5 in A&AS 31, 15, 1978) chose as NGC 549. ----- The object occurs in JH's Sweep 803 on 30 Nov 1837, where it is number 13. JH has four nebulae here observed in pretty rapid succession: NGC 534 (which he calls "N1"), NGC 544 ("N2"), NGC 546 ("N3"), and NGC 549 ("N4"). He noted the position of NGC 549 with respect to NGC 546: "fols 3 15[sec] +-" and "3' north of 3". While JH's estimated RA is off -- but note his "+-"! -- his relative NPD is correct for Steve's object. So, there is no doubt that it is the right one, that SGC is wrong, and that Andris Lauberts in his ESO list 5 is also correct. I suspect I sent him the "correction" before ESOB was published, and he followed my "advice". My apologies to all! ===== NGC 551. See IC 1707. ===== NGC 552 is probably a star. But is it the one I point to just northwest of CGCG 502-084? Wolfgang suggests that it is a different star (or perhaps a double star), but does not identify it in the preliminary analysis of the field that he has so far circulated (July 2014). Details will probably be presented in his forthcoming book on WH's observations. See NGC 537. ===== NGC 553 may be CGCG 502-084. However, Wolfgang believes that galaxy lies outside of WH's field in the sweep, and suggests instead that WH's object may be a single or double star. See NGC 552 and NGC 537 for more. ===== NGC 557 = IC 1703. NGC 557 comes from Swift's 6th list, sent in pieces to Dreyer before it was published in AN 2798. The final published description reads: "eF, S; B * f 15 seconds and is n of it." This differs a bit from the NGC description: "eF, S, R, * 10 nf," but not in any significant way. The star is actually southeast, but the galaxy is still almost uniquely identified by that star. Swift's RA is nearly 50 seconds of time out, and I wonder if he made a 1 minute error in reading his circles -- a 10 or 12 second error is somewhat closer to his usual accuracy. Bigourdan did not find N557 when he looked for it at the NGC place, but he did run across it a few minutes later. Thinking it was a "nova," he listed it as new and it ended up in the IC2 at its actual position. ===== NGC 558 is not equal to IC 117, which see. ===== NGC 559 is a fine open cluster seen by both WH and JH, though JH's NPD is one degree too far south. It has a "core/halo" structure, with the corona being composed of generally fainter stars. This may simply be an effect of patchy Galactic extinction, but I've given the diameters and positions for both the inner and outer parts of the cluster. ===== NGC 560 is identical to IC 117, which see. ===== NGC 563 = NGC 539. Leavenworth's description for NGC 563, particularly his comments "little extended 0 deg" (which applies to the bar) and "several faint stars following, in line north and south" exactly describes another discovery of his, NGC 539 (which he sketched; the star field around the galaxy matches the POSS1 star field). The position for NGC 563 is two minutes too far east, a common error in the Leander McCormick lists. Unfortunately, there is another galaxy about half a degree south of the poor position in NGC that has been taken by all the modern cataloguers (including me in SGC and the early versions of SEGC) as N563. However, the description just does not fit the object, and declination errors are far more unusual in the LM lists than RA errors. The identity with N539 is secure. ===== NGC 564. See IC 117. ===== NGC 568 = IC 1709, which see. ===== NGC 575 = IC 1710. The 2 degree error in declination is one of the few errors that can be traced to Dreyer himself. Entering this object in his 1878 GC Supplement, he miscopied the correct "69" (degrees of NPD from Stephan's 8th list) as "67". (It is also possible that the typesetter made a typographical error. If so, Dreyer did not catch it during proofreading.) He later transferred this exactly to the NGC, so it too has the incorrect degree of NPD. When the correction is made, the galaxy turns out to be the same as IC 1710, found and measured by Javelle. Had the NGC the correct position, Javelle no doubt would have not included the galaxy as a discovery of his own. Dreyer, of course, transcribed the position correctly the second time around. The equality was first noticed by Reinmuth, and mentioned by him in "Die Herschel Nebel" of 1926. ===== NGC 577 = NGC 580. Tempel claims to have found two nebulae 2m 50s following NGC 560 and 564, a pair found by WH. There is only one here, and it was also picked up by Swift in 1886 (more below) and, even earlier on 23 October 1867, by A. N. Skinner at Dearborn Observatory (see IC 1528 for that story). Tempel's position for it, apparently from a letter to Dreyer (the position in his first paper on nebulae is about two arcmin off the NGC position) is not bad. In particular, the NGC RA is less than two seconds of time off. Curiously, Dreyer also credits Tempel's second paper for this first nebula. I find no mention of it there, so suspect that Dreyer simply noted the wrong paper number. I'll check the rest of Tempel's papers to see if it is in fact mentioned in any of them. (It is in the 4th paper in AN 2347; see below.) The second of Tempel's nebulae is probably one of the stars in the area, but since he gives the position with a precision of only 10 seconds of time and 10 arcminutes, we have little hope of recovering his object (Dreyer adopted Swift's position for this object). There are two stars northeast of the galaxy, though, that are similar in brightness to others that Tempel mistook for nebulae (see e.g. NGC 4315 and NGC 4322). One is at 01 28 12.05, -02 13 01.0; and a second somewhat brighter star is at 01 28 19.78, -02 12 20.3 (both positions are for equinox B1950.0). As I mentioned above, Swift also picked up the galaxy, on the night of 20 November 1886. Since he made his RA 23 seconds larger than Tempel's, Dreyer believed that this was the second of Tempel's nebulae. So, he adopted Swift's position. Howe published a corrected RA in 1900, but has no other notes on the galaxy. Neither he nor Dreyer, who published Howe's correction as an IC2 Note, noticed that that made Swift's object, NGC 580, identical to NGC 577. Some observers might want to put one of these numbers onto one of the stars I've noted. But that number would be the following of Tempel's two, the one with the imprecise position -- and that is the one that Dreyer used for Swift's object. And we do not know for sure which star, if either, is the one seen by Tempel. So the easiest, and still a truthful, solution is to simply say that Tempel's one real nebula is identical to Swift's. ----- Looking at the field again in April 2017, I see that the only other galaxy in the area anywhere bright enough for Tempel to have possibly seen is IC 126. However, that is nearly a full minute of time west of NGC 577, so is unlikely to have been Tempel's second nebula. I've not even listed it in the main table as a possibility, but feel compelled to mention it here if someone else wants to follow up on it. In the earlier discussion above, I did not give Tempel's positions or notes. Here they are, translated by me with Google's help (the positions are for 1855): 01 23 23 -02 46 } Near the star Lalande 2666, which has in its field } the nebulae III 441-42, are still two more nebulae } following by 2m 50s, one as bright as the preceding 01 23 2... -02 4... } of Herschel's. He gives no discovery dates in this table, though his paper is dated May 1878, so the date was earlier than that. For the position table, I've precessed the second of Tempel's positions as if it were given "01 23 25, -02 45". As I mentioned above, Dreyer adopted Swift's position. I also found the second reference to NGC 577 in Tempel's 4th paper (AN 2347). Here he gives a more precise position for a single nebula and comments, "II class, somewhat brighter than the two preceding nebulae, H III 441, 442 [NGC 560, 564]." Tempel gives the discovery date as 14 August 1877, and the date of measurement as 14 November 1879. Wolfgang had also found this observation during his work on his 2010 book, and adds, "Because there is only one object at Tempel's place (13-mag galaxy), his first observation was erroneous; thus we have NGC 577 = NGC 580. Thus, Aaron Skinner (Dearborn Observatory) was the true discoverer." That pretty succintly sums up the situation, though I would point out that Tempel did in fact see at least one galaxy in 1877, so his first observation is not completely "erroneous". I find it rather curious, though, that he did not mention the second nebula in his 4th paper, even to correct his first observation. ===== NGC 580 = NGC 577, which see. ===== NGC 584 = IC 1712, which see. ===== NGC 586. See IC 1712. ===== NGC 587 is not IC 1713, which see. ===== NGC 603 is a triple star found by Lord Rosse or by his observer, Bindon Stoney, on 29 November 1850. Its position was unfortunately not well-determined, so there has been some puzzle over its identity. Dreyer, in the Notes to IC1, claimed that he could only see a faint star in the place of NGC 603. (I've been unable to identify this star with any certainty. One candidate is at 01 31 30.4, +29 55 58, B1950.0, while Bigourdan has two observations of another at 01 31 44.7, +29 56 42.) However, Lord Rosse's description makes the identification certain, even without a good position: "A S neb or Cl with 3 sts in it. It is about 8' ssp a ** whose components are of the 11 m." This is very close to the actual distance of the double from the triple star -- but there is no nebulosity or cluster associated with the triple. I suspect that the discovery was made on a night of relatively poor seeing, leading to the impression of accompanying nebulosity. The B1950.0 positions of the three stars, all from GSC, are *1 01 31 54.54 +29 58 37.1 = GSC 02293-00972 *2 01 31 54.85 +29 58 45.4 = GSC 02293-00966 *3 01 31 55.37 +29 58 31.6 = GSC 02293-00998. I've adopted the mean value for the main table. ----- Since I wrote that decades ago, SDSS and Gaia DR1 have become available. Both have four stars here, and the SDSS image clearly shows that the southeastern star is actually double, with the southeastern component of that being quite red while the northwestern component is blue (the other two stars of the "triple" are blue as well). So, I've recalculated the mean position for the asterism, this time using all four stars with the Gaia DR1 positions. Hopefully, this will do for the object for a few more decades ... ===== NGC 607 is a double star. (Is it possibly triple? The northern of two images on the POSS1 looks elongated, as if it were a close double. The DSS image, from the UK Schmidt, looks like a single star). D'Arrest's position is exact, and his description appropriate, particularly regarding the 9th magnitude star 29.7 seconds east and 2 arcmin north. ===== NGC 608. See NGC 618 and NGC 627. ===== NGC 610 and 611. This pair of objects is probably irretrieveably lost, thanks to Muller's poor discovery positions. I searched the sky for several degrees in all directions from the nominal positions, but turned up nothing that matches Muller's description. In particular, there are no galaxies in the area with a 10th magnitude star at position angle = 280 degrees, distance 2.4 arcmin. Muller also gives an "accurate" offset of N611 from N610: "Following previous at PA 60 degrees, dist = 0.5 arcmin," but then adds, "vF *?" This would be a striking configuration -- even if the second object is a star -- but it's nowhere in the area that I can see. There is no sketch, but even if there were, it could only confirm Muller's clear descriptions. Wolfgang Steinicke again drew my attention to this missing pair in July 1998. I made a further search at "reasonable" digit errors (e.g. 1hr in RA, 10deg in Dec), but found nothing matching Muller's description anywhere near any of the resulting positions. It may be worthwhile for other interested investigators to cover the areas, too -- they may have more luck than I. ===== NGC 611. See NGC 610. ===== NGC 614 is perhaps NGC 627, which see. It may also be NGC 618. See that, too. ===== NGC 616 is a double star. As with NGC 607, d'A's position is very good, and his description fits the object. In addition, his offsets -- 14.2 seconds west and 4 arcmin north -- to an 8th magnitude star are correct. ===== NGC 618 may be NGC 614 (which is also NGC 627, which see) -- or it may be NGC 608. JH's position points at nothing, and there is no star 2 min 51 sec east of that position as his description claims. NGC 614 fits his description ("pB, pL, bM") but the fairly bright star follows by only 55 sec. Is there perhaps a combination of transcription errors and/or typos in JH's offset to the star? I'm thinking perhaps that the superscript "m" on the 2 in his description stands for "magnitude" rather than "minute." The star, of course, is not 2nd magnitude -- this is where the error would have to occur. Whatever the case, there is certainly an error in JH's position for the galaxy. Is his object NGC 608? This is not quite as likely; N608 is the fainter of the two galaxies in the area. Also, N618 was found during a different sweep (102) than NGC 608 and NGC 614 (both sweep 106), and different again from N627 (sweep 100), the other "missing" object in the area. I'm tempted to simply equate N618 with N608, and N627 with N614. But the relative magnitudes, and the fact that N618 and N627 were found during different sweeps argues in favor of JH having seen only the brightest object during each sweep. So, I note the possibility of the identity of N618 with N614 or with N608, but would not bet my Pentium on it! ----- Wolfgang has recently (July 2014) looked at the field with JH's observing log in hand. He suggests instead that NGC 618 is an asterism centered on a bright star at 01 41 36.8, +33 17 42 (J2000), but I see only a bright (V = 10.1) star at this position, unlikely to have been mistaken as nebulous. While I've added this object to the table, I've also added question marks. ----- Working on a general cleanup of the position file in July 2016, I once again ran across this object. This time I checked the sweep and found a peculiar record for this object, number 25 in sweep 102 on 16 November 1827. JH has it at "-342 beats" and "18' S[outh] of St[ar]." Given that the star is TYC 2298-44-1 = GSC 02298-00044 = 2MASS J01391229+3341346, this leads to the position that JH published in his 1833 list and was carried on into the NGC half a century later. The "-342 beats" translates into -2minutes 51seconds (2 chronometer beats a second). It occured to me that perhaps the signs might be wrong. Checking at the suggested offsets, however, showed no nebulae. Did JH refer his nebula to a different star, perhaps the double star (WDS J01526+3127AB) that followed the nebula in the sweep? Again, checking the four possible offsets, I found no nebulae. What about the objects that I've suggested as possible identifications? Do either of these have a star at the correct offset? The answer is "No." This makes neither NGC 608 nor NGC 614 a reasonable choice. What about Wolfgang's asterism? Again, there is no star at JH's offsets. Or NGC 618 could just be a comet. But a search using JPL's "Small Body Identification" tool, limited roughly to JH's sweep limits in declination and between RAs of 1hr and 2hrs on his observing date turned up no comets. So, given that there is nothing on the sky in the area that matches JH's description and offsets, I have to throw up my hands once again and say, "Another lost NGC object!" However, JH adds an interesting footnote at the end of the sweep that may go some ways toward explaining the situation: "This sweep made with Sir Rufane Donkin who arrived unexpectedly just as I had begun & staid [sic] the night." JH goes on to comment on their observations of the Orion Nebula and Rigel ("... which is really superb"), and on the bad weather earlier in the day ("It had rained hard all day"). Is it possible, I wonder, that the presence of a distinguished lieutenant general, knighted for service all over the world to his king and country, and twenty years older than JH, could have perhaps rattled the younger man a bit? If so, then an extended search for JH's object, with its offset star, along the belt of sweep might be of some value. ===== NGC 627 may be NGC 614 (which may also be NGC 618, which see). JH's description reads "vF, R; another precedes which must be III. 174. The RA conjectural, and PD liable to some error." As noted in the discussion of NGC 618, JH has three sweeps over this area. During the first sweep (100), he picked up the two objects noted in his description that I've just given, during the second sweep (102) he found just one object (N618, which see), and during the third (106), he found another (N614). Since there are just two galaxies here, it is reasonable to suppose that JH picked them both up once, and noticed only the brightest on the other two sweeps. But, as I noted above, JH's positions and descriptions do not rule out other interpretations, so this is simply conjecture. As with NGC 618 (which see), Wolfgang's reanalysis suggests to him that NGC 627 is simply an asterism, this time at 01 42 37.0, +33 34 44 (J2000). As with NGC 618, I can't make a convincing asterism of the three stars there, which are about an arcminute apart. Perhaps just the two southeastern stars of the three might present a nebulous appearance. So, I am still puzzled by this object. I've added question marks to my old identifications, and have added Wolfgang's asterism, also with question marks. ===== NGC 629 is a short line of five stars six or seven arcminutes west-southwest of Struve's position. I've pulled the data for this from Auwers's list of novae attached to his catalogue of WH's nebulae and clusters. There he notes "Not seen in the Heliometer." However, Struve's description ("Irregular nebula with 3 stars") with his 9-inch Fraunhofer refractor certainly fits the asterism well enough. It reminds me of NGC 7150 (which see), another -- though somewhat smaller and fainter -- asterism also found with a refractor (the 15-inch at Harvard) by an experienced observer (G.P. Bond). I note that Brent Archinal sticks rigorously to Struve's "3 stars", choosing only the three north-eastern stars. My feeling is that the other two stars are also part of Struve's object. Perhaps an observation with a telescope similar to Sturve's could clear this up. ===== NGC 635 is probably MCG -04-05-002 just 3 degrees south of Leavenworth's nominal position. His sketch matches the galaxy and surrounding star field very well, so I'm willing to accept that he made a simple mistake in recording the declination. ===== NGC 643. This is a star cluster in the SMC. The RC3 incorrectly calls a galaxy by this name. That galaxy is the one that de Vaucouleurs called "NGC 643B". "NGC 643A", by the way, is another SMC star cluster, while "NGC 643C" is a spiral galaxy seen edge on. None of these are related to NGC 643 except by the near coincidences of their locations on the sky. ===== NGC 648 = IC 146, which see. ===== NGC 650 and NGC 651 together form M 76. They are the two bright lobes of a bipolar planetary nebula. (The fainter, whispy loops to the northwest and southeast were most likely not seen well until M 76 was photographed.) For GC and NGC, JH and Dreyer took the lobes as two separate nebulae, put the Messier number on N650, and the WH number (I 193) on N651. There is a little justification for this, but not very much. WH was the first to recognize that the nebula was apparently double. He says of it "Two close together. Both vB. dist. 2' sp nf. One is 76 of the Conn[oissance des temps]." That, strictly speaking, is incorrect as neither Mechain nor Messier reported the nebula as double. Still, two NGC numbers it is for the single Messier number. This has happened at least once more. See NGC 5194 and NGC 5195, the two galaxies comprising M 51 -- though for that, Messier did see the two separate objects. ----- While entering the Gaia DR2 positions, I noticed that there are actually two stars -- the southern star red, the northern star blue -- very close to the accurate positions usually given for the central star. The separation at J2000.0 is 1.4 arcseconds; both stars are well-seen in the Pan-STARRS images. Given that the central stars of planetaries are generally hot and blue, I have taken the northern blue star as the central star. The southern red star is also in the position table as a "companion" star, just to make the distinction clear. ===== NGC 651. See NGC 650. ===== NGC 652 has a +13 second error in its RA. It shares this with three other nebulae which Swift discovered the same night. See those (NGC 1450, N1509 = IC 2026, and N1594 = I2075) for more. Also see N1677 = N1659 for other notes about that night of 22 October 1886. ===== NGC 657 looks like a poor cluster of relatively bright stars against the crowded backdrop of the Milky Way. JH has it as "A ** (h2070), the chief of a p rich loose cl; sts 12." His position is for the double, HD 10495 = SAO 22555, but the apparent center -- a rough circle of 5 stars -- of the cluster is about 4 arcmin southwest of the double. ----- Brent Archinal makes the cluster somewhat larger and places the center about 2.5 arcminutes west of JH's double. Looking at it again (April 2017), I see a scattering of about 20 stars centered somewhat north of the circlet of stars I fingered years ago. Kharchenko et al (2013A&A...558A..53K) in their recent survey of Galactic open clusters have 18 members within 3 arcminutes of a center within the circlet, and add another 20 stars when the radius is expanded to 5.7 arcminutes. ===== NGC 660 is a nearby, large, distorted galaxy with twisted arms, and dust lanes and patches, perhaps the result of a recent merger. The nucleus is hidden in the optical bulge, but is fairly clear in the infrared. I've taken the IR position from the 2MASS PSC to represent the galaxy, but also include a few of the optical and radio positions as well. ===== NGC 674 = NGC 697. The right ascensions are just 2 minutes different, so it seems likely that N674 is another observation of N697. This strikes me as the only reasonable interpretation of d'A's observations, in spite of the fact that he claims to have found N674 on a night when he also observed N697. Is the night number, 4, perhaps in error? d'A also observed N697 on nights 5 and 93, but saw N674 only once. In any case, the descriptions are virtually identical, down to the 14th magnitude star 8 or 9 seconds east, and there are no other objects in the area that d'A would have described as "pB, vmE." ----- Here's an example of one of my old notes that didn't make a lot of sense until I pulled d'A's monograph off the shelf. He has just one observation of NGC 674 on his night 4 -- 2 December 1861 -- while NGC 697 = H III 179 has three observations on nights 4, 5 (3 December 1861), and 93 (19 February 1863). His description for NGC 674 is (translated from the Latin with the help of Google Translate): Quite bright, elongated; GC 398. * 14 mag follows about 7.8 sec in the parallel. For NGC 697, he writes: Night Description 4 Bright, round, brighter in the middle. * 13-14 mag follows 9 sec. 5 Pretty large, bright, oblong, diam = 45", *14 mag follows 9.4 sec; another 17 mag 11.5 sec a little to the south. 93 Quite bright, pretty large, 50" long; diffuse around the edges. The brighter of the stars that d'A mentions is 8.5 seconds following the galaxy -- very close to the average of his estimates -- and the fainter is 11.8 seconds following and 1.15 arcminutes south. With all that in mind, my earlier comments make more sense. Given that there is nothing like this at his position for NGC 674, the identity is virtually certain. Here, then, is a case of two observations on the same night of the same galaxy -- unless there is a transcription or typographical error involved. We'll need to go into d'A's log books and records to answer that question. WH's observation, by the way, makes the RA 22 seconds too large, but his description "vF, pL, lE" is appropriate for the galaxy. ===== NGC 676, a 13th magnitude edgewise S0, has a bright star superposed just a few arcseconds south of the nucleus. Its visual appearance is well-described in the NGC. Its magnitude in CGCG, 10.5, is misleading, of course, applying more to the star than the galaxy. The galaxy's total magnitude is around 12.5, but has not yet been measured accurately. ===== NGC 677 is probably also IC 152, which see. ===== NGC 684 = IC 165, which see. ===== NGC 687 is not IC 1737, which see. ===== NGC 690 is not IC 1741, which see. Leavenworth's sketch points us at the correct galaxy with two field stars to the northeast in their correct relative positions and brightnesses. ===== NGC 696. See NGC 729. ===== NGC 697 = NGC 674, which see. ===== NGC 698. See NGC 729. ===== NGC 700 is CGCG 522-030, not the larger but fainter CGCG 522-027. LdR has the object 8 arcmin southwest of the center of the NGC 705 group; CGCG 522-030 is 8.1 arcmin southwest, while -027 is 6.5 arcmin west-southwest. Since its surface brightness is higher than -027's, it is the more likely to have been seen. This is indeed Steve Gottlieb's experience. He notes that while he could pick out -027 in his 17.5-inch reflector, only the nucleus was visible as a nearly stellar object, while -030 was clearly the more nebulous of the two. ===== NGC 702 = Arp 75. When I looked at this in 1996, I interpreted it as a triple interacting object. It still, in fact, looks like a triple on the blue- sensitive plates. However, on red plates, the faintest of the three objects looks like a distorted arm of the brightest. On infrared images (e.g. 2MASS), the third object disappears altogether while the brightest object splits into two, or has two nuclei. For the current release (October 2013), I've adopted the interpretation of two galaxies, with the brightest being a single galaxy with a dark lane across the nuclear region. ----- Finally looking at the SDSS image in April 2017, I found that this is in fact an interacting galaxy. The second, nearly stellar, component is superposed just northeast of the nucleus, and appears to have a plume stretching on almost straight north. The other "components" that I picked up earlier are knots in the big galaxy. I've revised the position table to reflect this revised -- hopefully, somewhat more correct -- interpretation. Interestingly, the SDSS does not have the superposed companion as a separate object, while 2MASS PSC, UCAC4, and Gaia DR1 do. This is just another little reminder that these automated surveys have to be used carefully. There are also two other fainter galaxies in the field, either or both of which may be a physical companion. The Arp Atlas shows extremely faint, distorted, outer arms stretching in the direction of the fainter galaxy to the east. But that may be a coincidence of optical alignment. Unfortunately, neither this galaxy, nor the other companion west-northwest of NGC 702 have published redshifts, so their relationship with the big galaxy cannot be reliably established at the moment. ===== NGC 704. This is a double galaxy, a fact actually noted by LdR, but which Dreyer did not transfer into the NGC. Steve Gottlieb discovered this recently (March 2014), and suggests that this is another case where positions for both objects, using the notations "NGC 704A" and "NGC 704B", would be appropriate. I'll ponder this ... ===== NGC 705. See NGC 700. ===== NGC 708 is the brightest galaxy in a group. See the "notngc" files where Dreyer did not include a fifth galaxy -- 'LdR "B"' -- in the NGC in spite of having seen it himself. ===== NGC 716 = IC 1743. Swift's RA for the NGC object is good, but his declination is almost exactly 40 arcmin too far south. His description -- including the bright star near east -- is appropriate, so the identity (first suggested by Dreyer in the IC2 notes) is almost certain. There is no question of the identity of IC 1743. It was found by Bigourdan, and his four micrometric offsets point exactly at the galaxy. ===== NGC 718 is probably not also NGC 728, which see. ===== NGC 719 = IC 1744. D'Arrest's RA is 13 seconds of time off. This is close enough that either Dreyer or Javelle might have had some questions about the identity, especially given that the descriptions are so close. Well, that didn't happen, so the galaxy has two numbers now. ===== NGC 723 = NGC 724. JH missed this one when he was putting his GC together. In his 1833 PT catalogue he notes for h167 (N724): "It is barely possible [those two words in JH's italics] that this may be III.460 [N723] with a mistake in reading the PD." When he swept this up at the Cape a few years later, he specifically noted "No other neb within 15' all around." When he published his Cape Observations, he added in parentheses, "(N.B. This remark shows that the nebula No. 167 of my former Catalogue is really identical (as there suspected) with III.460.)" Nevertheless, his two objects are entered separately in GC without a note, so it was left to Dreyer to add a query in the NGC description: "[? = h166]". JH and Dreyer were both right -- the two numbers do indeed refer to the same galaxy. RNGC, ESO, and SGC all carried along the equality. ===== NGC 727 = NGC 729, which see. ===== NGC 728 is probably the triple star about 1.5 arcmin north-northwest of JH's position. JH has only one observation of this object which he describes as "A suspected nebula." D'Arrest could not find this object, though he only looked for it once. On a night of relatively poor seeing, the three stars (with a maximum separation of about 20 arcsec) might appear nebulous. A glance at the Sky Survey suggests that N728 might be a reobservation of NGC 718, about 2 minutes west of JH's place (the declinations are the same to within the errors). However, JH first observed N718 in the same sweep (No. 95) in which he found N728. So, the two are unlikely to be the same. ===== NGC 729 = NGC 727. JH describes N729 = h2446 as "eeeF, S, R. RA only rudely taken by a star, being out of the field." He recorded it only once in Sweep 803. Much earlier, however, in Sweep 486, he found another nebula in the area, N727 = h 2445. His description of that reads "F, S, R, bM, 15 arcsec." He then adds (in italics enclosed by square brackets, flagging a note added during the preparation of the Cape Observations for publication), "It is barely possible that this and the next nebula [h2446 = N729] may be identical with Nos. 2440 [= N696] and 2441 [= N698] by a mistaken degree in PD." The relative positions -- the later object in each pair is northeast of the earlier -- as well as the descriptions [N696: "F, S, R, 15 arcsec;" N698: "vvF, S"] support the idea. I suspect that JH also had his note about the "rudely taken" RA in mind when he added his comment several years later. However, the N696/8 pair was found in Sweep 802, and its RA is 4 min 15 sec off the N727/9 pair. This means 1 degree errors in both coordinates, rather than just in Dec as JH points out. Since the position of N729, "rudely taken" as it is, is close to that of N727, and since the two were seen on different nights, it seems more plausible to me that the observations refer to the same object. We can't dismiss JH's comment out of hand, though having both coordinates off by a degree would be unusual in his southern data. ESO's suggestion that N729 is a double star at 01 52 01, -36 03.0 (it is ESO 354-**011) seems less probable to me. JH made many hurried observations of "new" nebulae which have turned out to be identical to objects that he has securely observed during other sweeps. ===== NGC 730 is a star. Based on his observations, I suggested earlier that it might be two of three stars in a line. However looking at the field again in April 2017, I believe that the northwestern two stars are much too faint for Bigourdan to have seen with his 30-cm refractor. Here is the remainder of what I wrote then: Bigourdan has observations of this on three nights. The discovery observation on 7 Nov 1885, is only an estimate: +11 seconds and -4 arcmin from BD +4 328 [I mistakenly called this "BD +5 328" earlier]; there is nothing at that position, though three stars in a line are south and west. On 4 Dec of the same year, he has a single micrometric measurement that falls between the two eastern stars, though slightly closer to the eastern most. Finally, on 30 Nov 1891, his two measurements point exactly at this eastern most -- and brightest -- star of the three. ... Bigourdan described the object on the three different nights as 1) having a "Doubtful aspect," 2) being "Strongly stellar; could be a star 13.4 accompanied by nebulosity," and 3) as "Pretty strongly stellar. Could be a small nebula or a nebulous star; however, I'm not certain that there is any nebulosity there." Since even he sounds pretty convinced that his object is stellar, I'm not about to disagree! ... especially since there are no nebulae in the field. ===== NGC 731 = NGC 757, which see. ===== NGC 733 is almost certainly a star. Lord Rosse's observer, Bindon Stoney, found a group of five nebulae in the area of NGC 736 (the brightest) on 11 October 1850. His sketch is reasonably accurate, though it is distorted in that it exaggerates the north-south separations between the objects. His micrometric offsets from N736 also point quite accurately to the surrounding objects, including the star which I've taken as N733. The sketch confirms the relative distances in the table between N733, N736, and N740 (the distance between N733 and N736 is about half that between N736 and N740). However, at the same position angle as the star, and just 100 arcsec further from the star which I take as N733, is a faint galaxy. Not otherwise catalogued, is this possibly the object which Stoney meant to measure and sketch? Since the evidence from the sketch and the measurements point directly at the star, though, I'm currently retaining it, and not the galaxy, as N733. But I've nevertheless listed the galaxy, too, with the requisite question marks. ===== NGC 734. This is another of the Leander McCormick objects with a poor position. It is usually taken as PGC 07121 = 2MASX J01545728-1704477, and is more or less confirmed by the star about 4 arcmin to the west-northwest shown on Leavenworth's sketch. However, a brighter star about three minutes to the south-southeast is not on the sketch. How did Leavenworth miss the brighter of the two neighboring stars? Steve Gottlieb has suggested that the galaxy that Leavenworth swept up is actually 2MASX J01532872-1659442, a brighter spiral with just one star almost exactly west, where Leavenworth sketched it. Because this galaxy agrees with Leavenworth's observation much better than PGC 07121, it is the one that we've adopted as NGC 734. ===== NGC 736 is the brightest of a group of five. See NGC 733 and NGC 737 for more. ===== NGC 737 is a line of three stars in the corona of NGC 736. This object was variously seen as a single star and as a nebula by the early observers. Lord Rosse seems to be the first to list it as possibly nebulous, so Dreyer included it in the NGC. Reinmuth found only the three stars at the place of LdR's nebula (shown in LdR's sketch of the group around N736, and measured micrometrically by him in October 1850), and that is all that I see there on the POSS and DSS, too. ===== NGC 739. Ralph Copeland found this object near NGC 750 and N751 on 9 January 1874 using Lord Rosse's 72-inch telescope. He measured the distance and position angle from NGC 750; these point exactly at the galaxy he saw. His measures of three stars around N739 are also exact, giving further confirmation to the identification. In his description of the object, however, he mistakenly has N739 "south-preceding" N750, rather than "north-preceding." When Dreyer reduced a position for the object during preparation of Lord Rosse's observations for publication in 1880, he too made a mistake, placing the position of N739 too far south by 2 arcmin. Thus, the identity with the galaxy has been missed by most of the modern catalogues. ===== NGC 740. See NGC 733. ===== NGC 741 = IC 1751. This, along with NGC 742, was discovered by William Herschel, reobserved by John Herschel, and by Lord Rosse. N741 itself is the brightest in a group of galaxies, and the positions in NGC from the Herschels are good. Furthermore, their descriptions make it clear that all saw the same two galaxies. They did not pick up any of the other objects in the area. This leads to the puzzle of why the brighter of the two was also included in IC. True, it reappeared in Swift's 11th list of "new" nebulae (with one of his typically inaccurate positions), and was reobserved by Herbert Howe at Chamberlin Observatory in Denver. Howe provided a very good micrometric position for it which was adopted by Dreyer for the IC. I suspect that as Dreyer had come to trust Howe's positions and identifications (most of Howe's observations are of known objects), he (Dreyer) didn't bother to check the NGC to see if the galaxy had been seen previously. More recently, the IC number has been attached in CGCG (and in other subsequent lists) to the galaxy (CGCG 413-006) just over an arcminute northwest of N741. This object is indeed brighter than many that Swift found, but his description of a 9th magnitude star "north-preceding" rather than simply "preceding" pretty well establishes the identity. It is further pinned down by Howe's measurement of the distance and direction to the star (actually a double, or perhaps a single star superposed on a galaxy) which points exactly to N741 as the object that he measured. ===== NGC 742. See NGC 741 = IC 1751. ===== NGC 746. There is no problem with the identification of this relatively nearby (11-12 Mpc, a bit closer than the Virgo Cluster), low surface brightness, "semi-dwarf" galaxy (it has about the same absolute magnitude as the LMC, roughly V_T = -18). It was found on 12 September 1885 by Lewis Swift with the 16-inch refractor at the Warner Observatory in Rochester, NY. His description "vF, pS, lE; several sts nr" is also appropriate. The structure is completely irregular and very patchy; there is not even a well-defined bar as is common in these late-type irregular galaxies. A quick scan of the literature via NED in April 2017 suggests that the galaxy has appeared only in surveys -- I don't find any obvious detailed studies of the object. The position is a bit problematic. All the DSS2 images show two bright knots toward the middle, the brightest being south of the apparent center of the outer isophotes. The 2MASS PSC picks up these knots easily, while the 2MASS XSC, the several GSC lists, the Carlsberg Meridian catalog, the USNO-B1.0 -- all blend them into a single object. The galaxy is unfortunately outside the footprint of the SDSS, so there are no high-resolution images available. Brian took the position from the GSCA; this is close to the mean position of the two bright knots, and is finally the selected position that I have kept in the big table. A final intriguing possibility is that this is a colliding pair. The red and IR DSS2 images can be pretty easily seen that way. However, there are none of the extended streamers around the galaxy that a gravitational encounter would generate, so I think this is unlikely. The blue image is also most easily interpreted as that of a typical irregular galaxy without an obvious bar. ===== NGC 749 is not IC 1740, which see. ===== NGC 750 is the western of a well-known pair of interacting ellipticals (NGC 751 is the other). See NGC 739 for more. ===== NGC 751 is the eastern galaxy in an interacting double (NGC 750 is the other). See NGC 739. ===== NGC 755 = NGC 763, which see. ===== NGC 757 = NGC 731. Both N757 and N763 (which see) were found by Ormond Stone with the Leander McCormick 26-inch, presumeably on the same night, though he doesn't give us the dates in the discovery paper. He has, however, left us a sketch of N763 labeled "Drawn Jany 11.0 1886, sketched Jany 4.5 1885" where the "1885" pretty clearly should be 1886 (there are a couple of other sketches from early 1886 where the dates are given correctly). In any event, this is the western of two relatively bright galaxies in the area, found by WH early in 1785 (the other, as I noted, is NGC 763 = NGC 755). Taking Stone's poor positions into account, the true position difference of the two galaxies pretty well matches the difference in Stone's positions for his two nebulae. In addition, his descriptions match the galaxies very well, particularly his estimated magnitudes and diameters (N757: m = 11.0, D = 0.4 arcmin, gbMN; N763: m = 13.0, D = 1.6 x 0.4 arcmin, PA = 65 deg, gbMN). Even though WH's relative positions are good (his declinations are about 4 arcmin too far north), JH had trouble with his Slough observation for one of his father's objects (III 265), and apparently did not see the other (III 266) until his stay at the Cape. Dreyer suggested in the NGC that both referred to NGC 755. Earlier, I more or less agreed when I wrote, "I suspect that both observations refer to the brighter western galaxy, N731," though I chose the brighter rather than the fainter object. Comparing JH's positions now with the modern places, I think this is wrong and that JH really did see both objects. Peters got things sorted out when he micrometrically remeasured the galaxies' positions (see his second Copernicus article and his discussion in AN 2365). Dreyer adopted Peters's good positions for the NGC. Finally, my identification of both N757 and N763 with NGC 755 in the early versions of SEGC is wrong. ===== NGC 758 may also be NGC 111, which see. ===== NGC 760 is a double star found by Copeland with Lord Rosse's 72-inch. His offset for it from NGC 761 is accurately measured, and his position for N761 is in turn well-measured from one of Lalande's stars. Thus, the NGC position is good, and the identification not in doubt. ===== NGC 761. See NGC 760. ===== NGC 763 = NGC 755. This is the southeastern of two pretty bright nebulae, originally found by WH. Fortunately, Stone has left us a sketch of the object which clearly shows it to be N755. Assuming that he found both nebulae the same night, the northwestern (N757) is almost certainly identical to NGC 731. See the discussion of NGC 757 for more. ===== NGC 764 may be the double star at 01 54 38.9, -16 18 22. There are no other candidates for it nearby, and Stone has left no sketch. His description is appropriate for the stars ("eF, vS, iR, gbM") but given his poor positions in the two Leander McCormick lists, its identity as N764 is nothing more than a guess. Curiously, the next object in Stone's list (No. 46) is not in the NGC at all. Its position is given by him as 01 54, -09 26 (1890), and is described as "m = 14.0, D = 0.2, R, gbMN". I do not see why Dreyer left it out of the NGC. Other of Stone's objects with similar descriptions are included, so the omission of this one is puzzling. In any event, there is nothing at all in the area that can be clearly identified with this list entry, so perhaps Dreyer had reason to suspect it that he has not told us. Also see my notes for this in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 768. Swift has this in his third list where it is number 8, and in his fifth list where it is number 18. His full descriptions are virtually identical: List 3, number 8: 1885 Dec 2; eF, pS, R; B * 32[seconds] f. List 5, number 18: 1886 Oct 2; eF, pS, R; B * 30[seconds] f, 1' s. His positions are 20 seconds of time and 1.3 arcminutes apart (see the table of positions), but his notes about the star make it clear that he saw the same galaxy both times. The star is HD 12134 at V = 8.3. Coincidentally, IC 1761 is less than four arcminutes northeast of Swift's galaxy. It has sometimes been taken as the second object that Swift saw, but had that been the case, his offset to the star would have read "B * 18[seconds] f, 4' s". This makes it clear that he did indeed see the brighter galaxy twice. By the way, Javelle discovered IC 1761 in 1897, saw it again in 1903, and used HD 12134 as his micrometric comparison star on both nights. ===== NGC 771 = 50 Cassiopeiae is a star. During one sweep, JH said, "I suspect this star to be nebulous." No one since, including JH himself, has been able to see the suspected nebulosity. JH wrote in GC, and Dreyer quoted in NGC, "Retained in the catalogue for future occasional observation. Nothing can be more difficult than to verify or disprove the nebulosity of a considerable star under ordinary atmospheric conditions." A quick look (via SIMBAD) at the astrophysical literature on 50 Cas turned up no observed spectral peculiarities associated with it -- it is a normal A1 V main sequence star. Similarly, a look at the POSS1 reveals no trace of even faint nebulosity around the star. JH may have been misled by a moment of particularly poor seeing. ===== NGC 772 is a large spiral, close enough that LdR and Dreyer himself saw the brightest knot in the northern arm. See that story in the "notngc" file under the object "N0772 HII". ===== NGC 783 = IC 1765, which see. ===== NGC 785 = IC 1766, which see. ===== NGC 789. See NGC 793. ===== NGC 793. This is one of the few nebulae found by J.G. Lohse, an English amateur astronomer, working at the observatory of another amateur, Mr. Wigglesworth. Unfortunately, the observations never seem to have been published outside the NGC, so Lohse's approximate position and description as recorded in the NGC is all the information that we have. For this particular object, the NGC tells us only, "Very very faint, between two stars; south-following GC 5210 [NGC 789]." The only object in the area that fits the description is the faint double star about two arcmin southeast of Lohse's place. It is quite a faint object (it is not in GSC), so Mr. Wigglesworth must have had a considerable telescope if Lohse was to have seen it. Some digging in the literature is clearly called for to find the details we need to know about the observatory and its instruments. Without that, my possible identification, while fitting Lohse's description, can only be tentative. ----- Since I wrote that many years ago, Wolfgang Steinicke has done the historical research to find that James Wigglesworth's observatory at Scarborough in Yorkshire housed a 15.5-inch F15 Cooke refractor. This telescope was certainly capable of turning out the double star that we think might be Lohse's object, so I've changed the question mark to a colon. Lohse, by the way, was born in Germany, though worked for much of his career in Scotland with Ralph Copeland, as well as in Scarborough with Wigglesworth. Wolfgang's web pages, and his book "Observing and Cataloguing Nebulae and Star Clusters" (Cambridge, 2010), have more details for those interested. ===== NGC 794 = IC 191, which see. ===== NGC 797. See NGC 801. ===== NGC 799 and NGC 800. Gary Kronk suggested in an email in August 2016 that Swift has his directions switched in his descriptions of these two in his "Catalogue No. 2" in AN 2707. I agree. Swift's relative positions, however, are correct, though his RAs are 30 seconds of time too large. For the NGC, Dreyer corrected the descriptions. Herbert Howe, in his first list of observations of nebulae in MNRAS 58, 356, 1898 corrects the RAs, though does not mention the confused directions. For the record, Swift's entries in his 2nd list for these two galaxies, should read (with the 2MSP positions precessed to B1885): No. Date of [alpha] [delta] Descriptions and remarks discov. 1885.0 1885.0 16 1885 Oct. 9 01 56 19 -00 39 20 eeF; pS; R; n of 2 17 " " 9 01 56 19 -00 41 10 eeF; S; R; s of 2 ===== NGC 800. See NGC 799. ===== NGC 801. Four other galaxies (NGC 19, 21, 7831, and 7836; see these and NGC 6 for more discussion) discovered earlier in the evening of 20 September 1885 by Lewis Swift share a common offset in Swift's positions from the true positions of +1m 10s in RA and +8m 8s in Dec. If we accept the identity of NGC 801 as given by most catalogues (it is a large edgewise spiral on the northeast edge of Abell 262), then Swift's position for this object is about -19 sec and -0.9 arcmin off, more in line with Swift's usual precision (or lack of it). Swift mentions a "double star close following" which may be the faint double near the southeast end of the spindle. However, both stars are roughly at 17th magnitude on the POSS1; could Swift have seen them? Well, there is no other candidate galaxy near aside from NGC 797, and there are no doubles anywhere near it. So, while the identity of NGC 801 is somewhat uncertain, I will stick with it for now. Incidentally, this galaxy almost got an IC number as well. Searching for NGC 801, Bigourdan rediscovered this object -- it is number 473 in his fifth list of new nebulae. The first four lists were published in time for them to be included in the NGC or the IC's. The fifth list was not. Consequently, it has received almost no attention in the subsequent literature. ===== NGC 804 = IC 1773, which see. ===== NGC 810. Stephan's position, given in both MNRAS and AN, is correct, but the NGC position is 10 seconds west. This must be one of the few transcription errors that Dreyer made in his catalogues. The galaxy itself appears to be triple on the blue DSS images: a close dumbbell is oriented southwest-northeast, and a much fainter companion (or jet?) is just east of the southwestern component. Stephan noted only one object here, and the dumbbell is just barely noticeable on POSS1. On the scans of the POSS2 plates, it looks more like a "polar dust ring" galaxy than two interacting galaxies. It is clearly a single galaxy in the 2MASS images -- only a single bright nucleus remains visible. The SDSS has the nucleus intersected by a thin dust lane. The companion galaxy is also well-seen in the 2MASS and SDSS images, so this is a double interacting system. ===== NGC 811. The nominal RA, from a single observation by Leavenworth at Leander McCormick, is about 50 seconds too far east. This is not as bad as many of the Leander McCormick nebulae, but is still off enough that I did not recover this for SEGC. The identity is solidified by the star just an arcminute to the south -- Leavenworth mentions it in his description. ----- It's been suggested that MCG -02-06-024 at 02 04 34.9, -10 06 32 -- about 1 degree south of Leavenworth's position -- is NGC 811. However, this galaxy does not have the star to the south, so cannot be Leavenworth's object. ===== NGC 812. During my earlier push through the NGC, I had noted a "comp or knot on [the] distorted [southern] arm" of this galaxy. I gave a 1950 position for it, measured by offset from the nucleus, of 02 03 45.2, +44 19 47. But now, in December 2013, I don't see anything there on either red or blue DSS images that would rate special mention. So, I have simply removed the entry for "N0812se" that I had there. ----- However (ahem) during a re-evaluation in April 2017, I looked at the infrared DSS2 image and found another knot, this one in the middle of an apparent bar. This knot perhaps represents a southern component hidden in dust in the blue image. It is also near the geometric center of the outer isophotes of the galaxy, so several previous positions for NGC 812 fall near it. Unfortunately, there is no SDSS coverage for this part of the sky, so we do not have high-resolution images to see what is going on with the galaxy. My "solution" strikes me as thoroughly ad hoc: make two galaxies here where there may actually be just one. Thus, there are north and south components in the position table. The northern component is represented by the brightest 2MASS source, so if you need a single object, this is probably the one to take. ----- However (ahem) in February 2018, I finally looked at the Pan-STARRS images. Those make it pretty clear that the nucleus is the southern "knot" that I had noted in April 2017. So, my recommendation now is to take that southern knot as the position of the galaxy. I've relabeled the components in the position tables to reflect this -- what I had called "N0812n" is now "N0812 knot", and the "N0812s" object is now simply "N0812". By the way, there is no problem with Stephan's observation of the object, so the identification of the galaxy as NGC 812 is not in doubt. ===== NGC 814 and 815. These two objects, found by Ormond Stone at Leander McCormick in 1886, have been misidentified or given up as lost by nearly everyone who has tried to find them. However, Stone's sketch, made a few days after their discovery, points to the correct objects a full 4.5 minutes of time east of the recorded (and published) positions. The star field is unmistakeable, and the objects match Stone's descriptions. ===== NGC 815. See NGC 814. ===== NGC 823 = IC 1782, which see. ===== NGC 826. This is probably better taken as the interacting pair rather than just the southern brighter component. Stephan's position, from micrometric measurements on one night in September 1871, falls roughly midway between the two galaxies, though we perhaps shouldn't make too much of this as the pair is quite faint. In any case, I've changed the position table to reflect my revised interpretation. ===== NGC 832 is probably NGC 1226. Earlier, I wrote about this: NGC 832 may be a double star. D'Arrest has only one observation of the "nova," noting a star 9-10 about 5 arcmin southwest. There is such a star about four arcmin southeast of his position (copied correctly into NGC), but there is nothing at his position nor is there another bright star southwest of it. However, about 4 arcmin northeast of the star is a faint double star. It is 24 seconds east of d'A's position, and just 0.2 arcmin north. It is the sort of object that he could have seen as a "F, S" nebula on even a good night. Lacking any other candidate, this is a possible choice for his nova. In July 2016, putting in nominal positions for doubtful objects, I noticed that if the RA of d'A's object were to be increased by 1 hour, his position would fall within 1.5 arcminutes of NGC 1226 which does have a star of the right magnitude about 4 arcminutes southwest as d'A mentions. However, there are actually two stars to choose from! So why didn't d'A mention both? This is my only caveat. I mentioned this in an email to Yann Pothier; he replied that d'A's fields of view were sixteen arcminutes at 95X and just 12 arcminutes at 147X. He suggests that the further star was right on the edge of d'A's field, or just outside of it. This may explain the star "missing" from d'A's description. So, I'm going to suggest that d'A made a 1 hour error in his RA for NGC 832, just as he did with NGC 3167 (= NGC 2789), NGC 3575 (= NGC 3162), and NGC 3760 (= NGC 3301). I've left the double star in the big table as "NGC 0832?" even though I am now pretty well convinced that NGC 1226 is the correct object. Just covering all the possibilities ... ===== NGC 834. This was discovered by WH, who remained its sole observer at the time the NGC was compiled. See NGC 841 for more. ===== NGC 841 is the brightest of three galaxies forming a small group (the others are NGC 834 and 845). Though credited to Stephan (who has a note that it is clearly distinct from the other two, indicating that he saw all three), it was actually found by WH, and observed by d'Arrest. Interestingly, JH saw only the faintest of the three. Though his position is virtually exact for it, he was enough convinced that his object and his father's were the same that he equated them. So, in GC he noted a 1 minute of time difference in the RA's and adopted his own. For N834, he used his father's position since he did not come across it during his own sweeps. Thus, when Stephan observed the trio, he found two GC objects at their correct positions, and a "new" nebula which he measured and included in his list of "novae". Like WH, d'A also saw only the brightest of the three, but made the RA about 13 seconds too large (17 seconds larger than WH's). He, too, assumed that all the observations referred to the same object, so that is how Dreyer put them into NGC. There, Dreyer adopted d'A's RA for NGC 845. The credits for H III 604 and d'A need to be moved from NGC 845 to NGC 841. Aside from that and the adjustment needed for the RA of N845, the NGC is pretty close to being correct. ===== NGC 843 is a triple star very close to d'A's position. He describes the triple as a faint, small, round globular cluster. On a night of less than perfect seeing, that is how the triple must appear. ===== NGC 845. This is the faintest of three galaxies, and the only one seen by JH. (It was also seen by Stephan, though Esmiol merely calls it "Anonyme"; see UGC 03840 and UGC 4227 in the "notngc" files for more.) For this galaxy, we need to move the WH number (III 604) and the other observer credit to d'A to NGC 841 (which see). That is the brightest of the three. ===== NGC 846 = NGC 847. Stephan's micrometrically measured position is very accurate; Swift's position, estimated from setting circles is not too bad, and his description of the four field stars nearby is appropriate, too. The identity, first suggested by Spitaler in the early 1890's and included in the 1st IC, is certain. ===== NGC 856 = NGC 859. See NGC 863. ===== NGC 859 = NGC 856. See NGC 863. ===== NGC 863 = NGC 866 = NGC 885 and company. The problem here is what to do with the five observations reported by Lewis Swift in his fifth "catalogue" of nebulae, published in Astronomische Nachrichten No. 2763 (Vol. 116, page 33, 1886). All five received NGC numbers: 856, 859, 866, 868, and 885. So, in addition to NGC 863, found by William Herschel (H III 260), there are six numbers in the area and but only three fairly bright galaxies. NGC 863 itself is no problem. The NGC position, from JH's observations, is very good (there is a 30 second error in WH's RA; see Dreyer's note in his edition of WH's Scientific Papers). It obviously pins down the brightest of the galaxies in the area (which, by the way, is Markarian 590). Another of the galaxies is very nearly as bright (Mark 590 and this second galaxy are listed at m_p = 14.0 and 14.4, respectively, in the CGCG), and I'm a bit surprised that the Herschels did not see it. These two are obviously the two brightest that Swift found on the night of 3 October 1886 (N859 and N866, numbers 23 and 24, respectively, in his AN list). The relative positions that he gives them are correct -- "np of 2" and "sf of 2." The declinations are not too bad, but the RA's are out. The third object that he found that night is NGC 868; the position is not too bad, and the description (what there is of it: "eF, pS, R") is appropriate. Swift returned to the area on 31 October of the same year, finding two more objects. The first of these, NGC 856 (the 22nd object in Swift's list), has a good position, and the description ("eF, S, lE, F * close") is again appropriate. The star was measured by both Bigourdan and Howe, and is about a minute of arc east and slightly north of the galaxy. The second object, NGC 885 (number 27), has -- if my conjecture is correct -- the largest positional error of any of Swift's five objects here: five minutes of time in RA. Swift's declination is good. What I believe happened on this night is that Swift simply rediscovered the two brightest galaxies. So, NGC 859 = NGC 856 and NGC 885 = NGC 863. His descriptions of the brightnesses of the two objects, though, is systematically fainter -- "eF" vs. "pF" for the fainter of the two, and "vF" vs. "pF" for the brighter -- than on his earlier night's observations. This suggests to me that the sky was not as good on this second night as on the first, or that Swift was then simply noting nebulae as fainter. The right ascension problem for NGC 885 is, I believe, one of Swift's large random errors that are littered throughout his lists. For example, in the same list, NGC 1689 (found 22 October 1886) is also five minutes out, being = NGC 1667. Another example: NGC 1037, also in the same list, has as a part of its description "[GC] 581 in field." This means that GC 581 = NGC 1032 must be within about 16 arcminutes of Swift's object (Swift was using an eyepiece that had a field diameter of 33 arcmin), but his declination for NGC 1037 is 2 deg 49.7 arcmin different from NGC 1032's declination! In summary, then, I think that my original assignments of the NGC numbers are probably correct, though we do not have the evidence to be absolutely sure. The observations reported by Herbert Howe in M.N. 68, 356, 1898, and 69, 29, 1900, support my position: he could not find NGC 859, NGC 866, and NGC 885, though he reports observing NGC 856, NGC 863, and NGC 868. Bigourdan also has observations of only three objects here, though he assigns a different number to the faintest: NGC 859 rather than NGC 868. I've yet to sort out his data completely, however. ===== NGC 866 = NGC 863 (which see) = NGC 885. ===== NGC 867 may be the same galaxy as NGC 875. Or it may be the same as IC 225. Or it may be neither, or another galaxy altogether. I don't have enough information to tell. Here is the story. This is the second of WH's third class (very faint) of nebulae, found during his first season of sweeping the sky. He placed it "13 minutes :: following, -- north" of 60 Ceti. Dreyer has a note in the Scientific Papers that reads (in full): Sweep 61, Dec 21, 1783. "An almost invisible F. neb., it is R. and about 8 or 10 arcsec diameter, being brighter in the center than outwards. It can only be seen when the glass is perfectly clean and the attention confined to the object." By two diagrams, it is about 1 1/2 deg nf a star which was taken to be 69 Ceti, but obs. was interrupted by clouds. Not found by Bigourdan twice. In his 1912 MN list of corrections to WH's NGC nebulae, Dreyer shortens this to read merely, "The place of III.2 is extremely uncertain." The suggestion that it might be NGC 875 comes from d'A who found N875 and measured a pretty accurate position for it. Dreyer copied this suggestion into the NGC description for N875. Auwers, in his reduction of WH's nebulae places N867 at "02 07 29, -1::" for 1830 which places it at 02 13 37, -0.5 for 1950. This is more than a degree south of the GC (and NGC) position, and I wonder if Auwers has his declination sign wrong. He has no note for the object, nor does JH in GC. And that is pretty much it as far as the observations go. The crude offset from 60 Ceti suggests that N875 is the galaxy WH saw, while the 69 Ceti note suggests that IC 225 might be his object. NGC 875 is brighter by half a magnitude and is therefore the more obvious choice, but the agreement of the diagrams -- assuming the identification of the star as 69 Ceti is correct -- is also compelling. We will have to go back to WH's observing records for the sweep to look for other clues. For example, I suspect that Dreyer has replaced the original offset published in PT, but that is only a suspicion, based on JH's adoption of a fully-reduced position in GC, and on Auwers's partially-reduced position. So, at the moment, all I can say is "NGC 867 may be the same galaxy as NGC 875. Or it may be the same as IC 225. Or ..." ----- I find Dreyer's note in the Scientific Papers a bit curious. CH's fair copy of the Sweep says only "A nebula eF, R, 8 or 10[arcsec] d, bM. 60 Ceti f 13[min] PD about 89[deg] 53[arcmin]. For description see F[ixt] St[ars], Vol. 5, page 476". Dreyer apparently copied that description into his note. The curiosity comes because CH has clearly written "60 [sixty] Ceti", not 69 [sixty nine] Ceti". Though that star, whichever one it is, is the only star in the sweep, it's clock correction agrees reasonably well with the only other star with a similar correction from the same night, 55 Piscium in the previous sweep: -5h 37m 02.9s for 60 Ceti, and -5h 29m 39.8s for 55 Piscium. Had the star been 69 Ceti, the correction would have been -5h 18m 17.7s. The difference of nearly 20 minutes with 55 Psc compared with just 7.4 minutes makes the identity of 60 Ceti more likely in my mind, though the other is certainly possible. So, I come back again to NGC 875. That fits WH's description, and while I am not going to change the question mark on the identification, I think the meager evidence leads us to this galaxy as WH's object from his early sweep. The position I give in the table, by the way, is CH's 1800 position (02 05 37, 89 58 [NPD]) precessed to J2000. It is clearly very uncertain with the RA given to a full minute of time, and the NPD merely estimated. ===== NGC 868. Until I saw the SDSS image early in May 2017, I could not be sure that the superposed star was not actually a companion galaxy. The SDSS clearly shows it as a star, so the previous versions of the position table got the type wrong. Also see NGC 863 where this figures in the identification of several of Lewis Swift's nebulae. ===== NGC 869 is the western partner of the famous "Double Cluster". See NGC 884 for a bit more on these spectacularly fine naked-eye objects. ===== NGC 872 is one of the few Leander McCormick nebulae that is absolutely, positively identified. Not only did Leavenworth observe it three times, he made two sketches of the field. Even so, the nominal RA is 46 seconds of time off the true RA, an indication of the poor quality of the early LM positions. See NGC 412 for an LM nebula, found and sketched the same night as one of N872's, not so fortunate in its observation. By the way, I identified this galaxy as NGC "842" in previous releases of this notes file. I did that consistently throughout the file, not just as an isolated typo, clearly the result of a brain freeze. I'm grateful to Steve Gottlieb, who caught this, for letting me know with polite good humor. ===== NGC 874. Though Muller's position is off, his description is exact, including the position angle of the galaxy and the position angle and distance of the neighboring star. The RC3 is correct in this case. ----- In July 2016, John Ponting sent an email noting that my earlier comment is not correct in its reference to the neighboring star (star "A" in what follows). Here is what appeared in the second Leander McCormick list with respect to this galaxy: No. RA (1890) Dec m D x d "Form" n Obs Notes 329 02 11.1 -23 42 15.5 0.3x0.1 E 170[deg] 1 M **?; *10, P320[deg] [delta] 2.8[arcmin] The star's position angle is actually close to 27 degrees rather than the 320 degrees that Frank Muller recorded, though the distance is correct. John notes another star (star "B") of very similar magnitude at PA = 320 degrees and distance = 5.1 arcminutes. Given this, he has suggested four ways in which Muller may have confused his observation: "(1) Muller was referring to 'A', got the distance right, but measured the angle completely wrong (67[deg] error; most of his angles are within 10[deg]) (2) He was referring to 'B', got the angle spot on, but measured the distance completely wrong (2.3' error; most of his distances are within 0.5') (3) He measured both stars and compressed these readings into one, managing to take bits from each (seems very unlikely to me) (4) He was referring to 'A', whose angle he measured as 32[deg] (which is within his normal angle accuracy), but an extra '0' got added in error when the list was published. (This seems to me to be the most likely.)" I can add a fifth possibility to this list: Muller recorded his star in the wrong quadrant, intending "40[deg]" instead of 320. Whatever happened, the identity of the galaxy is pretty sure. Rather surprisingly, Muller's RA is close to the real value while his declination is 7 arcminutes too far north. But his description of the galaxy and its nearby star -- aside from whatever error he made -- are close to what we see on the sky today. ===== NGC 875 may also be NGC 867, which see. ===== NGC 884 is the eastern, larger member of the famous "Double Cluster"; the western member is of course NGC 869. There are 8-10 very bright stars scattered over the face of this cluster; most of these are probably M-type red giants. The clusters are part of a much larger stellar association spanning at least six degrees, but each cluster is pretty well isolated. They do, of course, form an actual physical pair at a distance of about 2.2 kpc, and the total population of both clusters combined probably tops 20,000 stars (see e.g. Currie et al., ApJS 186, 191, 2010). Absorption is patchy across the face of this cluster, so its diameter from visual inspection is probably not well-determined. In particular, the canonical core of the cluster appears to be in the southwestern part, while the overall distribution of stars is uneven over an area of 20' x 20' as seen on the DSS2 red image. The center, near 02 22 20, +57 11.2 (J2000) is well northeast of the core (02 22 04, +57 07.8) and there appears to be a "hole" (centered at 02 22 36, +57 07.9) in the distribution of the brighter stars. ===== NGC 885 = NGC 863 (which see) = NGC 866. ===== NGC 886. Thanks to a typo ("6" for "5"), this appeared in an earlier unpublished errata list of mine as being equal to NGC 863. It is not, of course. It is actually a scattered cluster of about 20-30 stars centered near JH's position. It's obvious on the POSS; nevertheless, RNGC chose to call it "non-existent." See Brent's Monograph on the "non-existent" clusters for more. ===== NGC 894 is the northwestern arm of NGC 895. Lord Rosse and his observer at first thought that this was a double nebula. But their description makes clear that, after some study, they regarded the two as parts of the same extended system. This, of course, is just what they are. ===== NGC 896. Though WH noted the polar distance as uncertain, his position is only 4 arcmin south of the nebula, a bright knot in a huge HII ring (or possibly a supernova remnant). In addition, CH has reduced a position with respect to another star in the sweep (HD 24480) that is almost identical with that derived from the offsets published in WH's PT paper (the second catalogue of nebulae and clusters). Wolfgang suggests that this is identical to IC 1795 (which see), found by Barnard. I think that is unlikely as Barnard's position is close to another knot in the same nebula. Unfortunately, Barnard's observation is apparently one that he communicated directly to Dreyer, so we cannot easily check its details. Until we can see that observation, I am going to assume that Barnard (and Dreyer) knew about the proximity of the two objects and thought they were different enough to warrant two numbers. ===== NGC 898. Dreyer points out in his edition of WH's Scientific Papers that this galaxy has a 40 second RA error shared by other galaxies in the same sweep on 17 October 1786. Oddly, WH apparently caught the offset for NGC 891, NGC 980/982, and NGC 1293/1294, but not for NGC 898. The correction was first made by Bigourdan, and noted by Dreyer. Yann Pothier has found that WH's error led to another by Dreyer himself. Using LdR's Leviathan on 6 November 1874, Dreyer thought he was observing this galaxy (III 570 = GC 533). But the description Dreyer gives perfectly matches NGC 923, and HD 15163 is just where he places it 2.4 arcminutes north- northeast of the galaxy. Yann concludes, "Pointing the Leviathan with accuracy was apparently a chore (not always successful) and I can understand why." So can I! ===== NGC 900. See NGC 901. ===== NGC 901 is just 2.8 arcmin nnf NGC 900, and the NGC position (from Marth, who found the pair) is very close to the true position. Nevertheless, this has not prevented MCG and RNGC from getting the identification wrong. MCG calls N900 "N901," and RNGC claims N901 to be non-existent (though it does get N900 right). In spite of this, the identifications of the two objects are clear. ===== NGC 917. JH's position is exactly 20 arcmin too far north in declination. His description, "vF, S, R; forms a semicircle with four stars" from a single observation in Sweep 106 is a prefect match for UGC 1890 and four nearby field stars. Lord Rosse looked at the area of JH's published position, but saw only several very faint stars. There are two double stars about an arcminute south of JH's place. These are very faint; while they might have been visible in the 72-inch, it's very unlikely that JH could have seen them with the 20-foot reflector. In any case, UGC 1890 is almost certainly the object he saw. The galaxy and the nearby stars match his description exactly. ----- Entering the Archinal and Hynes positions for the Galactic clusters in May 2016, I was surprised to run across NGC 917. It is listed in AH as an asterism at near JH's uncorrected position with a diameter of one arcminute. Here is what Brent has to say about it: Forms semicircle with 2 stars NW and 2 stars NE as J.H. indicated. Triple and double stars on E and W sides. Alias: h 220. I see what Brent is talking about, the two double stars south of JH's uncorrected position. As I noted above, however, these stars are very faint, and I doubt that JH could have seen them. I checked the sweep (No. 106 on 22 Nov 1827) where it is number 32 -- JH gives some additional information that did not make it into his 1833 catalogue. In particular, there is a diagram showing the stars and nebula: * 2 S ^ 1 * | E <--- 3 * * 4 @ n where the asterisks represent his stars, and the "@" symbol, his nebula (note that south is up in his diagram). JH also estimates the magnitudes of the stars: 1 = 8.9m, 2 = 3 = 11m, 4 = [unfortunately illegible, but possibly 10 or 12] m. These match the relative positions and brightnesses of the stars around UGC 1890 nearly perfectly. Re-reducing JH's position using the declination offset in his sweep from the nearest comparison star (7 Trianglum) gives the position that he himself reduced and adopted. However, the diagram he drew is clearly that of UGC 1890 and its neighboring stars, so his recorded NPD index of "1 30 10" should actually read "1 50 10". This is either a recording error on the part of John Stone, or an error made by JH himself in reading the NPD index on the telescope. Either way, it's clear that his NPD is in error by 20 arcminutes, and that UGC 1890 really is NGC 917. ===== NGC 920 = IC 1799. For decades, indeed for more than a century, most of us have accepted the galaxy that we now call UGC 1920 as NGC 920. It is, after all, only +16 seconds in RA, and +1.3 arcmin in Dec off Lewis Swift's position (02 20 10, +45 27 05), not all that far given Swift's usual statistical errors of 2-3 arcmin. The galaxy itself matches his description pretty well: "eF, eS, R; 1 or 2 eF * close; e diff." Swift found his object on 11 September 1885, the same night he found NGC 933 which is nearby to the east. We might wonder about the nearby stars; there are three relatively bright ones forming a fine triangle just 2 1/2 arcmin southwest of the galaxy. We might have expected Swift to mention that triangle explicitly, but he doesn't. But that little detail never surfaced as few of us had looked closely at the field or at Swift's original paper. Steve Gottlieb did both. His note early in January 2014 to Wolfgang and me reads in part: Swift's position for II-20 [the 20th object in his second list of nebulae, published in AN 2707] is also 70 tsec due west of IC 1799 = UGC 1943, and an excellent match in declination (given Swift's general accuracy). So, IC 1799 is only off in RA from Swift's position. His description mentions "1 or 2 eF* nr", which could apply to either galaxy, but UGC 1920 also has brighter nearby stars that to me would be mentioned [it was this that alerted me to the triangle of stars; I believe that these are the ones Steve mentions]. More importantly, though, IC 1799 is a more prominent galaxy than UGC 1920. In fact I probably would have missed UGC 1920 (the halo is very low surface brightness) in my 18-inch if I wasn't looking in the right place. IC 1799, on the other hand, was immediately noticed in the field, and has a much higher surface brightness. So, I'm suggesting NGC 920 = IC 1799 = UGC 1943. Wolfgang wrote back that his copy of Swift's paper came from Max Wolf's library in Heidelberg, and has "The '0' (of 20) is struck through and a '1' is noted to the right of the digit." So, Wolf, too, suspected a 1 minute error in Swift's RA (02 20 10 for 1885, as published). This leads to a difference in RA of only -10 seconds in RA and just -7 arcseconds in Dec -- negligible, in the face of Swift's usual errors. Steve's only remaining question is why did Swift not call his 20th and 21st objects in his second list -- NGC 933 is the 21st -- a pair? Specifically, he often says of galaxies oriented like this "np of 2" and "sf of 2", but does not in this case. Instead, he says, interestingly, of both galaxies, "Powers 132, 200, and 265". Mention of different magnifications is a very rare comment for him. The fact that he appends it to the descriptions for both objects does connect them, at least vicariously. Given all of this, especially the easier visibility of IC 1799, we have decided to accept Steve's (and Wolf's!) idea that Swift's object is actually the same one that Bigourdan came across five years later in January of 1891. ===== NGC 923 is credited to Stephan in his 10th list new nebulae. However, Yann Pothier has found that Dreyer actually discovered the galaxy on 6 November 1874 with LdR's 72-inch four years before Stephan chanced upon it independently with the 80-cm reflector at Nice. See NGC 898 (which Dreyer thought he was seeing) for more. ===== NGC 930 is lost. Copeland found it just an arcminute northwest of NGC 932 with Lord Rosse's 72-inch. He saw it only one night, and made a micrometric measurement of it with respect to the nucleus of NGC 932. Two stars that he also measured (on three other nights as well) are just where he places them. But there is no trace of his nebula. There is a faint knot (or superposed companion) in the corona of N932, but it is only about 35 arcsec northeast of the nucleus. While Copeland might have been able to see this, there is no way to make his measurement fit. There are no other likely galaxies nearby that he might have seen, either -- aside from NGC 938 about 10 arcmin east-southeast which he, in fact, also saw. So, NGC 930 is a mystery. The modern catalogues, by the way, are wrong in adopting that number for the galaxy that is here. Dreyer clearly meant NGC 932 to apply to WH's object. ===== NGC 932 is the correct number to apply to WH's nebula, not NGC 930 (which is lost; see its note for more) as most modern catalogues do. ===== NGC 935 has always been taken as the northern, larger, and brighter of two interacting galaxies; it was found by Lewis Swift on 18 September 1885. The fainter, southern galaxy has been called IC 1801 and was apparently discovered by Stephane Javelle on 27 December 1897. Swift does not mention the duplicity of his object, though he noted "p a pB * 6s" (that star is actually west of the pair of galaxies). Coincidentally, that is the star that Javelle used as his comparison star (BD +18 310). There is no doubting Javelle's galaxy. His micrometric position falls within a few arcseconds of the nucleus of the southern galaxy. However, Swift's RA falls 3-4 seconds of time east of the pair, and is actually closer in Dec to the IC galaxy. It thus seems likely that he did not see the individual objects, but the combined light of both of them. Given that, it would probably be more correct to list "NGC 935n" and "NGC 935s=IC 1801" as the names for the two objects. However, given that the name NGC 935 has been taken for decades to belong just to the northern galaxy, I'm going to leave it that way. See NGC 4874 for another case where the canonical name could well be wrong -- though in that case, the evidence is a bit murkier than here. ===== NGC 937 is a curious galaxy. In the DSS2 blue image, it looks like a fairly normal late-type spiral, at least in its outer regions. Towards the center is what at first glance appears to be a bar, but turns out to be nothing more than a knot on the eastern side with the rest of the "bar" being an extended bulge. This is centered a few arcseconds north of a relatively bright, superposed star. At least it looks like a star, and Stephan saw it that way, too. Its image is quite stellar on the 2MASS scans, but there are whisps of nebulosity around it in both the DSS2 images. Even more curiously, the brightest pixel in this "star's" image, especially on the blue DSS2 image, is on the northern edge close to the center of the outer isophotes of the galaxy. Is this "superposed star" perhaps some kind of extremely bright knot in the galaxy, or perhaps even an overexposed stellar nucleus? If I had to guess, I would say that it is a star. But we really do need a spectroscopic study of the galaxy to say for sure. ----- Looking at this again just a month or so later in May 2017, I wonder if the "knot" just northeast of the superposed star is actually the nucleus of the galaxy. The entire face of the galaxy is patchy, with at least three superposed stars including the bright one that I discuss in the second paragraph above. It's unfortunate that there is no SDSS scan this far north, nor any other easily available high-resolution optical image. But looking once again at the 2MASS image convinces me that the brightest object on the galaxy is indeed a superposed star. It also seems possible that the object just to the northeast of the star is actually the nucleus. I've changed the notations in the main table to reflect this latest "thinking" on my part. Finally, looking a the wider field around NGC 937 shows several other galaxies in the area, including NGC 946. All are probably outliers of Abell 347. Again, we really do need high-resolution studies of this interesting object to clear up the questions I still have about it. ===== NGC 940 is also NGC 952, which see. ===== NGC 944 = IC 228. Javelle's position for IC 228 is accurate, but Leavenworth's for NGC 944 is not. As is usual for many of the Leander McCormick nebulae in the first two AJ lists, the crude position there is over 1.5 minutes of time too far east. Fortunately, Leavenworth has left us a sketch showing not just the nebula, but two nearby field stars in their correct relative positions and brightnesses. The brighter of the stars is BD -15 430, Javelle's reference star. ===== NGC 950. There are two reasonable candidates for this object; Ormond Stone saw one of them. Stone's rough RA is 10 to 20 seconds east of the two which form a nice pair separated by about 2.3 arcminutes; his Dec is correct for either galaxy. The western galaxy is a bit fainter and smaller, but has a higher surface brightness, than the larger and somewhat brighter spiral. For MCG, Vorontsov- Velyaminov took the eastern galaxy as NGC 950, and I did the same for SEGC. But given Stone's position and description (m = 15.0, size = 0.4 arcmin, with condensation = gbM), either galaxy could be the object he picked up. As with other cases of possible confusion like this (e.g. NGC 935 and NGC 4874), I've stuck with the "canonical" identification to avoid confusion, though I've flagged it uncertain ":". The western galaxy is in the table as "N0950: comp". ===== NGC 952 = NGC 940. Here is my previous note on this object: Stephan has misidentified his comparison star. My first suspicion was that he switched the comparison stars for this and for NGC 983 (which see; briefly, when 15 Triangulum is used as the comparsion star for N983, Stephan's position exactly matches that for NGC 1002). The position he lists for the N983 star, however -- "786 B.A.C." = 15 Tri -- has no bright star near it (that position is RA = 02h 24m 11.23s, NPD = 58d 59m 27.6s, for 1870). Furthermore, he lists different NPD's for the nebula in the two papers in which he published his third list: in MN, the NPD is given as 59 49 52.1; while in AN, the NPD is 55 49 52.1. There is nothing in either position. The next thing to try is to look for galaxies in the area that are at the offset inferred from Stephan's published positions. These are -4m 25.61s in RA, and +2m 58.0s in Dec. A cursory scan of the relevant areas didn't turn up any reasonable candidates, but I suspect that a careful inspection of the fields northwest of the stars between 5 and 9 in Triangulum would eventually reveal Stephan's object. Until then, however, N952 is unfortunately "Not found." I wrote all of that years ago before I had a copy of E. Esmiol's "Reduction des Observations de Nebuleuses decouvertes par M. Stephan" in hand. That has all the original observations, not just the reduced positions that Stephan published between 1870 and 1885. Esmiol does not include NGC 952 in that list, nor does he discuss its absence. However, there is an entry for NGC 940 with offsets identical to those that I listed in the second paragraph above. The description of the galaxy that he gives is identical to Stephan's. These suggest that the entry for NGC 952 in Stephan's third list was the garbled result of combining this offset with the position of the wrong comparison star. So, we can be confident that NGC 952 = NGC 940. ===== NGC 956. JH describes this as a "p rich cl, 2 or 3 B and about 20 sts 13 ... 15 m; a star 9 m taken." This apparently refers to the eastern clump of a somewhat larger apparent cluster that includes another clump of stars in the southwest corner. I've adopted the center of the larger grouping as the cluster's center, in apparent agreement with Archinal and Hynes. However, a good case can be made for the eastern clump alone being JH's object. If so, then a position about 15 seconds east is appropriate. ===== NGC 961 = NGC 1051 = IC 249. Stone's description matches Stephan's in every respect, but his (Stone's) RA is just 10 minutes of time off, an obvious digit error. See IC 249 for more on that story. ===== NGC 963 = IC 1808. Leavenworth's position, like many of his, is too far east by over a minute of time. But his declination and description, like many of his, are about right. Since he left us no sketch of the field, we have to depend on just the declination and description, but I have little doubt that they refer to IC 1808. Javelle rediscovered the galaxy about a decade after Leavenworth saw it; the position he measured at Nice -- and therefore the IC2 position -- is correct. ===== NGC 964 = IC 1814, which see. ===== NGC 970. See NGC 971. ===== NGC 971 is a star. Lord Rosse's diagram and micrometric measurements with respect to NGC 970 point exactly to the star. Thus, though some have taken the faint companion of NGC 970 as NGC 971, this is incorrect. ===== NGC 980 and NGC 982. William Herschel found these two nebulae, but did not measure individual positions; his position is "between them." Thus, it is John Herschel's positions that are used in the GC and NGC. Unfortunately, JH did not carry over into the GC his uncertainty in the position of H III 572 = h 235; this is noted in his 1833 catalogue (RA and NPD): "02 24 40.5:, 49 55 25:". The other nebula, H III 573 = h 235 carries no such uncertainty symbols: "02 24 44.8, 49 52 39." If this latter position is precessed to 1950, it agrees closely with those measured by Bigourdan and by Dressel and Condon for "NGC 980." Dressel and Condon, of course, simply copied the designation from UGC. Bigourdan gives no reason for his identifications, simply noting that "NGC 982" is fainter than "NGC 980." The MCG, however, calls this southeastern object "NGC 982," apparently preferring to believe that the NGC declination is incorrect rather than the right ascension. Who's right? Let's look back at John Herschel's observations since that is where the incorrect position comes from. If we precess his uncertain position for the western object, we find that the RA but not the declination agrees with that from the modern observations. So, the two galaxies are oriented northwest- southeast on the sky, but the NGC positions (from Sir John) say southwest- northeast. Indeed, the GC and NGC descriptions state this orientation explicitly. However, Dreyer has a note in the NGC repeating part of Sir John's original description for h 235: "Dist. 3 arcmin; pos from the next one = 337.0 deg," and adding, "Is the p one perhaps the most northern? H says nothing about their relative position; not observed by d'A." John Herschel's note about the position angle between the two being 337 deg is the vital clue here, since it suggests that the nw/se orientation is correct. Let's now take the position of h 236 as correct -- as indeed it is within the known statistical errors of Sir John's observations (about 2 arcmin). Now, assume that Sir John measured the position of h 235 with respect to h 236, perhaps by measuring the distance and position angle that he quotes. This would then imply that he made an error in calculating the offset in declination. If this is true, then changing the sign of the declination offset (2 arcmin 46 arcsec) would put the declination exactly on the true declination: +40 42.5 for 1950 (NPD = 49 49 53 for 1830). So, here is another case where the position for a nebula was measured with respect to another nearby nebula, which in turn was referred to the "fundamental" reference system (see the note on NGC 2424 and 2427 for another instance of this). So, I think that the declination of NGC 980 is out by 5.5 arcmin, that the UGC identifications are switched, and that the MCG got them right. Another minor mystery: in the GC, JH has the distance as "210 arcsec" rather than "3 arcmin". This makes his observation closer to the true distance on the sky. I suspect that it comes from his original observing records -- but why didn't he use it in his 1833 list? ===== NGC 982. See NGC 980. ===== NGC 983 = NGC 1002. Stephan misidentified his comparison star, a mistake caught by the editor of the Monthly Notices and given a footnote in Stephan's third list (the editor, too, made a mistake: for "... R.A. 02h 17m 52.66s ..." read "... R.A. 02h 27m 52.66s ..."). When the right star, 15 Triangulum, is used, Stephan's micrometrically measured position falls exactly on NGC 1002. The error is also mentioned in Esmiol's 1916 re-reduction of Stephan's observations. ===== NGC 985 is a peculiar ring galaxy with a bright Seyfert nucleus on the southern side of the ring. The SDSS also shows a superposed star just 3.7 arcseconds northwest. The Gaia DR1 also includes the star. ===== NGC 993 = NGC 994. Marth found this in January of 1865, and only observed it once. Nevertheless, his position is good. That and his brief description (eF, vS) is enough to identify the galaxy he saw. Swift redisovered it 20 years and some months later in October 1885. His description of the galaxy and the surrounding star field exactly matches Marth's object: "eeF, pS, R, vF * close; bet a pB * and a F D *; np of 2 [the 'sf of 2' is NGC 1004] ..." So far, so good. But then Swift adds, "... not [GC] 5251 [NGC 993], 5264 [N1016] nor 602 [N1073]." This led Dreyer to assign a separate NGC number in spite of the virtually identical positions and descriptions. Swift seems to have confused another galaxy in the field with Marth's object. But I can't venture a guess as to which one it might be. I don't see any nearby that are bright enough for him to see that he has not already named. Perhaps there is an asterism in the area that he picked up. Whatever he did, there is no doubt about which galaxy he saw -- it was the same one that Marth saw (the identity was first suggested in CGCG, by the way). ===== NGC 996. See IC 240. ===== NGC 997. See NGC 998. ===== NGC 998 is often misidentified as CGCG 414-028 = UGC 2102,N2 (the second object in the UGC Note for UGC 2102) in modern catalogues because the CGCG put the NGC number on the wrong galaxy. Steve Gottlieb points out that the correct object -- clearly identified by Marth's relative position from NGC 997 -- is just 1.9 arcmin north-northeast of NGC 997, and is UGC 2102,N1. MCG is also a bit confused: NGC 997 is MCG +01-07-015 with declination "+7 04.", while NGC 998 is MCG +01-07-016 with declination "+7 06". The other information in MCG for these two objects is correct. ===== NGC 1002 = NGC 983, which see. ===== NGC 1006 = NGC 1010. Swift saw all three of the galaxies here. Curiously, his RAs for the first two (NGC 1011 is the second) of the triplet are both 10 seconds of time too small, but the RA for the third galaxy (NGC 1017) is close to being right (he saw them all on the same night). Stephan picked up the first two of the galaxies, but not the third, while Stone got all three and recognized that the first two were Stephan's. Swift apparently did not have the GC supplement at hand, so did not realize that Stephan had already seen the nebulae. Thus, he included all three as new in his fifth list. This led Dreyer astray, but -- again curiously -- only for NGC 1006. He credited Swift for all three, but included a separate number only for Swift's observation of NGC 1006. The other two he combined with Stephan's and Stone's nebulae to get this field almost, but not quite, right. ===== NGC 1010 = NGC 1006, which see. ===== NGC 1011. See NGC 1006. ===== NGC 1014 is a double star not too far from Muller's position. It is positively identified by his note "1st of 2"; the second is NGC 1018, a galaxy about three arcmin to the northeast. Muller's relative position for the galaxy -- +0.2 minutes and +1 arcmin -- is close to the true relative position -- +9.4 seconds and +1 arcmin 47 arcsec. Muller's descriptions are appropriate, too. ===== NGC 1017. See NGC 1006. ===== NGC 1018. See NGC 1014. ===== NGC 1023 is one of the nearest early-type galaxies in the sky, and is also the brightest in a group. It has a low-surface-brightness companion ("NGC 1023A" in the position list) attached on the eastern end. Both galaxies may have bars, but they are indistinct on the DSS image. ===== NGC 1027 is probably also = IC 1824, which see. Note that the position Brian has chosen for the cluster is that for HD 16626 -- perhaps rather ironically as it is a foreground star. ===== NGC 1032. See NGC 1037. ===== NGC 1036 = IC 1828, which see. ===== NGC 1037. Swift found this on the night of 29 Sept 1886, and gives an 1885.0 position of 02 34 08 -02 13 47, describing it as "eeeF; vS; vE; eee diff; [GC] 581 [NGC 1032] in field" in his 5th list of new nebulae. Something is obviously wrong since NGC 1032 is at 02 33 29 +00 35.9 (1885) and probably has no other galaxies bright enough for Swift to have seen within 16 arcmin of it (he used an eyepiece that gave a field of 33 arcmin, so if N1032 is "in field," it must have been within 16.5 arcmin, assuming that N1037 was centered). In addition, Swift's quoted declination is 2 deg 49.7 min south of NGC 1032. I don't see any obvious typos, so I've had to conclude "not found" for N1037. ----- After I wrote the preceding paragraph, I learned that Wolfgang Steinicke (and the catalogues that I noted in the position table note) have suggested that NGC 1037 is actually UGC 2119 = A0235-02, two minutes of time preceding Swift's position, and 6.7 arcmin south. This is certainly possible as there are several other larger RA errors in Swift's 5th list. However, this still leaves the problem of NGC 1032 being nearly 3 degrees to the north. Looking at the field, two other possibilities suggest themselves. First, Swift may have picked up UGC 2106 which is in the same field as UGC 2119. This would suggest that he somehow thought that U2119 was NGC 1032. Secondly, if he had NGC 1032 correctly identified, then it is just barely possible that he might have also seen the very faint galaxy about 4 arcmin northwest. This is quite flattened, and might be visible in a 16-inch under very good skies. However, there are brighter stars near it -- in particular, a star is less than an arcminute to the northeast. Why didn't Swift mention any of these? This hypothesis also requires a large error in position (50 seconds in RA and 2 deg 53 min in Dec). Finally, Courtney Seligman has suggested another solution: Swift's object is actually IC 243 with a -1m 30s, +5deg 10arcmin error in the position. Here, the other galaxy in the field would be NGC 1022, just 13.5 arcmin to the north. This has the advantage of picking up a bright/faint galaxy pair that Swift could have seen, but the disadvantage of requiring large errors in both his RA and his Dec. See Courtney's web page and note on this object for his thoughts. All in all, none of these hypotheses strike me as entirely plausible, but I have included them all in the position table for your consideration. ===== NGC 1038. Gary Kronk has found that not only was this galaxy found twice by Lewis Swift -- it is number 16 in his 3rd list, and number 34 in his 5th list -- but it was discovered a century earlier by William Herschel. Here is WH's observation from Sweep 505 on 1 January 1786: Clock NPD Index Description 02 31 16 89 26 Suspected, may be 2 S close stars in the parallel. 396 Ceti of Bode's Cat. f 9' 14" n 1[deg] 17' RA 02 29 46 PD 89 21 [equinox 1800; CH's reduction] WH's comparison star is HR 732 = HD 15633. Reducing this, I find WH's J2000 position is 02 40 04, +01 30.8, very close to the galaxy. The only puzzling thing in the observation is WH's note, "may be two small stars in the parallel." We might take this as a comment on the difficulty of seeing the object as there is no trace on the modern sky surveys (DSS, 2MASS, or SDSS) of a second "star" -- only the galaxy's nucleus is visible. ===== NGC 1040 = NGC 1053. Here is a peculiar case where Lewis Swift's position is closer to the galaxy than Edouard Stephan's! However, if Stephan's position is made exactly one minute of time larger, then it agrees with the GSC position to within 5 arcsec. Stephan apparently made a simple error in subtracting the RA offset of the galaxy from the comparison star as the position he lists for the star is correctly precessed from the BD. However -- another error -- he recorded the star's BD number as +40 677 in both publications of his third list: the correct number is +40 577. We all have bad days. The identity with NGC 1053, by the way, was suggested by Reinmuth, and Swift's position and description are good. ===== NGC 1042. See NGC 1048. ===== NGC 1044. Neither WH nor JH noted this as double, so it is likely that they saw only the brighter, northwestern component of the two interacting galaxies. It is also possible, of course, that they saw the combined light of both. I am going to take only the brightest as the NGC object, noting that this could be an incorrect interpretation. NGC 1046 is 2.2 arcminutes to the southeast, a fainter companion is about 0.9 arcminutes to the northwest, and the 10th magnitude star noted by JH is about 1.5 arcminutes further on to the north-northwest. JH's "line" is comprised of the two galaxies he saw and the brighter star. Coincidentally, there is the second galaxy and another fainter star, this one southeast of NGC 1046. ===== NGC 1046. See NGC 1044. ===== NGC 1047. See NGC 1048. ===== NGC 1048. This is one of the two galaxies here (actually three; the southern galaxy has a very faint companion about 0.5 arcminute south). We can't quite be sure which one Swift saw as the two are pretty close in brightness and diameter. I think he probably picked up the northern galaxy, however, as Swift's positions for NGC 1042 and NGC 1047, found the same night, are too far south by about an arcminute. This offset would move his position for NGC 1048 right on to the northern galaxy. ===== NGC 1051 = NGC 961 = IC 249. See NGC 961 and IC 249 for the stories. ===== NGC 1053 = NGC 1040, which see. ===== NGC 1057 is noted as double in the NGC. It was seen this way at least five times by Lord Rosse and his observers. It is actually an S0^+ galaxy with a double star superposed just northwest. The position in the GSC for N1057 does not include the double star. ----- We've adopted 2MASS PSC positions for both the galaxy and the double star. I also note that this is one of a group of about a dozen galaxies with NGC 1061 being the brightest. The note for NGC 1062 (a star) has a bit more on the group. ===== NGC 1059 may be the double star about an arcmin east of JH's position. He recorded the object only once, and then described it as "eF; hardly sure." Dreyer noted that this object was found neither by d'Arrest nor by Burnham. The suggestion that N1059 is the double comes from Reinmuth. ===== NGC 1061. See NGC 1062. ===== NGC 1062 is a star found by Copeland in the NGC 1061 group (actually in the core of an extended cluster of galaxies) with Lord Rosse's 72-inch "Leviathan." The offsets from NGC 1061 measured by him fall precisely on a faint star, so the identity is certain. The RNGC and PGC identification of NGC 1062 with a low surface brightness spindle near NGC 1066 and 1067 is incorrect. Dreyer reduced positions for the objects in this group from the 72-inch micrometer measurements assuming a position for the nearby comparison star. It was these positions that he used in the NGC. Comparison with positions in the GSC show that Dreyer's position for the star is off by about 1.8 seconds in RA and 21 arcsec in declination. Taking these offsets into account, Copeland's measured position for NGC 1062 becomes 02 40 23.6, +32 15 00 (1950.0). ===== NGC 1065. As with NGC 1048, there are two galaxies near Swift's position for the object he found. Here, however, his declination is probably good enough to identifiy the correct galaxy, and his description of the star field "* nr s; B * p" also helps to pin down the galaxy. In addition to the galaxy 2.7 arcminutes north of Swift's object, there are two other fainter galaxies in the field. I've given positions for all of them. ===== NGC 1066. See NGC 1062. ===== NGC 1067. See NGC 1062. ===== NGC 1072 = IC 1837, which see. ===== NGC 1075 may also be the 70th entry in the first Leander McCormick list, not included in the NGC. See "LM1-70" for more on that idea. ===== NGC 1105 = IC 1840 = MCG -03-08-004. My previous decision to list two galaxies under the number "NGC 1105" was misguided. After reviewing the evidence, I've decided to go with historical precedent and let Leavenworth's sketch -- which clearly shows that N1105 = I1840 -- provide the final word. However, for those still interested, here is the full story. The NGC galaxy was found in 1885 by Leavenworth with the 26-inch refractor at Leander McCormick Observatory. As with most of the faint nebulae discovered visually with this telescope, the discovery position is crude, especially in RA. Fortunately, Leavenworth has left us a sketch that shows conclusively that his object is identical to IC 1840. The four stars to the west of the galaxy -- looking like the top four stars in the cross of Cygnus -- are all shown in the sketch along with the galaxy. The second candidate comes from Herbert Howe. Working with the 20-inch refractor at Chamberlain Observatory just outside of Denver, he could not find anything at the position given by Leavenworth. However, "... four minutes following was a very small nebula, about equal in brightness to a star of magnitude 13. As Leavenworth observed his nebula only once, and took its place roughly, the two may be identical." Dreyer took Howe's "may be identical" as "indeed are identical" and put Howe's RA in the IC2 Notes with only the qualification, "... (nothing in the place given by L.)." So, we have two galaxies for one NGC number (where is Solomon when we need him?!). My previous solution added "e" and "w" suffixes to the NGC number for the two different galaxies. Not very satisfactory for the purist, I'm afraid, but it did give some credit to each of the observers, and attempted to deal with Dreyer's Note in IC2. As I've said, however, my current sensibilities are offended by this Solomaic decision, so I've reverted to using historical precedent and ignoring Dreyer's Note. For what it's worth, the galaxy that Howe found is now called MCG -03-08-036. ===== NGC 1109 (= IC 1846?), 1111, 1112, 1113, 1115, 1116, 1117, and 1127. Of these eight nebulae, all found on a single night in 1863 by Albert Marth with William Lassell's 48-inch reflector, only three -- N1115, 16, and 27 -- can be readily identified. All but one of the others can be force-fit to galaxies in area, but only by changing RA differences from galaxy to galaxy. The declinations are pretty good, assuming that the RA differences noted below are in fact leading us to the correct objects. All we have here to help decypher the field are Marth's positions -- five of them clearly wrong -- and descriptions -- all of them sparce. Here are my tentative conclusions, with Marth's data on the first line (my comments follow in parentheses), and the modern positions (for J2000.0) on the second: NGC RA (2000.0) Dec Description and comments 1109 02 49 39 +13 15.1 vF (Marth's RA 2.0 min off?) 02 47 43.6 +13 15 19 = IC 1846 = UGC 2265 = CGCG 440-008 1111 02 49 43 +13 14.0 F, vS, stell (Marth's RA 1.0 min off?) 02 48 39.4 +13 15 34 = IC 1850. Faint comp 0.4 arcmin s. 1112 02 50 00 +13 13.0 F, pS (Marth's RA 1.0 min off?) 02 49 00.4 +13 13 26 = IC 1852 = UGC 2293 = CGCG 440-015 1113 02 50 08 +13 18.0 vF (Marth's position on * 10). 02 50 05.1 +13 19 39 = * 15. 1115 02 50 25 +13 15.0 vF 02 50 25.4 +13 15 58 = CGCG 440-020 1116 02 50 35 +13 19.9 vF 02 50 35.7 +13 20 06 = UGC 2326 = CGCG 440-021 1117 02 50 43 +13 09.9 Close to a small * (RA 30 sec off? Is the comp 0.4 arcmin n the "small *"?) This may also be = IC 1855 (which see). 02 51 13.1 +13 11 07 = CGCG 440-022s = UGC 2337s 1127 02 52 51 +13 14.6 vF 02 52 51.9 +13 15 23 = CGCG 440-024 = UGC 2356 As I implied, the RA differences strike me as rather ad hoc if I have the correct objects, so these are tentative conclusions. Javelle went over this field in January 1896; there is at least one problem with his observations, too, perhaps more. See IC 1855 for that story. ===== NGC 1111 may be IC 1850. See NGC 1109 for a discussion. ===== NGC 1112 may be IC 1852. See NGC 1109 for a discussion. ===== NGC 1113. See NGC 1109. ===== NGC 1115. See NGC 1109. ===== NGC 1116. See NGC 1109. ===== NGC 1117 may also be IC 1855 (which see; also see NGC 1109). There is a double galaxy just 30 seconds of time east of Marth's position; this is probably his object. However, his only description is "close to a small *". Unfortunately, he does not tell us the direction of the "small *", so we do not know which of the galaxies is the one that he saw. Neither is obviously stellar on the sky survey plates/images, and the faint star near the southern galaxy is probably beyond his limit, even with a 48-inch telescope. So, I've listed both objects with colons. This is a candidate for visual inspection: Does one galaxy appear more obviously stellar than the other? ===== NGC 1120 = IC 261. Leavenworth's RA for this is just over a minute of time larger than Javelle's correct one. But Leavenworth left us a sketch which clearly shows the galaxy in the surrounding star field. The identity is certain. ===== NGC 1122 = NGC 1123. Swift's position is nearly identical to that given in the GC, yet neither he nor Dreyer caught the identity with the Herschel's nebula. These things happen to the best of us. Swift, by the way, mentions a star near to the north. It is there, about 2.0 arcmin away from the nucleus. There is also a faint edgewise companion to the brighter galaxy on to the northeast of Swift's star. ===== NGC 1123 = NGC 1122, which see. ===== NGC 1127. See NGC 1109. ===== NGC 1128 is the dumbbell galaxy in the center of Abell 400. Swift's RA is five minutes too small, but his comment about two pretty faint stars close west is accurate. Several objects found by Swift in October of 1886 have the same 5 minute problem. I wonder if the printed RA of a star that he commonly used then to calibrate his setting circles had a typographical error. ===== NGC 1129. See NGC 1130. ===== NGC 1130 and 1131. Both of these were discovered by Lord Rosse (or by his observer) while he was examining NGC 1129. The Parsonstown observers looked at NGC 1129 three times, noting the superposed object to the southwest all three times (it was finally taken as a star or a double star, so did not receive an NGC number. It is VV85, and may be a line of three galaxies, or two galaxies plus a star). Two other "knots," seen only during the final observation, did receive NGC numbers. While Lord Rosse did not yet have a micrometer to measure accurate offsets, the estimates he gives (2 minutes north for the first, and 2 minutes east and "a little south" for the second) are just good enough to tentatively identify the objects. Dreyer calculated the NGC positions from the offsets and the position for NGC 1129. Neither identity is certain. While there is a brighter CGCG galaxy four or five arcminutes on further southeast of N1131, Lord Rosse would have had to make a mistake of five arcminutes in his estimated offset; this is unlikely. The situation for N1130 is even less sure. There is no object directly north of N1129. Of the two possiblities, CGCG 540-004 1.5 arcmin northwest is the more likely identification. Not only is the galaxy brighter than the one about two arcmin northeast, there is a star superposed just southwest that would probably have enhanced the visibility of the CGCG object. Assuming these identifications, CGCG and UGC got the correct objects, but MCG did not (not even N1129!). The accurate position measured at Bologna for CGCG 540-007 = NGC 1131 is also for the wrong object; they got a faint spiral that may be in the background of the group. ===== NGC 1131. See NGC 1130. ===== NGC 1135 = NGC 1136, and not ESO 154- G018 as Andris and I have it in ESO and SGC. Glen Cozens has pointed out that E154-G018 would be one of JH's faintest objects if he had seen it, and he would probably have called it "eF" instead of just "F". JH, in fact, has two observations of the galaxy. For the object that became NGC 1135 (h2498) he writes, "F, R, gbM; taken for No. 3 sw 520, but proves, on reduction, to be a different nebula"; this from Sweep 732 on 11 Sept 1836. For h2499 (the "No. 3 sw 520" in the description just quoted), JH says only, "F, R, gbM; [moon above the horizon]." (Sweep 520 is dated 5 December 1834). Both observations refer to the brighter of the two objects (ESO 154- G019), but the earlier observation has a 5 arcminute error in the north polar distance. This led JH -- and Dreyer and Andris and myself and several others -- to believe that he had two nebulae here, not just one. Coincidentally, there are two nebulae in the field, but as with NGC 5440 and NGC 5441 (which see), JH almost certainly saw only the brighter of them. ===== NGC 1136 = NGC 1135, which see. RC3 and ESO give the correct position. RC2 and RNGC are wrong. The incorrect position comes from JH who made a five arcmin error in his NPD. ===== NGC 1141 = NGC 1143, and NGC 1142 = NGC 1144. This is a well-known interacting pair of galaxies, perhaps a collision. Marth's description for N1141 and N1142 fits, and his positions are just 30 arcminutes off. He apparently was having an off night when he found this pair: of the ten objects that he discovered on that night in early October 1864, five have large position errors, and another is a star. The discussion of NGC 1474 has more details. ===== NGC 1142 = NGC 1144. See NGC 1141. ===== NGC 1143 = NGC 1141, which see. ===== NGC 1144 = NGC 1142. See NGC 1141. ===== NGC 1146 is a group of four stars near d'A's position. He mentions a triple star near to the south -- that is what Brian Skiff and Tom DeMary have taken as the object itself, Brian noting that it is the southeastern of two groups of stars. For some time, I had thought that the NGC number applied to both groups. Seeing d'A's full description has finally made it clear that I was wrong. Here is what he has to say (my translation): "Cluster, very small and not rich. At 226X some nebulosity is seen. A triple star is close south." Aside from there being no nebulosity, this is a very good description of the field. Perhaps some of the fainter stars nearby lent the appearance of nebulosity on a less than perfect night. Finally, Wolfgang Steinicke got the right asterism a decade ago during his early work on the NGC. ===== NGC 1147 is lost. There is no object within five degrees of the nominal position that matches Muller's description (m = 15.0, Dxd = 0.4x0.2, extended 180 deg; star 9.5 mag following 25 sec, north 1 arcmin). I had the thought during preparation of SEGC that it might be identical with NGC 1157, a few degrees south, but the fairly bright star in the right direction from that galaxy is over 30 seconds following and over three arcminutes to the north. So, NGC 1157 remains a faint possibility, but not enough to put it into the position table. I also checked at reasonable digit errors (+-1 hour, +-10 degrees) and a few other intermediate places for galaxies matching Muller's description of NGC 1147, all with no luck. ===== NGC 1157 is probably not NGC 1147, which see. ===== NGC 1170 may have been the tail of a comet. It was found by C.S. Pierce at Harvard on the last day of 1869, and was verified by Joseph Winlock. The Notes for the observation in Harvard Annals, Vol. 13, Part 1, read, "J.W. and C.S.P. independently think the sky generally bright f and a little n of the comet for 14' or more (several fields according to C.S.P.). [The approximate place in Table VIII results from comparison with the comet.]" The comment in square brackets is from the author of the paper, probably J.W. In Table VIII, the only information is the position 02 54 10, +26 31 (1860), and the Remark, "Comet 1869 III p neb 2m 31s, a little s." I haven't yet done the library work to know if the comet's tail stretched off to the northeast from the head. But the description makes it possible that this is the correct explanation for this NGC entry. ----- Using JPL's HORIZONS ephemeris generator in August 2016, I found that the position of the comet was pretty well verified by the observation. For J2000, assuming that the observation took place on 30 December 1869 UT at around 04:00 (31 December at 23:00 EST) then the position of the comet would have been 03 00 06.0, +27 04 15. That would make the position of the nebula 03 02 37, +27 04 for J2000, just 11 seconds larger than the position given by Pierce and Winlock. Given their description of the size of the nebula, I am still of the opinion that they actually saw the faint tail of the comet. Unfortunately, HORIZONS does not give the orientation of the tail. But if we assume that the tail points away from the sun on the sky as well as in space, we can work out an approximate orientation. On 31 December, the sun is in Sagittarius near 18 50.0, -23 00 +-. So the tail, under these assumptions, would indeed be stretching toward the northeast. Perhaps a search of the observations of the comet (called "11P/Tempel-Swift- LINEAR" in modern parlance, "1869 III" in the nomenclature of the day, and sometimes "1869 c") could confirm or falsify this idea. ===== NGC 1171. See NGC 1197. ===== NGC 1173. This is one of four objects (the others are NGC 1176, 78, and 83; N1176 has the story) that Bigourdan found scattered around NGC 1175 in December of 1884. Bigourdan's published north polar distances for the four are all one degree too large. The other three are stars, but this one is a mystery at the moment. I suspect that Bigourdan has misidentified his comparison star, but will have to look around the field some more for another that he might have used instead of the one he claims to have used. Whatever the case, there is nothing in Bigourdan's position, which comes from two accordant measurements on 17 December. About 40 arcsec to the southwest is a faint double star that he probably could not have seen (based on the fact that he had difficulty with NGC 1177). He adds a curious note to his description: "At the end of the measurements, I could see the object very well: the sky, very clear at just that moment, had been a little unsettled." This is what leads me to believe that he has misidentified his star field. ===== NGC 1174 = NGC 1186. Swift's position for N1174 is just 1 minute of time off. Otherwise, his description is a good match for NGC 1186, including the bright double star about 5 arcmin northwest: it does indeed point to the galaxy. Dreyer corrects the relative position of the double star and the galaxy in a note in IC1 where he also repeats Spitaler's suggestion that N1174 and N1186 are identical -- but for a different reason. See N1186 for that story. Coincidentally, Swift's incorrect position for N1174 lies near IC 1872 (which see), a group of 4-5 stars. Somehow, these two numbers have avoided being equated over the years. Even RNGC simply called N1174 "Not found." ===== NGC 1175. See NGC 1176 and NGC 1177. ===== NGC 1176, 1178, and 1183 are all stars in the vicinity of NGC 1175. Bigourdan's published north polar distances are all 1 deg too large, but he has correctly identified his comparison stars. Re-reducing his positions puts them directly on top of faint stars in the field. Another object found at the same time (N1173, which see) is apparently lost, or is the victim of a misidentified comparison star. Also, Bigourdan had trouble seeing N1175's one real companion galaxy, NGC 1177 = IC 281. Even though his measurements of N1175 itself are good, this was obviously not a well-seen field for him. ===== NGC 1177 = IC 281. N1177 was found by Lord Rosse, and clearly measured by him with respect to N1175. The NGC position is good, and LdR also mentions the brighter star 32 arcsec northeast of N1177. However, this has not prevented Swift from claiming the galaxy as one of his discoveries, so it has an IC number as well as its original NGC number. Bigourdan claimed to have found four "novae" in the field (N1173, 76, 78, and 83; see N1173 and N1176 for more), but three are clearly stars (the fourth, N1173, is missing, but I wonder if Bigourdan misidentified his comparison star for it; see N1173 for more). In spite of his four "discoveries," Bigourdan had trouble seeing N1177. He observed N1175 on two nights, could not find N1177 on the first of those, and saw it only vaguely on the second, commenting that the light of the brighter star mentioned by LdR prevented him from measuring it. ===== NGC 1178 is a star. See NGC 1176 for the discussion. ===== NGC 1182 is almost certainly = NGC 1205. Both objects were found by Ormond Stone with the 26-inch refractor at Leander McCormick. As with all of the nebulae published in the first AJ paper from LM, the positions are crudely given to just a full minute of time and an arcminute. In this case, the two positions flank the actual position, with NGC 1182 being about a minute of time to the west, and NGC 1205 about two minutes east (this latter error is a common one in the Leander McCormick lists). The declination is within an arcminute in both cases. There are no sketches for either of these. Stone's descriptions of the nebulae are almost identical (m = 15.5, Dxd = 0.7x0.3, extended 120deg; *10 PA = 240deg, dist = 2.5 arcmin and m = 14.0, Dxd = 0.7x0.3, extended 25deg; *9.5 PA = 240deg, dist = 3.0 arcmin). Only the magnitudes and position angles are different enough to attract attention. Howe suggested that the two objects were the same, and put the star 8 seconds west and 2 arcmin south of the galaxy (I measure 8.1 seconds and 1 arcmin 27 arcsec; the separation is 2.47 arcmin). I suspect that the published position angle of the galaxy (25 degrees) is a transcription error for "125"; the difference in magnitude could be the result of different observing conditions. There is a galaxy, NPM1G -09.0141, closer to the position for NGC 1205 and with a star at approximately the right distance and position angle. But the galaxy is considerably fainter than NGC 1182. Its position is also off in declination as well as RA, so I think it is unlikely to be Stone's second object, especially since he makes the eastern one brighter than the western. ----- Finally, the galaxy is a peculiar patchy object, best seen in downloaded 2MASS images adjusted for lower contrast than the DSS images provide. There are two knots in the middle; some of the automated surveys pick up the brighter northwestern one, others have both knots, and some -- Gaia DR1 in particular -- have a single position influenced by both knots. I've taken the brighter knot to represent the "nucleus" of the galaxy, but until higher resolution images are available, I'm unable to say that this really is the nucleus. ===== NGC 1183 is a star. See NGC 1176 for the discussion. ===== NGC 1186 = NGC 1174 (which see for more). In the NGC, Dreyer notes that both Lord Rosse and d'Arrest looked for N1186 in vain. However, it was seen and consistently described by both WH and JH at much the same position. Until Spitaler's observation appeared (in AN 3030, which I've not seen), Dreyer must have been puzzled by this as both LdR and d'A were fine observers. The galaxy has a pretty low surface brightness, and with at least two 14th mag stars superposed, it would have been rather difficult to see, especially in long-focus telescopes. However, there is no doubt that both Herschels saw it, and the identity is not in question. Swift's RA for N1174 is just 1 minute off, and his description of the double star 5 arcmin northwest clinches that identification, too. ===== NGC 1197. Well, I can't find this one, either. There is nothing at Swift's position, and his description -- "pF, cE, pS; sev vF sts nr" -- could fit any of a dozen galaxies within a few degrees in any direction. He apparently found only one other galaxy on the same night (NGC 1171), and that is close to his nominal position. So, searching for a systematic offset won't help. A search of the surrounding POSS1 fields turns up no digit errors in the ten's places of RA and Dec that would nail an appropriate object. So, this object may well be lost. Wolfgang's identification, by the way, is a star about an arcminute west of Swift's position. Swift's description -- particularly "cE" -- pretty well rules out this ID. ===== NGC 1198 = IC 282, which see. ===== NGC 1202 is positively identified by the wide double star at PA = 45 deg, d = 4 arcmin, mentioned in Stone's description. The galaxy is not, by the way, identical to IC 286 (which see) -- Bigourdan "observed" them on the same night in December of 1890. ===== NGC 1204. Steve Gottlieb has found that WH saw this on the night of 27 November 1785 in Sweep 478. Herschel, however, simply said "A deception." His position, though, reduced with respect to 83 (epsilon) Ceti, is just 1.2 arcminutes south of the galaxy. A glance at the galaxy suggests why WH thought he was "deceived": There are three foreground stars very close to it. The brightest star is actually superposed on the galaxy close southeast of the nucleus. WH would have seen primarily the light of the star, with just enough of the galaxy to be "deceived" into thinking he might have seen some nebulosity involved. It was left to Frank Leavenworth at Leander McCormick to re-discover the galaxy on 26 December 1885, just a century and a month after WH's observation. ----- The Gaia DR1/2 and PanSTARRS-1 positions are very close to being centered on the nucleus of the galaxy, while the other astrometric survey positions (2MASS PSC and XSC, CMC, URAT1, and 6dF) are offset slightly but significantly to the southeast. Is it possible that the bright superposed star in that direction has had some influence on the measurement of the nucleus? Probably not, but something is going on here. Whatever it is, I've adopted the Gaia DR2 position for the galaxy. ===== NGC 1205 = NGC 1182, which see. ===== NGC 1207. Gary Kronk tells us in his forthcoming book on Swift that this is one of two nebulae found by Lewis Swift that he published in individual papers, not in any of his twelve lists of nebulae. This particular object, of course, was first seen by William Herschel, so Swift's sighting actually stands as a re-discovery. Unfortunately, the exact reference to Swift's discovery is currently (April 2017) lost. Gary has the date as 1884 October 14 or 18, so it may actually be mentioned in one of Swift's letters which Gary has examined. See NGC 1360 and NGC 6285 for more on the other objects not appearing in Swift's dozen lists of nebulae. ===== NGC 1212 = IC 1883. As with NGC 1213, Swift found this galaxy in October of 1884, and made an error in estimating its RA. Thus Barnard thought it a nova when he found it sometime later. Barnard's observation, like many others of his in IC2, is unpublished -- he apparently sent it directly to Dreyer. In this case, this object is the first of a group of five near Algol that appear in IC2 (the others are I1884 = I290, and I1887 = I292, I1888 = I293, and I1889 = I294; see IC 290 and IC 1884 for notes on them). Swift explicitly notes the proximity to Algol in his notes for several of the galaxies. As I mentioned, his positions are not good, so misled Barnard into believing that all five galaxies were "novae" when all, in fact, are included in NGC or IC1. Thus, all have IC2 numbers, too. In this case, Algol is west-northwest by several arcmin. Swift's galaxy can be identified by his note "Right angled with 2 sts." The figure actually looks more like an equilateral triangle, but is close enough to provide strong support for this object as being the one that Swift saw. ===== NGC 1213 = IC 1881. Swift found NGC 1213 in October of 1884, soon after he began observing with the 16-inch refractor at Warner Observatory in Rochester, New York. As was to be his practice for the next 14-15 years, he "measured" the position of his "nova" by centering it in the eyepiece of his telescope, then reading the setting circles. This led to many mistakes in his positions. Swift's RA of this object is far enough off that Bigourdan thought it was probably also a "nova" when he rediscovered it in January of 1891 (the object that Bigourdan labels "NGC 1213" is a star). Though Bigourdan's observations of the galaxy are especially poor because of its low surface brightness, it is almost certainly the same object that Swift saw. Both of their descriptions are apt (including Swift's "F * close n"), and Bigourdan suggests in his that the galaxy might be NGC 1213. ===== NGC 1226 is probably also NGC 832, which see. ===== NGC 1233. Is NGC 1235 (which see) possibly equal to this? ===== NGC 1235. Is this perhaps = NGC 1233? Found by Swift on one of his more productive nights, N1235 is one of 13 nebulae observed on 21 Oct 1886. Aside from NGC 58 (which see) which has a 1 minute error in RA, the other 12 objects have no significant systematic offsets in their true positions from Swift's discovery positions. If N1235 is indeed N1233, then it would be the lone exception with a 23.6 arcmin error in Dec. So, though the description (what there is of it) fits, I'm not comfortable with this identity, and consider it provisional at best. ===== NGC 1237 is most likely the double star about 30 seconds west, and a minute south, of Muller's position. It fits his description, including the position angle, and Muller himself notes "**?" ===== NGC 1240 is probably the double star 34 sec east and 3.7 arcmin south of WH's position. His description, from one observation on 12 Sept 1784 ("Suspected, 240 left a doubt; eF and vS, most probably 2 close stars; between 2 stars," quoted by Dreyer in the 1912 Papers collection) fits perfectly, and there is nothing else in the area that matches. The position difference is not unexpectedly large for WH's early observations. ===== NGC 1241. See NGC 1243. ===== NGC 1242. See NGC 1243. ===== NGC 1243 is a double star first seen by JH. There are two nebulae here, N1241 and N1242, both discovered by WH (though nearly two years apart). JH saw the brighter (N1241), but thought his father's description of the fainter's position ("... about 1 arcmin north-following II 286 [N1241]") wrong -- it isn't, but JH never saw the fainter (N1242). Curiously, neither did d'A who picked up the same two objects as JH, N1241 and the double star. The first observation at Birr turned up both of WH's nebulae, but not JH's double star, so the sketch made that night shows only the two nebulae and some field stars. JH thought that the orientation of the sketch must be wrong since it did not agree with his own observation. He made a comment to that effect in the note in GC, which certainly confused the situation. It was not until Dreyer looked at the field in November 1877 with the 72-inch that all three objects were observed together for the first time. Dreyer's measurements pinpoint all three, but he still describes N1243 as a nebula, making it the second brightest of the three. His description and sketch from that night is an accurate repesentation of the field -- except that he still believes N1243 to be nebulous. ===== NGC 1245. WH's RA is just one minute of time too large. Otherwise, his observation is accurate and in agreement with other observations. I still find it a bit curious that JH did not mention the RA difference in either his 1833 list, or the GC. ===== NGC 1251 is a double star. It is so close to Coolidge's position that Reinmuth had no trouble identifying it as the NGC object. This is one of many asterisms in the list of "nebulae" found visually at Harvard in the late 1850s. ===== NGC 1252 is a sparce cluster (actually, a "cluster remnant"; more below) 20 arcminutes north of the GC and NGC position. JH's CGH position for HD 20037 -- which he adopted for the cluster -- is nearly perfect, so I suspect a transcription error during preparation of the GC. His description, "Star 8m, the chief of a cluster of 18 or 20 stars" also fits perfectly, so there is no doubt about the identity of the cluster. The position I've adopted is a few arcmin northeast of the bright star, more or less in the middle of the the group of stars that JH describes. Brian Skiff moves on another 10 or so arcmin to the northeast, apparently to include another clump of stars beyond the boundaries of what I believe is JH's cluster. RNGC, Wolfgang Steinicke, and Tom DeMary give the nominal NGC position, where only two 13th magnitude stars are found. ----- Brent Archinal in "Star Clusters" has a note telling us that Eggen (PASP 96, 70, 1984) did not regard this as a physical cluster, just a random clump on the sky. Brent goes on to point out, however, that the 20 arcminute offset in the positions may mean that Eggen actually measured field stars at the wrong position rather than cluster members at the correct position. A major part of Eggen's work was pointed at finding the distance to TW Horologii, so he does not seem to have been overly concerned with the cluster itself. However, a more recent paper by de la Fuente Marcos, et al. (MNRAS 434, 194, 2013) directs its attention directly to the question of whether this is a cluster or not. The authors find that there is indeed an old, metal-poor cluster remnant here; furthermore, at a distance of nearly 900 parsecs from the Galactic disk, it is one of the furthest (from the disk) cluster remnants known. Checking their table, I find that all of the stars they studied are within twenty arcminutes of JH's CGH position, but only 50 are within twenty arcminutes of the GC/NGC position, so they did indeed get the right object. So, a questionable cluster from JH's sweeps has turned out to be a most interesting object! ===== NGC 1257 is a double star. Bigourdan saw this object on two nights, but only estimated its position once. Since the BD position of his comparison star is also an estimate (and is actually closer to a slightly fainter star about 1.7 arcmin east-southeast), the NGC position is off. Consequently, the number N1257 has been mistakenly assigned to CGCG 540-073 in RNGC, PGC, and RC3. Bigourdan's estimated position, however, falls within an arcminute of the double, and he notes the two neighboring stars in his description. The identity is secure. ===== NGC 1264 is UGC 2643. Bigourdan's position is within 5 arcsec of the GSC position, so there is no doubt about the identification. RNGC has mistakenly put the number N1264 on CGCG 540-085, which is about 5 arcmin southwest of the real NGC 1264. ===== NGC 1265 = IC 312. For over a century, this has been identified with the galaxy that has also collected the numbers 3C 83.1, UGC 02651, CGCG 540-088, and MCG +07-07-052. Unfortunately, this is not the galaxy that Bigourdan discovered and included as "Big 20" in his lists of "novae". Steve Gottlieb brought this to my attention early in 2017 after observing the Perseus Cluster with his 24-inch telescope. He picked up IC 312 (nominally found by Lewis Swift on 8 November 1888) easily, but goes on to say [I] initially was stumped on NGC 1265. It took me a minute or two to notice NGC 1265 as a relatively large, diffuse glow surrounding a fairly bright star that is superimposed. The star is not evident on the DSS, but you can clearly see it on the SDSS, including its diffraction spikes. NGC 1265 supposedly has a V mag ~12, but I'm guessing that includes the star, and the glow of IC 312 at V = 13.4 was more obvious to me. Looking into Bigourdan's observations, we find that his entry for NGC 1265 is referred to an anonymous 9th magnitude star 5m 30s east and 23.2 arcminutes north of BD +40 687. But there is no star that bright with those offsets from the BD star. However, eight arcminutes south, there is such a star, and IC 312 is at Bigourdan's measured offsets from it (+14.06s, +01'04.3" from two observations on 14 November 1884). The eight arcminute error in Bigourdan's estimated offset from the BD star is currently inexplicable, but it is clear that Bigourdan discovered IC 312 and not UGC 02651. So, I've renamed the galaxies in my position tables. NGC 1265 is now identical to IC 312, and UGC 02651 is called "IC 312 comp". However, this is going to be a difficult change to push beyond the small group of NGC historians -- the literature from at least 1913 (when Wolf and Kaiser published positions of Perseus Cluster galaxies in Veroff. Heidelberg 6, 131) onwards accepts UGC 02651 = 3C 83.1 as NGC 1265. Yet it is abundantly clear that the NGC 1265 identity of this galaxy is a mistake, so we're just going to have to live with the confusion. (Contrast this with NGC 4874, which see, where I've suggested sticking with the traditional identification. There are good reasons for that, of course, though they are not quite as clear as the ones leading us to NGC 1265 = IC 312.) ===== NGC 1269 = NGC 1291. Though JH claims to have seen them on the same night (1 November 1836), I think that he has some mistake in his records. His data and description for NGC 1269 are identical to those for NGC 1291 on that night with two exceptions. First, the RAs differ by 2 minutes 34 seconds, and second, he adds a diameter to his description of N1291 (90 arcsec), while N1269 has none. Otherwise, the data are the same: NPDs 131d 43m 11s, and descriptions "vB, R, gmbM (hazy)." He has two observations of N1291 (on the second night, he called it a "mottled, but not resolved" globular cluster). His RAs for the two nights differ by 10 seconds, and he suggests that one is in error. Not knowing which one, he simply took the mean value and used that for GC. The galaxy is so large that both positions fall within the image. The identity was first suggested by Robert Innes in a note in Monthly Notices 62, 468, 1902. He could not find N1269, but had no trouble seeing N1291. Dreyer, in his IC2 Note, did not go so far as to repeat the supposition of identity, but succinctly summarizes the other evidence. I don't think there can be any question of the identity of the two numbers -- though without seeing JH's observing logs for that first November night of 1836, I of course cannot say this with utter certainty. ===== NGC 1270. First seen by JH, this was micrometrically measured by Dreyer on 12 December 1876. It was also seen by Lewis Swift on 11 September 1888 (it is number 30 in his 8th list), who mistakenly took it to be a "nova". Given that it is in the Perseus Cluster, Dreyer was not sure that Swift's nebula was indeed newly discovered, or just a reobservation of a known nebula. So, he did not include it in the first IC. Swift's position is a bit off the NGC object, but there is a small but significant systematic offset in Swift's positions for the night, +5 +-2 seconds of time, and -0.2 +-0.1 arcminutes. Applying these to Swift's place moves his "nova" to within an arcminute of NGC 1270, so the identity is sure. ===== NGC 1272. See NGC 1279. ===== NGC 1275 is the brightest galaxy in the Perseus Cluster, and is obviously the one that both WH and JH saw. Their positions are good, but Dreyer put their numbers and description on NGC 1278. His NGC note gives us a clue as to the source of his confusion -- the relative positions for the other cluster members were accurately known by him from the Birr micrometric offsets (Dreyer in fact corrects a mistake in one of them), but tying those to the absolute positions in the Herschels' and d'A's lists proved to be troublesome. Both WH and JH picked up only two other NGC objects in the cluster (NGC 1293 and 1294), and their positions for those two are not as good as for NGC 1275. Supposing that the errors in those positions also applied to NGC 1275, Dreyer "corrected" the NGC 1275 positions, so landed on the wrong galaxy in d'A's list (all of d'A's positions for galaxies in the cluster are very good, by the way). ===== NGC 1276 is a double star mixed in with the many galaxies in the Perseus Cluster. Dreyer himself found it while making micrometric measurements of the cluster galaxies in 1876. Fortunately, he has recorded his measurement of the object (352.3 degrees position angle, 291 arcsec distant from NGC 1278) so that we can positively identify it. I make the PA 352.5 and the distance 283 arcsec, not significantly different from Dreyer's numbers. ===== NGC 1277. This was apparently first seen by Dreyer on 4 December 1875 with LdR's big telescope. However, Swift picked it up on 14 September 1888 during one of his sweeps through the Perseus Cluster. Because of the crowding here, Dreyer was not able to decide if Swift's object -- number 32 in Swift's 8th list -- was a true "nova" or a reobservation of one of the nebulae he himself had found thirteen years earlier. It's clear, however, that Swift did see the object, and his position (03 19 47, +41 34.1; J2000) is pretty good. With one interesting exception, his description ("eeF, vS, R; close D with [N]1276, M of 3 in a line; [N]1271, 73, 37, 78 in field") is also appropriate. The exception of course is the NGC number of the companion -- it is NGC 1278, not 1276 (which see) four arcminutes to the north. Swift either made a simple typo, or his identifications of NGC objects in the cluster are confused. I suspect the latter. Another object in Swift's list not included in the first IC for the same reason is number 31, also in the 8th list. Swift found this object on the same night, and its position is also pretty good. Once again, his description is appropriate: "eeF, S, R; one of 3 in a line; about a dozen in field; identifications diff." The galaxy is the northern-most of the line of three (the other two are NGC 1277 and 1278), and is NPM1G +41.0110 = PGC 12430 at 03 19 47.8, +41 35 47 (J2000 from 2MSX). ===== NGC 1278 = IC 1907, which see. This is not the galaxy that WH and JH saw in the Perseus Cluster -- that is NGC 1275; see that for the story. Also see NGC 1276 for which this serves as Dreyer's micrometric reference point. ===== NGC 1279 is accurately located by Lord Rosse's micrometric offsets from his reference star which is directly between NGC 1272 and NGC 1275. It is certainly not the fainter galaxy superposed on the corona of NGC 1275 as suggested by LEDA. ===== NGC 1289 = IC 314, which see. ===== NGC 1291 is also NGC 1269, which see. ===== NGC 1293. See NGC 1275. ===== NGC 1294. See NGC 1275. ===== NGC 1304 is also probably NGC 1307. WH's position for N1304 is pretty good, being only 3 seconds off in RA and 2 minutes in Dec. Leavenworth's RA, though, is a minute of time east of the galaxy, and his note mentions a nearby star of magnitude 9.5 eight seconds east and 3 arcmin north. The star is closer to 6.5 seconds west (not east), 3.2 arcmin north, and has a V magnitude of about 11.8. All in all, the star is not a very good match to Leavenworth's description. But given the size of the 26-inch at Leander McCormick, it could well be that he simply overestimated the brightness. There is a fainter galaxy (KUG 0319-047) about 5 seconds on east and 1.5 minutes north of Leavenworth's position, but the neighboring star for that galaxy is only four seconds west and 3.4 arcmin north. This star, too, is considerably fainter than Leavenworth's estimate (V about 11.7). Wolfgang originally chose this fainter galaxy as NGC 1307. While it would probably have been within reach of the 26-inch, I still favor equating Leavenworth's nebula with WH's. N1304 would certainly be easier to pick up while sweeping, and Leavenworth's neighboring star more closely matches his estimated offsets, if not his indicated direction. ===== NGC 1307 is probably NGC 1304, which see. ===== NGC 1312. The RC3 is wrong in equating this with UGC 2711. This is actually a double star, as are many of the first "nebulae" found at Harvard by Bond and his colleagues. The positions of these are generally very good, and their descriptions and those of the surrounding fields make clear just what the early observers were seeing. ===== NGC 1313. This is a big galaxy, interacting with a companion -- vaguely butterfly-shaped -- centered about 3.7 arcminutes southwest of the center of NGC 1313 itself. The images of the two galaxies are pretty well overlapping, so finding separate magnitudes and diameters will be difficult. In addition, the interaction has splashed out stars, gas, and dust from both objects to form a corona at least 19 arcminutes by 13 arcminutes in extent. Dunlop and JH saw only the inner, brighter portion of the larger galaxy, so it was left to the twentieth century southern observers to discover what a remarkable object this is. ===== NGC 1316. See NGC 1317 and NGC 1392. This is most likely the 14th object in Swift's 6th list of nebulae. See NGC 1392 for the story. ===== NGC 1317 is also NGC 1318. Curiously, the position for this galaxy is virtually the same in Schmidt's Fornax Cluster list (AN 88, 138, 1876) as it is in JH's catalogues, yet Schmidt calls it a new nebula. Schmidt complains that there are not very many reference stars in the declination zone of the Cluster, so he has instead referred his positions to those of JH's nebulae in the area. Thus, I am not surprised to see that Schmidt's position for NGC 1316 (given with JH's number h2527) is nearly identical to JH's. When I first went through Schmidt's list (in the mid-1970s at ROE while preparing SGC), I was, however, surprised to see that Schmidt did not notice that the first of his "Faint new" nebulae is at JH's position for N1317 (h2529). Glen Cozens has pointed out (in an email sent in September 2006), though, that the CGH observations have the NPD for h2529 20 degrees in error. JH himself caught this while proofreading his monograph, and has the error corrected in the errata at the end of the volume. The NPD is carried correctly over into the GC and the NGC. Since Schmidt does not use GC numbers in his list, only JH's numbers, we can be pretty sure that he had the CGH in front of him when he prepared his paper. So, without checking the errata, he thought h2529 was 20 degrees north of its true position. There are several other errors in Schmidt's list of stars and galaxies, suggesting that he threw it together quickly without checking JH's CGH observations very carefully. We can be sure about this identity. It was first noted (to my knowledge) by the de Vaucouleurs in RC1. Knox Shaw at Helwan in a 1912 list, and Carlson in her 1940 list of NGC corrections, both simply noted N1318 as not found, but did not suggest the identity. ----- It is also likely that this is NGC 1392 (which see for the story) with a 15 minute error in the RA. Lewis Swift would then have rediscovered the galaxy in February 1887 while searching for the "Great Comet" of that year. ===== NGC 1318 = NGC 1317, which see. ===== NGC 1326A and NGC 1326B form an interacting pair of late-type galaxies first noted by de Vaucouleurs in his southern Reynolds survey of 1956. The center of NGC 1326A is marked by a faint nucleus, but NGC 1326B is a long, raggedly patchy spindle with no obvious nucleus. The position usually taken for it refers to a clump of patches toward the southeastern end of the spindle, but a case could be made for the knot 0.6 arcminutes to the northwest. I've adopted positions for both from USNO-B1.0; take your pick! ===== NGC 1326B. See NGC 1326A. ===== NGC 1327. This is L.M. 105, found by Ormond Stone with the 26-inch refractor at the Leander McCormick Observatory in Virginia. He describes it simply as "vS, neb?" and assigns a magnitude of 16.3. His position is typically uncertain with nothing resembling his description nearby. There is a faint galaxy (MCG -04-09-008) 0.6 minutes of time east of his RA and at the correct declination. Since the early Leander McCormick positions, not just Stone's, tend to be too far west, this object is a logical candidate. However, Delisle Stewart examined a Bruce reflector plate taken at Harvard's Arequipa station in Peru, and noticed a faint triple star near Stone's place. ESO has suggested that the wide triple about 2.5 arcmin north of Stone's place is Stewart's object. Since the stars in the triple are 13th and 14th magnitude, and since they are spread out along a line nearly an arcminute long, I doubt that they would appear as a "vS" nebula of the 16th magnitude in the 26-inch, even on a night of spectacularly bad seeing. Stewart created some additional confusion by simply precessing Stone's crude position to equinox 1900. This, together with his comment in Harvard Annals 60, "3 vF sts, close together, no neb," summarized by Dreyer in the IC2 Notes, would lead us to believe that the triple is at Stone's position. All of this makes me quite uncertain about Stewart's hypothesis, but I've nevertheless retained the triple in the main table as a possibility for N1327. I prefer the MCG galaxy, however, and list it with a colon. ===== NGC 1330 is a group of six or seven stars -- probably with several more fainter involved -- exactly located by Stephan's micrometric position. Efforts to identify it with galaxies in the area are futile. The URAT1 proper motions for the brighter stars are small. However, given the statistical errors, there is a possibility that at least some of these stars might form a physical group. In the position table, I've given the proper motions in milliarcseconds/year from URAT1, and the UBVR photometry converted from SDSS (three SDSS i values are clearly wrong, so the (V-R)'s for those stars is estimated). ===== NGC 1331 = IC 324, which see. ===== NGC 1333. Though there is no question about the identity of this nebula, its early observations with small telescopes were contradictory enough to lead to suggestions that it might be variable. The note in Auwers's 1862 appendix to WH's catalogue makes it clear that Tuttle's observation of 1859 has the directions of the field inverted. This probably contributed to the perception of variability. Interestingly, part of the object seems to be a collapsing protostar (see Sky and Telescope, January 1997, pages 15 and 16 for the story). Is it thus possible that N1333 really is variable? Depending on the density, position, and orientation of dust clouds around the protostar, and the possibly changing intensity of the star itself, variability from our point of view is not out of the question. This is apparently the cause of the variability of the nebulae around T Tauri (NGC 1554 and NGC 1555, which see), and perhaps also explains the variability of NGC 2261 (also which see). ===== NGC 1334. See IC 323. ===== NGC 1340 is certainly identical to NGC 1344, just as Dreyer first suggested in the NGC note. Swift looked for it with his 16-inch from Lowe Observatory on Echo Mountain but could not find it. He wrote that it should be "struck out" in a note appended to his third list of new nebulae found at Lowe. As Dreyer notes, JH saw this in two different sweeps, but only crudely estimated the position in the first of those (JH says "Transit missed while observing another nebula"). That estimated position was far enough off that when he was assembling his CGH table of nebulae back in England, he thought he had two different nebulae. Lacking any other evidence, he took a rough mean between his position and his father's for NGC 1344. And there is another tale to tell. WH used a star he called "12 Eri" as the reference star for his offsets for the galaxy. I depend on "Sky Catalogue 2000.0", Vol. 1, for Flamsteed numbers, so was not happy to find no listing for "12" Eridani (11 and 13 are there, but not 12). A search based on WH's offsets and the modern position for N1344 shows that 12 Eri is probably alpha Fornacis. But this position is 20 seconds and 10 arcmin off JH's for N1340 -- no wonder he thought there were two nebulae here! In any event, there is only one. Its RA is close to that for NGC 1340 and its Dec is close to that for NGC 1344. Sometimes, it just takes teamwork to get things right. ===== NGC 1344 = NGC 1340, which see. ===== NGC 1356 is the brightest of a group of four galaxies, clearly interacting with at least two of the others. The companion that I've listed in the table is the nearest companion to the main galaxy, actually being superposed on the southwestern arm. It is difficult to tell from the IIIa-J survey plate (the DSS) whether this is a galaxy or a group of knots in the arm, but the 2MASS image clearly shows it to be a galaxy. Its redshift is close to that for N1356 itself. ===== NGC 1360. The discovery of this large planetary nebula is credited by Dreyer to Lewis Swift and Friedrich Winnecke. Swift has a note about this object in his paper in The Sidereal Messenger, volume 4, page 36, 1885, on page 39, while Winnecke's discovery was apparently communicated directly to Dreyer who included it in the GC Supplement. See Wolfgang's 2010 book for more on this. Winnecke's position (03 33 34, -25 50.1; J2000) is not very good, but that measured by Barnard (03 33 19, -25 52.5; also J2000), given by Swift in his article is considerably better. Both are adequate to locate the planetary. ===== NGC 1367 = NGC 1371. Ormond Stone found NGC 1367 sometime in 1885 or 1886, and as with the other nebulae in the first Leander McCormick list, gave its RA to only a full minute of time. This put it about 20 seconds of time west of NGC 1371 (accurately placed by the Herschels) and earned it its own entry in the NGC. However, Stone made the magnitude 13.0, actually one of the brightest in the LM list of "new" nebulae, and he has a ninth magnitude star 5.0 arcmin north- east of his nebula. That star is there (as is a fainter one about 3 arcmin northeast), making the identity with N1371 certain. ===== NGC 1369 is probably ESO 358-G034 = MCG -06-09-004, a fairly bright Fornax Cluster galaxy that JH missed. This is one of the nebulae found by Julius Schmidt with a 6.2-inch refractor in Athens in the 1870s (others include NGC 1318 and NGC 1378, both of which see). His table in AN 2097 has stars and galaxies listed in RA order, and is full of errors. In this case, there is an entry for a bright star immediately following his entry for this nebula. If the star is SAO 194404, and if it and Schmidt's nebula share the same incorrect RA minutes of "27" instead of "30", then the nebula is ESO 358-G064. I do not see any other star/galaxy pairs in the cluster near the same declination that would fit as well. Schmidt's data are clearly estimates: he assigns a magnitude of 5.6 to the star, while the modern V magnitude is 7.3. His position -- with the RA corrected -- is 03 35 12, -36 29.2 (precessed to B1950), while that for the SAO star is 03 35 11, -36 27.4. For the nebula, he has 03 35 05, -36 26.8 compared to 03 34 51, -36 25.2, not particularly good matches. But as I said, I do not see any other reasonable candidates. ----- The J2000 positions from Schmidt's paper, again corrected by +3m in RA, are 03 36 59, -36 17.0 for the nebula, and 03 37 06, -36 19.4 for the star. The modern positions are 03 36 45.2, -36 15 23 for the galaxy, and 03 37 04.6, -36 17 32 for the star (= HD 22621). ===== NGC 1378 is a double star found by Julius Schmidt with a 6-foot (focal length) refractor during his survey of the Fornax Cluster area from Athens in the early 1870s. His position is off in RA by about 3 seconds of time, but the double is the only object in the area that he might have picked up. His "description" reads "F. new" (in the original German, "S. neu") so it is not much help. The Mt. Wilson and Helwan observers came to the same conclusion, so RNGC has the same identity. For SGC, I consulted Schmidt's paper in AN 2097, and saw no reason to differ with the earlier concensus. ===== NGC 1382 is another of Julius Schmidt's discoveries in the Fornax Cluster. As given in his table, his RA is about 40 seconds of time off a galaxy that de Vaucouleurs (in his 1956 monograph on bright southern galaxies) called "NGC 1380B". Carlson had already included N1382 in her 1940 list of NGC/IC corrections, and deV noted that N1380B was the same galaxy. I think that he was reluctant to adopt the identification because he did not have Schmidt's list at hand, so could not check it himself. Since there is no other reasonable candidate for NGC 1382, I adopted the identity for SGC, and still think it is pretty solid. ===== NGC 1384. There is a faint double star very close to Marth's position, though the brightest galaxy in a scattered cluster about 2 arcmin south fits Marth's description ("Nebulous star 13m") very well -- it has a star superposed about 5 arcsec southwest of the nucleus. The galaxy/star pair are also considerably brighter than the double star, and are within Marth's usual error circle. So, while it's possible that the double is Marth's object, it is much more likely to be the galaxy with the superposed star. ===== NGC 1392 was found by Swift on 13 February 1887 about 4 arcminutes north of a brighter "nebula" which he took to be Comet 1887-I, three degrees south of its predicted position. There is nothing in either of the places given by Swift in his sixth list for either object. Nor is there anything three degrees north where the comet was supposed to have appeared that night. However, the center of the Fornax cluster is one and a half degrees north. I think it's likely that Swift saw two of the galaxies there, but choosing two out of the 15-20 that he could have seen would be pure guesswork. Similarly, Lauberts's guess in ESO (ESO 358-G040) is based on a reliance on the 1 degree difference in declination more than it is on the likelihood that Swift actually saw the object: ESO 358-G040 has a total visual magnitude around 16.2, likely putting it beyond Swift's limit, especially given the far southern declination. A third possibility is raised by Kreutz in a note following Swift's list in AN. Kreutz notes that the offset of Swift's position from that predicted for the comet by Finlay is 38 minutes east, and 4 degrees 1 arcminute south. However, searching at Finlay's place for a double nebula turned up nothing, either. Other objects found by Swift on the same night include NGC 1797 and NGC 1799, both very near Swift's positions for them; and NGC 2589, like NGC 1392, not found at Swift's position (see Herbert Howe's note in MN 61, 29, 1900, copied into the IC2 Notes). In the end, NGC 1392 is another of Swift's nebulae "not found." (But keep on reading!) ----- Comet 1887-I does not appear, by the way, in a 10x10 degree square centered on Swift's position during the time of his observation, at least using JPL's "Small Body" identification tool. Nor does it appear near Kreutz's place. So, this is either a lost comet, or its orbit was not well-known in 1887 -- or both. The only comet near Swift's position on the date of his observation (assuming a time of 21:00 EST) is "C/1968 H1 (Tago-Honda-Yamamoto)" at 03 30 50, -39 57.3. But at this point in its orbit, it had a predicted total V magnitude of 39.6, well beyond (!) the limit of Swift's 16-inch refractor. ----- Another possibility was suggested by Barnard (in AN 118, 173, 1887). Given that Swift has two nebulae here, Nos. 14 and 15 of his sixth list, Barnard searched around Swift's positions for two objects. He found two nebulae in the correct relative positions with the correct relative brightnesses, but at the position 03 18 16, -37 36 for 1885 (03 22 39, -37 11.4; J2000). AN's editor, A. Krueger, noted that this would make the two nebulae GC 697 and 698 (= NGC 1316 and 1317). This is probably the most likely explanation as it requires only a 15 minute of time error in Swift's RA's; perhaps this was a simple error in setting and/or reading the RA circle of his telescope. For the record, here are Swift's observations (the positions are for 1885): No. 14 1887 Feb 13 03 33 13 -37 34 36 pB, L, R, lbM; cometic. See Note. No. 15 " " 13 03 33 13 -37 30 +- vF, pS, R. Precessed to J2000, the positions become 03 37 32, -37 11.9 and 03 37 32, -37 07.3. Swift's "Note" reads No. 14. Regarding this object I have reason for supposing with a considerable degree of probability that it was the Great Comet 1887 I. The seeing was exquisite and setting the 16 in. refractor for it in accordance with Chandler's ephemeris for that day nothing of a nebulous nature was seen at the indicated place, but some 3[deg] south this object [sic] which I then thought and still was the Comet was found. In every particular save entire absence of tail it resembled a Comet. An experience of 30 years in Comet seeking and nebular work enables me almost instantly to decide whether an object is a nebula or a Comet. It is remarkable that an object so large and bright should if a nebula have so long escaped detection. A prolonged interval of cloudy weather prevented subsequent observation. No. 15 was by estimation 4' exactly north of it. Again, the most likely explanation is that proposed by Barnard and Krueger -- these two nebulae are NGC 1316 and NGC 1317. I thank Gary Kronk for bringing Barnard's observation to my attention. ===== NGC 1396. The galaxy chosen by me for SGC is the only reasonably match to the original position by Schmidt in his short paper on the Fornax Cluster. Unfortunately, Schmidt's table in that paper has several errors, some perhaps typos, some perhaps observational. In any event, given the size of his telescope, and the problems in his table, the SGC galaxy is as good a match to Schmidt's observation as I can make. ----- Looking at this again in September 2017, I am skeptical that the SGC galaxy has anything to do with Schmidt's object. The galaxy is probably too faint -- V ~ 14 -- for a 15.7-cm refractor; its surface brightness is also quite low. Given all of this, I've put question marks on the number. ===== NGC 1397. See NGC 1417. ===== NGC 1408 is another of the new "nebulae" found by Schmidt during his survey of the Fornax Cluster area. There is nothing at his position, but during my sweep across the area for SGC, I noted two double stars nearby. The fainter and wider pair is northwest of Schmidt's position, and the brighter but closer pair is southeast. Though I've listed both in the main table, with question marks, neither seems particularly likely to me to be mistaken for a nebula. This should be checked at the eyepiece, though. In any event, N1408 is currently unidentified. See NGC 1378 and NGC 1396 for more on Schmidt's Fornax Cluster work. ===== NGC 1411 may also be IC 1943, which see. ===== NGC 1412 = IC 1981. While this is the only galaxy near JH's position that he could have seen, the declination is far enough off to cause some concern (the RA is correct). Fortunately, JH's description is appropriate, especially his note "... has a * sf dist 2'". The star is there. The copy of the sweep in the Herschel Archives suggests from internal evidence that the north polar distance was properly reduced, so the incorrect declination probably results from a mistaken reading at the telescope. ===== NGC 1414. Courtney Seligman has noted some confusion here. Though Howe claims to have measured this galaxy, his micrometric position falls exactly on NGC 1422 (which also see) which is 8 arcminutes east-northeast. Leavenworth's position for NGC 1414 is, perhaps fortuitously, within an arcminute of the galaxy. However, his position for NGC 1422 is about a minute of time too far east. Did Howe simply confuse the two NGC numbers when he was preparing his paper for MNRAS? Or does his confusion go right back to his work at the telescope? Unless Howe's log books and reduction papers are still accessible in Denver, we may never know. ===== NGC 1415 = IC 1983, which see. ===== NGC 1416 has suffered a bit in the literature. It was discovered by Frank Muller at Leander McCormick before he and his fellow observers there were measuring good positions for the nebulae they were finding, so it has an NGC declination that is about 3.5 arcmin off. In addition, the two bright stars just south are described as "* 8.7, nr; * 8.6, n 2'". The actual place of the "* 8.6" is south by 3.5 arcmin, while the "* 8.7" is 1.5 arcmin south. This apparently confused Herbert Howe, too. He wrote in his second MN paper, "Muller gave this nebula as 2' north [sic] of a star of mag. 8.6. It is really south [sic] of the star. There is another star of equal mag. about 5' south of the star mentioned. The position of the nebula is 03 36 41, -23 02.4 [1900.0]." What Howe should have said is "Muller gave this nebula as 2' south of a star of mag. 8.6. It is really north of the star. ..." Still, he did get the galaxy's position right, assuming that this really is the one that Muller saw. Dreyer copied Howe's corrected declination into a note for IC2. Carlson had this to say in 1940 about the object: "NGC correct, W" where the "W" is the source of the note, a Mt. Wilson photograph. She has a footnote on the object that reads "Howe's correction (D III) to NGC not confirmed" ("D III" refers to Dreyer's Notes in IC2). Unfortunately, she is wrong as the NGC declination lands between the two bright stars; Howe is right. So, nobody has got it completely right. This leads me to question Howe's identification, which is the usual one adopted by every catalogue since that includes the galaxy. However, there is no other galaxy in the area that has two bright stars close to it. So, this is most likely Muller's object. ----- This object also figures in the identification of IC 1983, which see. Briefly, Gary Kronk suggested in correspondence that this is Swift's object, not NGC 1415. I wasn't convinced, and Gary finally accepted NGC 1415 for his book on Swift. The note for IC 1983 has the story. ===== NGC 1417. This is the brightest of a line of four galaxies stretched out along an east-west line at a declination of about -04d 41m. The galaxies are traditionally numbered IC 344, NGC 1417, NGC 1418, and NGC 1424 (a fifth galaxy, NGC 1397, well to the west, was mistakenly pulled in by JH who mismeasured its position). NGC 1417 and 1418 were found by WH, and reobserved by JH, d'A, and -- repeatedly -- by LdR and his observers (who also found NGC 1424). Leavenworth may have seen two of the nebulae in the area (see NGC 1429), Swift found another (IC 344), and Frank Muller made micrometric observations of all four in 1889. Working with the many 72-inch observations, Dreyer pretty well sorted out the field for the NGC, only assigning h 305 incorrectly to NGC 1397. He corrected this in the first IC where he put h 305 on IC 344. Though JH's position is not very good, this is an acceptable way to reconcile his published comment "The 1st of 3" with what we actually see on the sky. ----- Also see NGC 1429 where a note from Yann Pothier suggests other possibilities for this and NGC 1418. ===== NGC 1418 may also be NGC 1429 (which see). ===== NGC 1420 is a triple star at d'Arrest's position. The identity is nailed down by d'A's mention of the "* 13 10.5 seconds preceding [at about the same] declination." That star is there. ===== NGC 1422. Leavenworth's RA is about a minute of time too far east, and an arcminute too far south. But his description as transcribed for the NGC is appropriate "eF, pS, E 80[deg]" (the actual PA is closer to 65[deg]). This makes it a little surprising to me that Howe called this NGC 1414 when he remeasured its position with his Bruce micrometer. As NGC 1414 is somewhat fainter then NGC 1422, Howe may not have seen it while he was examining the field. Courtney Seligman alerted me to the problem with this object, and this short note acknowledges his diligence. ===== NGC 1424. See NGC 1429. ===== NGC 1425 may also be IC 1988, which see. ===== NGC 1426. See IC 1983 = NGC 1415. ===== NGC 1427. See NGC 1436. ===== NGC 1429 is lost. Leavenworth describes it as "15.5, 0.3 x 0.2, E 180 deg, gbMN; 2nd of 2." The first of two is NGC 1424 which carries this description in the Leander McCormick list: "15.2, 0.2, R, gbM; 1st of 2, one of which is GC 763 [N1424]; * 10 p 15 sec." The description of Leavenworth's "2nd of 2" matches the one galaxy in the area. But that is it. The star 15 sec west of the galaxy is 13th magnitude, and there is an 11th magnitude star half that distance northwest. Why did Leavenworth not mention that? I think that Leavenworth has misidentified the known galaxy so that his description applies to a different pair altogether. But which pair? I don't see any other in the area that matches the descriptions. Wolfgang chose a star near Leavenworth's position, but that clearly does not match the description, particularly, "E 180 deg, gbMN". So, NGC 1429 is another lost NGC object until someone with sharper eyes than mine has a go at the problem. ----- Yann Pothier has suggested that Leavenworth has confused his description of the field. Here is a paraphrase of what Yann had to say in an email in April 2016: I wonder if Leavenworth's description of the field is confused -- perhaps he saw three objects but described only two that he believed to be uncatalogued. His first object matches NGC 1418 quite well as the field shows a magnitude 11 star 16 seconds west (close to NGC 1417 = GC 758; his crude position estimate led him to believe it was NGC 1424 = GC 763) and seems quite round. His second object would then indeed be NGC 1424 (the position offsets would be 78 seconds west and 50 seconds west for the two galaxies); he would have thought it was new, misled by his poor position. This might be what happened, but Leavenworth's note about the "* 10 p 15 sec" is difficult to reconcile with the sky -- the star is one arcminute southeast of the brighter galaxy. Surely it would make be far more appropriate to write the note that way than the way he did. In the end, I think it is worth keeping Yann's note in mind, so I have added the appropriate designations to the position table -- with plenty of question marks, of course. ===== NGC 1430 is probably NGC 1440 = NGC 1442. In the same email from April 2016 in which Yann Pothier questions the NGC 1424/1429 problem, he writes Maybe I missed something here, but am I the only one inclined to think that this might be identical to NGC 1440? The RA difference of 1m 35s is within the reasonable range for the Leander McCormick team, and the position angle is appropriate. This is indeed a reasonable question. Leavenworth claims two observations of this object and his description "m = 15.4, Dxd = 0.6x0.4, E 20deg, sbMN" is appropriate (perhaps aside from the magnitude) for the center of NGC 1440. I've adopted this as a probable identification, and have demoted the star that Wolfgang and I had pointed to earlier to a double question mark. This galaxy is probably also NGC 1458 (which see), also found by Leavenworth. ===== NGC 1432 is the reflection nebula around Maia in the Pleiades. Though the brightest part of the nebula is to the north-northwest of the star (see e.g. Barnard's description in AN 3018), I have simply adopted the position of Maia itself. This nebula is also the first to be discovered photographically, by the Henry brothers in Paris, on a plate taken by them late in 1885. It also has the distinction of being the only nebula in the NGC to be found on a photograph; all others were found visually. See NGC 1435 and IC 349 for more on the Pleiades nebulosity. ===== NGC 1434 may be the galaxy I chose for SEGC at 03 43.8, -09 50. This has a star of about the right brightness 20 seconds east and 3 arcminutes south that might match the star in Muller's description: "Mag = 15.3, Size = 0.4, Form = R; *8.5, f 25s, n 3'". If he made a mistake in his direction, the SEGC galaxy would fit his description. There is no sketch. NGC 1445 (which see), suggested as a possible identity for N1434, also fits Muller's description, but it has no star anywhere near that could be Muller's. I think this identification is less likely. ===== NGC 1435 is the part of the reflection nebula around Merope extending almost directly south by 10 to 15 arcmin from the star. For some time, I had thought that it and IC 349 (which see) are identical. However, reading Barnard's careful observations of the Pleiades in AN 3018 (where he announces the discovery of IC 349), it became clear that the IC object is actually a brighter knot in the larger Merope nebula, and very close to the star itself. Under normal conditions, Merope's light swamps the knot, so it is not surprising that it was not found until the keen-eyed Barnard turned the Lick 36-inch refractor on it (though Pritchard claims an earlier image on a plate taken at Cambridge in the late 1880's; see Herbig's article in AJ 111, 1241, 1996 for a complete history of IC 349). NGC 1435 itself, however, is fairly easily seen on good nights with much smaller telescopes. I've picked it out with a six-inch, and I suspect that any good scope of four inches or more would give a view of it. ===== NGC 1436 is almost certainly identical with NGC 1437. JH saw 1436 twice, but not on the meridian, so did not derive an accurate position for it. The one position he gives is a rough one from his working list for Dunlop 562. He has this to say about it: "... I have reason to believe this RA too great and the NPD also materially in error -- perhaps 126 35 [instead of 126 45] would be preferable." His single observation of N1437 is from a different sweep with a secure position. But his diameter estimate of '4"' must be in error as he calls the galaxy "vL". I would guess that the diameter should read "4'". This would match Dunlop's estimate of 3.5 arcmin. Unfortunately, the rough position in the CGH Observations was precessed and copied into the GC with very little to warn us about its inaccuracy. Only in the "1?" entries in the columns in GC marked "No. of Obs. used." is there a hint of the problem. Dreyer did not carry those over, but just copied the summary description and position directly from GC. So it is that JH's careful notes in his early work have been lost in the later collections. In any event, the first suggestion that I've been able to find that N1436 is N1437 comes from Harold Knox Shaw in Helwan Observatory Bulletin No. 15, 1915 -- but even that is indirect and found under his entry for N1437, not N1436. For N1436, Knox Shaw says, "Nothing here. [N]1427 answers fairly well to the description and there are several other similar objects not far away." For N1437 he writes, "vF, pL, vlE, prob. spir., prob. = Dunlop 562." I've found one other observation of N1436, that by Schmidt in his Fornax Cluster paper in AN 2097. There he has it in the penultimate place in his table of stars and nebulae, and labels it "h 2581". He gives only a position "3h 35m 11.8s -36 23 49" for 1830 with no description. This is correct only if the minute of RA is changed to "37". Then, it falls within a few arcsec of the modern position for N1437. So things stood until I did SGC in the mid-70s at ROE. There I stumbled across the missing N1436 again (see below), and scribbled this note in my copy of Dunlop's paper: "Though Herschel saw Dunlop 562 in two sweeps, he was not able to get an accurate position for it. His estimated position, however is nearly that of N1437 for which he did obtain a good place in a third sweep. The descriptions are similar, so the identity is assumed." This overlooks the 22 arcmin difference in the declinations (ahem), but for the RA, it is not so bad ... (ahem). Well, N1436 is a reasonable choice, especially since JH has his note about the 10 arcmin correction to the Dec. Knox Shaw's suggestion of N1427 strikes me as very unlikely as both the RA and Dec are well off JH's estimated position. Finally, I first became aware of this puzzle during my years as an amateur astronomer in the late 1950s. NGC 1436 appeared in the copy of Norton's Star Atlas that was my introduction to the sky. I was curious about this because the object did not appear in any other list of deep sky objects that I had at hand. What was this thing that the NGC claimed was a very bright globular cluster? Twenty years later, I had my answer. Now, after nearly another 30 years, I'm FINALLY writing it all down. Patience reaps its rewards. ===== NGC 1437 also probably carries the number NGC 1436, which see. ===== NGC 1440 = NGC 1442. WH's offset from 54 Eridani should be 1 deg 10 armin north rather than the 10 arcmin that he recorded for II 594. Though JH and Dreyer both noticed this, as did Auwers and Schoenfeld (see the GC and NGC Notes), they both also included both of WH's entries for the galaxy. JH has a curious note appended to his two observations of this in the CGH Observations: "N.B. Both observations agree in making the degree of PD 108 -- whereas it appears in the reduction of my Father's observations as 109." Taken at face value, it shows how obvious this particular error was. But it is recorded under h2583 = H II 458 which has the correct offset from its comparison star, 20 Eridani. As I noted, it is WH's observation for II 594 that is incorrect. So, even JH was somehow confused here. In any event, the galaxy carries the two NGC numbers from the Herschels, and the identity is certain. It also happens that the NGC numbers 1430 and 1458 probably apply to this galaxy (see those numbers for those stories). This makes this object one of the few with four entries in the NGC. ===== NGC 1441. See NGC 1443 and NGC 1446. ===== NGC 1442 = NGC 1440, which see. ===== NGC 1443 is a star. Tempel found it while observing NGC 1441, 1449, 1451, and 1453. His description says that his nova forms a trapezium with N1441, N1449, and N1451 -- indeed it does. The position in the NGC must be one of those that Tempel sent directly to Dreyer; it is not included in his fifth paper in AN 2439. Tempel probably has another star here, NGC 1446, that also made it into the catalogue. See it for more. ===== NGC 1445 is clearly identified by Muller's 9th magnitude star, 2 arcmin away in position angle 330 degrees. Some of the Leander McCormick positions and descriptions are sufficient for pretty solid identifications of the objects. This galaxy has also been suggested as a possible identification for NGC 1434 (which see), but I think that is unlikely -- there is no 8.5 mag star 25 seconds east, 3 arcmin north (or south for that matter). ===== NGC 1446. This is probably a star roughly 2 arcmin south of Tempel's position. He says of it, "... follows [NGC 1441] by 16 seconds [and is] +3/4 arcmin" (a crude translation of "... und folgt 16 seconds auf [GC] 772 +3/4'.") If the plus sign is switched to a minus sign, the star I've included in the table is Tempel's object. He has another nova here that is certainly a star. See NGC 1443 for that. ----- While Dreyer credits his own observation of this object in the NGC, the galaxy that he actually saw is NGC 1451. His attribution "Dreyer (R)" in the "Other Observers" column should be moved to that object. ===== NGC 1448 = NGC 1457, which see. ===== NGC 1449. See NGC 1443. ===== NGC 1450. Howe corrected Swift's RA which is 16 seconds too large, an error this object shares with three others that Swift found the same night (NGC 652, N1509 = IC 2026, and N1594 = IC 2075). See NGC 1677 = NGC 1659 for more about this night of Swift's observing. ===== NGC 1451. See NGC 1443. ===== NGC 1452 = NGC 1455, which see. ===== NGC 1453. See NGC 1443. ===== NGC 1454 is probably the star that Steve Gottlieb and I have independently fingered. It matches the description given by Muller, and -- in particular -- there is a considerably brighter star just where Muller notes it: "* 9.5, P 240 deg, distance 3.2 arcmin." My thanks to Steve for bringing this back to my attention; I had lost the identity in my hand-written notes (how many others are there, I wonder?!). ===== NGC 1455 is probably identical to NGC 1452. The position, by Leavenworth at Leander McCormick, is pretty poor, but the description exactly fits the nucleus and inner bar of NGC 1452. In particular, the position angle mentioned by Leavenworth (30 deg) is just that of the bar. The RNGC galaxy is certainly the wrong choice -- it has too low a surface brightness to be seen even with a 26-inch refractor. ===== NGC 1456 is a double star. One component looked nebulous to Lohse; other than that, his description -- "D * 10-12, comp. nebulous (130 deg, 9 arcsec)" -- is good. ===== NGC 1457 = NGC 1448. JH has only one observation of NGC 1448; its RA is exactly 50 seconds in error. He has three accordant observations of NGC 1457 at the correct position, yet modern observers -- following Shapley-Ames -- have used the number 1448 for the galaxy. Strange people, astronomers. The identity was first suggested by DeLisle Stewart in the big list of new nebulae which he found on Harvard plates in the 1890's and early 1900's. There, he noted that N1448 was "Not seen, error for 1457 which is identified." In spite of this correction coming from a paper which they must have known, Shapley and Ames chose to use the number 1448 rather than 1457. Strange people, cataloguers ... ===== NGC 1458 is probably identical with NGC 1440 = NGC 1442 (and probably NGC 1430 as well; see the other three numbers for those stories). This is one of Leavenworth's Leander McCormick discoveries with an RA that is about 2 minutes of time too large. When that is corrected, his observation falls on NGC 1440, with his description ("m = 13.0, D = 0.3', R; [planetary]; neb?") more or less matching the bright inner part of the galaxy. This is not a certain identification, though. There is no sketch, and Leavenworth did not mention any nearby stars which we could use to verify the identity. Nevertheless, I'm fairly confident of the match, so use colons in the position table rather than question marks. ===== NGC 1464 = NGC 1471. Once again, the Leander McCormick RA from Leavenworth is about 2 minutes of time too large. But Leavenworth has left us a sketch that accurately portrays the galaxy and three of the stars nearby. In particular, he has the size (which he simply records as "vS") right, and his position angle of 45 degrees is correct as well. Swift's position is closer to the modern position, but his description is a bit peculiar when he claims "... forms equilatoral [sic] triangle with 2 sts." It does form a triangle with two nearby stars -- the two brighter ones shown in Leavenworth's sketch, in fact -- but the triangle is far from equilateral. In spite of this, I do not doubt that this is the galaxy which Swift saw -- his position is too close and there are no other nearby galaxies which could be his object. So the identity, at least in my mind, is secure. ===== NGC 1471 = NGC 1464, which see. ===== NGC 1474 is probably the same as IC 2002 at 03 54 30.3, +10 42 24 (J2000.0 from GSC). In addition to the problem with the original position, RNGC got the Dec sign wrong, and that incorrect sign was copied into NGC 2000.0. NGC 1474 was discovered in early in October 1864 by Albert Marth using William Lassell's 48-inch reflector at Malta, and was only observed once. The position is rough, as are many of Marth's. Of the other nine objects that he found that same night, two (N1141/2) have declination errors of 30 arcmin, another (N7575) has a 1 degree dec error, and two others (N7519 and N7593) have RA errors of 30 seconds of time. IC 2002 was found 21 Dec 1903 by Javelle with the large refractor at Nice. He measured the galaxy micrometrically, so the IC position is pretty good. This galaxy is UGC 2898 = MCG +02-10-003, and also occurs in CGCG. While Marth's description ("very faint, small, round") does not match Javelle's very well, especially in ellipticity ("... elongated along the meridian ..."), there is no other galaxy in the area that Marth is likely to have seen. Nevertheless, the N1474 identification with I2002 must be an uncertain one. Perhaps N1474 is really another star. ===== NGC 1475. The galaxy about four arcmin west of the NGC position is most likely the object that Leavenworth found. He mentions a 14th magnitude star four arcmin northwest of the nebula; there is no such star there. However, four arcmin southwest of is just such a star. Given the otherwise good description of the object, the incorrect direction is probably a simple transcription mistake. I missed the object when scanning for SEGC, so it is not included in the early editions of that catalogue. ===== NGC 1479 and NGC 1480 are a lost pair of nebulae seen only by Frank Muller at Leander McCormick. He made careful notes of the field for each nebula -- N1479: "Mag = 16.0, Size = 0.6 x 0.1; 1st of 2; nebulous **, PA 170 deg"; N1480: "Mag = 15.5, Size = 0.4, Form = iR; 2nd of 2; * 10 f 30 sec." -- but these don't help to identify the objects. There is no pattern of nebulae and star, or a double star with a nearby star, in the area of his positions that could match the descriptions. Nor are there extant sketches. I searched for an hour both east and west of the nominal positions with no luck; searches at reasonable digit errors north and south also yeilded nothing resembling Muller's objects. This may be another of the cases where the telescope was on the opposite side of the meridian (see NGC 111 for a suggested case of this kind of error). This would lead to a large RA error of unknown size. ===== NGC 1480. See NGC 1479. ===== NGC 1487 is an interacting system with at least two bright components. There are a couple of other smaller knots involved, and the faint plumes stretch over at least 10 arcminutes. The GSC position is a blend of the three brightest components; it seems to represent the system pretty well. JH saw only a single object here, but did note the two stars nearby which make a neat triangle with the galaxy. (The triangle symbol in the NGC description is just that rather than another reference to Dunlop's list.) ----- The positions I've adopted more or less represent the brightest portion of each knot. However, these "knots" are quite patchy, and the sky surveys have picked up on different patches depending on wavelength, size, brightness, and all the other factors that were programmed into their centering algorithms. The positions I've chosen are good enough, however, to identify the individual knots in this peculiar galaxy. ===== NGC 1488 is a double star. Cooper listed it as a "Star 12 involved in nebulosity" in the Markree Catalogue, and it was picked up by Auwers for his 1862 list of new nebulae appended to his reduction of WH's positions. Auwers adds a note which reads, "Place from the Markree Catalogue. I've not looked for it myself." The Markree position (03 57 12, +18 25.8; B1950.0) is very good and points exactly at the double. The object (CGCG 466-003) suggested as N1488 in several modern catalogues is far too faint to have been picked up by the Markree observers. ===== NGC 1491 is a diffuse nebula found by WH. His description is very good, as is his position. Dreyer nevertheless used the micrometric position measured by Engelhardt. This is refers to a star about 1.5 arcmin east of the brightest part of the nebulosity; WH mentions the star explicitly: "... a pL star in it towards the f[ollowing] side, but unconnected." The position I've adopted follows WH, and applies to the center of the nebula. ===== NGC 1498 is probably the triangle of three stars centered about 2 arcmin west of the NGC position. Curiously, WH's original observation reduces to a position 34 seconds of time on further west (there is nothing in that field but a few 18th magnitude galaxies). The NGC position comes from GC; did CH make an error in her reduction of her brother's observations or did JH somehow miscopy his aunt's MS? Or did they have access to other information in the sweep that led them to change the position? GC has no notes on the object, and Dreyer's 1912 note to WH's observation, "There is no very pronounced cluster near the place," is not very informative even if it is accurate. The only other historical evidence comes from Auwers's reduction: he gets the same answer I do, 34 seconds west of the NGC position. Assuming that the asterism is indeed the object that WH saw, we now find it about 40 arcsec across, and matching WH's description pretty well. Could he have glimpsed some of the much fainter stars in the field as well? They might add a "depth" to the asterism that would make it appear to stand out even more from the surrounding field and take on the appearance of a richer cluster. ===== NGC 1499 is the brightest part of the very extensive California Nebula, so called since its outline more or less resembles the outline of the state. Barnard's position -- apparently sent to Dreyer in a letter, since it is not in any of his published notes -- is just off the nebula to its east. The position I've adopted is more or less the center of the brightest portion of the nebulosity on its northeastern edge. ===== NGC 1509 = IC 2026. NGC 1509 was found independently by Swift and by Stone (who claimed two observations; he left us no sketch). Dreyer adopted Swift's position (which is 12 seconds of time too large) and description, though Stone's descriptive data certainly match what Swift recorded. (See NGC 1677 = NGC 1659 for more on other nebulae which Swift discovered on this night of 22 October 1886.) Bigourdan tried to find the galaxy a few years later in December of 1890, but could not see anything at the NGC position ("Searched with care, but in vain"). His second observation seven years later was only slightly more successful: when his measurements are reduced, they point to a star east of the galaxy. However, he also saw the galaxy on that second night, and measured it, too. Supposing it to be new -- it is not at the NGC position, of course -- he listed it among his novae, so it received the IC number. There is a fainter galaxy just to the west of NGC 1509 that is often taken as IC 2026. I'm not surprised that Bigourdan and Swift missed it; its magnitude is around V = 15, and it does not have a bright nucleus. However, Stone, working with the 26-inch at Leander McCormick, has picked up fainter galaxies. Perhaps he observed on poor nights, or perhaps he could only see high surface brightness objects with the long-focus refractor. He makes NGC 1509 only 0.1 arcmin in diameter, which means that he saw only its core. Finally, the 1893 list of micrometrically measured nebulae from Leander McCormick includes a nebula claimed to be NGC 1509. Unfortunately, only the declination was measured, so the object cannot be unambiguously identified. However, even the measured declination does not agree with the accurate value from Bigourdan and the modern sources. This measurement probably refers to a star (the description given in the 1893 paper bears this out). ===== NGC 1510 and NGC 1512 form an interacting pair. The much extended outer arms of NGC 1512 are very faint, and overlap NGC 1510. There appear to be knots in those arms superposed on NGC 1510 -- I've listed two that show up faintly in the DSS2R image. There is the possibility that these are actually foreground Galactic stars, or even supergiants in NGC 1512. There are probably papers discussing all these possibilities and more, so a search for them is perhaps in order. ----- When I did that search, I found that NGC 1510 is intrinsically peculiar. It is often listed as a "blue compact dwarf" galaxy, and its H-alpha emission is concentrated within the central region, apparently in two of the bright knots there. Gaia DR2 picked up at least three knots here, one of which may represent the nucleus of the galaxy. However, without having yet seen a clear image of the galaxy (HST images do exist), I've retained the separate entries for the knots. It is unlikely, by the way, that any of these are superposed Galactic stars. ===== NGC 1512. See NGC 1510. ===== NGC 1516 is a double galaxy which is identical to NGC 1524 and NGC 1525. See those for the story. ===== NGC 1523 is only a group of 5-7 stars. JH's position is good, but his description from a single night, "vF, R" is sparce. Delisle Stewart first saw the object as a group of stars on a Bruce plate from Arequipa, then Andris and I also picked it up as an asterism during our surveys of the southern sky in the 1970's. At first glance there are only four stars here. However, at least two of them appear to be blends of fainter stars, so there are probably at least six stars altogether in the asterism. ----- The Gaia DR2 data -- positions, parallaxes, and proper motions, all given in the position table -- for the four main stars suggest that they are not physically related. ===== NGC 1524 and NGC 1525 are the two components of NGC 1516, a double galaxy found by WH. The pair, however, was not seen as double by WH, nor JH from the Cape of Good Hope; it was finally resolved by Ormond Stone on 31 December 1886 (within a month of the centenary of its discovery on 30 Jan 1786). The Herschels' positions are good, but Stone's, as is common for the objects he and his colleagues found at Leander McCormick in the mid-1880s, is well off. In this case, his position is over 2 minutes of time too far east. The pair is identified by Stone's sketch, however. It has the relative sizes and orientation correct, so there is no doubting the identity with WH's nebula. ===== NGC 1525 is the southeastern of a pair of galaxies first seen by WH that became NGC 1516. See NGC 1524 for the story. ===== NGC 1538 is possibly IC 2045, or perhaps -- a bit more likely -- IC 2047. IC 2045 (no identity problem) is the brightest galaxy in a group. Stone's sketch (at least my copy of the sketch), however, seems to point to IC 2047, the second brightest. Unfortunately, his position, as poor as usual, falls near yet another galaxy in the group. It was this object that was probably taken to be NGC 1538 by Howe in 1900 (Howe only mentions that his two new nebulae, IC 2045 and 2047, are near NGC 1538), and certainly by Reinmuth in 1928. So, the NGC identification is not at all certain. Observing logic suggests IC 2045, the sketch suggests IC 2047, and Stone's crude position has led to the third galaxy. All three are in the table of positions. ===== NGC 1539 may be CGCG 488-001, which is about 1 minute east and 4-5 arcmin north of the NGC position, correctly copied from Marth's table. Marth has only one observation of the object, and there is nothing near his position that would match his description. The CGCG galaxy is bright enough that Marth could have seen it, and the 1 minute/5 arcmin offset puts his position within his usual accuracy of the galaxy, so I've retained it as a possible identification for the NGC entry. ===== NGC 1540. Earlier, I wrote: "NGC 1540 is probably the southern galaxy of the interacting pair. It is somewhat brighter and more concentrated than the northern." On the blue IIIa-J plate, this may be true, but on the red IIIa-F plate, it is the northern galaxy that looks a bit brighter. So, I'm going to suggest now (December 2013) that the entire ragged system -- rather than just one of the components -- is JH's object. ----- How many galaxies are there here, anyway? The Pan-STARRS image shows that the southern is a distorted spiral, while the northern is just a mess of HII regions, bridges, and streamers. However, half-hidden behind several bright knots in this northern "mess," is an apparently nearly normal lenticular. There are a few published studies of this "pair", but they barely hint at the obvious complexity of the system; see e.g. da Silva and de Souza, A&A 457, 405, 2006 and references therein. The pair's number, P221, is from Soares et al, A&AS 110, 371, 1995, and it is also known as IRAS 04131-2836 in the literature. ===== NGC 1547. I was surprised to come across this galaxy in Archinal and Hynes's "Star Clusters". What is it doing there? A glance at the NGC itself gave me the beginning of an answer. Found by Frank Leavenworth with the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor, it has a typically poor position. But the NGC description is fascinating: "pF, pS, iR (?Cl or neb w sts inv)". The full note in the first Leander McCormick list reads "cl? or neb with sev vF sts and one * 11.5 n of cen inv." Dreyer copied Leavenworth's "pF, pS, iR" verbatim into the NGC. There are two stars superposed, so it is possible that through a long-focus refractor, this might indeed suggest a mostly unresolved cluster to a visual observer. Well, carrying on with the paper trail, we find that Dreyer has a note in the second IC that reads, "RA is 4h 10m 57s [1860], Ho. (a cluster)." So, here is the definitive source of the "cluster" classification. But checking Howe's observation in MNRAS 60, 130, 1899 we find this: 1547. Leavenworth queried whether this were a cluster. I had no such suspicion. The southern end is the brightest portion. The position is 4h 12m 44s, -18[deg] 6'.3. Dreyer obviously misread Howe's note to mean that the object was indeed a cluster when Howe was telling us just the opposite. Howe did apparently glimpse the star superposed south of the nucleus, if only enough for it to suggest to him that the galaxy was brighter there. There is no problem with the identification as Leavenworth has left us a sketch which confirms Howe's position. So, the only problem here is Dreyer's misreading of Howe's note. This fine little galaxy is certainly not a cluster, at least as we usually use the word. ===== NGC 1548. There isn't much to write home about at JH's catalogued position. Some have tried to make a cluster out of the scattering of stars here, but it is really no more than a random Milky Way field. This is all that Steve Gottlieb saw in February 2010 when he went over the area. There is a galaxy group in the background, but JH does not mention any nebulae in his observation. However, about 20 arcminutes south and west, Steve found a "cluster" that doew look something like JH's description: "The chief star of a very loose, poor cluster 30 arcmin diameter, little compressed; stars 10...12m." He has it in only one sweep from 3 February 1832. The "chief star" is HD 27403, exactly 20 arcminutes south of JH's nominal position. Checking the other objects in JH's sweep that night, I found NGC 1778 = h344, and NGC 1857 = h 350. While JH's position for N1857 is correct, his place for N1778 is, like that for N1548, 20 arcmin too far north. This makes the group of stars that Steve noticed almost certainly the cluster that JH saw. Steve makes it only 20 x 10 arcmin visually, but pulling in some of the other stars around the core, I can stretch it pretty easily to 25 x 25 arcmin across. In any event, it is pretty clear that Steve has recovered JH's object. ===== NGC 1550 = NGC 1551, which see. ===== NGC 1551 = NGC 1550. WH made a recording or transcription error of exactly one degree in the NPD of II 464, placing it on the parallel with his comparison star (44 Eridani). D'Arrest could not find the object and was the first to suggest that it might be the same as N1550, just one degree north of WH's place. Dreyer added a note to this effect in NGC, and later adopted it as a "definitive" answer to the problem, as indeed, it seems to be. JH has a comment in GC about the object, noting a 5 arcmin difference between CH's reduction and Auwers's. He attributes this to CH using an incorrect NPD for the comparison star. He says nothing about the larger one degree error. Finally, while I'm splitting hairs, WH's description in Dreyer's 1912 edition of the Complete Papers reads, "F, vS, r," while GC and NGC both have "F, S, R". Since JH had access to WH's records, it may be that he corrected another mistake. Or it may be that Dreyer or his typesetter made one. A check of the original paper in Philosophical Transactions could eliminate at least one of these possibilities. A look at CH's "fair copy" of WH's observations in the Herschel Archives shows "vS, F, r", in accordance with Dreyer's 1912 description, so "F, S, R" is probably from JH. ===== NGC 1554 and NGC 1555 are both involved with the young variable star T Tauri (which has lent its name to the class of similar stars). The nebulae are among the most notorious of those found during the 19th century as they were the only nebulae certainly known to vary in brightness -- even to the point of disappearing, as NGC 1554 has done. They are most likely reflection nebulae, created as thick dust clouds near the star move about, mostly casting shadows, but occasionally letting "shafts of sunlight" out to illuminate the surrounding dense interstellar gas and dust. Nebulae were first noticed around the star by Hind in the 1850's, and were later observed by d'Arrest, Struve, and Dreyer among others. Dreyer has brief synopses of the observations in the NGC and IC Notes, and points (in the IC2 Notes) to a paper by Barnard in Monthly Notices which details most of the history of the T Tauri nebulae up to about 1900. For all the fuss that these nebulae created in the 19th century, they are all quite small and very faint at the present time. As I noted above, NGC 1554 is not visible on the Palomar Sky Survey plates (taken in the early 1950's), nor can it be seen on any of the later sky survey images. Also not visible in modern images is a nebula seen only by Bigourdan (B. 144; mislabeled as B. 143 by him in his big table). He makes its position 04 19 09.5, +19 21 51 (B1950.0) from a single observation on 12 Dec 1890. This is about 4 arcmin southeast of T Tauri in a blank patch of sky. Observers might find it worthwhile to monitor the area for changes. For NGC 1554, I've adopted the position of the star near where the nebula briefly appeared. For NGC 1555, I've adopted that of the several short streaks of nebulosity about an arcminute west of T Tauri. ===== NGC 1557 is a clump of 10-15 stars that cover an area of 15 arcmin by 10 arcmin a few degrees northwest of the LMC. JH's position applies to SAO 256073 = HD 27346, but the clump is centered about 5 arcmin south. That is the position that I've adopted. ESO, Wolfgang Steinicke, and Tom DeMary put the declination closer to the star, but that misses JH's "loose and straggling" cluster. Skiff and Archinal move the center well south as well. My most recent look at the "cluster" (September 2017) puts the center somewhat west of most of the esitmates, but the position agrees well with Archinal's in "Star Clusters". My estimated size, however, is somewhat smaller than his. JH gives no estimate of the size of his object, so we have only our own eyes to guide us. Most of the stars are bright enough that they probably have proper motions by now, so if there is in fact a cluster here, we could find out pretty easily. The few stars marked "N1557" in the Hodge-Wright Atlas are northwest of JH's object. ===== NGC 1560 is not IC 2062 as I supposed in RC2. I2062 (which see) is a star. ===== NGC 1569 is a nearby peculiar late-type irregular galaxy dominated by two bright superassociations or clusters near the center. A third knot a few arcseconds to the northwest, easily seen in the 2MASS images, is nearly as bright. See e.g. Martin (ApJ 506, 222, 1998), Tomita et al. (PASJ 46, 335, 1994), Arp and Sandage (AJ 90, 1163, 1985), de Vaucouleurs et al. (ApJ 194, L119, 1974), and other references in NED for further information on this fascinating nearby galaxy. The general conclusion of the early papers is that this is a star-forming galaxy with several "bubbles" apparently blown out by supernovae. There is no nucleus unless you wish to so designate one of the three bright superassociations. I've chosen to simply take the mean Gaia DR1 position of all three; this falls close to the middle knot, so the position for that alone may also be a reasonable choice to represent the galaxy. Note that Gaia resolves the northwest knot into two objects; the position I give for that is simply a mean value. ===== NGC 1570 = NGC 1571. JH's declination is 10 arcmin off for N1570, but his RA and description insure the identity with N1571 which he saw in a later sweep. ===== NGC 1571 is also NGC 1570, which see. ===== NGC 1575 = NGC 1577. Muller's RA is 23 seconds of time too small, but his note about the "* 9.5 P[A] 185 deg, [distance] 2 arcmin" insures the identity with Swift's 29th nebula in his third list. Swift's RA is very close to being correct but his declination is further off than Muller's. Swift also mentions the "* nr s", so it is clear that they found the same galaxy. The identity was first noted by Herbert Howe in a paper that appeared in the first issue of Monthly Notices for 1900. Dreyer has this as a note in IC2, simply saying "1575 = 1577 (Ho.)." ===== NGC 1577 = NGC 1575, which see. ===== NGC 1579. This bright diffuse nebula is centered roughly 20 arcseconds north of an involved star; I give positions for both. In the 2MASS images, this looks like an HII region associated with a young star cluster. It has also been called a reflection nebula, perhaps because of its association with the California Nebula. See Imara et al., ApJ 840, 119, 2017, who opt for the star cluster/HII interpretation, though their CO observations are aimed more at the star formation going on in the nebula than at the nebula itself. ===== NGC 1582. WH describes this in the sweep (number 801 on 3 February 1788) as "A coarsely sc cl of L stars 20 or 25' diar [sic] pretty rich. 41 ([nu]) Persei f 46' 17" n 1[d] 28'." CH's reduced position is 04 17 56, 46 36 (NPD, 1800); this becomes 04 32 04, +43 50.9 for J2000, close to the position reduced from WH's measurements. This is the approximate center of an elliptical group of stars from 9th to 13th magnitude roughly 18' x 16' in diameter. I put the center at 04 32 03, +43 50.1. However, there is another sparcer clump of somewhat brighter stars about 15 arcminutes to the southwest. This clump is apparently included in the cluster as seen by Skiff, Archinal, and DeMary, as well as myself in an earlier examination of the field. Including this clump gives a diameter closer to that estimated by WH. In the end, I am going to take the northeastern "cluster" as WH's object. While I doubt that this is a real cluster, I have not yet checked the recent cluster lists based on proper motions as well as positions on the sky. I leave that as an exercise for the interested observer. ===== NGC 1586. See IC 371. ===== NGC 1590. See IC 2074. ===== NGC 1592 is a complex "nest" (in Vorontsov-Velyaminov's terminology) of at least eight bright knots (in the DSSR2 image) and many fainter ones. I've provided positions for three of them, one each from the western and eastern ends of the galaxy, and also for the northern-most bright knot. I've adopted the position for this northern knot as representative of the entire galaxy. It will at least get you into the thing. JH did not resolve this, calling it simply "vF, vS". It would be interesting to know how large a telescope is needed to begin to show the brighter knots. ===== NGC 1593 = NGC 1608 = IC 2077. Neither of the NGC observers did very well by this galaxy. Marth has the RA 1 minute too small, and LdR has it 30 seconds too large along with a declination that is 8.5 arcmin off. In addition, LdR notes the nearby star as "south" of the galaxy rather than north (an error that Dreyer caught before he prepared the NGC). Javelle, however, has one observation that is within 10 arcsec of the galaxy -- he got it right. Reinmuth first suggested the identity of NGC 1608 with IC 2077, but I think that the identity with NGC 1593 had to wait until I ran across it doing SEGC. ===== NGC 1594 = IC 2075, which see for the story. Briefly, Swift's RA is off by 17 seconds of time (see also NGC 1677 = NGC 1659 for other interesting tidbits about the nebulae Swift found this night of 22 October 1886). This misled Bigourdan into thinking he had found a new nebula. Howe had corrected the RA for Swift's object, and Dreyer put the correction into an IC2 Note. However, Dreyer did not catch the identity with IC 2075 even though its position is only 30 arcsec off Howe's corrected place for N1594. This also had an impact on IC 2080 (which see) which shares the same RA error as NGC 1594. ===== NGC 1599 may also be NGC 1610, which see. ===== NGC 1600. See NGC 1610. ===== NGC 1608 = NGC 1593 = IC 2077. See NGC 1593. ===== NGC 1610 is probably one of the faint nebulae in the NGC 1600 group -- but which one? There is nothing at Leavenworth's position, and his description (m = 15.5, D = 0.2 arcmin; R, bMN) could match any of the several fainter members of the group. Among the more likely candidates are NGC 1599, and RNGC 1610. N1599 is at the same declination and is just over a minute of time west of the nominal place of N1610. However, it has a bright star just 1.1 arcmin east-northeast which Leavenworth would almost certainly have mentioned had he seen this galaxy. The RNGC identification is also possible, but is 7 arcmin south and 1.4 minutes of time east of Leavenworth's place. Neither of these options is particularly compelling, but are still worth noting. ===== NGC 1619, like N1610, is probably one of the faint members of the NGC 1600 group. It was found by Lewis Swift on 22 December 1886 along with N1621, N1627, N1628, and N1699. Unlike those other four, however, there is nothing at all near Swift's place. As with N1610, there are two candidates for N1619 that seem somewhat likely to me. RNGC 1610 is two minutes of time west and 8 arcminutes north, while the 51st object in Reinmuth's 1932 list of nebulae is 1 minute 20 seconds west and 28 arcmin north. I'm not convinced that either of these is Swift's lost nebula, but I note them for the record. Reinmuth's object has a brighter star just 1.1 arcminutes southeast that Swift would have almost surely mentioned; but all he has for his nebula is "eeF, S, R". ===== NGC 1621 = NGC 1626, which see. Also see NGC 1619. ===== NGC 1626 = NGC 1621 is another galaxy independently discovered by Swift and by one of the Leander McCormick observers, Francis Leavenworth in this case. Leavenworth left us no sketch of this object, but mentions a bright star north-preceding -- the star is 10 seconds west and 3 arcmin north. Curiously, Swift does not say anything about the star, though it must have been an outstanding object in his large field around the galaxy. This is one of the discoveries that Swift sent in a letter to Dreyer and later published in his 6th AN list. The letter to Dreyer apparently had a bit more detail as Dreyer adds "lbM" to the NGC description, otherwise the same as Swift's terse "eF, S, R" in the AN list. As usual, Leavenworth's declination is very good, but his RA is 50 seconds of time too far east. Swift's position is within 40 arcsec of true, so even without a word for the star, the galaxy is clearly identified. ===== NGC 1627. See NGC 1619. ===== NGC 1628. See NGC 1619. ===== NGC 1632 is probably = IC 386 (which see), but could possibly be IC 382. ===== NGC 1639 is a triple star. JH has it in a single sweep with an accurate position and description; he also mentions the two stars flanking it. Herbert Howe was the first to note that JH's object is an asterism, and Dreyer copied his note into the IC2 Notes. ===== NGC 1641 may be the clump of stars centered about 4 arcmin northwest of JH's position. He describes his object as a "pL, p rich, irreg R cluster; p m comp M; 5'; stars 11...16." There are only about 15 stars scattered across a 9 arcmin by 6 arcmin area. If this is JH's object, it must look better at the eyepiece than it does on the Sky Survey films or on the DSS. ESO apparently has the same object, as does Brent Archinal in "Star Clusters", though Brent puts the center about 3 arcmin southeast of the mean of mine and ESO's, and makes the diameter only 5 arcmin. The object labeled "N1641" in the Hodge-Wright Atlas is a pair of faint interacting galaxies (ESO 084-IG025) that JH could not have seen. The galaxies were further misclassified as an open cluster, and appeared as number 6 in the Shapley-Lindsay list. They are among the brightest in a group of galaxies coincidentally scattered over the same area as the foreground star cluster. ===== NGC 1646 has a companion seen by R.S. Ball with LdR's 72-inch reflector at Birr Castle. The story is in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 1649 is probably NGC 1652. JH has only one observation of NGC 1649 in Sweep 523 that puts it about 9 arcmin south and 6 seconds preceding NGC 1652 (his original data for N1649 are 04 38 43.3, -69 08 37 for 1830). This is only a few arcsec from the star SAO 249073, but JH makes no mention of a nearby bright star in his observation. NGC 1652 is an LMC cluster which JH observed on three nights (Sweeps 508, 653, and 759) with fairly accordant positions (the unweighted mean is 04 38 49.2, -68 59 56; 1830). JH did not record N1652 in the sweep in which he found N1649. Also interesting are his descriptions: they are virtually identical in sweeps 523 and 759. He writes `F, R, gbM, 30",' and `F, R, gbM, 35",' respectively. The descriptions in sweeps 508 and 653 make the cluster `vF, S, R, gbM, 12" ' and `vF, S, R'. Since the difference in declination is close to 10 arcmin (a digit error that JH and others made several times), and the RA's are not very much different -- many other CGH observations also show RA differences of six seconds or more of time, especially as far south as the LMC -- I think that the two NGC numbers refer to the same object. Hodge and Wright came to the same conclusion in the LMC Atlas, but are rather cautious and say, "Possibly NGC 1652. Declination off by 9'." (Another very similar case is NGC 241 and NGC 242 in the SMC. See those for the discussion.) However, just eight arcmin south of NGC 1652 is a faint LMC cluster (ESO 055-SC031 = KMHK 022) that Lauberts, in ESO-B, suggested might be NGC 1649, though with two question marks and a note commenting on the declination difference. He also has N1649 = N1652 with one less question mark. KMHK (Konzitas et al, A&AS 84, 527, 1990) do not use the NGC number on the cluster, and apparently did not notice the ESO-B entry. Bica et al (AJ 117, 238, 1999), however, use N1649 for the cluster, and also note the ESO entry. Jenni Kay has also picked up the faint cluster with her 12.5-inch reflector, so it is not impossible that JH saw it while sweeping. In an email to Jenni and to Mati Morel (who alerted me to Jenni's observation) I wondered, though, if the SAO star might hinder JH's ability to see the very faint cluster. It certainly did not get in Jenni's way! Jenni, by the way, argues that this cluster is NGC 1649: JH saw two clusters here -- albeit not at the same time -- so let's give him the benefit of the doubt. See her "Visual Atlas of the Magellanic Clouds" for her comments. Mati, in response, listed eight cases where JH found objects near bright stars (V < 9.5) in the LMC. JH mentions the star (or stars) in only four of his descriptions, so the presence of the star alone would probably not be an obstacle to his having seen the cluster, assuming that it (the cluster) is bright and large enough to have attracted his notice during a sweep. So, keeping Jenni's and Mati's comments in mind, I do have a bit of doubt about the identity of NGC 1649 -- but not much. I think the evidence in JH's observations leads to its identity with NGC 1652. ===== NGC 1652 is probably also NGC 1649, which see. ===== NGC 1655. This is one of 20 new nebulae found by J. G. Lohse with a telescope at "Mr. Wigglesworth's observatory," and sent directly to Dreyer in the form of a private communication. Thus, the only readily available information we have on them comes from the NGC itself. In this case, that includes the position and the description, "pB, R, gbM, * 10 s." There is a star of about 10th magnitude 2.5 arcmin south of Lohse's position for N1655, but there is nothing at all at that position. Delisle Stewart searched for N1655 on a Harvard plate, and could not find it either. He has an intriguing note attached, however: "... a hazy star p 1 minute, same Dec." I don't even see that "hazy star" on the POSS1 prints; is it a defect on the Harvard plate? So, N1655, too, is presumeably lost. ===== NGC 1659 = NGC 1677, which see. ===== NGC 1663 is probably the poor, scattered cluster about 45 seconds of time following WH's single position. This is one of his earlier objects (10 Feb 1784), so the position problem -- if it is one -- may be understandable as part of his learning curve. His description "A cluster of large and small scattered stars, not rich" certainly fits. There are about two dozen stars scattered over an area 12 arcmin by 10 arcmin with a 4 arcmin by 4 arcmin core containing half the stars. WH's position itself sits in a void surrounded by a weak annulus half a degree across of scattered stars, strongest on the following side (where the cluster noted in the previous paragraph sits). Is this the object that WH actually saw? If so, I suspect that he would have noted the annular structure. My best guess is the cluster following his position. Visual verification would not go amiss. ===== NGC 1665. See IC 2091. ===== NGC 1667 = NGC 1689, which see. Also see IC 394 and NGC 1677 = NGC 1659. ===== NGC 1671 may refer to the same galaxy as IC 395. Swift's description ("pF, pS, R, pB * nr sp") matches I395 (a later discovery also by Swift) pretty well, but the position is over a degree off in declination, and 43 seconds of time off. None of the other objects found by Swift on the same night (2 October 1886) have position errors anywhere nearly that large, and there is no suggestion of systematic offsets in either coordinate among the other objects. So, this is probably another lost object, though the IC 395 connection is not totally outrageous. ===== NGC 1674 and NGC 1675 are "Two faint nebulae in the same field" found by J. G. Lohse at "Mr. Wigglesworth's observatory." Lohse did not publish any data for these, but sent them directly to Dreyer who included them in the NGC. As with NGC 1655 (which see), which Lohse found in the same part of the sky, there is no trace of these at Lohse's given position. Three arcmin south is a group of six faint stars about an arcmin across, but we would need visual observations to tell if these could be mistaken for two nebulae. In the meantime, I've included the stars under both numbers in the position table, with plenty of question marks, of course. ===== NGC 1677 = NGC 1659 with a 5 minute error in its RA. It is not IC 2099 as I had supposed when I went over the field for SEGC. Here is the story. Swift found 14 nebulae on the night of 22 October 1886. In general, his positions are pretty good, being on average out by +5 seconds in RA and just +17 arcsec in declination. However, these numbers exclude two objects, NGC 1689 and NGC 1677. Both have RA's in Swift's fifth list (and in the NGC) which are 5 minutes of time too large. (In addition, another group of four objects from this night, NGC 652, N1450, N1509 = IC 2026, and N1594 = I2075, have a mean RA offset of +15 seconds of time). The identifications are secured by Swift's declinations (which are within 20 arcsec in both cases), and by his descriptions which are accordant with the Herschel's (for N1659) and with Stephan's (for N1667). In addition, these are among the brightest three or four objects that Swift found this night, and thus are the least likely to have been overlooked by other observers. ===== NGC 1679 found by JH on 18 November 1835, and reobserved the next night, has its GC and NGC brightness estimate incorrectly given as "vB". Both of JH's estimates in CGH read "pB". Otherwise, his description is appropriate, mentioning the four stars near the galaxy. The object may be a double interacting system, with the "asymmetric extension southwards" mentioned by Andris Lauberts in ESO-B being the companion. If this is a correct description of the system, then it would be similar to NGC 1313 (which see) and its interacting companion. ===== NGC 1689 = NGC 1667 is five minutes of time off its true position. See NGC 1677 = NGC 1659 for more on the nebulae that Swift found this night of 22 October 1886. ===== NGC 1690. Steve Gottlieb has pointed out that this is misidentified in MCG, PGC, and RC3. In those, the number has mistakenly been put on UGC 3199 rather than the correct UGC 3198. UGC, RNGC, and CGCG are correct. Note, too, that the outer diameter listed in MCG is actually the inner diameter; VV rarely assigned outer diameters to early-type galaxies, which this is. ===== NGC 1692 is another of the Leander McCormick nebulae which was sketched. The sketch confirms the SGC and NGC 2000.0 identification with the galaxy called "A0453-20" in RC2. ===== NGC 1699. See NGC 1619. ===== NGC 1707 = IC 2107 (which see for more) is an asterism of four stars with a fifth (considerably fainter) just north. JH's RA is 30 seconds of time too large; this misled Bigourdan into rediscovering the object. Reinmuth was apparently the first to notice that the two numbers apply to the same object. ===== NGC 1708 is a large cluster of stars of magnitudes 10 to 14, about 20 arcmin by 12 arcmin in size, and elongated north to south. It is centered about 7 arcmin southeast of JH's position, but nevertheless is unmistakeable. This is one of RNGC's "nonexistent" clusters. Personally, I don't see how they could have missed it. ===== NGC 1709. See NGC 1717. ===== NGC 1710 = IC 2108, which see. Once again, a poor position from the early lists out of Leander McCormick led to enough confusion for Bigourdan that the galaxy received two numbers in Dreyer's catalogues. However, Bigourdan eventually caught his mistake (after seeing the list of micrometrically measured nebulae from Leander McCormick), and made the identity himself in his own big table of micrometric measurements. The object which he initially measured as N1710 is nothing more than a faint star. ===== NGC 1712. The first of three "clusters" involved in nebulosity in the Large Magellanic Cloud, this has only one observation by JH while the others, NGC 1722 and NGC 1727, have three each. Also, JH notes them as "the [second/third] of a series of clustering patches," while NGC 1712 has no such comment. Even though JH calls it "A pB, S cluster", it is actually composed of several clumps of stars, including foreground stars, covering an area of about 3 arcmin by 2 arcmin. Since it is ill-defined, the positions from various sources are not in very good agreement. Nevertheless, the identity is pretty clear. ===== NGC 1713. See NGC 1717. ===== NGC 1714 is a compact, annular HII region in the LMC. On the DSS1 image, there is a bright knot on the east side, and a short extension to the west, with no obvious cluster involved. Nor is there an obvious "central" star. I suspect that inspection of the DSS2 images would show considerably more detail. ===== NGC 1717. My previous "story" on this was wrong, confused by LdR's several observations. Steve and Yann have sorted this field out nicely, so I'll start this completely rewritten note with Steve's email of 24 Dec 2016: "Along this theme, I wanted to add some comments to the identification of NGC 1717, which originates from the 15 Jan 1849 observation at Birr Castle mentioning "3 vF nebulae" and includes a small diagram. If the diagram is turned upside down (assuming west is roughly to the left), the relative separations and directions on the diagram are a very reasonable match with NGC 1713 the largest nebula, NGC 1709 marked as 3 1/2' roughly northwest (the actual separation is 2.7'), and CGCG 394-055 marked as 10' roughly southwest (the actual separation is 7.8'). I observed this field two nights ago and found CGCG 394-055 only very slightly fainter and smaller than NGC 1709, despite having a CGCG magnitude of 15.7, so it would likely have been noticed. Yann noticed this configuration first and included this galaxy in his spreadsheet on unrecognized LdR discoveries." Steve is suggesting that NGC 1717 is CGCG 394-055. This is a reasonable interpretation of LdR's observations. But ... more below! I would add that we have no trouble with the identications of NGC 1709 (also observed by d'A), NGC 1713 (found by WH -- though his declination is about six arcminutes too far north -- and also observed by JH and d'A), and NGC 1719 (found by JH and also observed by d'A). The only identification problem left in the field is then NGC 1717. If Steve is correct, then CGCG 394-055 is the object that LdR (or his observer in 1849, Johnstone Stoney) sketched. However, just 1.5 arcminutes north-northeast of CGCG 394-055 is CGCG 394-056. This is nominally brighter than 394-055 (15.5 vs. 15.7 in CGCG), but the CGCG magnitude for 394-056 includes a nearby star southeast of the nucleus. (For the record, 394-055 also has a superposed star just 7.5 arcseconds northwest of its nucleus). Steve does not mention 394-056, so he presumeably did not notice it during his observation. This makes sense as it is the fainter (after subtracting the star) of the two objects, so would be less likely to have been noticed by the Birr observer. LdR has three additional observations. The first of these is explained by Steve from the same email quoted above: "I also noticed the observation of 3 Jan 1873 reads '[GC] 948 (NGC 1719) is F, S, mE 161.5[deg], * 13m att to s end.' On reading this, I originally assumed Copeland simply got the position angle incorrect as there is a star involved on the south side of NGC 1719, though it is closer to 15th magnitude. But while observing the region, I also picked up UGC 3221, which is 24[arcmin] south of NGC 1713. This is a thin edge-on [galaxy] with a mag 14.5 star attached at the south end, and the position [angle] is 161 or 162 [degrees], a perfect match! So, I suggest UGC 3221 was misidentified as NGC 1719 [by Copeland] and this is another pre-NGC discovery." Steve is certainly correct about this, so I've entered the UGC galaxy in the list of non-stellar objects observed before the NGC was compiled but not included there. The final two observations at Birr, both by Dreyer, read 1876 Jan 21. E sp nf. * 14 m in sp end (not seen with certainty, eyepiece dewed). No "nova" near. 1877 Jan 12. pF, S, lE or irr R, bM, looks r or has two points of condensation sp nf. Looked carefully for other nebulae near, found none except [GC] 943 [NGC 1713] and [GC] 944 [NGC 1709]. Night clear. These two are not clearly for NGC 1719; its position angle is about 100 degrees -- implying "np sf" -- but the star is indeed southwest of the nucleus. So, for NGC 1717, we can pretty safely choose either CGCG 394-055 or 056. I've listed both in the position table, the first with colons, the second with question marks. ===== NGC 1719. See NGC 1717. ===== NGC 1722 is the second of three "clustering patches" in the LMC (the others are NGC 1712 and NGC 1727, both of which see). It is pretty ill-defined, and involves a considerable amount of nebulosity. It is probably better described as an association than a cluster. The three brightest patches in the association make up IC 2111, which also see. The brightest of these is the one that I have designated "IC 2111s". ===== NGC 1724. This was found by George Rumker on 30 Apr 1864, and was subsequently measured by him on three additional nights in May of that year. Rumker's position, re-reduced with respect to the Tycho-2 position for his comparison star, coincides exactly with an asterism of three pretty bright stars (Brian Skiff identifies them in the main table). These are clearly resolved on the 48-inch Schmidt plates; but in Rumker's 4-inch, F15 refractor, they would probably have been resolvable on just the best nights. This is borne out by his descriptions (translated by me with the help of an on-line translation program): 30 April, "Several stars near one another, mixed with nebulosity"; 1 May, "Only nebulosity vaguely seen"; 3 May, "Several small stars near one another, the brightest preceding"; 6 May, "Three small stars (mixed with nebulosity?)". There is no nebulosity involved with the three stars on the sky survey plates, but there are fainter stars in the neighborhood that may have yeilded that impression through Rumker's small refractor. ===== NGC 1727 is actually a group of three HII regions and their associated stars. JH's size, "3 arcmin long, 90 arcsec broad" makes clear what he saw, so the position that I've estimated on the DSS refers to all three patches. Most of the other positions refer to only the northwestern of the three. ===== NGC 1730 = IC 2113. This is one of the bright Leander McCormick nebulae that the Herschels could probably have picked up. However, it was apparently first seen on 12 November 1885 by Francis Leavenworth. It is one of the rare nebulae in the first LM list to have more than a single observation, but its position is still given to only a full minute of time. It is also one of the few to have two sketches from LM -- the first is Leavenworth's discovery sketch, the second is by Frank Muller from 16 February 1887. The sketches are similar, but Leavenworth claims two nebulae, while Muller -- correctly -- has a nebula with a superposed star. Leavenworth's measurement of the separation (10 arcsec at PA = 110 degrees) is, however, correct. The star can be easily seen in the 2MASS image superposed just a few arcseconds northwest of the nucleus of the barred spiral, within the inner ring. By the way, the NGC misattributes the object to Ormond Stone rather than to Leavenworth. In between the two LM observations which led to the sketches, Lewis Swift picked up the galaxy on 9 October 1886 and published it in his fifth list of new nebulae from Warner Observatory in Rochester, NY. His position for the galaxy is one of the best he ever published, falling just a few arcseconds from the nucleus (statistics suggests that this happens now and then). Fortunately, Dreyer used this position for the NGC. Well, OK, you say, but what about IC 2113? That was found by Barnard and is apparently one of the several discoveries that he sent directly to Dreyer. I find no trace of it in any of his papers on nebulae, at least in those papers that I've collected. His position for the galaxy is nearly coincident with Swift's, so I have to assume that neither he nor Dreyer checked the NGC closely. Comparison stars for this also figure in the uncertain identifications for IC 400, which see. ===== NGC 1731 is an association in the LMC centered about two arcminutes west of JH's position (very good) for the double star towards the eastern side. DSS2R (from which I've estimated the position) provides a very good view of the object; it is about 5' x 4.5' across with some very faint nebulosity involved. ===== NGC 1736. Steve Gottlieb during a recent (2012) trip to Australia, noted that this matches JH's brief description "B, R, r" pretty well, though JH's RA is 1 minute of time too far east (that was first noted by Lindsay in one of his LMC papers; I'll see if I can dig out the reference). ===== NGC 1737 is part of the NGC 1743 star-forming complex in the LMC. See NGC 1745 and IC 2114 for more. There is no obvious cluster directly associated with it, but there are many stars in the area. NGC 1737 itself is very faint in the DSS1 V-band image. ===== NGC 1738. There are no problems with the identification even though Ormond Stone's original position for this -- and the neighboring NGC 1739 -- is about a minute of time too small. Herbert Howe corrected the RAs for both galaxies, and Dreyer noted Howe's new positions in IC2. The problem here is in the Gaia DR2 position for the nucleus; it is about 3/4 of an arcsecond to the southeast of the nucleus, correctly pinned down by the 2MASS PSC and Pan-STARRS positions. There is no obvious reason for the discrepancy that I can see -- no superposed star, no HII region or cluster within the galaxy itself that could have pulled the Gaia software off. While I'm not yet familiar enough with the technical details of Gaia's centering algorithm to declare this an obvious mistake, this does stand as an example of the caution we must take in accepting even the most statistically "correct" survey positions. Following up on discrepancies, even very small ones, is clearly a wise thing to do. ===== NGC 1740. See NGC 1742. ===== NGC 1742. Ball's observation on 29 December 1866 of this puts it 60 arcsec away, in PA 65 deg, from NGC 1740. That clearly identifies the star he took to be a "vF, vS" nebula; he called it "beta". His sketch of the field is clear, too, once the orientation is known. All this is in Dreyer's monograph of LdR's observations. For the NGC, Dreyer used JH's position of NGC 1740 as a reference. Since that is about 15 seconds of time too small, his calculated position for NGC 1742 is also 15 seconds too small. Had I looked at the observation decades ago when I first went over the field, I probably would have gotten it right. As is, I've had the wrong star in the list for all these years (sigh). Well, it's finally right. ===== NGC 1743. See NGC 1745 and IC 2114. ===== NGC 1745 is a diffuse nebula -- probably an emission nebula -- in the NGC 1743 complex in the LMC. John Herschel's position was an estimate based on his measured positions for NGC 1743 and N1748, but it is close enough to the correct position to identify the nebula without question. It is pretty well- seen on the IIIa-J film of the area, and on the DSS2 images, though is just barely seen in the DSS1 short-exposure V-band image. N1745 is called a star cluster in the ESO/Uppsala catalogue, but this is wrong. Furthermore, there is no cluster at the ESO position, but just a group of faint stars. ===== NGC 1746. This is a curious case, found by d'A while searching for NGC 1750 (which see) = H VIII 43. He describes it as a poor cluster, and places it about 10 arcmin north of WH's place -- but nevertheless calls it H VIII 43. Dreyer apparently thought it a separate object since he gave it a new GC number in the GC supplement. There is a group of about a dozen faint stars at d'A's place, and a much more extensive group at WH's place (see the note for N1750 for a description). While I'm doubtful that d'A's object is worth numbering, I'm going to follow Dreyer as closely as possible and retain both objects at something like their original positions. I must note, however, that Galadi-Enriquez et al (A&AS 131, 239, 1998) have shown that this group of stars is neither astrometrically nor photometrically a real cluster. It is no more than a random clump in the rich Milky Way field in Taurus. ----- I came across this cluster again in November 2017 during my sweep through the parts of the NGC that I hadn't looked at carefully earlier. I noticed that both Archinal and DeMary have this as a very large -- 40 and 42 arcminutes -- cluster. Given that the NGC says nothing about the size, I checked d'A's monograph and found this: "Acervus nec numerosus nec elegans; vix ullius momenti" ("It is neither populous nor obvious; of little consequence"; my translation). While this does suggest a poor and scattered cluster, the wording is completely silent about the actual size of the cluster. AH says this about the cluster: Contains C0500+235 = NGC 1750 and C0501+237 = NGC 1758. Skiff: Too large to check. Archinal: 40' group of ~10 bright stars. Aliases: Mel 28; Raab 20; Cr 57; OCl 452; Lund 148; (2) NGC 1750; (2) NGC 1758; (2) OCl 454; (2) C0500+235; C0500+237. (AH explain that the "... (2) indicates that the name of the object given *includes* [their italics] the object listed.") Chasing down the references, I found the following: P. J. Melotte (MemRAS 60, 175, 1915) gives a diameter of 45 arcminutes and comments "A loose cluster covering a large area. Not well-defined." Sigfrid Raab (Medd. Lund Obs. Series II, No. 28, page 3) has a diameter of 49-59 arcminutes and gives the total number of stars as 95. He also notes "A very large, thin cl. without perceivable condensation. The south half of the cl. contains the brightest stars. Passes imperceptibly into the environs. It should be observed tha this cl. contains an extremely large number of K-stars." Per Collinder (Lund Obs. Annals 2) has a diameter of 50 x 50 arcminutes, and reports six earlier measurements ranging from 40 to 50 arcminutes. The two cluster catalogues mentioned by AH collect these various earlier estimates. I wonder if they were simply copying one another. I see the "cluster" of bright stars that attracted their attention as well-defined north and south, but not east or -- especially -- west. In the end, then, I will simply repeat the earlier catalogues, but with a big query on the NGC number. This is a case where we do not know what d'A actually saw on the sky, so I think it is better to just acknowledge the early work from a century ago, and let it go at that. Definitely not satisfactory, I know, but there it is. For those, like me, who are not happy with this particular ending, there are always the two clusters "associated" with it, NGC 1750 and NGC 1758. These at least are reasonably well-defined, and are apparently real clusters as well. Finally, there is always the possibility that d'A actually did make a mistake in his declination, and that he saw NGC 1750. So, I've included this possibility in the position table as well. ===== NGC 1748 = IC 2114, which see. Also see NGC 1745. ===== NGC 1750 may be the same object as NGC 1746 (which see). If so, there is a 10 arcminute error in the declination for NGC 1746. The group of stars I see on the POSS1 close to WH's place consists of about 20 9th to 12th magnitude stars scattered over an area 25 arcmin by 12 arcmin, with the long axis at PA roughly = 125 degrees. I put the cluster center about 3 arcmin east of WH's RA. Reinmuth claims this to be the central group in a larger cluster also containing NGC 1746 and NGC 1758. This is also how AH have taken the field. The note on NGC 1746 has more on all this. Galadi-Enriquez et al (A&AS 131, 239, 1998) have confirmed the reality of this cluster as well as NGC 1758. They have also shown, however, that the clump of stars I call NGC 1746 (which see) near d'A's position is not a true cluster. ===== NGC 1757 is nonexistent. JH claims to have seen it once on 20 Feb 1830, saying of it, "A very large space affected with nebulous streams in zigzags up and down. (N.B. Such observations require several verifications. The opportunity has not occured in this case.)." He never got back to this and it has never been seen since. Lord Rosse and his observers tried six to eight times. The actual number is uncertain. In the 1861 monograph, LdR says "Looked for seven times. Not found," while the 1880 monograph says "Looked for 6 times in the years 1848-58, not found", and adds another attempt on 30 December 1867: "Night bad; suspected slightly luminous appearance in spots, but not very decided." (Dreyer in the NGC note says six times). Neither Tempel nor Spitaler could find it, and Reinmuth did not locate it on the Heidelberg plates. I searched for this on the sky survey prints and later on the DSS, as well as in the IRAS infrared images. The closest nebulosity is over 20 arcmin from JH's position and does not agree at all with his description. In any case, the whispy stuff is far too faint to be seen visually. Even JH came to doubt his observation. His GC note reads, "A very large diffused nebulosity, distributed in zigzags. This has been looked for seven times by Lord Rosse and not found. Its existence is therefore very doubtful." ===== NGC 1758 is a cluster seen through the scattered Milky Way field that many have taken to be NGC 1746 (which see; also see NGC 1750). AH make the diameter of this cluster 40 arcminutes, but that is clearly the overall diameter of the three clusters -- NGC 1746, 1750, and 1758 -- taken together. NGC 1758 by itself is approximately 9-10 arcminutes across. ===== NGC 1760 is a diffuse nebula in LMC, probably an HII region, south-southwest of NGC 1761 (which see). It just barely shows on the DSS1, and is associated there with a line of 9 or 10 stars. JH's sketch of the field is fairly close to what we see on the IIIa-J and IIIa-F plates (DSS2) of the area, though. ===== NGC 1761, though often called a "cluster", is actually a star cloud in LMC. JH mentions a double star of 9th magnitude in it -- I suspect this is a foreground Milky Way star. The star cloud is centered about an arcminute southeast of the double star. Most others have taken the position of the double as that for the star cloud but, using DSS1, I've given an estimate of the center of the cloud itself. ===== NGC 1763 is a bi-lobed complex of HII regions and star clusters in the LMC. JH's descriptions and positions from five different sweeps are appropriate, though he was not happy with one of his RA's. His position is toward the middle of the western "lobe" of the nebula. This is where the brightest stars are located, including the "chief of which in the anterior part of the neb [was] taken." In the one sweep when he estimated the size of the nebula, though, he made it four arcmin long and 2.5 arcmin across, almost exactly what we seen on the short exposure DSS1 V-band plate. The position I've adopted is more toward the intersection of the "lobes" and is more representative of the entire nebula. One last note on this: this is not identical to either IC 2115 or 2116, in spite of what ESO claims. It is possible, though, that the IC numbers refer to parts of NGC 1763. See IC 2115 for more on this. Note, too, that I had most of this note incorrectly loaded under the number "1736" for a while. My apologies! ===== NGC 1767 is one of a number of nebulae and clusters in the LMC that JH found with a 5-inch refractor. Beginning on 2 November 1836 and continuing through 26 March 1837, JH worked across the Cloud in 34 different zones with his refractor. He does not give us many details of his work on these zones, but if we assume to zeroth order that he worked steadily on these, given that there are 144 days between his beginning and end dates, that would allow him 4.24 days per zone. This would allow us to guess at the discovery dates -- or at least the years -- in which he discovered the objects. Since N1767 was put into zone 9, it was probably one of the earlier objects found, so November or December of 1836 is a reasonable guess as to its discovery date. ===== NGC 1768. JH's single position (from Sweep 759 on 30 Dec 1836) is southwest of the center of this small, straggling complex of stars. The northeastern lobe looks like a typical small LMC cluster, while the southwestern part is more scattered and centered on a tight, bright knot of stars. It's not clear from either JH's position or description ("F, R, gbM; 20-arcsec") exactly what he saw, so I've put positions for both lobes and the overall complex in the main table. ===== NGC 1770 is a large complex of clusters and HII regions in the LMC. The various positions for it reflect the difficulty in determining its center -- even JH had trouble. His two RA's are discordant by nearly 40 seconds of time. But when we examine the field, the limits of the association are pretty clear. On DSS1 (and on DSS2R), that center is about 40 arcsec southeast of the 9th magnitude star that JH noted in his second observation. Also see IC 2117, one of the HII knots in the southern part of this star cloud. ===== NGC 1775. JH's single position is southeast of the core of this scattered cluster or association. He makes it a full 2 arcmin across, while I can trace it on the DSS2R only out to half that size. JH does call it "vvF, irr R", however, a pretty accurate description. ===== NGC 1777. JH's original description reads, "eF, E, attached to and following a D * (9 = 9m)." However, the double star (a wide one, with 30 arcsecond separation) is actually east of the core of the cluster, not west. The NGC description, however, reads "eF, E, ** 9 att, f", which is correct. This is from the GC which also claims a total of two observations, though only one is given in CGH. Note also that the RA in CGH, GC, and NGC is one minute of time too small. The cluster is far enough south, however, that the correct object is close enough to be unmistakeable, especially given that the wrong position falls into an empty field. ===== NGC 1778. JH's position is 20 arcmin too far north, but because his father also observed the cluster, the NGC position is only a few arcmin north. For a counter-example, see NGC 1548 where JH's 20 arcmin error persisted into the NGC. ----- JH corrects the position in his "Errata and Addenda" on page 481 of his 1833 list. It is accordant with all the others when the correction is made. My apologies for overlooking this before now (November 2016). ===== NGC 1781 = NGC 1794. Dreyer reprints as an NGC note JH's note from the GC explaining the choice of RA's from three different stars in WH's sweep from 6 Feb 1785 -- JH unfortunately picked the wrong RA. Ormond Stone found the object independently at Leander McCormick about a century after WH picked it up. But he, too, has the RA wrong. Fortunately, Stone has left us a sketch of the galaxy and nearby field stars which positively identify the correct object. Even without the sketch, Herbert Howe corrected the RA and suggested that the two NGC numbers refer to the same object, assuming the 3 minute of time RA difference noted by JH. Howe's observations led to Dreyer's IC2 notes nearly a decade later, and also to Dreyer's notes in his 1912 edition of WH's complete papers, and finally, to Dreyer's 1912 MN list of NGC corrections. ===== NGC 1785 is probably an asterism of about 5 stars superposed on the LMC. It was found by JH in Zone 9 of his special sweeps of the Large Cloud with "an equatorially mounted telescope of five inches aperture, and seven feet focal length, by Tulley, which had served me for the measurement of double stars in England ..." The position is good, and it is accurately plotted on JH's wonderful map of the LMC. Unfortunately, none of these objects has any description beyond a single letter -- "N" in this case -- denoting "Nebula". ESO suggested two different objects as candidates for N1785. One was a chain of 5-10 stars (of which JH's object is the southwestern end); the other was Shapley-Lindsay 150, a faint LMC open cluster about 20 arcmin south-east of JH's astersim. This latter is much too faint to have been seen during sweeps with a five-inch refractor, and the position is well off JH's. ----- I've retained the ESO candidate as a possible identification for JH's object, though I do not think that the longer asterism is what JH saw. With his small refractor, it's more likely that the nearly round southwestern part of the larger asterism was mistaken for a nebula. ===== NGC 1787 is a large (at least 20 arcmin by 15 arcmin) cloud of stars in the LMC. This number has been applied to SL 178, but that is a faint, small cluster that JH did not see. On the Hodge-Wright Atlas, I put the center about five arcmin northwest of JH's position, but either will serve to identify his cluster. ===== NGC 1790 is a group of about a dozen stars of 10th to 12th magnitude scattered around JH's position. It probably looks better at the eyepiece than it does on the Sky Survey prints; JH calls it "A pretty object," while RNGC puts it into the "nonexistent" category. JH's position is about 3 arcminutes east of the apparent center on the POSS1 blue plate. ===== NGC 1794 = NGC 1781, which see. ===== NGC 1797. See NGC 1392. ===== NGC 1799. See NGC 1392. ===== NGC 1803. This has a companion glimpsed by JH that did not receive an NGC number. See the story in the "notngc" files where the companion is ESO 203-G019. ===== NGC 1814 is an open cluster in the LMC star cloud NGC 1820, which see. On the DSS2R, NGC 1814 has an HII annulus around it. ===== NGC 1816 is a cluster in the LMC star cloud NGC 1820, which see. ===== NGC 1820 is a large cloud of stars in the LMC, 8 arcmin by 5 arcmin, rather scattered on the DSS1. It contains several fainter, smaller clusters, two of which (NGC 1814 and NGC 1816) JH saw. The position I estimated on DSS1 is the approximate center of the entire complex. ===== NGC 1823. "The most compressed part of a pF, L, branching cl of stars 12...15m." The contrast between the cluster at the core of this star cloud and the remainder of the cloud itself is more striking than JH's description suggests. The cluster itself is only about 30 arcsec across, while the star cloud covers an area of 9 arcmin by 6 arcmin. There are at least two other clusters involved in the cloud (or at least in the line of sight), one about 4 arcmin west-northwest, the other 4.5 arcmin south-southeast. ===== NGC 1824. This late-type galaxy has no obvious nucleus. There are two faint knots near the center of the patchy bar, and there is superposed star about six arcseconds north-northeast (previous versions of the position had this star marked as the center of the galaxy -- my apologies!). My guess as to which knot best represents the nucleus is the northern of the two, but it could well be the southern one -- or neither. NED has nothing to say about the position, but at least one of the positions there refers to the star. ===== NGC 1829. JH describes this as a nebula: "F, R, 60[arcsec], r". He may have glimpsed some of the faint stars northwest of the center of the brightest patch of nebulosity, leading to the impression of mottling. I presume that it is these stars that have led later observers to call this simply an open cluster in the LMC. Nevertheless, it's clear that JH saw nebulosity here, so my preferred position is southeast of the stars. ===== NGC 1833 is probably also NGC 1840, which see. The position Brian adopted is for the "central star". Curiously, this star does not appear in Gaia DR1, but it is in the 2MASS PSC and in UCAC; we've taken the UCAC place. ===== NGC 1837. My earlier note read tersely: JH calls this "Scattered, more than fills the field." This tells us that JH's object is at least 15 arcmin across. The position I've given is for a clump of four stars near the center of JH's "cluster." Ahem. He actually has two observations of the grouping which he numbered h 2769. The first of these, in Sweep 509 on 3 November 1834, reads, "The last of three clustering groups (hazy)." The second observation, from which I drew my previous note, reads in full, "The most condensed part of a large rich cluster of scattered stars which more than fills the field." This is from Sweep 513 on 26 November 1834. The very next entry in Sweep 513, for h 2770, reads, "The general middle of the same cluster." JH puts the "general middle" about 10 arcminutes north and 1 minute of time east of the "most condensed part". So, NGC 1837 is just the core of NGC 1845. The clump of four stars with its surrounding field that drew Brian's and my eyes -- and JH's! -- is indeed NGC 1837. ===== NGC 1838 is a scattered and pretty poor association in the LMC, perhaps including several superposed Galactic stars. JH's 7th magnitude star is on the western edge, so his position is off of the more modern ones that point to the center. I make the size 7.5 x 7.0 on DSS1. The much smaller and fainter LMC cluster SL 225 is on the southwestern edge of NGC 1838; it is probably not associated with the NGC object. ===== NGC 1840 is probably a second observation of NGC 1833. Here is what I had to say about this earlier: JH saw this only once on 3 Nov 1834, and noted considerable uncertainty about it: "F, R, bM, r. Hardly visible through a thick haze. The observation makes the RA [05] 6m 13.5, but this is impossible from the context. It *may* [JH's italics] be 8m." The haze must have cleared soon after this observation as JH's notes on later objects in the same sweep make no mention of it. The position JH gives in CGH is 05 07 13.5, 161 58 26 (1830.0, NPD) -- there is nothing there aside from field stars. Similarly at his "impossible" position, there are only field stars. Close to the position implied if the minutes of RA is 8, there is an asterism of four relatively bright stars with half a dozen fainter. There is apparently a faint cluster here, ESO 056-SC062 = KMHK 529 (see Archinal and Hynes "Star Clusters" for more information). Is this JH's object? It is usually taken to be NGC 1840, but I am not convinced. First, the description -- even taking the "thick haze" into account -- does not really fit the scattering of stars. Second, even if the RA minute suggested by JH is correct, the position is still over 20 seconds of time off. I don't see anything else in the area that JH would have called a nebula, however, so the asterism is, by default, the best candidate. I've checked at several of the positions implied by digit errors (+- 1 deg, +- 30 arcmin, etc), and see nothing obvious. Jenni Kay, in her "Visual Atlas of the Magellanic Clouds" does not question the identification of the asterism, and notes "... [it] may be only a few stars in a group about 2.0 [arcmin] in size." She used a 12.5-inch reflector at 150X for this observation. This does not sound like the same object that JH recorded, but we have to remember that he was observing through "thick haze". I've put question marks on the identification. ----- Going back over this in August 2016, I checked the sweep, where this is number 24. JH has scribbled in a note "Some mistake ? 9[min]". Unfortunately, in the Herschel Archive, the minutes of the clock reading is partially lost in a big smudge from the photocopy process: "[Something] 5". The remainder of the observation is clear with the beat being "-20" and the wire being recorded as "2". Assuming a wire error, 1 instead of 2, the RA would be 1m 35s more than the recorded value; and if the edge of the field was meant, the RA would be 1m 26s less. Given all this, we can set up the following table of possible RAs: JH RA (1830) as given Wire 1, not 2 Field edge, not wire 2 05 06 13.5 05 07 48.5 05 04 47.5 05 07 13.5 05 08 48.5 05 05 47.5 05 08 13.5 05 09 48.5 05 06 47.5 05 09 13.5 05 10 48.5 05 07 47.5 Assumimg that JH's NPD is correct at 161 58 26, and we have our cluster on an arc beginning at 05 02 17, -71 44.6 and ending at 05 08 14, -71 46.0 (both J2000). Are there any clusters along that arc that match JH's description? The only one is ESO 056-SC062, discussed above. So, I returned to the sweep. I found that the nearest star in the sweep is beta Mensa; JH has 05 04 56.1, 161 32 38 (1830, NPD) or 05 02 42.4, -71 18 51 (J2000), remarkably close to the Hipparcos position of 05 02 43.00, -71 18 51.5. JH makes the cluster 25' 48" further south (for 1830) in his reduced position, but 34' 10" by his NPD index reading (astute readers will have already noticed that the sum of these two numbers is almost exactly one degree; more on this below). So, there may be a declination error, too, as this implies an NPD of 161 53 06 (1830), or -71 39.8 (J2000). There is nothing obvious at this declination across the RAs in the table above. I also noticed that NGC 1856 is the next object in the sweep. This is north of beta Mensa, and the index reading is "00 22 05"; that for beta Men is "02 35 00". Curiously, the index reading for NGC 1840 is "02 00 50", implying that it too is north of beta Men. However, JH's reduced position has it south. A check on this is JH's note at the beginning of the sweep "P = 158[deg] 58[arcmin] + i" where P is the north polar distance and i is the index recorded in the sweep. For beta Men (i = 02 35 00) and NGC 1856 (i = 00 22 05), the resulting NPDs are close to those that JH has given us. But for NGC 1840, the NPD is a full degree off: NPD = 158 58 + 02 00 50 = 160 58 50 (1830). This becomes -70 45.6 for J2000. Checking this arc, we find two candidate objects: NGC 1833 and SL 249 (at 05 07 35, -70 44.9). The NGC object (= h 2765) is the larger and brighter of the two, and its position is off JH's by even digits: 1 minute of time, and 1 degree of declination. This makes it likely to also be NGC 1840. I've noted that in the position table with colons. I've also put SL 249 into the table as it is at the correct declination. Given JH's uncertainty about the RA, this fainter cluster remains a possibility. ===== NGC 1841. This is probably an old globular cluster in the Magellanic Stream, apparently similar to M92, at least in its color-magnitude diagram (see Andersen et al MNRAS 229, 1, 1987 and Alcaino et al, AJ 112, 2020, 1996). Most investigators assign it to the LMC by default, so I have followed along, though it is at least 15 degrees from the center of the LMC. Its distance modulus has been estimated (from its color-magnitude diagram) at 18.26 +- 0.11 (again, see Alcaino et al) while that for the LMC is canonically 18.50. This smaller distance is consistent with other LMC globulars derived from RR Lyrae stars (see van den Bergh, ApJ 446, 39, 1995), so may be tangled up in an apparent conflict between distances derived from RR Lyraes on the one hand, and Cepheids on the other (again, see van den Bergh). The recent availability of the Gaia data may help resolve this conflict. ===== NGC 1845 is a large, scattered cloud of stars in (or superposed on) the LMC. Its center is northwest of JH's 9th magnitude star by 2-3 arcmin, and I make the approximate size on DSS1 15 x 10 arcmin. JH gives us two positions for it, one from Sweep 513 for "The general middle of the same cluster [NGC 1837, which see]" (05 07 47.5, 160 45 01 for 1830.0); the second from Sweep 751 for "A star 9m the second in magnitude and near the centre of clustering groups which run together and form a cluster which fills the whole field. v l comp M; [sts] 11 ..... 16 m" (05 08 08.1, 160 48 55, again for 1830.0). The position in the NGC is a mean value of JH's two estimates. ----- On the DSS2R (which I examined in November 2013), it appears to be somewhat larger (22 x 12 arcmin), and centered further west than I'd placed it before. It seems to be composed not only of an LMC star cloud (including a couple of small clusters and a nebula), but of a few brighter, superposed Galactic stars as well. The center is marked by NGC 1837, a small group of four to six stars, perhaps with a one-arcminute "tail" of another half-dozen stars leading south. ===== NGC 1848. There is nothing matching JH's description at his nominal position (05 06 56, -71 15.1 for B1950.0). He says, "The first and brightest star, 9m, of a cluster of loosely scattered stars." However, there is such a star 1 minute of time east of JH's position, on the western edge of a scattering of stars matching his description. I've adopted this "cluster" as JH's object; it is most likely a poor star cloud in the LMC. The triple star (or compact cluster? they call it "SL 256") that Archinal and Hynes point at is likely just the northeastern-most "star" in JH's cluster. ----- Looking at this again in December 2018, I wonder if the "star cloud" I chose earlier is just a part of JH's "cluster". Looking at a 25-arcminute field centered on my previous position suggests that a handful of other star to the north and east might also have played a role in JH's observation. I've put this larger group of stars in the position table as "NGC 1848 extended". JH unfortunately has not left us quite enough to go on, but this certainly seems a reasonably alternative to the smaller "cluster" that we've adopted in the past. ===== NGC 1850. Bhatia and MacGillivray make the interesting suggestion that this cluster is in the process of colliding and merging with another -- the second, smaller cluster is about half an arcminute to the west. They also note a "tail" to the northeast where there are at least two other apparent clusters. One is Hodge 88-159 (in the position table as "NGC 1850 comp"), the second -- at the end of the "tail" -- is Hodge 88-164. Both are also in the OGLE list, so have pretty good data. The DSS2R image reveals some faint nebulosity overlaying the area. The DSS1V and DSS2IR images, however, show the several objects well. The "tail" is faint but clear, extending nearly 4 arcminutes northeast from the center of NGC 1850 itself. ===== NGC 1854 and NGC 1855 are the "core" and "halo," respectively, of a stellar association in LMC. JH picked up NGC 1854 in five different sweeps, but only noticed NGC 1855 in one -- looking at DSS1, I can see why he recorded the the objects this way. The "core" is a much more prominent object than the "halo." When I first looked at this, I made the center of NGC 1855 slightly preceding NGC 1854 and added, "JH obviously has them reversed." Looking at them now (November 2013) on the DSS2R, I would judge JH closer to the "truth" of the positions than I was. I've adjusted the position of NGC 1855 accordingly. (Sorry about that!) Brent Archinal was, as far as I know, the first to point out the core/halo structure of the object(s) in "Star Clusters." ===== NGC 1855 is the extended outer part of a stellar association in the LMC; NGC 1854 (which see) is its bright, compact core. JH notes, "This obs. must refer to the general cluster in which the former [NGC 1854] is situated as a nebulous-looking knot -- a combination of the most ordinary occurrence in the Nubecula Major, though very rare in other parts of the heavens." ===== NGC 1857. This cluster of mostly faint stars is dominated optically by HD 34545, a K5 variable star. The proper motion of the star (-4.3 and 14.5 mas/yr) is similar to that of the cluster itself (-4.7 and -0.6 mas/yr), at least in RA. I've found no specific information on whether this star is actually the brightest cluster member, or is simply superposed on it. I suspect the latter. The diameters that I measured for the cluster may be affected by the corona of HD 34545; that optical defect dominates the DSS2R image that I examined. Also see NGC 1548 where NGC 1857 cluster figures in the identification of JH's possible cluster around HD 27403. ===== NGC 1862. JH's description, "vF, R, 30[arcsec]" suggests that he saw more than just the southern clump of stars. So, I've put the position a bit north to include the stars in the northern clump. ===== NGC 1869, NGC 1871, and NGC 1873 are three concentrations in a large (10 x 9 arcmin), scattered stellar association in the LMC. I put the center of the association somewhat northwest of JH's position which coincides with NGC 1869. Here are his two observations: 05 13 58.4 157 34 10 (1830.0, NPD) Cluster of the 7th class; a fine L cluster of sc sts which fills the field. The point taken is in the middle of 3 groups in the most condensed part. [Sweep] 658 [on 20 Dec 1835.] 05 14 03.9 157 34 03 (1830.0, NPD) The first of a series of clusters which extends northwards as far as B 922 [theta Doradus given its number in the Brisbane Catalogue]. [Sweep] 760 [on 2 Jan 1837.] My brief note in earlier versions of this file referred to only JH's first observation, overlooking the second. Coming across this again in November 2013, I see that the "most condensed part" consists of three more or less conspicuous clusters aligned north to south on the eastern side of the association. I also found that each of these three clusters has a separate entry in JH's list. The second of them is NGC 1871, and the third is NGC 1873, all taken in that January 1837 sweep. It's finally clear to me (and I hope to you, if this note is not too dense), that JH's first observation of "NGC 1869" in December 1835 refers to the entire complex, while his second from January of 1837 points specifically to the middle of the three clusters. I have adopted this middle cluster as "NGC 1869". I have also created an entry in the big table for an "NGC 1869 star cloud" which uses my earlier position for the entire association as I see it on the DSS images. The positions labeled with the numbers NGC 1869, 1871, and 1873 are for the specific groups of stars within the larger complex as picked up by JH in January 1837. ----- Looking at this again in March 2019, with many earlier papers on the LMC in hand, I found that each of the clusters is called an "association" by Lucke and Hodge (AJ 75, 171, 1970): NGC 1869 = LH 037, NGC 1871 = LH 038, and NGC 1873 = LH 036. The big star cloud which JH has containing these three clusters is comprised of these three associations plus part of LH 034. ===== NGC 1871. See NGC 1869. ===== NGC 1873. Archinal and Hynes have chosen the position of the brightest star to represent the cluster, though the star is somewhat northwest of the actual cluster center. Also see NGC 1869. ===== NGC 1874, NGC 1876, NGC 1877, and NGC 1880 are four emission nebulae and the many bright stars they envelope in a large, complex, star-forming region in the LMC. ESO did not provide separate positions for the first three (and put "N1880" on NGC 1874), so the positions I've adopted come from measurements on DSS, from 2MASS, GSC 2.3, and UCAC4. JH's positions are excellent for the first two, adequate for the third and fourth -- but those last two come from a sketch drawn on 17 Jan 1838, not from one of the sweeps, so I'd expect lesser accuracy for them. All four of the nebulae and clusters, by the way, are shown in JH's sketch (it is Plate III, No. 6 in his CGH volume), so can be pretty positively identified (but see NGC 1877 for a little doubt). To my embarrassment, I did not do this the first time I went over the field. Bob Erdmann caught the mess -- I had put the position for NGC 1880 on NGC 1877, and had missed N1880 altogether. It's fixed now. ===== NGC 1876 is the largest of a group of four nebulae and star clusters in the LMC. Brian's position applies to the embedded star cluster just west of the center of the nebula. That is the brightest object, so is likely to be the one that JH picked up. See NGC 1874 for more on the grouping, and NGC 1877 for a discussion about the closest companion of NGC 1876. All of these are likely to be a part of the same complex of nebulae and clusters in the LMC. ===== NGC 1877 is one of a group of nebulae and star clusters in the LMC found by JH. Even though his sketch has it just south of NGC 1876, there is nothing exactly at the position he shows. There is an elongated complex of stars and nebulae centered just southwest of his knot. I've adopted a position close to the bright, central nebular knot in this complex for N1877. This knot, which I've called "NGC 1877 m" is the middle of a row of three knots or clumps of stars, all embedded in nebulosity and all of which I've found positions for. See NGC 1874 for more on this complex of clusters and nebulae. ===== NGC 1880. See NGC 1874. ===== NGC 1881 is shown on JH's sketch that contains NGC 1874 (which see) and its retinue of clusters and nebulae. Unlike the others, though, there are just a few faint stars in the place of N1881, no more than an asterism. However, JH's position (from the sketch) is exactly right for the group of faint stars, as is his note of a double star preceding. There is a more obvious cluster around that double star, however, so that is the object we have all taken in the past. Steve Gottlieb, during one of his recent Australian trips found, "a long, curving chain of stars [that] extends to the NE of the N1874/76/77 complex and ends at an easy pair of mag 12 stars [JH's double] that are located about 2.5' NE of the globular N1872." Steve goes on to say in his email note, "But if there is anything nebulous 'following' the double star, I didn't catch it -- only some weak haze surrounding the mag 12 stars." This was enough to lead him to question the modern identification, and to lead me back to JH's sketch. Steve's "curving chain of stars", by the way, is clearly visible on DSS just as he describes it. It is also clearly shown in JH's sketch. For now, I've left the modern position in the table, but have labeled it "N1881? cl near **". As I noted, I've also confirmed JH's position. Here is JH's complete description from CGH: "vF; follows a double star. An outlier of the arc-formed nebula and cluster [N1874/76/77]. Laid down in drawing Jan. 17, 1838, whence also its place. See Plate III. fig. 6." I think that this pretty well pins down the stars JH was looking at, but I'd be happier if they were brighter and more obvious at the eyepiece. Well, spending time sketching the field, he may have been able to pick out fainter objects than we can see during a relatively quick survey. He certainly has much faint diffused nebulosity shown around the field among the stars. ----- Looking at this field again in February 2018, I found that I had the position of JH's knot about 20 arcseconds off. He placed it between two north-south stars of a triangle about 2.6 arcminutes east of the double star. I've corrected the position and identification. I also call it an asterism now; I think it is nothing more than a slight field enhancement. In addition, I've changed the name of the nearby suspected cluster -- which is certainly not JH's object -- from the awkward "N1881? cl near **" to "N1881 comp", a more common sort of name that I've used many times in these files. I apologize for any confusion. ===== NGC 1882 is probably NOT also NGC 1884, which see for more. ===== NGC 1884. During my early work on the LMC Atlas, I identified this with NGC 1882. But that is highly unlikely as JH found both objects during the same sweep (761 on 3 Jan 1837). There is nothing obvious at JH's position matching his description ("eF, 2 [arcmin] diam."), and I entered it simply as "Not found" going through the NGC a few years ago. However, revisiting the field in November 2013, I see an asterism of 3 or 4 stars just southwest of JH's place. Perhaps these are what he saw. I've included them in the table with a query. Jenni Kay's entry in her "Visual Atlas of the Magellanic Clouds" reads simply, "Not found." She notes as I did, however, in her "Identification Corrections" section, that the object cannot be identical to NGC 1882 since JH saw both objects in the same sweep. ----- I've checked the sweep where this is number 29. JH's reduced position and his description are the same as those published in his CGH Observations. The nearest star in the sweep is the relatively faint UCAC4 118-006457. Re-reducing the object's position using this star confirms JH's reduction. Checking for possible wire errors turned up no additional candidates, so the discussion above still stands. And this object is still a bit of a mystery. ===== NGC 1891 is the scattering of stars somewhat following JH's position. That position is for the brightest star (SAO 195771), a double (h 3753) on the western side of the cluster. There are about 20 stars covering an area 19 arcmin by 14 arcmin. They may be a dispersed open cluster, but could just as well be a random collection of field stars. ===== NGC 1893 is a cluster found by JH. As noted by Brent Archinal in "Star Clusters" and in an email from Wolfgang Steinicke, it is embedded in a large, faint nebulosity found by Max Wolf and listed as IC 410. JH apparently did not see the nebula as he makes no note of it. While Wolf noted stars in his nebula, his note is primarily concerned with the nebula and not the stars. So, applying the two numbers to both objects is incorrect, though it has been done often in the 20th century catalogues. Another curiosity here is JH's RA. Steve Gottlieb has found that it is three minutes of time too large (the declination is correct); this carried over into the GC and NGC. I've found that Reinmuth in Die Nebel-Herschel of 1926 flags his position of the cluster as corrected from the NGC, so this may well be the reason that all the current catalogues have the correct RA. ----- In the sweep (number 51 on 22 January 1827), the minutes of the clock reading is "25::", and the reduced minute of RA is "14:". JH gives no reason for the uncertainty, and he did not carry it over into his 1833 list. So, the GC and NGC appear to have a position with a typical uncertainty, while the actual RA is indeed 3 minutes of time smaller. I put the center of the cluster a few arcminutes to the northeast of the canonical center near HD 242935. JH's corrected position falls very close to the star, too, so I've adopted Brian's concordant position. That more or less represents the cluster in any case. A detailed study of proper motions with spectroscopy and photometry could sort out the members from the field stars. These could eventually lead to a refined position. ===== NGC 1895 in the LMC resembles a planetary nebula with a central star, but is much more likely to be an HII region. Nevertheless, we've chosen its position to be that of its "central star." ===== NGC 1896. A nine degree error in declination was introduced in the GC, and copied intact into the NGC. The Herschels' original positions are good, and point to a scattering of about 20 9th to 12th magnitude stars. This may not be a real cluster, but that determination will depend on detailed studies of proper motions, photometry, and spectroscopy of the stars. This group, by the way, is not OCL 450 (in the Prague catalogue). That is a much more distant, much fainter cluster about half a degree north-west of NGC 1896. ===== NGC 1899. The usual object taken as NGC 1899 is a very faint nebulosity, perhaps a reflection nebula, surrounding two brighter stars and several fainter ones. However, it is very faint, and is southeast of JH's position by about two arcminutes, further off than most of his LMC positions. My hesitation over this has led me to a group of faint stars near JH's place. But these are probably not sufficiently concentrated to appear nebulous at the eyepiece. JH's observation book has this as number 34 in Sweep 759 on 30 December 1836. It fits comfortably within the bounds of the sweep -- only a degree wide, and there is no suggestion of anything wrong with the position. The description is correctly copied into the CGH monograph as is the position. The one thing that might offer an additional clue is a little sketch showing what is apparently a nebula with three stars preceding. JH says "three stars 10[prime] m precede" (where the [prime] perhaps means "approximately"). Unfortunately, I cannot relate that little sketch to what I see on the DSS2 red image of the area -- there are two relatively bright stars preceding JH's position with four or five others in the area, but they do not match the right triangle JH has drawn. I've also checked at reasonable positions that could result from a digit error in JH's position, but there is nothing that matches his description, or his note about the three stars. So, by default, the faint nebulosity may indeed be JH's object, and my misgivings about its faintness unfounded. But, when I checked Jenni Kay's LMC observations, I found that she did not see the object at either 110X or 150X in her 12.5-inch F5 Newtonian, simply noting, "Too faint." We clearly need an observation with a 15- to 20-inch telescope. ===== NGC 1901 is a scattered grouping of Milky Way stars superposed on the Large Magellanic Cloud. The position I list in the table for the eccentric core is a few arcminutes northeast of the center of the entire group. JH's position applies to the 7th magnitude star on the southern edge of the group. He says in CGH of the group, "A star 7 m. The most southern and largest of a L, brilliant but poor cluster which fills the field. Stars 8, 9....12m." I've taken him at his word, so the apparent size of the cluster that I give is based on his estimate. A somewhat more condensed core is also apparent. Coincidentally, there is a much fainter LMC cluster, SL 359, just a couple of arcmin from JH's position. ESO took this to be the NGC cluster, but it is not. ----- Curious about this "cluster", I dug into modern data for it (in March 2019) and found that ten of the brightest 21 stars in the field have very similar parallaxes and proper motions in Gaia DR2. This suggests that they might actually be associated. The mean parallax of the ten stars is 2.338 +- 0.037 milliarcseconds, suggesting a distance of around 420 to 435 parsecs. The total V magnitude of these ten stars is 7.7, and for all 21 stars -- appropriate for JH's apparent cluster -- the total magnitude is V = 7.2. Somewhat ironically, JH's 7th magnitude star is not a member of the cluster. For those interested, here is a summary of the data for the 21 stars. Full data, including error estimates, are available in Gaia DR2 (from which these positions, parallaxes, and proper motions were taken) and APASS via UCAC4 (from which the magnitudes and colors are taken). Probable cluster stars: Proper Motion Parallax (mas/yr) RA (J2000.0) Dec (mas) RA Dec B B-V 05 16 41.76 -68 37 34.8 2.2900 1.655 12.778 10.25 0.24 05 17 23.04 -68 28 19.1 2.2994 1.348 12.174 9.57 0.15 05 17 35.81 -68 21 47.1 2.3877 1.792 12.825 10.87 0.31 05 18 02.09 -68 21 19.5 2.3311 1.709 12.942 9.70 0.32 05 17 59.16 -68 31 27.7 2.3105 1.578 12.169 10.47 0.26 05 18 11.98 -68 25 36.3 2.3398 1.425 12.620 10.38 0.27 05 18 22.48 -68 28 01.6 2.3907 2.412 12.695 10.25 0.23 Foreground? 05 18 42.74 -68 27 32.7 2.3242 1.666 12.592 11.57 0.40 05 18 52.92 -68 34 13.3 2.3230 1.652 12.869 10.42 0.20 05 19 10.75 -68 34 51.7 2.3847 1.478 12.252 10.01 0.23 Probably not in the cluster: 05 16 19.70 -68 35 57.9 2.4342 -0.912 -33.512 11.75 0.51 05 17 53.53 -68 18 36.2 2.5954 7.867 26.988 11.97 0.73 05 18 16.68 -68 25 10.4 2.6792 1.487 9.524 11.33 0.46 05 20 03.14 -68 31 00.5 2.7076 19.821 25.773 11.84 0.55 Other stars in the field: 05 16 53.78 -68 21 08.7 22.0616 13.421 59.125 11.97 1.44 05 16 23.81 -68 31 58.0 0.7530 2.076 7.172 11.76 1.16 05 17 35.51 -68 35 35.2 5.5207 -14.001 -1.519 9.03 0.52 JH's "star 7 m" 05 18 03.26 -68 27 56.7 1.4877 1.569 12.774 9.41 0.44 05 18 29.52 -68 27 13.9 0.3500 2.491 15.991 11.54 0.49 05 19 47.05 -68 28 15.5 3.1217 -25.393 -4.477 11.22 0.46 05 19 54.38 -68 32 27.7 0.5555 2.908 6.539 11.83 0.96 ===== NGC 1908. WH has only one observation of this on 1 Feb 1786 where he says, "Diffused extremely faint nebulosity. The means of verifying this phenomenon are difficult." JH and Dreyer took this to mean that the nebula was only suspected, so that is how it is entered in the GC and NGC. WH places the nebulosity 1 min, 26 sec east, and 7 arcmin south of Eta Ori. There is nothing here on either of the POSS1 plates, nor on the SERC EJ plate. However, 7 arcmin north of Eta Ori there is a very faint, very diffuse sheen of nebulosity (I make the approximate position 05 23.0, -02 20 for 1950). But could WH have seen this? I very much doubt it. So, I've tentatively labeled this "Not found." ===== NGC 1909. WH has one observation of this "Strongly suspected nebulosity of very great extent." He makes its size "Not less than 2 deg 11 arcmin of PD and 26 sec of RA in time." These numbers come from his offsets from Rigel: 11m 09s east to 11m 35s east, and 1 deg 19 arcmin north to 52 arcmin south. While this whole area is covered with a very diffused, very low surface brightness nebulosity, I do not see anything that WH could have seen easily. In particular, there is no nebula stretched out north to south as WH describes. However, at about the right distance WEST of Rigel, there is such a nebula, IC 2118. It is bright enough that WH might have seen it during his sweeps, and it more or less matches his description. So, I am going to suggest, pending visual confirmation, that IC 2118 is the object WH found, and that he somehow confused "east" and "west" in his log book. That is what I wrote in the 1990s when I went over the field on the first Palomar Sky Survey prints. However, I now have CH's fair copies of the sweeps available and find that my idea of the nebulosity west of Rigel being WH's object is impossible. WH observed the nebulosity at least 11 minutes AFTER Rigel had left the field, so NGC 1909 cannot be west of the star. So, there is no possibility that WH's object is IC 2118. So what DID WH see? Probably nothing beyond optical (reflections of bright stars, fogging of his eyepiece or mirror, faint clouds or sky glow) or physiological/psychological (aberrations within his eye, fatigue, hunger, etc) effects. ===== NGC 1910. JH has two slightly different positions in CGH for this cluster (actually a large stellar association with several smaller clusters embedded). In three sweeps, he measured a "knot" which he variously called that, a "nucleus (which seems to be a close double star)," and a "close triple star". That position refers to the compact cluster SL 360. JH's other observation refers to "probably the general middle" of his large (he gives 10 arcmin, I measure 7 x 5 arcmin) cluster, southeast of SL 360. The GC/NGC position is a straight mean of all four observations. Nevertheless, JH's description is very clear so we have no doubt that he was describing the association and its brightest cluster. Brent Archinal gives positions for both objects in "Star Clusters", and I follow his lead in the position tables here. ESO, by the way, assigns the NGC number to the south- eastern clump of stars in the association. ===== NGC 1911 may be NGC 1920. JH has N1920 in seven different sweeps, but not in the one sweep when he found N1911 -- that is Sweep 522. The declinations are within an arcminute, but the RA is different by 1m 20s. The extra 20 seconds bothers me, so I've put a colon on the identity. JH's eight different descriptions are pretty well accordant, though he does have the size of the nebula range between 20 arcsec and 2 arcmin (he puts N1911 at 30 arcsec). I also checked the possibility of a systematic position offset among the other 37 objects that JH recorded in that very productive sweep through the northern part of the LMC -- there isn't any. One curious thing turned up, however: N1911 is the ONLY object in the sweep that was not seen in any other sweep. By the way, JH suggests that this and N1915 may be the same. Jenni Kay accepts this hypothesis, noting that neither of JH's positions match those of any cluster in the area, and that the two clusters taken as the NGC objects are much too faint. While I agree with both points, I do not think that NGC 1911 and 1915 are the same; see N1915 for more on this. A final note: Archinal and Hynes have an entry for NGC 1911, equating it with KMHK 763. This KMHK cluster, however, is far too faint for JH to have seen -- it can't be NGC 1911 (Jenni's comment, noted above, concurs). ----- This is probably a wire mistake. The sweep claims that JH used wire 2; if he had actually used wire 1, the RA would be 1m 19s more than his reduced value. This would make the position identical (within JH's usual errors) to that of NGC 1920, so I am pretty confident of the identity. You may read the first sentence in this note as "NGC 1911 is probably NGC 1920." ===== NGC 1915. JH has this in only one sweep (760 on 2 Jan 1837), and calls it only "eF, pL." However, he adds (parentheses are his), "(Possibly the same with No. 2826 [NGC 1911], but the nebulae are so crowded that they may with equal probablility be different ones.)" I don't think it is the same as N1911 (which see). The descriptions are too different, and N1911 is probably the same object as N1920. So, what then is N1915? JH's position is about an arcminute northwest of the center of a stellar association 3 arcmin by 2 arcmin across (coincidentally, there is a faint cluster on the northeastern edge of the association). The object shows up clearly on the Southern Sky Survey IIIa-J film, somewhat less clearly on the 2nd generation DSS image, and not at all on the quick V plate used for the DSS distributed on CD-ROM. The association is, admittedly, pretty faint to have been picked up visually. Still, JH was careful, had keen eyesight, and didn't miss much in the LMC that he could have seen. Another possibility is that N1915 is a second observation (in the following sweep on the next night, 3 Jan 1837) of NGC 1919 which JH also describes as "eF, L ...". He goes on to add, however, "... irreg R, 4 [arcmin] diam. Resolved into small stars with nebulous light." That is a perfect description of NGC 1919, a cluster immersed in a reflection nebula. Is it possible that JH missed the stars the first time around? Finally, as with NGC 1911 (which see), Archinal and Hynes have an entry for this cluster, equating it with KMHK 761. As with NGC 1911, KMHK 761 is much too faint to be JH's object. Again, Jenni Kay concurs. In February of 2014, Steve Gottlieb sent his own observation of NGC 1915 with a 24-inch reflector at Magellan Observatory in Australia: "[This is a] fairly small knot of four mag 14-14.5 stars with perhaps some unresolved haze, ~40 arcsec diameter. Appears to be an asterism only and unimpressive. Three mag 11-12 stars lie 2'-3' E and emission nebula NGC 1920 is 6' ENE." He adds the comment, "... when I looked at this region in November 2012, the only object I noted was a group of 4 stars near [JH's] position, but I would think these would have been resolved by Herschel." Looking at the DSS2R, I would agree, but since the stars are close to JH's position, I've included them as another candidate for NGC 1915. Jenni Kay has also taken this asterism as NGC 1915, and makes it NGC 1911 (which see) as well, though I think that is actually NGC 1920. ----- The sweep itself confirms JH's note that the nebulae are crowded. This object came just a minute and five seconds after the preceding object (NGC 1905) and fifty seconds before the next (NGC 1920). All three were taken as they left the field, and all three are correctly reduced. If JH made a wire recording error, the actual RAs for 1830 would be 05 22 09, and 05 20 47 for wires 1 and 2 respectively. Precessing to J2000 shows empty fields, though NGC 1920 is near the position implied by wire 2. However, JH saw that in the same sweep. So, the mystery about NGC 1915 remains. ===== NGC 1916. Archinal and Hynes have a strange entry for this LMC cluster in Table C.1, page 312. The position they give is for Shapley-Lindsay 357; there is only a total magnitude and a reference to Uranometria chart 212, with no comments or aliases. Checking the position of NGC 1916 in AH's table, I find no cluster there, so the object is effectively missing from their list. JH's position agrees almost perfectly with the modern positions, so there is no problem with the identification. It's simply missing from AH's "Star Clusters". ===== NGC 1918 is from JH's list of stars, clusters, and nebulae in the LMC collected with a five-inch refractor. He simply calls it a nebula with no other description. His position falls between two bright knots near a supernova remnant in the LMC. ESO chose the SNR, but I have adopted the mean position of the knots. ----- There is a possibility that JH's object includes the scattering of stars involved in the SNR. Since his classification is "Nebula", however, I have chosen to ignore the stars. I note, though, that both Jenni Kay and Mati Morel, in their separate examinations of the LMC, mention the stars as part of the object. Even if the stars are included, however, the position and dimensions of the object remain the same; only the classification changes. ===== NGC 1919 may also be NGC 1915, which see. ===== NGC 1920. See NGC 1911. ===== NGC 1921 is an LMC cluster that probably includes the brighter star (or another, more compact cluster?) about 20 arcsec west. JH's description reads "vF, oval, r, 40 arcsec". This would fit if he glimpsed both objects, but did not resolve them. ===== NGC 1923. There is no problem with the identity of this cluster enshrouded with nebulosity -- it, in fact, looks like the head of a bow shock, plowing through the interstellar medium of the LMC. JH's position is good and his description is appropriate. What caught my eye was an additional comment in his description: "A faint and poor cluster precedes." Indeed it does; it is at 05 20 49, -65 30.9. It is actually a scattered association, and may even be associated with the NGC object following it. See the "notngc" files, where the additional object is called "h2835 Note", for a bit more. ----- This "faint and poor cluster" has been picked up by Lucke and Hodge (AJ 75, 171, 1970) as their association number 43. It's not clear to me that NGC 1923 is actually a part of the stellar association, but Lucke and Hodge list the NGC number as an "associated object". My own assessment of the association puts NGC 1923 outside of its boundaries, but I really don't have enough data to make a good call on it. ===== NGC 1927. JH has one observation that reads "All about this place (05 26 20, -08 24.9; B1950.0), there exists diffused nebulosity." In fact, there is none. Dreyer comments in a Note to the NGC, "Looked for three times at Birr Castle; twice the sky was fancied to have a milky appearance." There is certainly no nebulosity on the POSS1 plates, nor on the SERC EJ plate. Also, JH originally made this an observation of his father's V 38; that identity is shown in his 1833 catalogue. However, his position differed enough from WH's that he made them separate objects for GC; Dreyer followed suit for NGC. There, H V 38 = NGC 1909 (which see). In short, NGC 1927 is "Not found." ===== NGC 1929 is part of a large star cloud in the LMC found by JH, easily identified by reference to JH's sketch of the area published in the CGH Observations (Plate III, Figure 2). See NGC 1934 for more information. Besides NGC 1934, the other NGC objects involved are NGC 1935, NGC 1936, and NGC 1937. ===== NGC 1932 and NGC 1933. JH found a faint nebula -- actually a compact star cluster in the LMC -- here, and observed it four times. His mean position is just a few arcsec from the center of the cluster, which ended up with 1933 as its NGC number. On the last night JH observed N1933, he also noticed a very faint, very small nebulous object 80 arcsec west of his brighter object. When reducing his observations, he noted it "curious" that he picked up this fainter object only once. The object turns out to be a 13th magnitude star with a few others scattered around it. The ensemble may have appeared just nebulous enough on the one night that JH mistook the asterism as a nebula. Lauberts, of course, found only one non-stellar object in the area, so assumed that N1932 = N1933. This incorrect equality is noted in ESO. ===== NGC 1933. See NGC 1932. ===== NGC 1934 is part of a star cloud and emission nebula complex in the LMC. It can be pretty well identified in JH's sketch reproduced in the CGH Observations as Plate III, Figure 2. The area of NGC 1934 is a bit distorted in the sketch, but individual stars can be identified that lead unambiguously to the object that JH saw. Other nebulae and clusters in the star cloud are NGC 1929, NGC 1935, NGC 1936, and NGC 1937. ----- Curiously, Brent Archinal in "Star Clusters" also uses JH's description and sketch to identify this object with a single star. I don't think this is right as JH clearly says, "The second nucleus of the composite nebula of fig. 2, Pl. III., from diagram." He refers to all the nebulae in the larger complex as "nuclei" and all are shown as nebulous in his sketch. So, it seems very unlikely that this object is a single star. ===== NGC 1935 is also IC 2126, which see. It is a small but bright HII region in the LMC, found by JH, who measured it in four sweeps, and also sketched it. He noted it as part of a group of nebulae and clusters; the others are NGC 1929, NGC 1934 (which see for more on the star cloud enveloping these objects), NGC 1936, and NGC 1937. ===== NGC 1936 = IC 2127, which see, is another of the HII regions in this part of the LMC found by JH. He has it in six different sweeps, and his position is very good. It is also shown as the brightest knot in his fairly accurate sketch in Plate III, Figure 2 of the CGH Observations. The other NGC objects shown are 1929, 1934, 1935, and 1937. ===== NGC 1937 is the north-eastern part of a large star cloud or stellar association in the LMC. Found by JH, who also sketched the association, this object can be identified by comparing his sketch to photographs of the area. Other NGC objects in the association, all shown in JH's sketch (Plate III, Figure 2 of the CGH Observations) are NGC 1929, 1934, 1935, and 1936. ===== NGC 1938 is an open cluster in the LMC situated just 0.7 arcmin northwest of NGC 1939, a globular cluster. ESO did not give separate coordinates so I've adopted that for NGC 1939 from GSC and have measured the offset to N1938 from the brighter cluster. JH's position and descriptions are good, though he did not resolve either cluster. In particular, his micrometric measurement of the offset of N1938 from N1939 (distance = 50 arcsec, PA = 339.1 degrees) is very good. ===== NGC 1939. See NGC 1938. ===== NGC 1945. JH found this on 3 Jan 1837, calling it "eeF, vvL. Great blotches of diffused nebulosity." His position points to the brightest "blotch" at the southeastern tip of two or three annular nebulae south and west of NGC 1946, a small unresolved cluster (with a good position) that he found in the same sweep. If JH did indeed see the annular nebulae that I'm looking at -- it has a butterfly shape and is about 7.0 x 4.5 arcmin across -- I'm surprised that he did not mention the much brighter nebulosity enveloping the association NGC 1948, which he also found in the same sweep. So, I've marked the identification uncertain. In any case, JH's description suggests that his nebula filled his field, so I am going to assume that the center is not the brightest knot that JH measured, but is about five arcminutes to the northwest near a star at the intersection of the annuli (where the butterfly's "wings" would attach to its "body"). I've also measured JH's knot, of course. Jenni Kay takes this knot to be NGC 1945, noting it to be -- with averted vision at 150X -- "... an extremely faint, relatively small, round, hazy glow, about 40 [arcsec] in size." This is clearly just a small part of the "vvL" nebula that JH saw. ===== NGC 1947. Note the correct position given in the table; the error was apparently first reported by Shapley and Ames in their 1932 catalog. GC and NGC followed CGH without comment, of course, having only the one observation from JH to go on. Not so coincidentally, his incorrect position has "... a star 9m np" just as does the galaxy itself ... ===== NGC 1950. See "SL 460" in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 1952 = M 1 = The Crab Nebula. This is the prototypical supernova remnant (from SN 1054), and is now a large, bright nebula. I have adopted the position of the pulsar near its center as the nebula's position as well. The pulsar, by the way, is the southern of the two stars of similar brightness near the nebula's center. There is evidence, however, that in this case at least, the star has a large proper motion -- it is no longer at the center of the nebulosity implied by the measured expansion of the knots and filaments, but is several arcsec to the northwest. This is taken as evidence for an asymmetric supernova explosion which gave the star a powerful kick and set it off at high velocity. In spite of all this, I'm sticking with the position of the pulsar as the center of the nebula for the time being. Perhaps I'll change my mind in a few thousand years when the star is well away from the center of the expanding gas cloud that Messier placed first in his famous list. ===== NGC 1955. See NGC 1974 = NGC 1991, as well as the "notngc" files where JH is quoted as having seen another cluster ("h2863 Note") in the area. ===== NGC 1958. See "SL 460" in the "notngc" files for another cluster found with the "Great Melbourne Telescope." ===== NGC 1959. See "SL 460" in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 1961 = IC 2133 is another of the identifications that Dreyer himself made. He has the long explanation in a note in his 1912 edition the Scientific Papers; briefly, WH's comparison star had incorrect coordinates in one of the catalogues that CH was using during the reduction. When the right coordinates are used, WH's position is still 22 seconds out, but the identity with Bigourdan's object (Big. 385 = IC 2133, which see) is certain. There is nothing else nearby that WH could have mistaken for the galaxy. ===== NGC 1963 is an apparent cluster of about 20 stars, roughly arranged in the shape of the number 3 (JH describes it that way, and it still appears that way on the southern sky survey -- and on the southern sky for that matter). PGC and RC3 are clearly wrong in using the number for the bright spindle galaxy which is really IC 2135 = IC 2136. ESO, however, got it right. See IC 2136 for more. ===== NGC 1968. See NGC 1974 = NGC 1991. ===== NGC 1969. See "SL 460" in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 1971. See "SL 460" in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 1972. See "SL 460" in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 1974 = NGC 1991 is a stellar association in the northern part of the LMC. JH calls it the fourth in a line of four (though he did not measure the first, so that does not have an NGC number). He also made a one minute error in the RA of NGC 1991. This was first caught, as far as I know, by Paul Hodge and is noted in his and Francis Wright's LMC Atlas. The observation leading to N1974 is the only one in the field not from Sweep 760 on 2 Jan 1837. The DSS image shows a field very much as JH describes it: "... a great line of rich clusters which are connected by abundant scattered stars. (The first not taken.)" The other NGC objects are NGC 1955 and NGC 1968. The western- most, which JH did not measure, is at 05 25 32.4, -67 31 49 (B1950.0). All are wreathed in loops and tangles of nebulosity, probably supernova remnants and HII regions. Curiously, all but the first of the associations appear to be double on the DSS image. JH's positions fall in between these concentrations, so I've estimated the centers of them, and have measured the approximate centers for each concentration. It may be that there are no really separate clusters here, just one large, extended, star-forming region. ===== NGC 1976 = M 42. I have adopted the position of the Trapezium as the position of M 42. This helps us avoid the problem of trying to decide on a geometric center for the nebula. See also NGC 1982 = M 43 and IC 429 for other notes about the Orion Nebula and the large, complex region of star formation around it. Finally, the southern part of M 42 may be NGC 1980 (which also see). ===== NGC 1977. For the position of this large nebula found by WH, I've taken the Hipparcos position of 42 Ori as representative of the entire object. That will get you there. ===== NGC 1980. This very faint nebula around iota Orionis has been the subject of some controversy recently (Steve Gottlieb brought this to my attention late in October of 2014). WH first suggested its existence early in 1786 (Sweeps 517 on 31 January, and 529 on 24 February). Could WH have really seen it, or is his "nebulosity" simply the result of the overlapping coronae of the several bright stars in the area, not least that of iota itself? Here are WH's notes: Sweep 517: "Iota Orionis seems with its neighbouring stars to be involved in milky nebulosity, but it is so faint and the number of stars makes the field so bright, that I cannot assure myself; though I compared this spot with the preceding and following ones." Just four minutes before this observation began, WH noted "Very clear" in the sweep. Sweep 529: "Iota, certainly affected; but no more than what the tinge of the bottom in this neighbourhood will account for." Again, seven minutes before this observation , WH noted "Clear and dark" in the sweep. Wolfgang, after a long study of WH's observations of nebulae, believes that WH's suggestions of nebulosity are visual illusions brought about by the stars in the area. He points out, correctly, that "The southern part of M 42 has a very low surface brightness." I'm inclined to agree, but don't want to dismiss the observations entirely. For the record, JH recorded only "i Orionis involved in a feeble neb 3' diam" on 8 January 1831; and Bigourdan says "Not seen" on 27 December 1886, and "I cannot see nebulosity around this bright star, which is BD -6 1241," on 15 January 1896. So, given the uncertainty, I am keeping the number "NGC 1980" as a possibility for future observers to confirm or refute as they please. Its position is certainly not a problem: WH is clear that it surrounds iota Orionis. Only the visibility of the faint nebulosity here, the southern reaches of M 42, is in question. ----- In May 2019, Rodolfo Ferraiuolo posed a question on the amastro forum about the cluster (Collinder 72) associated with NGC 1980: Who first gave the NGC number to the cluster? The answer seems to be Solon Bailey in his 1908 "A Catalogue of Bright Clusters and Nebulae" gleaned from Harvard plates, and published in Harvard Annals, Volume 60. Per Collinder picked up Bailey's comment "Cluster, coarse" for his thesis (published as Lund Annals Number 2 in 1931), and made NGC 1980 the 72nd entry in his catalogue of Galactic open clusters. There may be earlier references to NGC 1980 as a cluster, but I am not yet aware of them. If anyone has an earlier reference, Rodolfo and I shall be interested in hearing about it. Thanks! ===== NGC 1982 = M 43. For this, and many other emission or reflection nebulae with clearly identified embedded stars, I have adopted the position of the star as that for the entire nebula. This follows the precedent set by the visual discovers who noticed that many of the nebulae are usually (though not always) brightest in the vicinity of the stars. There is a curiosity in the NGC listing for M 43. WH's first "Very Faint" nebula is in the vicinity, so GC and NGC suggest that it might be equivalent. This probably bothered Dreyer a bit, as he added a note to WH's observation when he edited the Complete Papers: "III 1 is an appendage to the north of M 43." WH's own observation seems to support this, and it is well-known, too, that he tried to not include any of Messier's nebulae or clusters in his own lists (though several did creep in, including M 8, M 20, and M 82). ===== NGC 1983. The position I give refers to the knot of stars north of the center of a stellar association in the LMC which JH describes like this: "A pretty rich irregular cluster which fills the field; a knot in it taken." It's likely that many of the previous studies have simply taken the "knot" as JH's cluster. That, of course, is not strictly correct. His object is the larger scattering of stars, approximately 15' x 11.5', centered about 3 arcmin south of the knot. I give positions for both in the main table. By the way, if we take JH's description as it stands, then his "cluster" includes at least another two of his objects, NGC 1984 and NGC 1994, as knots on the southern side of the association. ===== NGC 1984. See NGC 1983. ===== NGC 1985 has been called a planetary nebula in the past, but is now generally accepted as a reflection nebula. There are several other such nebulae nearby, including UGC 3327 = MCG +05-14-001. In spite of its inclusion in two galaxy catalogues, that object is almost certainly a nebula within the Milky Way Galaxy. One or the other of these two, N1985 or U3327, is included in van den Bergh's 1966 catalogue of Galactic reflection nebulae. I've not checked yet, so it may be possible that that entry refers to both objects as well as to the other fainter reflection nebulae in the field. ===== NGC 1988. Suspected of variability by its discoverer (Chacornac, in 1855), this has never been seen by any other observer. Dreyer has a brief history in the NGC Notes. The NGC position comes from GC where JH gives a source as "Les Mondes, No. 9." This was apparently a short-lived journal or newsletter; there is no trace of it in the indexes of major astronomical libraries in the US, nor in the library of the Paris Observatory. Fortunately, Chacornac also published his position in Comptes Rendus 56, 637, 1863, a publication which is still very much with us. The only things in the area on the POSS1 are two or three stars. Chacornac's accurate position corresponds to the western-most of the the stars, a 10th magnitude object with two much fainter companions just a few arcsec east. My guess is that the "object" was perhaps a reflection or flare from zeta Tauri which is only 5 arcmin to the southeast, possibly enhanced by the faint stars around the 10th magnitude "primary." ===== NGC 1990. In spite of this nebulosity having been reported by WH, JH, and Dreyer, as well as by several amateurs in recent years, there is no clear evidence of it on photographs of the area. The images that do exist of the nebulosity suggest that it could be a reflection nebula, shining by the light of epsilon Orionis. If so, it will be very blue as epsilon is one of the bluest stars in the sky. Steve Waldee has brought this object back to my attention early in 2011, so I am I reconsidering my earlier conclusion that the nebula is illusory. That is still the best explanation for it, but here are some more thoughts about it. WH says only of this nebula -- in the sweeps on 1 February 1786 -- only, "[Epsilon] passed, and I am pretty sure is involved in Nebulosity, unequally difused [sic]." CH adds the position of epsilon to the note, and that is the one that JH and Dreyer have adopted for their catalogues. JH has a little more detail from sweep 107 on 23 November 1827: "[Epsilon] Orionis. Place by Catal a v brilliant * involved in an immense nebulous atmosphere, whose n and s limits are 91[d] 7[m] 29[s] and 91[d] 31[m] 29[s]. Viewed also and shown to Mr. Dunlop in sweep 110 [16 December 1827]." That much is from his 1833 catalogue in PT. Unfortunately, his notes on the object (it is number 30) in the sweep itself are illegible, but he does have a footnote, some of which I can make out. (JH's penciled notes will have to be examined on his original pages to see what he actually wrote. The high- contrast images in the Herschel Archives are very poor for many pages -- some are essentially blank -- and often words on even the good pages are lost in the photocopying process): [Epsilon] Orionis is involved in a vast milky nebulosity which is something of a lenticular [?] figure and is very much more condensed about the star than elsewhere. [Illegible] to the two limits [illegible] but at the double * it is [illegible] faint. [illegible] see it, he called it a star in a fog. Other large stars have no such appearances[?]. [delta?] Orionis was free from it -- The diffused light of the star (42a[?]) though considerable and giving occasion to a singular [illegible] has[?] quite[?] [illegible] and no way comparable to it. From this, we can make out that he attempted to find the limits of the nebulosity, that a guest observer also saw the nebula, and that other bright stars in the area showed no such nebulosity. In sweep 110, only part of JH's notes are legible: "Viewed [epsilon] Orionis and the neb about it the neb is less[?] bright [illegible] than[?] before[?]." The conclusion is simple: JH saw the nebulosity on more than one night, and it was seen by at least one other person than just him through his telescope. A huge optical corona around the star from its scattered light (in the earth's atmosphere, in virtually any telescope, on virtually any image) is inevitable. This corona could well be hiding a nebulosity that is nevertheless visible, if not easily, to the naked eye. Perhaps an image taken with the star blocked, or carefully removed, would reveal a nebula close to the star similar to NGC 1432, NGC 1435, and IC 349 (all of which see). JH noted that the nebulosity extends at least 12 arcmin north and south of epsilon, while Dreyer (in the NGC Notes) makes it more extensive to the south. On the POSS1 red plate, the star is apparently close to the center of an extended, striated nebulosity. This, however, is not visible on any other photograph or image that I've seen, including several color photos that would certainly show a red nebulosity if it existed. This striation must be a defect on the red plate, apparently caused by imperfections or reflections in the red Plexiglass filter. I certainly do not think that the nebula that the Herschels and Dreyer saw are any of the more scattered nebulosities in the area. Not only are they too far from epsilon Ori, but I doubt that any of them could be seen visually without a nebular filter -- assuming it is emission nebulosity, of course. If it is reflection nebulosity, a filter passing the oxygen and hydrogen lines won't help. So, at the moment, I'm doubtful about the existence of this object. But it has been reported at the eyepiece often enough by reliable observers that it could be easily lost in the light of epsilon Orionis. (In the table, I give epsilon's position for this object.) However, see NGC 7088 for a well-known case of an illusory nebula "seen" by many experienced observers which is almost certainly non-existent. ===== NGC 1991 = NGC 1974, which see. ===== NGC 1995 is a double star, seen only once by JH. It is about two arcmin west-northwest of NGC 1998; JH's position is within 25 arcsec of the GSC position of the brighter of the stars, so the identity is certain. ===== NGC 1996. Another of RNGC's "nonexistent" clusters, this is clearly visible on the POSS1, and is centered just an arcminute east of the NGC position. The 30 or so stars are scattered over an area of about 15 arcmin by 10 arcmin (the long axis is at PA = about 20 degrees). But is it a real cluster? To answer that, of course, will take a study of the area, with proper motions and photometry for the suspect stars. ===== NGC 1998. See NGC 1995. ===== NGC 1999. See IC 427. ===== NGC 2002. JH has two observations of this. The positions agree to within his usual errors (~2 arcmin), but the descriptions are very different: Sweep 658 on 20 Dec 1835: "Place of a double star class I, (h 3779), the chief of a great cluster of S sts loose and filling the field. It is the forerunner of the great cluster-region of the nubecula. Sweep 760 on 2 Jan 1837: "vB, S, R. Here comes on the richest and brightest part of the starry and clustering protion of the nubecula. (Note. -- From this object being described at one time as a double star, and at another as a nebula, it is probable that it is in one of those singular close-knotted groups which especially characterize the nubeculae.) The position lies close to the globular cluster that nearly everyone has taken as NGC 2002, but the differing descriptions lead me to question that classical identification. In particular, JH's first observation makes the double the brightest star in a star cloud that I make 18' x 11' centered a couple of arcminutes north of the cluster. The star cloud almost sweeps southeast to encompass as well the two clusters of NGC 2006 (which see.) For the record, I also checked the double star h 3779, and found the two stars, magnitudes 10 and 12, to be separated by only 2 arcsec in PA 343.5. The field is crowded, but there is nothing obvious that close together. So, the two stars are probably in the core of the cluster itself, overexposed on the sky survey images. JH's second observation clearly points to the cluster, and describes it very well -- he saw many other LMC clusters as small, bright, unresolved nebulae. Given the dicotomy, I've put two objects into the main table, each corresponding to one of JH's observations. This may not be an ideal situation, but given the nature of what JH described, I feel I have little choice. ===== NGC 2006. Brian Skiff has recently (July 2006) called this "cluster" in the LMC to my attention. At the NGC position there are actually two very small, compact clusters, probably both globulars. Brian noted that the northern is certainly SL 538, while the southern, SL 537, is almost always called "NGC 2006" in the modern literature. Mati Morel and Jenni Kay certainly do this in their Atlases, as does Brent Archinal in "Star Clusters" and Andris Lauberts in ESO. But when I looked at JH's observations, I found a very different story. Here is what I wrote to Brian: JH has two observations for N2006 (precessed to J2000): 05 31 19.4 -66 57 27 A very small nuclear knot in an extremely rich assemblage of stars and clustering groups which fill the field. 1834 Dec 23 05 31 18.2 -66 59 11 A small highly condensed knot in an immensely large and very rich cluster, which fills much more than the field, and is like the Milky Way. 1837 Jan 03 He clearly saw the same (large!) thing both times. The position for the first more or less corresponds to the northern cluster, and that for the second to the southern. So, I think that he either did not separate the two -- unlikely, since you saw both clusters with a much smaller telescope -- or he was so impressed by the much larger background star cloud that he simply took both clusters to be a part of it. It is curious, though, that he didn't mention the "knot" as a double object. Looking at the field on the DSS, I would guess that JH's "object" goes all the way to include NGC 2002 to the northwest, and a similar distance to the southeast [roughly 15 arcmin by 7 arcmin]. I don't think that it extends as far southwest or northeast, though JH does not mention any particular elongation. So, I'm pretty sure that the JH/GC/NGC numbers are meant to include both clusters and much more of the Large Cloud besides. Though Brian suggests keeping the southern cluster as NGC 2006 for consistency with the modern literature, I've included both clusters in the position list with notes (hopefully) clarifying the identification. I've also adopted the rounded mean position of the two clusters for "NGC 2006" itself. After reading the above note in November 2013, Mati wrote to say that JH's extended object can be identified with the OB association Lucke-Hodge 77. There are probably other of these associations that can be picked out of JH's notes as well, so I will keep my eyes open for them. ===== NGC 2013 is probably a random scattering of about a dozen stars; it covers an area of about 11 arcmin by 6.5 arcmin if two stars south of the main group are included. JH called it simply "A poor cl of 8 or 10 sts 11 m", recording it in only one sweep. Most of the stars are east and south of his position, so the position I've estimated reflects that. Archinal and Hynes quote Brian's position -- though with a slightly larger RA -- and copy his comment, but have no other note on the object, aside from marking the cluster type with two question marks: "cl??". We should probably look at the proper motions and photometry of these few stars. Are they really part of a cluster, or are they -- as they appear to be -- simply a clump of field stars aligned along our line of sight? ===== NGC 2014 is a scattered star cloud in the LMC that JH interpreted as an open cluster. The first of his three position for a 9th magnitude star on the southwest side of the cloud was taken "at leaving the field", so is uncertain in RA at least. Nevertheless, the mean of his positions is quite good enough to clearly identify the star cloud. Curiously, KMHK say "Incorrect on Hodge-Wright Atlas", unfortunately repeated by Archinal and Hynes. KMHK are themselves incorrect -- the star cloud is correctly marked on all three Hodge-Wright charts on which it appears. ===== NGC 2015. It's relatively difficult to pin down the star cloud JH describes from one observation on 24 November 1834: 05 33 05.4 159 22 28 The general middle of a cluster of loose stars 11 ... ... 16 m. It is rich, and fills the whole field. This accounts for the considerable scatter in positions estimated over the years. A half-degree wide image from the DSS2R centered on JH's position does indeed show a large LMC star cloud (containing two smaller clusters) in the area. However, I put the center somewhat to the northeast of JH's position. I've taken Archinal's position which seems to be a good compromise for the object. ===== NGC 2017. JH calls this "A fine clustering group of large stars" when he saw it on 11 Dec 1835. But there are only 6 stars here brighter than V = 11.3, four of them brighter than V = 9.0. The four would nevertheless make a striking group at the eyepiece, and I'm a bit surprised that this asterism is not better known. Is it a real cluster? Probably not. One of the bright stars has a relatively large proper motion of 67.2 milliarcseconds per year, but the other proper motions are all six to twenty times smaller and not in any systematic direction. Brian Skiff comes to a slightly different conclusion; he also considers the photometry. His discussion is at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/bas/ocpos/n2017.pos Whether a real cluster or not, this is worth a look now and then. ===== NGC 2018. JH is quite clear that his nebula is east of a 10th magnitude star: 05 33 41.4 161 11 30 pB, R, pglbM, 2'; a star 10 m involved, p. Though he has only one observation of it on 3 November 1834, his position is clearly pointing at the nebulosity east of the star. That nebula is compressed enough (or there is a star involved in the middle) that the digital sky surveys have picked it up. ESO took a much larger star cloud for JH's object, and I suspect that others have followed along, judging by the published positions. ===== NGC 2019. JH notes that there may be some uncertainty with one of his observations of this, placing it one degree further north than the other observation. He is pretty sure he is correct in the southern position, though, and a glance at the northern position shows him right -- there is nothing there. ===== NGC 2020 is a fine annular nebula, the result of a strong stellar wind from its central Wolf-Rayet star, HD 269748 (see NGC 2359 for a bit more on these unusual nebulae). JH's position applies to the brightest part of the annulus west of the center. My own preferred position is for the central star, though I also list the center of the annulus since JH says in both of his observations that the nebula is 4 arcmin across. To make it that large, we need to encompass the entire annulus and more. That the star is not at the exact center is a reflection of the local conditions in the LMC, of which this is a member. The star blew off a good portion of its mass as it left the main sequence, and that is now a part of the interstellar medium being energized by the star. ===== NGC 2024. The position I've chosen from the DSS is in the dark central area of the nebula. This is more or less the center of the brightest part of the object. See also IC 434 where this plays a role in the discovery of the Horsehead Nebula. WH saw the dark patch in this nebula, not the Horsehead in IC 434. ===== NGC 2026. WH's position, reduced by me using the Hipparcos position for the nominal comparison star (54 Ori), is 36 seconds of time preceding the NGC position. The NGC position is more nearly correct -- so where does it come from? Not Auwers; his reduction agrees precisely with my reduction with the Hipparcos data. The answer is in CH's fair copy of WH's sweeps. There, in Sweep 329 on 5 Dec 1784, the offset from 54 Ori is given as 11m 19s preceding, 15 arcmin south. The offset published in PT from which I and Auwers worked reads 11m 53s preceding the star, and again 15 arcmin south. The difference, 34 seconds of time with a minus sign, corresponds to a notation made in the log book just below the recorded time of the observation of the star, not the cluster. The same minus 34 seconds is noted for the next star in the Sweep, 62 Ori, and for one star preceding, 102 Tauri, as well (two other stars, 105 and 106 Tauri, have notations of "-12"). Yet the cluster was "moved" 34 seconds further away from the star for its offset in the big PT paper. It's clear that this is the source of the error. Now we have only to work out why WH applied the "correction". Toward that goal, I have been looking through CH's fair copy. I found this comment following the short sweep 350 on 21 December 1784: It appears now plainly that my late improvements in RA and PD have so far succeeded that I now should use the places of the stars reduced to the present time; but having registered all my Sweeps in the time and PD of Flamsteed, I shall use them both till I may have leisure to alter my register of Sweeps. The greatest inaccuracy now remaining in owing to the clock not having a compound pendulum, but I shall endevour also to keep an account of its errors, which I have found have formerly been very considerable. His comment "alter the register" may well be relevant. CH began her reduction of WH's positions in 1799 and used not just Flamsteed's, Mayer's, and La Caille's stars, but those in recently published catalogues by Wollaston and Bode. Thus, the positions and reductions were worked over after they had been published. And it was these newer reductions that were adopted by JH for his working lists, the GC, and ultimately for the NGC. WH mentions the clock, too, with its "very considerable" errors. I suspect that the 34 second discrepancy comes from this source, though am still puzzled by the fact that he included the 34 second difference in the published offset for NGC 2026. I would have guessed that this came to light during CH's much later reduction of the positions. What is clear is that WH, just over a year into his systematic sweeps with the 20-foot telescope, was still experimenting and adjusting his observing procedures. Not only did CH's post-publication reduction of the positions take into account new star positions not available at the time of observation, but WH himself was still learning the best way to conduct his sweeps and gather his data. ===== NGC 2027. JH has three observations of this, and notes in each that "...fills the whole field", "fills many fields", and "The field full of grouping stars." In the first two observations, the stars are 9th magnitude and fainter, while for the third, they are of 15th magnitude. As if this weren't enough to confuse us, his positions scatter over an area three arcmin across. The field is actually a rich part of the LMC, even more than a star cloud. Any of the positions in the table would do for it, so I've taken the ESO position as reasonably representative of what JH saw. Just to make it even more interesting, NGC 2034 (which see) is a part of this, too. ===== NGC 2029 and NGC 2030 have their positions interchanged in GC and NGC. They are correctly given in CGH, so the error occured when JH was assembling the GC. ESO confused the two numbers as a result, as did KMHK in their big LMC cluster catalogue. ===== NGC 2030. See NGC 2029. ===== NGC 2033 and NGC 2037. These are two successive objects found by JH, and called clusters by him, in one of his "zones" that he swept across the LMC between November 1836 and March 1837 with a 5-inch refractor. Judging by the positions of stars in these zone sweeps, JH's places are about as good as those determined with the sweeps with the 20-foot reflector. So, we would expect to find "clusters" within a couple of arcminutes of JH's positions. Here are his data (positions for 1830, NPD): No. Type Mag. RA NPD Zone NGC nos. RA (J2000) NPD 579 Cl 11 05 36 02 159 53 33 20 = NGC 2033 05 34 29, -69 47.4 593 C [sic] 8 05 36 35 159 52 33 20 = NGC 2037 05 35 02, -69 46.6 Yet there is not much to catch the eye in either place. Most modern observers (cf. Hodge and Wright, Archinal and Hynes, Morel, and Kay) take the star cloud north of JH's position for NGC 2033, and assign NGC 2037 to the compact cluster at 05 35 06.6, -69 46 37 (B1950), but not Hodge and Wright -- they choose the eastern part of the NGC 2033 star cloud. Having fussed over this field for several hours early in January 2014, I'm comfortable now with that identification of NGC 2033, but not with NGC 2037. I do not see how JH could have seen this faint, small cluster with a 5-inch, let alone call it magnitude 8. Jenni Kay estimates its magnitude as 12, and its size as just 18 arcseconds. So, I suspect some error in JH's position for these objects. Looking at the field on the DSSR2 image, reasonable objects, based on the Hodge-Wright Atlas, might be these (again, positions for 1830, NPD): NGC 2033 05 36 07 159 52.0 8' x 5' ==> 05 35 35, -69 45.9 (J2000) NGC 2037 05 36 31 159 50.5 3' x 1.5' ==> 05 35 00, -69 44.5 (J2000) This pushes the positions north by about two arcmin, but necessitates a switch of JH's magnitudes. Another option: NGC 2033 05 36 10 159 51.6 10' x 8' ==> 05 34 38, -69 45.5 NGC 2037 05 36 59 159 48.5 4' x 3' ==> 05 35 28, -69 42.6 I checked for digit errors, but found nothing to the north or the west -- these two objects are near the southeastern corner of zone 20. So, what did JH actually see? We may never know. [But see below!] Finally, as a footnote to this short discussion touching on the 5-inch sweeps, I'd like to add a note from JH's text in CGH: It was not considered necessary to go over the work twice. Independent of the value of time under all circumstances, *the sweeping position, at considerable altitudes, with any instrument but a reflector is so excessively painful (and indeed so permanently injurious to the muscles of the back and neck), that it is scarcely endurable beyond an hour at a time* [JH's italics], for which reason alone I felt little inclination to repeat it. Is it possible that the strain JH put himself through contributed to this particular puzzle? From my own extensive observing at the Cassegrain focus of McDonald Observatory's 76-cm reflector, I can attest to the changes -- sometimes radical -- brought on in my vision by back and neck strain. That can be very unpleasant indeed. ----- These two objects occur in zone "20" of JH's 5-inch sweeps of the LMC. If all of the objects -- including stars -- in that zone between 05h 34m and 05h 38m, and between -69d 00m and -70d 30m (1830 coordinates; at J2000, the limits are roughly 05h 33m and 05h 37m, and -68d 53m and -70d 24m) are plotted, we get a reasonable map of the area. This makes it pretty clear that NGC 2033 is the star cloud at 05 34 40, -69 44.6 as I had previously suggested; and that NGC 2037 is the star cloud at 05 35 28, -69 42.5 (J2000). There is just nothing else suitable on the sky. Note that with this interpretation, NGC 2037 is the cloud of fairly bright stars just 3-4 arcminutes southwest of NGC 2048 (which is also affected by a relatively poor position in CGH/GC/NGC). In fact, the two may be physically related, but that is conjecture on my part. It is just possible that NGC 2037 is identical to NGC 2048, but the descriptions are different enough that JH's objects fit what we now see on the sky. ===== NGC 2034 is a part of NGC 2027. JH has it as "A more condensed part of the great cluster [NGC 2027], of a crescent-like form, occupying one field. Rich and fine." Fortunately, his position is good, so his crescent of stars can be identified pretty easily. The star cloud actually extends a bit to the northwest of the crescent, but -- contradicting my earlier look at the field -- I've simply taken the crescent itself as JH's object. ===== NGC 2036. JH notes in CGH, "There is strong ground to suspect an error of a degree in the PD. It should most likely be 160." In spite of this, he lists the degree as 159. This, then, is the number that was copied into GC and NGC with no note in either. JH was right -- the north polar distance should be 160. Once that mistake is corrected, the object can be easily identified as a small cluster in the LMC. This cluster may also be NGC 2043; see that for the story. ----- This cluster is definitely NOT also NGC 2043, which see. ===== NGC 2037. See NGC 2033. ===== NGC 2039 (= h 366) was described by JH as "A large tract of stars filling many fields. It extends much further in RA." He has a second concordant observation: "A large ill-defined tract of loose stars, neither rich nor condensed," though for this one, he made an estimate of only the NPD. Just such a configuration, roughly 30 arcmin across in RA and 10 arcmin in Dec, is centered two or three arcmin north-northwest of JH's single position. It is a well-scattered group of about 30 stars ranging in magnitude from 8 to 13. I doubt very much that it is a true cluster. However, JH called this H VIII 2 in both observations in his 1833 catalogue. That this is probably not the case was realized by JH himself as H VIII 2 (NGC 2063, which see) and h 366 were given separate GC numbers. WH described his object as "A small cluster of very small scattered stars" and gave it a position (from two observations) nearly 3 minutes of time following and 8 arcmin north of JH's later position for h 366. Dreyer followed GC, but neither he nor JH mention the initial confusion of the two objects. Looking at this again early in 2014, I would make the position of the center of the asterism about half a minute of time further west, and a bit south, of JH's position. It does stretch out in RA quite a bit. I also noticed that Brent Archinal puts the center another 1.7 minutes of time east. This RA ends up in a pretty empty space east of the brighter stars that apparently make up JH's cluster. This is either a mistake or Brent is seeing a much different clump of stars than I am. ===== NGC 2042. JH measured "The chief * (9m) of a L, irreg figured, looped or hooked cluster of stars 12 ... 15 m; rich and various, and filling the field." While he has only one observation of this on 30 December 1836, his position for the star is very good, and his description appropriate for an LMC star cloud extended northwest and southwest from the star. There are at least three condensations in this star cloud; I've estimated their positions and called them "open clusters", though that may not be an accurate description as these groups are quite scattered themselves. ===== NGC 2043 is [not!] = NGC 2036 (see addendum below). This was found in December of 1884 by Pietro Baracchi with the Great Melbourne Telescpe. He has this to say about it: "Preceding H.1259 [= GC 1259 = NGC 2058] by 79.5s and 4 [arcmin] 30 [arcsec] north is a small elongated group of minute stars involved in very thin nebula ..." (he goes on to describe NGC 2072, which see, another of his discoveries in the area). Given the position of NGC 2058, we should find NGC 2043 at 05 35 37, -70 05.0 for J2000. There is nothing exactly there but very faint field stars in the LMC, but 2.5 arcmin south-southwest is a linear asterism 1.7 x 0.5 arcmin, perhaps part of a star cloud (more below), that fits Baracchi's description. After I wrote that, Steve Gottlieb pointed out that Jenni Kay has suggested that NGC 2043 = NGC 2036. This would require a one minute error in the RA of of N2043, but N2036 would match Baracchi's description very well. If, as Steve himself suggested, Baracchi thought that NGC 2036 was a degree north of its actual position, then he would have taken the cluster as a "nova". But JH's italicized note for NGC 2036 stands out quite well in CGH, so I don't see how Baracchi could have missed it. Perhaps he was working from GC only; if so, he would have had no clue that JH had written that the NPD of N2036 might be a degree off. Baracchi would, therefore, have believed that N2043 was indeed a new discovery. NGC 2043 is almost certainly not the very faint cluster that ESO chose, and I doubt that it is the vague collection of stars marked in the Hodge-Wright Atlas, either. Going through that Atlas many years ago, I had marked the small star cloud containing the north-south line of stars (that I mentioned above) as a candidate for the NGC number. I've retained the position for that in the table as well as the linear asterism itself. Finally, there is a curiosity in the Melbourne observations. Baracchi also describes another "new" nebula in the LMC at 05 36 47, -70 06.7 (2000) as "an extremely faint, flat, a little [sic] elongated patch, not shown by any of the previous observers. It precedes H. 1260 [sic; = GC 1260 = NGC 2059] by 14s, and is 1 [arcmin] North of it" in the text, and "Very, very faint, flat, elongated, small, indistinct," in his table of transit times. The difference in RA in the table is 13.9 seconds, consistent with the text. As with NGC 2043, there is nothing exactly at this position, but there is an asterism of 6-8 LMC stars at 05 36 53, -70 06.5 (2000). The curiosity is that this object of Baracchi's is not listed in the NGC. I discuss it further in the "notngc" files. ----- In the fall of 2018, Steve Gottlieb spent some time going through the GMT observing notebooks (available online at https://collections.museumvictoria. com.au/search?query="Great+Melbourne+Telescope"), searching for additional information on the GMT nebular discoveries. In particular, he was curious as to why there were so few of them when the telescope was, for many years, the largest in the southern hemisphere. Briefly, he found that at least 73 nebulae and clusters (almost none represented in the NGC) had been discovered by the GMT observers. There are suggestions in the notebooks that at least a second paper of GMT discoveries was planned. The title of the single published paper -- "Observations of the Southern Nebulae made with the Great Melbourne Telescope from 1869 to 1885" -- also suggests a sequel. Steve also found sketches made at the eyepiece (or copies of them) in the notebooks. One of these sketches shows the field of NGC 2043, NGC 2058, and several other LMC objects. This sketch positively identifies the 1.7' x 1.5' linear asterism mentioned above as NGC 2043. ===== NGC 2044 is one of the clusters that JH found with a five-inch refractor during his sweeps with it across the LMC. His "cluster" is likely the star cloud that I've listed in the table, as shown in the Hodge-Wright Atlas; ESO adopted the same interpretation. AH take a narrower view of the field, restricting JH's "cluster" to the line of three smaller clusters in the southeastern part of the star cloud. ===== NGC 2045 = Lalande 10842 = SAO 094827. JH has this simply as "A star 8-9 mag with faint nebulosity." It is barely possible that there is a bit of faint nebulosity around the star, but it is not visible on any of the DSS images. ===== NGC 2046. See NGC 2052. ===== NGC 2047. See NGC 2052. ===== NGC 2048. This may play a role in the identification of NGC 2037, which see. Also see NGC 2050. ===== NGC 2050 is a cluster in the LMC. While it has entries in both JH's main table of nebulae and clusters, and in his table of LMC objects (where it is Number 628), it has no sweep number in either. JH explains this in a note (on page 164 of CGH) to the LMC table, where he says that this object and several others (NGC 2048, NGC 2052, NGC 2074, NGC 2081, NGC 2091, NGC 2092, and a small cluster at 05 41 48, -69 16.4 [1950] that received neither a GC nor an NGC number; it is perhaps a duplicate observation of NGC 2092; see the "notngcnotes.all" file for more information) near 30 Doradus (NGC 2070) had "... their places deduced from a very careful and deliberate drawing of the neighbourhood of 30 Doradus ..." In his text, he says that the drawing was made over several nights, but specifically mentions 29 November 1834, and 21 and 22 December 1835 as nights on which he worked on the drawing. A drawing centered on 30 Doradus exists in the Herschel Archives (it is page 16 of file J3-6-1) dated "Dec 21 & 22 1835". It covers less than the area of the engraved plate in the CGH Observations, so does not extend as far as the place of NGC 2050. Another sketch of the area dated Nov 30 1834 (page 30 of the same file) -- the "Nov" is scribbled through but is still legible -- extending further from the center of 30 Doradus is unfortunately not clear enough in the scanned image to read entirely. Among the other marginal writing on this sketch are the words "[illegible] is 'a very careful' drawing". This sketch may hold the keys to the correct identifications of the eight LMC objects without JH's usual table entries. The original sketch should be examined to work out the details. Unfortunately, JH's description of NGC 2050 is also ambiguous, and seems to unravel as it goes along: "Cl VI [very compressed and rich]; vF sts and nebulosity of irregular branching figure, or rather 3 clusters connected." What is on the sky at JH's position appears to be a star cloud in the LMC, neither very compressed nor very rich. Nor is there much nebulosity in the immediate area, but one could, I suppose, stretch a bit to find three connected clusters. The usual identification is the star cloud; JH's position is close to the middle of it. The other positions that JH deduced from his drawing show no systematic errors, and have standard deviations of 19 seconds in RA, and 1.1 arcminutes in declination. So, we would expect to find NGC 2050 near JH's position. Whatever the true identification of NGC 2050, I've stuck with the star cloud for now. Given that the sketch may hold the clue to the true identity, though, this could change. ===== NGC 2052 may be the large diffuse nebula 2 minutes of time preceding JH's position. But it may not be. Another possibility is the annular nebula about 2 arcmin northeast of JH's position (Jenni Kay has taken this object as NGC 2052). The problem with this is that JH calls his nebula "vvL", while the annulus is less than an arcminute across -- Jenni estimates 50 arcseconds. So, we need to find JH's chart from which he estimated the positions of seven of his LMC nebulae, including this one. JH describes this as "vvF, vvL, vglbM. See do. do." I take that to mean 'Notes on Catal of Nubecula Major' as in the CGH descriptions for NGC 2048 and NGC 2050. All that is discussed in the Note for NGC 2050 here. Steve Gottlieb has pointed out that JH has changed the GC description to read "eF, vvS, vglbM". I'm inclined to believe that the "vvS" change is incorrect. Some of the other nebulae and clusters referred to in JH's description are also called "vL" or "large", so I do not think that "vvS" is appropriate in the context. Also, JH has no errata listed for this in the GC, so I am inclined to accept his original description. Finally, I had written, "Still, there may be a clue to the identity in JH's Figure 9 of Plate IV in CGH." In fact, there is not. This figure includes only NGC 2046, 2047, 2057-59, 2065, and 2066; so it tells us nothing about NGC 2052. ===== NGC 2054 is a group of five or six faint stars found by George P. Bond, then director of Harvard College Observatory. In his small "Comet-seeker," the grouping appeared nebulous, and he gave it only an approximate position. Dreyer himself saw the nebula and commented, "... at times, I thought it was a very small cluster, but it is doubtful." Nevertheless, he gave an accurate micrometric measurement of a star, 9-10th magnitude, in position angle 0.5 degrees and distance 404.0 arcsec. The star is indeed there, and was later seen by Howe (MN 58, 515, 1898) who misattributed it to Bond, but saw only "three small stars" in the place. Bigourdan provided a corrected position for the asterism, quoted by Dreyer in IC2. ===== NGC 2057. See NGC 2052. ===== NGC 2058. See NGC 2043 and NGC 2052. ===== NGC 2059. See NGC 2043 and NGC 2052, as well as "Baracchi-Melbourne" in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 2061 is probably the group of about 20 stars centered near HD 38253, a double star, though others have suggested that JH's object is restricted to just the brighter stars a bit further west. JH's description, from a single CGH observation, should put this idea to rest: "Cluster, 8th class; coarse, loose, and filling the field; stars 10 ... 13 m. Place, that of a double star in a vacant part." This makes it clear that JH's double is indeed the HD star just a minute of time preceding his position. Nevertheless, this does not look like a cluster, though I do not know if that classification has been rigorously studied. ===== NGC 2062. JH's position is 1 minute 10 seconds of time too small in RA, though his declination is correct as is his comment, "... north of 2 stars 10 m." The remainder of his description is appropriate for this small cluster: "vF, E, glbM, 40 [arcsec] ..." ===== NGC 2063. When I looked at this in 1997, I wrote: [This] may be the small grouping of 7-8 faint stars at WH's place, though there is another larger clump with brighter stars about 8 arcmin to the south-southeast. Neither is likely to be a true cluster, and I am not sure that either one is the correct object. Taking WH at his word, though, I've tentatively assigned the NGC number to the stars at his place. JH did not see this clump, but mistakenly asigned the number H VIII 2 to h 366 (= NGC 2039, which see) in his 1833 catalogue. He separated the two objects for the GC, and Dreyer followed his lead. The second paragraph is still appropriate early in 2014, but I now feel that the southeastern clump of stars is the correct one. What has changed my mind is having reduced WH's position (8m 28s preceding, 1deg 16 arcmin north of "58 (alpha) Orion" = Betelgeuse). This has moved the position nearly four arcmin south of the NGC position (which comes from GC) toward the southern clump of stars. That "cluster" of fainter stars has no outstanding "members" -- unlike the northern one -- so more closely matches WH's brief description: "A S cl of vS sc sts." While I don't think we can be sure of this identification, the fact that it is closer to both WH's position and description than the northern clump -- it also looks more like an eye-catching cluster than the northern clump -- suggests that it is what WH saw. ----- In June 2016, I found the entry for this in Archinal and Hynes, but at 05 43 55, +08 39.8 (J2000), nearly three minutes of time west of WH's position. Brent adds the notes, "Skiff: Not obvious in 0.4 degree field. Archinal: 9' scattered group centered on small Milky Way patch. On W[est] side of NGC 2039." As we'll see below, there is no evidence at all that NGC 2063 is west of NGC 2039 (which see). I do not know how Brent came to this position (it is not from his Webb Society Monograph No. 1), but it cannot apply to NGC 2063, so I've rejected it. WH claims to have two observations of this cluster, but digging into the sweeps in Herschel Archive, I found the following (the reduced positions follow WH's descriptions): 26 Dec 1783: 32:: min following, 52:: arcmin north of mu Orionis. A small cluster of scattered stars. 06 34 18, +08 36.9 (J2000) 28 Dec 1785: 8m 28s preceding, 1 deg 16 arcmin north of alpha Orionis. A few pretty closely scattered very small stars. 05 46 48, +08 43.0 (J2000) WH assigned the same serial discovery number, "21" to both of these clusters even though the positions leave them nearly a dozen degrees apart. I do note, however, that the December 1783 sweep (Sweep 67)was done during WH's very first observing season when he had not yet worked out a satisfactory method of finding positions. There are only four objects in that sweep: mu Orionis itself, NGC 2063, NGC 2251, and NGC 2261. WH also observed NGC 2251 and NGC 2261 on 28 December 1785; his positions for those two objects from the 1783 sweep are in better agreement, but are still not up to his later standards: NGC 2251 26 Dec 1783: 06 36 15, +08 08.3 28 Dec 1785: 06 34 29, +08 21.5 (Modern: 06 34 41, +08 21.5) NGC 2261 26 Dec 1783: 06 39 18, +08 42.4 28 Dec 1785: 06 39 05, +08 45.1 (Modern: 06 39 10, +08 44.7) I tried looking at offsets to NGC 2063 from both of the other objects, but found nothing more convincing than the southeastern clump of stars I noted above. Given that WH's positions for the latter two objects are more or less in agreement with the modern positions, I do not think that he misidentified his single star on 26 December 1783. But his observation of his number 21 on that night remains a mystery. While there are random clumps of stars within 30 arcminutes of his position, none are particularly convincing as "A small cluster of scattered stars." So this leaves us with only WH's second observation as a guide to NGC 2063. This is the one that JH ultimately adopted for the GC. He offers us no explanation there as to why he separated his observations (h 366 = NGC 2039) from his father's VIII 2, but it was probably based on simple caution given the discordant positions and descriptions. ===== NGC 2064. See NGC 2067. ===== NGC 2065. See NGC 2052. ===== NGC 2066. See NGC 2052. ===== NGC 2067 is a part of the large complex of nebulae around M 78 = N2068. Here is what I had to say about this in 1997: Found by Tempel, neither the position nor the description makes it really clear which part of the nebula he saw. The first position I give in the main table is for a large patch of pretty low surface brightness nebulosity about 5 arcmin northwest of M 78. But this is not the brightest nebulosity in the area. That is a knot about 3 arcmin southwest, the brightest part of a long faint streamer pointed toward NGC 2064. This, however, is much more east than north of M 78, while Tempel says that M 78 is to the south. So, a bit of a mystery here -- which part of the nebulosity was Tempel refering to? I've stuck with the larger more northerly end of the nebula, but could well be wrong, so have also put the southern knot in the main table. That wasn't very satisfactory, so I went over the field again early in 2014. This time, I simply translated (using several on-line translation sites) Tempel's note from AN 2212: A good class III nebula, somewhat north-preceding M 78; it is south of a star 11m, and itself runs arc-shaped following D'Arrest's new nebula. It is remarkable that neither Herschel nor Lord Rosse saw D'Arrest's southern and my preceding companion of M 78; occasionally mine appeared to me to be brighter than D'Arrest's nebula, as I also later found the latter. While this is pretty rough (my apologies), the intent is clear: Tempel's new nebula is an arc of nebulosity northwest of M 78, south of an 11th magnitude star, and bright enough that he was surprised that neither Herschel nor Lord Rosse had found it (or d'Arrest's nearby NGC 2064). From all of this, I am now inclined to believe that Tempel was describing the nebulosity stretching from its southwest end at 05 43 49, +00 03.4 (these are B1950.0 positions) to its northeast end at 05 44 04, +00 07.2. There is a dark patch roughly in the center of this "arc" of nebulosity at 05 43 56, +00 05.3 that I've taken as the position of Tempel's nebula. This is not too far off Tempel's position, and I think it fairly represents the nebulosity that he described. Finally, in spite of what he says, "his" portion of M 78 has a lower surface brightness than d'Arrest's (NGC 2064), so appears to be somewhat fainter. ===== NGC 2068 = M 78. The position I've chosen applies to the brightest patch of this large nebula, northwest of the geometrical center, as seen on the DSS2 red and blue images. Also see NGC 2067. ===== NGC 2069. JH says of this, "The middle of a large extended faint nebulous mass which forms the northern branch of the great looped nebula [NGC 2070 = 30 Doradus], and is almost, or entirely, detached from it." The short-exposure V-band plate from which the GSC was derived shows this area pretty much as JH may have seen it. On this plate, it is fairly easy to see that N2069 is a knot in the northern streamer leading away from 30 Dor. JH has the same knot shown in his sketches of the area, and it is this that I've provided a position for. ESO has chosen a much fainter part of the streamer 2.5 arcmin on north, but that is not the brighter knot that JH indicated. ===== NGC 2070 = 30 Doradus. For this splendid, big superassociation, one of the largest known in the Local Group, I've taken the position of the central star (or star cluster?) itself to represent the entire nebula. This also figures in the identification of several of JH's objects in the LMC. See, for an example, "hLMC710" in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 2072. Unlike NGC 2043, which see, this small cluster is within less than an arcminute of where Baracchi put it, "... following H.1265 [sic; GC 1265 = NGC 2065] by 47s and north 40 [arcsec] is a very faint, small, indistinct patch." Also see "Barrachi-Melbounre" in the "notngc" files for another object in the area not include in the NGC. ----- As noted under NGC 2043, Steve Gottlieb has found Baracchi's sketch of the LMC field containing NGC 2072. This positively identifies the small cluster that we chose earlier as Baracchi's object -- it is clearly NGC 2072. ===== NGC 2074. See NGC 2050 for more on the origins of the positions for eight objects in the LMC in the area around 30 Doradus (NGC 2070), including this one. Like NGC 2050, NGC 2074 is also outside the boundaries of the sketches of the 30 Dor area that I've been able to locate in the Herschel Archives. Unlike NGC 2050, however, JH's position points at a rich star cloud embedded in a bright nebula, presumeably an HII region. JH has an added note, "Involves 5 stars, 2 of which are 10 m." This is a relatively crowded field, so it is not easy to tell exactly which stars JH has in mind, but there is no doubting the identification. ===== NGC 2075 is a star-forming region in the LMC. While there is no doubt about its identification, the position is a bit uncertain. The center of the nebula is a few arcseconds southeast of the brightest star (or central knot?) in the object. I give both positions in the table; take whichever is most appealing to you. ===== NGC 2077 and other objects in its area (NGC 2078, 2079, 2080, 2083, 2084, 2085, and 2086) are parts of a large star cloud (in current parlance, a "star-forming region") containing many HII regions and young star clusters. JH sketched it on 4 December 1837, and included the sketch as Plate III, figure 4 in his CGH Observations. The plate shows a dozen knots of nebulosity, but JH included only eight in CGH, so these are all that received GC and NGC numbers. Some of his positions for these eight are derived from the sketch, and all are pretty good. I've given positions for his other four in the main table. ----- I have put the four without GC/NGC numbers into the "notngc*.all" files where I have called them "N2084 [ne/se/w] comp" and "N2078 n comp". All are also in the main position table. ===== NGC 2078. See NGC 2077. ===== NGC 2079. See NGC 2077. ===== NGC 2080. See NGC 2077. ===== NGC 2081. This is a star cloud in the LMC, surrounded by a large annular nebula. It looks like a classic HII-star forming region, with the gas blown out of the cluster by the light of the bright, young stars. See NGC 2050 for more on JH's observations that led to this object. ----- Looking again at this in February of 2018, I am no longer sure that the big star cloud with the annulus around it is JH's intended object. His CGH description is that of a classic globular cluster: "Cluster VI of vF sts and nebula." The class VI clusters were defined by WH as "Very compressed and rich clusters of stars," while the star cloud under discussion looks more like a class VII cluster: "Pretty much compressed clusters of large or small stars." ===== NGC 2083. See NGC 2077. ===== NGC 2084. See NGC 2077. Three of the nebulae that JH shows in his figure that he did not include in CGH (and thus not in GC, or Dreyer later, in NGC) are near this star-forming region. I've given positions for them from the DSS1R image, though diameters and position angles come from the DSSR2. ===== NGC 2085. See NGC 2077 and NGC 2086. ===== NGC 2086 = IC 2145. JH is very clear in his description of this object: B, pS, R, lbM; follows a star 10m with other S sts about it. Not observed in sweeping, but laid down in the drawing of Dec 4, 1837, whence its place is derived, [Plate] III, [panel] 4. His position is also quite good, but that was not enough to prevent both Andris and me from taking JH's 10th magnitude star as NGC 2086 (the star is actually closer to NGC 2085, so that is what I've called it in the position table). The object is clearly shown in Herschel's sketch, directly east of the star. (See NGC 2077 for a bit more about this sketch.) Williamina Fleming rediscovered the object on an objective prism plate taken late in the 19th century. She, too, did not give it its NGC number in her paper in Harvard Circular No. 60, so it has also acquired an IC number. Steve Gottlieb recovered the correct numbering during one of his Australian trips in 2007 or 2008. ===== NGC 2091. See NGC 2050. ===== NGC 2092. JH may have two observations of this cluster. If so, I find it odd that he claims to derive positions for two objects from the same chart, and gives them two different numbers. See hLMC710 (in the "notngc" files) and NGC 2050 for more. ===== NGC 2094. Shapley and Lindsay mistakenly put this number on their cluster SL659; that cluster is 33 arcmin to the south of the real NGC 2094. The mistake has been copied over into at least ESO and the Bica et al SMC/LMC cluster list and perhaps others. If I find any other lists with the mistake, I'll mention them here. Curiously, Shapley and Lindsay do not include the real NGC 2094 in their pretty comprehensive list of LMC clusters. It is a compact cluster, just over half an arcminute across. Shapley and Lindsay have many other similar objects in their list, so it surprises me a bit that they missed this one. ===== NGC 2095. JH picked this cluster up on two nights. He descriptions read, (20 Dec 1835) "A star 9 m, chief of a F irreg oblong cluster 3' in extent", and (2 Jan 1837) "Cluster, irregularly elongated; not very rich". This makes it clear that he was not referring to just the clump of stars (SL 669, a cluster in itself) at the eastern end of his larger "cluster", but to the entire elongated star cloud, 3 x 1.5 arcmin, centered at the position in the table. The 9th magnitude star he measured is a bit closer to the western end of the cloud. ===== NGC 2107. See NGC 2171. ===== NGC 2113. It's a little difficult to know what position to take for this object. JH has five observations of it, in four of which he saw stars or described it as a cluster. The object on the DSSR2 image appears as a nebula about about 1.7 arcmin in diameter with stars involved, particularly on the eastern edge where the nebula narrows to an apex. It looks like there is a compact cluster embedded in this apex. I've given the position of the approximate geometrical center of the nebula as THE position for NGC 2113, but offer two others as well. One is for a star just east of the center, and the second is for the apex itself. Take whichever suits your thoughts on this object. ===== NGC 2128. In March 2011, Steve Gottlieb wrote to me about this object: I don't believe Swift or Dreyer published a corrected position -- NGC 2128 was discovered by Swift's son Edward on 27 Dec 1886. There is nothing near the published position, and the description from list VI doesn't add any additional clues as far as the field: "vF; vS; vlE." But exactly 30' north of Swift's position is UGC 3392, and the general description of [Swift's] nebula applies. I had taken the UGC galaxy as NGC 2128 on the word of CGCG. I found that I had written the identification into my copy of MCG, and had even corrected my master version of the NGC -- but until now, had not written a note. I'm pleased to acknowledge Steve for this one. ===== NGC 2129 appears to be a cluster of about 30 stars scattered around two bright ones near the center. However, neither the UCAC2 proper motions, nor multi- color photometry (see J. H. Pena and R. Peniche in Rev. Mex. A&A 28, 139, 1994) support the idea that this is a true physical cluster. Instead, it seems that this is a random clumping of stars at different distances, accidentally rich enough to pass for a real cluster. James Kaler's article in S&T, Feb 2005, page 90, called attention to the purely optical nature of this object. ===== NGC 2132 may be a cluster centered a few arcmin east of JH's position. That position applies to the "Chief * of a cluster of 8th class of about a dozen bright and some smaller stars." This is just what we see on the sky today. The stars are scattered over an area of 17 arcmin by 11 arcminutes (Brent Archinal makes the cluster much larger and calls it an asterism). They stand out enough from the field that I'm a bit surprised that Lauberts did not pick them up for the ESO list. JH's "chief star", by the way, is HD 40484 which is within a few arcsec of his position for it. There is the usual question about this object: is it in fact a cluster, or as Brent suggests, a simple asterism? ===== NGC 2139 = IC 2154. Dreyer has a note in his 1912 edition of WH's Scientific Papers on this object. Taken from WH's note in the sweep, it reads "The A.R. cannot be above 10 or 15 s out; the roller went off the apparatus which occasions the uncertainty." The RA is actually 24 seconds out, and the dec, due to another unspecified error, is 8.5 arcmin off. Dreyer was further able to identify a star in the sweep that was closer to the galaxy than WH's "official" reference star, delta Canis Majoris. Comparison with this star led to the correct position. However, he had not yet done this when Howe and Bigourdan tried to find the NGC object near WH's place -- not surprisingly, neither succeeded. What is surprising is that when Lewis Swift came across the galaxy over a century after WH, he did not make as nearly as large an error in its position as WH. Swift's positions from his last nights in 1897 and 1898 at Lowe Observatory on Echo Mountain are nortoriously bad. But for this object, he actually came within 14 seconds in RA and 1 arcmin in Dec. Herbert Howe pinned the galaxy down with a micrometric observation and it was that position that Dreyer adopted for IC 2154. Dreyer himself discovered the identity when he fixed WH's position for the NGC object. ===== NGC 2142 = 3 Moncerotis = HD 40967 = SAO 151037. JH says, "I am sure this star has a faint nebulous atmosphere 2 or 3 arcmin in diameter. Eye-glass examined, not dewed." This brightest part of the nebulosity is lost in the glare of the star on the POSS1, but a very faintly extended cloud can just be seen on the red plate (but is that a result of the red plexiglass filter?). It would be nice to have independent confirmation of this nebulosity. ----- Another note: 3 Mon is a double star. I wonder if JH's view was somehow influenced by the 8th magnitude companion. The duplicity of the star was not discovered until 1871 by Burnham, so JH did not know about the companion. But I don't know of a reasonable optical mechanism that would allow a fainter companion star to create a "faint nebulous atmosphere 2 or 3 arcmin in diameter." I also realized that my initial examination of the star image was on the DSS1 images, so I looked again for JH's nebula in the DSS2 images in February 2019. I found nothing aside from the usual corona of starlight that occurs around all bright stars, so we still await confirmation of JH's "faint nebulous atmosphere", if it indeed exists. ===== NGC 2143. This is a cluster of pretty bright (V ~ 9 - 13) stars covering an area about 12 arcmin by 10 arcmin across. While JH puts the center close to the brightest star (SAO 113401), I make it (on the POSS1 print) about three arcminutes to the west. Brian Skiff puts the center (using the DSS) seven arcmin to the north, nearly on the edge of the cluster. This must be a typo of some sort. A curiosity: JH's original description contained the note, "... place of a * 10m in M." Somehow, this metamorphosed into "stars 10" in GC and NGC. This may have led in part to RNGC's failure to find the cluster, though it is a low-contrast object with the rich field around it. ----- Looking again at the field in December 2017, I see the "cluster" a bit differently than described above. Following JH's lead (just as Brent Archinal did in "Star Clusters") and putting HD 41080 near the middle of the cluster, places it further east and makes it somewhat larger as well. Which, if either, of these interpretations is correct? It probably depends on whether you're looking at the field through an eyepiece spanning fifteen arcminutes, or on an image covering half a degree or more. For the purposes of trying to reproduce what JH saw, I've settled on the star as being near the middle of the cluster. Nevertheless, the "cluster" is difficult to define, so the center and dimensions I give is just another way of looking at the field. I've adopted AH's position from "Star Clusters" as an appropriate compromise. ===== NGC 2151. This is misidentified in the Hodge-Wright Atlas of the LMC as Shapley-Lindsay 798; it is actually SL 786. ===== NGC 2163. The NGC NPD is incorrect, being one of Dreyer's very few transcription errors. He corrects the mistake in the IC2 Notes. The object is a striking example of a bi-polar nebula with fans of nebulosity extending north and south from the central star. Stephan's position is good. ===== NGC 2167 is SAO 132848; it is certainly not H IV 44. This error comes from JH who equated his own h378 with his father's "planetary" more than 10 arcmin south-following his (JH's) position. Dreyer followed JH in NGC, but when he prepared WH's papers for their re-publication in 1912, he realized that WH's description as well as position did not agree with JH's. Dreyer gives some additional information in his note in WH's Collected Scientific Papers, and also suggests there that WH actually observed a nebulous star about 70 seconds of time following JH's position. This suggestion was the source of my own comment in the preliminary version of SEGC that the RA of N2167 is 1 minute of time too small. Wolfgang agrees with this as WH's description very clearly fits, and Dreyer also describes the same group of stars with its attendant reflection nebulosity (van den Bergh 68). In the earlier version of this note, I went on to say, I think now that Dreyer and I were wrong. The description of IV 44 fits IV 19 = NGC 2170 very nicely, and the RA's are the same. The Dec's are about 8 arcmin different, and IV 19 was not seen in the sweep in which IV 44 was found. Therefore, it is likely that the only error in NGC is calling N2167 "IV 44." Is there, however, a problem with JH's observation? The star at his position has almost no trace of nebulosity around it. Yet JH does not mark the position as uncertain, and that position is within 20 arcsec of the true position of the star. And JH calls it a "star 7 m;" its V magnitude is 6.9. By contrast, the star in NGC 2170 is 9th magnitude, and the star that Dreyer suggested as IV 44 is 11th magnitude. Perhaps there is a trace of nebulosity hiding in the overexposed image of the bright star. A close visual examination is needed. When I wrote all of that, I had not seen WH's full description for IV 44: "A star involved in milky chevelure, situated betwee[n] two stars, with a 3[rd] star at rectangles to the former two." (See the Note on H IV 44 in the "notngc" files for more about this.) That clearly does NOT fit NGC 2170, but is a nearly perfect description of vdB 68 as I note above. Dreyer says the same thing in his note in the Scientific Papers, Vol. 1, page 368. So, the identifications are as follows: NGC 2167 is SAO 132848 = HD 41794; NGC 2170 is SAO 132861 = BD -06 1415; and H IV 44 = vdB 68 is involved with HD 42004 = SAO 132867. ===== NGC 2170. See NGC 2167. ===== NGC 2171. Earlier (I believe sometime in the mid-2000s), I wrote about this lost object: I had given this up for lost, but Mati Morel found a star cloud in the LMC that fits pretty well: the two clusters SL 691 and 692 and the surrounding area. The contrast with the background of the LMC is subtle, but it fits JH's description very well. JH has it as "eeF, vL, R, glbM, 4 [arcmin]" from a single sweep (number 657 on 16 Dec 1835). The object marked in the Hodge-Wright Atlas is a faint star about 2 arcmin south of JH's position; ESO apparently adopted this identification, too. In "Star Clusters", Brent makes this KMHK 1573 at 05 59 03.8 -67 53 56 (B1950.0), with no explanation of the 2.5 degree difference from JH's declination. KMHK 1573 is too small and too faint in any case to be one of JH's clusters. Mati had earlier suggested that this object is identical with SL 809, a small, faint star cluster in the LMC. While the position is not too far off (34 seconds in RA, and 3.8 arcmin in Dec), I was skeptical because this cluster is only 0.7 arcmin across, certainly not an object that JH would have called "vL ... 4 [arcmin]". [While this cluster is in the position table, it is there with two question marks, an may deserve another one or two!] I had finished up my [even] earlier note by saying, "So, the only other possibility that I can see is that JH made a 10 or 20 minute error in his RA, and that his observation applies to one of the star clouds in the eastern end of the LMC's bar. However, this is such a stretch that I'm not going to list any of these star clouds in the main table." Mati took me at my word, though, and found a star cloud that matches JH's declination and his description almost perfectly. This is by no means, though, a solid identification. NGC 2107 is just one minute of time preceding the star cloud, and just one arcminute north of JH's position for NGC 2171. So, I wondered why JH did not mention that in the same sweep. However, looking at his list of nebulae in the LMC, it's apparent that in any given sweep, he skipped many that he recorded in other sweeps. The nebulae and clusters were just coming by too quickly for him to record them all, so he went over each area of the LMC several times to be sure to catch all the objects. In any event, Mati's star cloud, with its two embedded Shapley-Lindsay clusters, is the best candidate I've seen for this object, so it's in the main table, though with a colon. Now in 2014, I finally checked the other objects in the sweep, No. 657 on 16 December 1834. All are further north than NGC 2171. That suggested a possible error in declination, but an examination of JH's observing logs showed no obvious error in reduction, and that this was indeed the southern- most object that he observed that night (it is numbered 39 in the sweep). I am still as puzzled as I was years ago, and after looking at hundreds of JH's nebulae and star clusters in the LMC over the past month, am much less inclined to put much weight on Mati's suggestion. JH's description just does not match the two clusters and the surrounding field very well. Also, the order of the object within the sweep argues firmly against an RA error -- its entry in the sweep is followed and preceded by the objects that appear in JH's final tables in the same order. So, I've downgraded the star-cloud hypothesis to a question-marked possibility. Finally, there is a galaxy pair about 1 minute 10 seconds of time east of JH's position. However, it is probably beyond the reach of his telescope, and is only an arcminute long in any case, far smaller than his estimate of 4 arcmin. This pair, or at least the larger of the two galaxies, was suggested long ago as the identification for N2171, probably by Lindsay. This idea rates three question marks from me for all the reasons set out above. I should also mention that Jenni Kay does not even mention NGC 2171 in her "Visual Atlas of the Magellanic Clouds." I leave the interpretation of that omission open until I can query her about it. ----- Finally, in September 2016, I've checked for an eyepiece wire error. JH records wire 2, so if he actually used wire one, the RA for 1830 would be 06 02 39; and if he used the edge of the field, the RA would be 05 59 41. There is nothing at either position (assuming the Dec is correct), though the galaxy pair is about 17 seconds of time -- about an arcminute -- preceding the first, within JH's usual errors. So, I've elevated these galaxies by one question mark, and have demoted SL 809 by a similar one question mark. ===== NGC 2174 is one of the knots in NGC 2175, which see. ===== NGC 2175 is a very large roughly circular emission nebula which also includes NGC 2174 and IC 2159 (both of which see), and a star cluster which has inherited the NGC number, though there is no mention of it in the discovery notes. The nebula is centered on SAO 078049, though the brightest knot (which Bigourdan took for N2175; hence, the "corrected" RA in the IC2 Notes) is about three arcmin to the west-northwest. Auwers's note makes it clear that NGC 2175 is much more than just the knot: he gives dimensions of 25 arcmin by 8 arcmin, and specifically adopts the position of Lalande 11668 = SAO 078049 as that for the object. I have followed his lead. Note that Archinal and Hynes in "Star Clusters" call out another smaller cluster as "NGC 2175.1". This is a small group of about a dozen stars at 06 10 53, +20 36.6 (J2000) no more than five arcminutes across. They correctly point out that this has nothing to do with the NGC object -- the nebula -- and suggest deprecating the NGC number often attached to this group. I agree, so have not put this object in the main table, but do note that Collinder 84 is associated with the nebula. Archinal and Hynes have some doubts that this is a real cluster, but Brian Skiff has it centered on the same star that Auwers chose. Archinal suggests reserving the NGC number strictly for the nebula, but if the stars are associated with it, I see no reason not to adopt the NGC number for Collinder 84 as well. We (observers over the centuries) have done this with, for example, M 17 = NGC 6618 and M 42 = NGC 1976 with little or no confusion, so doing the same here should not be a problem -- as long as "NGC 2175.1" is indeed dropped. ===== NGC 2180. This is a scattered cluster of about 20 stars, 9th to 12th magnitudes, centered about 7 arcmin northeast of JH's "* 9 m". Its size is about 14' x 14' across and would probably make a fine showing in a smaller telescope. ===== NGC 2184 is a poor scattered cluster of about 20 stars, 10th to 12th magnitudes, similar to NGC 2180 (which see), but less well-defined with fainter stars. I suspect it is nothing more than a collection of field stars. JH's position for a double star is about 2 arcmin preceding the approximate center of the cluster. ===== NGC 2187 is a double galaxy seen through the outskirts of the LMC. See NGC 5765 for a note on others of these doubles with just a single position in the NGC. ----- Well, that wasn't very helpful, was it? Here's some clarification. JH has three observations of this with accordant positions (the position file has the mean); here are his descriptions: 24 or 25 Dec 1834: "Double nebula, pos 12[deg].5; larger pB, R, gbM, 40[arcsec]; smaller vF, R, glbM." (Sweep 523 has no date given in JH's table of sweeps, but 522 was on 23 December, and 524 on 26 December.) 16 Dec 1835: "vF, irreg R, gbM, 50[arcsec], r" 9 Feb 1836: "F, irreg R; gbM" There are a couple of problems here. The first is that JH saw the object as "double" on only one night. On the other two nights, he presumeably saw only the brightest (indeed, his positions are very close to the brighter, northeastern of the pair). Secondly, his "pos"[ition angle] of 12.5 degrees is far off the the actual position angle between the galaxies (~45 degrees with the fainter south-western object as the reference point). Did JH somehow confuse the star 0.4 arcminutes north-northeast of the brighter galaxy with the actual companion galaxy to the southwest? Well, we have what JH has left us. Dreyer adopted the description of the object as a double nebula for the NGC, so I have listed the two galaxies here as the southwestern and northeastern components of NGC 2187. ===== NGC 2189 is described by T.H. Safford (not "J H Safford"; this is the same T.H. Safford whose list of new nebulae formed an Appendix to the NGC) as "Two clusters, seen 1863 March 19 near two stars of the 10-11th magnitude" with the "Great Refractor" at Harvard College Observatory. (The NGC description confuses the stars with two others in Safford's description of another cluster NGC 2198, which see). Curiously, he gives positions of the two stars, but not of the clusters (the NGC position was concocted by Dreyer). So, we can identify the stars with certainty (Safford's positions, precessed to J2000.0, are 06 11 50, +01 06.9 and 06 12 52, +01 08.2), but not the clusters -- there is nothing in the area aside from random clumpings of field stars. When I went over the field earlier, I finished up this note as follows: However, two of the clumpings -- listed in the main table as possibly being the correct objects -- may be the one's Safford noted. Both are extended roughly north-south, with the first having a diameter of about 6 x 3 arcmin and including only a dozen stars, and the second 3 x 2 arcmin, again with only a dozen stars, fainter than those in the first group. Neither is likely to be a real cluster. Are these the right objects? We need visual observations, and a look at Safford's original observing records, to be sure. Looking again at the field in January 2014, I no longer think that the second of the random groupings mentioned above (at 06 12 18, +01 03.7; J2000) can be mistaken for a cluster. Instead, I am fingering another elongated (11 x 4 arcmin) clump of stars on to the east. The stars are brighter and closer to the second of Safford's stars. However, I am no more confident of this clump than I was of the fainter, smaller one. Thinking of uncertainties, the second of Safford's stars may itself not be the one I have suggested. There is another star at 06 12 53.0, +01 07 37 (2000) that may be the one he measured. I've taken the one I did because the declination is closer to Safford's reported number. Bond's paper mentions that the stars are in the Harvard Zones, so the correct stars could be dug out. Experience with other objects in Bond's AN list (NGC 5632, NGC 5651, and NGC 5658; all of which see) suggests that the objects will be mentioned in the "Remarks" column of the Harvard Zones in much the same way as they are in the AN paper. We should nevertheless dig them out sometime. ===== NGC 2194 has two companion "clusters" seen by LdR. See the story in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 2195 is an asterism of four stars. The object was found by J. G. Lohse who also noted the 10th magnitude star 31 arcsec north. It is this star that clinches the identification since Lohse's RA is about 3 arcmin too far west. RNGC picked the wrong object. My earlier identification of this with just the two brighter stars strikes me now as a bit naive. Given the typical seeing/resolution of a telescope like Lohse's 15.5-inch refractor, the fainter stars would almost surely have been blended into the same eyepiece image. ===== NGC 2198. Described as "A cluster, seen 1863 March 19 by J.[sic] H. Safford, between two stars ... With the Great Refractor" at Harvard, the NGC position actually corresponds to a field with fewer than the average numbers of stars. As with NGC 2189 (which see) T.H. Safford measured the two stars (one is 10-11 magnitude at 06 13 32, +00 59.2; the other is 9-10 magnitude at 06 14 17, +00 58.4, both for J2000.0), but not the cluster. The position in the NGC was, like that for NGC 2189, concocted by Dreyer for his catalogue. It may be that the observation, like that of NGC 2189 (which see), is given in the Harvard Zones. If so, it could be dug out for further details, if any are given. Earlier, I wrote, "I see nothing in the field on the POSS1 prints that looks like a cluster. Perhaps a visual observation can turn up something." Going over the field again in January 2014, I see a scattered group of 20-30 stars, probably no more than a random field, centered at 06 14 31, +01 02.2 (J2000.0) that covers an area about 12 x 11 arcmin in size. The stars range between 9th magnitude (the eastern-most of Safford's two stars) to about 13. Depending on the field size that his eyepiece on the Harvard 15-inch refractor gave him, he might have picked this up. It is rather similar to two of JH's clusters, NGC 2180 and NGC 2184 (both of which see), so could have been taken at the eyepiece for a real cluster. ===== NGC 2202. JH wrote this about the double star Struve 885 in his 1833 list of nebulae and clusters: "The chief of a tolerably neat cl of L stars." That is indeed what we see, though the center of the cluster is about 2 arcmin to the southwest of the double. ===== NGC 2218 is only an asterism of five stars (not just four as I had earlier said). It is one of the "nebulae" recorded in the Markree Catalogue, pulled out by Auwers in his 1862 compilation of the nebulae found by others than the Herschels. Auwers looked for it, but had to note "Invisible in the Heliometer." The original position is good. ===== NGC 2220. JH calls this "A poor, very coarsely scattered, but brilliant cluster of 8th class. Place of a star 8m = B 1222, the chief of cl." The star is SAO 217873 and is well off the center towards the southeastern edge of a clump of 7-8 stars. Roughly 15 arcmin to the northwest is a similar clump of 4-5 stars; I wonder if JH meant to include this as well. I've included positions for both clumps and the entire grouping in the table. In any event, the stars probably do not constitute a real cluster. We'll need to check their proper motions to be sure of that, however. ===== NGC 2224 is perhaps the elongated gathering of stars centered about three arcmin southwest of the NGC position. It looks to me like a random fluctuation in the Milky Way, though it is overlain by an extremely diffuse band of nebulosity. This area should be examined telescopically -- the POSS is crowded with faint stars. ===== NGC 2225 and NGC 2226 have sometimes been considered to be the same object. In fact, the latter number refers to the compact core of the cluster, apparently unresolved in the 5- or 6-inch refractor with which Barnard found it. He described it as "Small, very difficult, with a star 10 close south" (the star is there). This is apparently from a letter to Dreyer as the observation does not appear in any of the Sidereal Messenger, Observatory, or AN notes where Barnard published other of his early nebular discoveries. ===== NGC 2226. See NGC 2225. ===== NGC 2234 is described by both WH and JH as a very large cluster, at least half a degree across. I find three concentrations of stars in the area, the first at 06 25.4 +16 42, the second at 06 26.5 +16 45, and the third at 06 27.4 +16 30. Perhaps the Herschels' observations refer to all three. As with so many of the poor, scattered "clusters" found by them, telescopic observations will be needed for conformation. ===== NGC 2237, 2238, and 2246 are all parts of the large annular HII region often called the Rosette. Embedded in the middle of the nebula is a bright cluster of young stars, NGC 2239 = NGC 2244 (which see) discovered by WH, and observed again by JH. Albert Marth is apparently the first to see any part of the nebulosity (NGC 2238, which see), though Lewis Swift was the first to call attention to its great size. Barnard ran across the nebula independently in 1883 while sweeping for comets, and his observations inspired Swift to finally publish a note about it in 1884. Scanning the area again in 1886, Swift found part of the eastern side of the nebula (NGC 2246, which see), but it was not until Barnard began his photographic work at Lick in the early 1890s that the full extent of the nebula became known. The position for NGC 2237 given by Swift in his second list of nebulae actually comes from Barnard, though it is about 45 seconds of time west of the center of gravity of the western part of the Rosette to which it refers. Barnard's description is accurate, however, and there is no question as to which part of the nebulosity he saw. ===== NGC 2238 is a small patch of somewhat brighter nebulosity in the much larger Rosette Nebula. It was found by Marth in 1864 with Lasalle's 48-inch reflector, which probably accounts for Marth's ability to see the faint star embedded in the knot. See NGC 2237 and NGC 2239 for more on the Rosette. ===== NGC 2239 = NGC 2244, the bright young cluster in the center of the HII region called the Rosette (see the discussion under NGC 2237), was found by WH. JH recovered it 30 years later during his northern sweeps from Slough, though he made an error of 1 minute of time in the position. Neither noticed the nebulosity around the cluster; that remained for Marth, Swift, and Barnard to bring to our attention. ===== NGC 2240. WH provided only a rough position for his comparison star, but that position is good enough to identify the star as HD 53329. This, with his usual offsets, points directly to the cluster. ===== NGC 2242. See IC 2170. ===== NGC 2244 = NGC 2239, which see. ===== NGC 2245 is not identical to IC 447, in spite of what Barnard has to say in the caption to Plate 28 of Vol. 11 of the Lick Publications. He has misidentified IC 447 as NGC 2245; the NGC object is northeast of the larger more diffuse IC 447 at 41 mm from the right edge and 87 mm from the top of the plate. For comparison, I measure IC 447 to be at 31 mm and 94 mm (Barnard has 30 and 94). He does identify IC 446 correctly. See IC 446 = IC 2167 and IC 447 = IC 2169 for stories of their own. Also see NGC 2247 for a possible case of confusion in LdR's observations. ===== NGC 2246 is a brighter patch of nebulosity in the eastern side of the Rosette first seen by Swift in 1886; see NGC 2237 and NGC 2239 for more on the discovery of this remarkable object. ===== NGC 2247. Yann Pothier has pointed out in an email of 18 April 2016 that this has been credited, perhaps incorrectly, to LdR based on an observation by R.J. Mitchell on 14 February 1857: "* np easily seen. vvF diffused neby, about 1' or 1 1/2' n of the recognized nebula?" The main object here is NGC 2245 -- Mitchell's description exactly matches that nebula and its fainter extension to the northeast. If Dreyer's attribution of the discovery of NGC 2247 to LdR rests on this observation, it is wrong as the second NGC object is about 11 arcminutes northeast rather than 1-1.5 arcminutes that Mitchell wrote. On the other hand, Dreyer may possibly also be referring to the 28 February 1850 observation by Johnstone Stoney. In this, Stoney tells us that "... This neb is part of an enormous neby which I traced f and n to a great dist some degrees. ..." This is obviously not an explicit statement of the existence of NGC 2247, but Stoney must have at least seen the involved star -- it is the brightest one northeast of NGC 2245 where he was looking. Since the nebula around that star was visible to Swift (his description reads, "Nebulous *; v diff; B * exactly in center of L eF nebulosity; f [GC] 1425 [NGC 2245] 28s and is 10' n. Resembles [GC] 4634 [NGC 7023, which see] in Cepheus, but is fainter."), it would almost certainly have been visible to Stoney using a much larger telescope. Without knowing exactly which 72-inch observation Dreyer was referring to, it is difficult to know whether to strike out or retain the "LdR" attribution in the NGC. What is without doubt is that Swift clearly picked up NGC 2247 in November of 1883. ===== NGC 2248. This asterism of nine stars was recorded in the Markree Catalogue where it remained essentially unnoticed until Auwers reobserved it in the late 1850s. He included it in his 1862 list of nebulae and clusters found by observers other than the Herschels, and JH picked it up there for the GC. The original position is good. ===== NGC 2250 is placed 1 minute of time too far west in RNGC and in the Alter and Ruprecht star cluster catalogue. JH recorded as the position that of the 8th magnitude star we now call SAO 133414, though that is on the eastern side of the cluster. I now (February 2014) make the approximate center is about five arcminutes west-southwest of that star, based on JH's full description: "Place of a *8.9 m in foll[owing] part of a L p rich loose cl; irreg oblong fig; sts 12 ... 14 m." I've taken the western edge of the cluster to be the star at 06 30 34.0, -05 03 19. If only stars closer to JH's bright star are considered, then the position will move back east a bit. ===== NGC 2253 may be the elongated (southwest to northeast) group of ten stars that I've listed in the table. There is nothing at W. Herschel's position (06 36.9 +65 54, 1950), nor is there much to suggest a systematic error in the positions of the other objects found that night (NGC 2347 = III 746, though see this for some confusion; and NGC 2403 = V 44). Herschel's description -- "A vF patch or S cl of eS st(ars)" -- as well as the fact that he included this object in his class VII (number 54) suggests that we should be looking for a small, tight group of faint stars. Alister Ling found such a group about 34 arcmin north of WH's position. Brent Archinal and Steve Hynds have this included as a possible identity as NGC 2253 in "Star Clusters", and Brent discusses Alister's observation at greater length in "Non-Existent Star Clusters". Recently (March 2007), Bob Jardine, using a 12.5-inch reflector, looked at Alister's object, and found that its eyepiece appearance matched WH's description very well. Based on that, I've adopted this as the probable identification of WH's object. This would make his declination about half a degree off, not an unusual error for him to make. There is another scattered group of 10 or 15 stars of magnitudes 14 to 16 at 06 37.4 +66 22 (1950), closer still to being half a degree off, but I would not call it a "patch" -- it is too scattered. Some have suggested that Herschel's description might just fit UGC 3511 (06 38 45.8 +65 15 22, 1950), a rather patchy late-type spiral galaxy, but the position is off by random amounts in both coordinates, and the patchiness probably much too faint to register as such in a telescope the size of WH's. Similarly, the CGCG object at 06 38.2 +65 43 (1950) is probably also not WH's object. ----- I've had occasion to look at this again in February 2018 after Courtney Seligman sent me copies of his and Donald Pelletier's correspondence about it. In particular, I looked again at CH's "fair copy" of the original observation, and found that it is not quite identical with the PT entry: Fair copy: A vF patch of eS stars. Phil. Trans: A vF patch or S Cl of eS sts. NGC: vF, sts eS The original description makes it almost certain that this cannot be one of the galaxies in the area. If WH could see stars, even very faint ones, in the object, then any of the faint galaxies around his position can be ruled out. My original notes pick up again here, very slightly modified. ----- Finally, Steve Gottlieb looked at this field in March 2014. Here are his notes: The surrounding field was examined at 125x (49' field of view) and the only object that caught my attention was a 4' string containing a dozen mag 13-14 stars oriented SW-NE. In addition, a larger group of mag 14 stars is just south (though detached), with the total size of both groups roughly 10'. This asterism is penned in by some brighter stars: mag 9.6 star (SAO 13933) is just north of the group, mag 7.7 HD 47522 is southeast and mag 7.2 HD 47215 is roughly 10' S. Checking a 1/2 degree field centered on the northern clump of stars -- Steve's four-arcmin string -- the DSS2R image easily shows the larger grouping to the south. I was impressed with the appearance of a "cluster" that both groups made together, and have included it in the position table. This may not be a real cluster, and it is certainly well off WH's position, but it looks like a very good candidate for NGC 2253. ===== NGC 2254. The NGC RA for this cluster is 10 seconds of time too far west. While that may be an error in reduction of WH's or JH's observations, it could also simply be a statistical fluke. ===== NGC 2260. WH calls this "A cl of v sc sts of various sizes, above 1/2 degree in extent." The GC and NGC adopted JH's position for the brightest star on the northern edge of the cluster, HD 47362. JH's description is "Very coarse, v poor, v straggling; the chief * 8 taken." I make the center of the cluster about six arcmin south of JH's star. While the cluster is apparently pretty large, I don't see that it can reach WH's 30+ arcmin estimate. Nevertheless, I think it might be a nice object in a small telescope. ===== NGC 2261 is often called "Hubble's Variable Nebula" as its variability was indeed first noticed by Hubble during his years at Yerkes Observatory. The nebula was discovered, though, by WH in 1783, and is the second of his new class of "planetary" nebulae. We know now that the nebulosity is actually enveloping a very young double star system, R Monocerotis. The star's variability was first noted by Schmidt (AN 55, 91, 1861). The variability of the nebula is probably the result of circumstellar clouds close to the stars casting shadows on the surrounding nebulosity. NGC 1554/5 (which see) around T Tauri is another example. ===== NGC 2265 appears to be no more than a random grouping of stars. On the POSS, it is an elongated group of 12th to 14th magnitude stars about 10 x 5 arcmin in size, centered about three arcmin southwest of JH's position. ===== NGC 2269. JH's entry in his 1833 northern catalogue reads 404 VI.3 6 34 56+- 85 16 3 Close cl of v small sts; poor; twilight; preceded by a coarse cl of large ones. The cluster is about 10 arcminutes northwest of his position. His father's position is about the same distance off the cluster, though is southwest of JH's. I was curious, though, about JH's comment "preceded by a coarse cl of large [stars]." There is indeed a clump of about a dozen stars west of the small compact cluster seen by the Herschels. I think it is simply a collection of field stars, but give a position and diameters for it in the position table. ===== NGC 2270. Found by WH who called it "A cluster of very scattered stars, considerably rich and of very great extent," this appears on the POSS as an irregularly scattered grouping of about 50 stars centered about 2 arcmin north of the NGC position. About 12 arcmin north and 4 arcmin east is another similar group of stars, though generally fainter. Could this second group be the reason WH noted the "very great extent" of the object? ===== NGC 2274 and NGC 2275. The UGC and MCG identifications of this close pair are opposite one another. This has happened in at least two other cases: NGC 980 and 982 where there is indeed an error in the NGC declination for one object, and NGC 5216 and 5218 where there is only a small error in John Herschel's 1833 list and the reversal of the identifications in MCG. The NGC, however, is correct in this second case (see the discussions of these objects for the details). In the case of N2274 and N2275, there is indeed an error in the NGC, but it is such a trivial one that I doubt that it led to the MCG reversal (it is indeed MCG that is incorrect here): the numbers from William Herschel's catalogue are reversed. JH got them right in his 1833 catalogue (and the GC) when he listed them under h406 = H II 614 and h407 = H II 615. Dreyer, too, got them right when he republished William's Scientific Papers in 1912, but did not mention the earlier mistake in his errata list of that year. In the end, it is clear that NGC 2274 is the southern and very slightly preceding of the two. The MCG identifications should be switched. ===== NGC 2275. See NGC 2274. ===== NGC 2277 is an asterism of five faint stars. It was found by d'A as he reobserved the interesting area containing NGC 2274, 2275, and the NGC 2290 group. Apparently observing on a night of poor seeing (20 April 1865, described by him as "Aura pellucida" -- "Transparent sky" which tells us nothing about the seeing) or anxious to increase the number of nebulae in the area, he also found three other asterisms here (NGC 2278, 2284, and 2285, which see). ===== NGC 2278 is a double star found by d'A. Bigourdan reobserved it, and found a companion asterism nearby, NGC 2279 (which see). See also NGC 2277. ===== NGC 2279 is a triple star (one star is very faint) found by Bigourdan while he was measuring the previously discovered nebulae and asterisms in the area. See NGC 2277 for more. ===== NGC 2281. The NGC position, from CH's reduction of WH's single observation, is just one minute of time too large. The published offsets agree with the sweep and give the same result. There is no mathematical error, so the fault must be in the record of the observation itself. Whatever happened, there is no problem with the identification of the cluster. ===== NGC 2282 = IC 2172, which see. ===== NGC 2283 may also be IC 2171, which see. ===== NGC 2284 may be an asterism, perhaps comprised of the four stars noted in the table, but it could be the triple 2 arcminutes southeast. There is nothing obvious at all around d'A's position, and his descriptions are not very helpful, either. In his big monograph, he says only, "Neb admodum delicata. Dissolvitur (amplificatio = 148). Alia subinde, septentrionem versus; enumerantur primum cum nonnullis aliis in Actis Astronom. [AN] num 1537." Roughly translated, this reads, "Nebula is faint. Another [one?], towards the north; [these] are listed for the first time with a few others in AN 1537." Checking the AN paper, we find the same position and the summary description "vF. vS. Resolv. pow. 148." D'A has seven new objects listed here; I presume that the one to the north is NGC 2285 (which see). However, unlike N2285 -- which has a star close to d'A's position -- this entry has no corresponding stars or nebulae nearby. Finally, I note that d'A found it on the same night as he found NGC 2277 and NGC 2285 (both of which see) in the area between the NGC 2274 group and the NGC 2290 group. Some of his positions here are pretty good, others are not. I'll do some more work on the area to try to sort it out. LdR and Bigourdan went over it, too, before the NGC was published. Dreyer is not sure about two objects here that WH found. JH apparently saw only the nebulae found by his father. ===== NGC 2285. d'A's position, from a single observation on the same night during which he also found NGC 2277 and NGC 2284 (both of which see), is nearly coincident with a single faint star. While I previously fingered the double star about 1.5 arcminutes northeast as his object, this single star is a bit brighter, and should be more obvious at the eyepiece. Being so much closer to d'A's position, I think that it is more likely to be his object. I've put it into the table with a colon, and have downgraded the faint double to a questionable identification. One curious aspect to the field is the pretty bright double star just 12 seconds following d'A's position. He does not mention this in his description; the double is bright enough that I'm surprised at his not noting it. He only says (my translation using Google Translate), "Very faint, very small, not quite distinctly seen. Whether a cluster or a nebula, I cannot say for certain; in no way clearly resolved." D'A first announced this along with six other "new" nebulae in the area in AN 1537; there he describes this as "vF. vS. Resolv.?" ===== NGC 2290 is the brightest of a group of galaxies. There are several asterisms in the area, too (see e.g. NGC 2277, 2278, 2284, and 2285). ===== NGC 2296 = IC 452, which see. This, by the way, is a Galactic diffuse nebula with an involved star, not a galaxy. ===== NGC 2299 is the same cluster as NGC 2302. JH saw the cluster we now call N2299 only once, and noted its position as uncertain in both coordinates. There is nothing at all at his position resembling his description, which reads, "A coarse cluster, not very rich; 30 or 40 stars; probably only an outlying portion of VIII 39 [NGC 2302]". Aside from the final phrase, this could easily match NGC 2302. Clinching the identity is the offset from the position for NGC 2302: about 50 seconds of time and 7 arcmin, nearly the same as NGC 2338 (which see), found in the same sweep on 19 January 1828. His three accordant observations of NGC 2302 are all in other sweeps. Had the two clusters been seen on the same night, I would not have entertained thoughts about equating the objects. As is, however, I think it's certain that the two numbers refer to the same cluster. ===== NGC 2302 probably = NGC 2299, which see. ===== NGC 2306 is probably a rich portion of the Milky Way. Neither WH nor JH seemed mightily impressed with it. JH in particular thought it simply a concentration of stars rather than a true cluster. Examining the POSS1, I thought it might be identical to NGC 2309 which is 1.5 minutes of time to the east. However, JH saw both objects in the same three sweeps: his concurrent observations rule out an equality. The "object" I've chosen as N2306 appears on the POSS1 as an elongated cloud of stars, magnitudes 10-13, roughly 20 arcmin by 10 arcmin, with the long axis in position angle 70 deg. The position in the table is just an arcmin southwest of JH's position, adopted for GC and NGC. ===== NGC 2316 and NGC 2317. This was seen by both WH and JH, but neither noted it as a double nebula. That was left to LdR (or his observer at the time, Bindon Stoney) on 20 Feb 1851, who described this as a "S close D neb below [that is, north of] 3 sts, 2 stellar points (or nuclei?)". He has left us a reasonably good sketch (nicely reproduced in the 1861 monograph) that matches the sky reasonably well. The double "nuclei" are best seen on the POSS red and blue images, and it is from those that I estimated the positions. The positions I've adopted from the 2MASS PSC are probably for these same knots. ===== NGC 2317. See NGC 2316. ===== NGC 2318. WH makes the diameter of this scattered group 20 arcminutes. The best I can do with the DSS images is 16-17 arcmin, probably close enough. JH was not much impressed with this object, nor am I. I'm not convinced that it is a cluster, but I've adopted Brian's position for the bright star near the center. ===== NGC 2319. This object has a curious history. Before I get into that, however, I should say that I've finally assigned the number to h 423 which JH describes as a "Linear cluster of stars, forming a bent line nearly 15 arcmin long, terminated on the following side by a star 8 ..." He calls the cluster "VIII 1," though it is not (more below). The position I've assigned (06 57 55, +03 06.8; 1950) is for the mid-point of the chain, rather than that of JH's 8th magnitude star (he gives 06 58 31, +03 07.9 -- also 1950 -- less than an arcmin from the true position), so the RA is well off JH's, though the object is clearly the one that he saw. For the GC, he used his own position for the object rather than his father's (for reasons apparent below), and Dreyer did the same for NGC. This leads us unambiguously to JH's "bent line" as NGC 2319. Curiously and perhaps unfortunately, both JH in GC and Dreyer in NGC also assigned an unusual WH number to the object: VIII 1B. There is no VIII 1A, and VIII 1B turns out to have nothing to do with VIII 1 (which is NGC 2509) except that it follows the first entry chronologically in WH's list of scattered clusters. So, to the history. Dreyer has a short note in the NGC, beginning with JH's note in the GC: "Entered by CH as VIII 1B, with a remark `not in print.' -- JH." Dreyer continues, "It must be a very poor cluster; at any rate, Auwers could not find anything like a cluster in this place." Dreyer inserts VIII 1B in his 1912 edition of WH's first catalogue with an extensive note giving some of the details of WH's Sweep 48 on 18 December 1783. In short, WH's observation puts the cluster around 1950.0 RA = 06 45.3, and between +02 06 and +03 21. He describes it as "A cluster of very small stars, not rich." This is obviously too far off JH's position to be the same object, so I am wondering how JH arrived at the identity. In any case, there is no obvious cluster matching both WH's position and his description. Two objects partially match, however: Collinder 115 (at 06 44 03, +01 49.4 for 1950) matches the description, but is well off in position. A scattered group of 9th to 12th magnitude stars at 06 44 52, +03 08.0 comes closer to the position, but the stars -- particularly the 9th magnitude star near the center -- are too bright to appear "very small" to WH. I see nothing else that could be WH's cluster. In the end, H VIII 1B remains a footnote, unidentified and probably unidentifiable (though a careful scrutiny of the Herschel Archive might turn up more information than Dreyer found -- but that's unlikely in my opinion). Its connection with NGC 2319 is a mistake by JH and Dreyer, and it has no other NGC number. ===== NGC 2323 (M 50) has an apparent core-halo structure on the sky survey prints/ films and DSS. The overall diameter is roughly 30 arcmin by 25 arcmin, with the core being just 10.5 by 8.0 arcmin. Most previous catalogues put the diameter at about 15 arcmin, but I have no idea now whether that is just an eyeball estimate, or is based on photometric and proper motion studies. The diameters I measured are obviously just estimates. I also put the position slightly southeast of Brian Skiff's or the one from him adopted by Brent Archinal and Steve Hynes in "Star Clusters". The core- halo structure is well-shown in the DSS image reproduced in "Star Clusters" as Figure 4.70. ===== NGC 2326. This was originally found by William Herschel who describes it as "F, pL, iF, mbM. South-following a triangle of small [faint] stars." JH looked at it a quarter of a century later and noted: "eF, R, pslbM; has a small group of stars immediately preceding like the letter Y." The J2000.0 position from the Bologna group is 07 08 11.1, +50 40 53 which is in the right direction from the NGC 2000.0 position to agree with the position measured by Glen Deen in the course of his work on MicroSky. The group of stars just west, shaped like the letter Y, clinches the identification, even if the NGC position (from the Herschels) is not too good. ===== NGC 2327 is a compact HII region, or part of one, in the large, sinuous nebula found by Max Wolf south of IC 2177, which see. ===== NGC 2329. Wolfgang has recently (2012) found that this galaxy is not H III 875 as suggested by Dreyer, though it does retain the number H II 735 (seen in two sweeps). H III 875 is instead UGC 3696, not included in the NGC. WH saw it in only the second of his sweeps over this field. ===== NGC 2330 and NGC 2334. Malcolm has not been happy with my assignments of NGC 2330 and NGC 2334 to IC 457 and IC 465. After going over all of the extant historical evidence once again, I'm not happy, either. But I'm not sure what to do about it. Here's the story. WH swept over this field twice, finding -- so he thought -- two nebulae, II 736 (on 9 Feb 1788) and II 862 (on 28 Dec 1790). His positions reduce to 07 07 21, +50 14.2 and 07 07 03, +50 14.4 (both for B1950.0). Since NGC 2332 is well over a minute of time preceding either of these, I think that both observations refer to NGC 2340. That galaxy is, in any case, the brightest in the group. WH's descriptions are consistent with his observations refering to the same galaxy. When JH swept up the field about 35 years later, he picked up NGC 2340 twice and NGC 2332 once. His positions and descriptions match the two galaxies well, so there is no reason to doubt that he actually did see both. After another 25 year gap, Lord Rosse turned his 72-inch "Leviathan" on the field. Unfortunately, the three sketches he made during his first two observations in January of 1851 did not appear in his 1861 monograph. He had only a short note under his entry for h 430, "Several knots around; 430 is E np, sf" (the directions should read "sp, nf"). So, when JH assembled the GC, he had only this scanty note on which to base the entry for GC 1492. Consequently, the position for GC 1492 is very rough (06 58+-, 39 36+-; RA and NPD for 1860), and the description reads only "Several near h 430 (?426, 433, & 1 nov[a])." When Dreyer was preparing LdR's observations for publication, he transcribed the details missing from the 1861 monograph, giving us the first two night's notes and sketches. Unfortunately, the arrows in the sketches are pointing in the wrong directions, and (as I noted) north and south are reversed in the notes for the first night's observations of NGC 2332 = h 430. I think that the first two sketches must come from only the first night: one shows NGC 2332 and a new nebula, with the second showing NGC 2340 and another nova. I also think that these are the objects which Dreyer intended to include in the NGC. This is the reason that I earlier adopted the NGC numbers 2330 and 2334 for them, in spite of the large differences in position from the NGC positions (from Bigourdan's observations; more on these below). The notes for LdR's second night refer to five novae, as well as the two known objects. A third sketch -- apparently from that night -- shows a total of nine nebulae. A third observation in 1863 refers to only six of these, with Dreyer adding the comment, "Zeta, iota, and theta not noticed this night." This is understandable as LdR says "A fog prevented these being well seen." In any event, Dreyer clearly had evidence for nine nebulae in the field, yet chose to include NGC numbers for only four. Perhaps he did this because he thought he had good positions for only those four -- two from JH via the GC, and two from Bigourdan (more on Bigourdan's observations just below) for two of the "novae." However, given the confusion of the directions in the sketches and the observing notes, Dreyer was unable to sort out the field satisfactorily. So, he put question marks on LdR's initials under the numbers 2330 and 2334, adopting Bigourdan's positions published in his (Bigourdan's) first list. Dreyer could have inserted numbers for the remaining five nebulae, trusting to future observers to provide good positions, but unfortunately, did not. It is here that Bigourdan's complete observations could have provided positions for most of LdR's novae, had he (Bigourdan) chosen to publish them before the NGC appeared. For, on two nights in November of 1885, Bigourdan measured eight novae of his own, including six real nebulae, in addition to the two known nebulae. Unfortunately, he chose to publish only two of his novae. By startlingly bad luck, the two he did publish are stars. The six real galaxies remain buried in his massive tables of observational details and did not appear until 1907 in the Observations of Paris Observatory. Consequently, Dreyer put the two stars, with Bigourdan's positions and descriptions, into the NGC. While his clear intent was to include two of LdR's nebulae, he just as clearly -- with Bigourdan's unknowing assistance -- botched the job. So, what do we do with the two errant NGC numbers? If we assign them to the stars which Bigourdan's positions and descriptions point at, we do Dreyer's intentions (and JH's in the GC as well) a disservice. If, on the other hand, we assign them to the two novae that LdR found in 1851 (IC 457 and IC 465), then we incur Malcolm's wrath and my own furrowed brow. My solution is to adopt both options with lots of question marks, knowing full well that neither is satisfactory. Dreyer has simply not left us enough information to make any clear choice. As a footnote, I should mention that Heinrich Kobold also stumbled across this problem in 1893. He published a short note in AN 3184 with good positions for NGC 2332, 2340, and nine other nebulae which he assumed included those found by Lord Rosse. However, he could not find Bigourdan's two published novae (the ones with NGC numbers), understandable since those are stars. Dreyer put all of Kobold's novae into the first IC, and included a note reporting Kobold's negative observations of the two NGC numbers. Finally, a footnote to the footnote: Kobold published his complete observations in the Strassburg Annalen in 1909. There, he has two observations of IC 459, but has reversed the signs on the offsets for one of them. He apparently discovered this before he published his short announcement in AN, so he did not publish a non-existent object (one object, IC 462, is a star, however). Since his monograph was published long after the observations, and long after he found the error, it's puzzling that he should let the mistake stand. The fact that the wrong signs are not just typos is shown by his including the second observation as if it were for another object. Also, his summary list of reduced positions includes only the IC objects (with the correct number of observations for each), so the decision to publish the incorrect observations is doubly puzzling. I certainly wouldn't have done it that way! ===== NGC 2331 is a large, scattered cluster of pretty bright stars. There is a concentration of several stars on the southeast edge that attracted JH's attention enough that he took it as the position for the whole object. Thus, the position in the main table is about 8 arcmin northwest of the NGC place, copied directly from GC and JH. A curious footnote to this object is in the "Other Observers" column in the NGC: "Flamsteed." I do not know yet why Dreyer credited Flamsteed with the discovery -- there is no mention of the object in Kenneth Glyn Jones's fine book, "The Search for the Nebulae." According to Glyn Jones, Flamsteed did find several other objects in the area, including M 41 and NGC 2244. But this cluster is missing from his catalogue and atlas. ===== NGC 2332. See NGC 2330. ===== NGC 2334. See NGC 2330. ===== NGC 2338 is the cluster about 50 seconds following and 5.5 arcmin south of JH's place, which he marked uncertain in both coordinates. It's worth noting that he also marked the position for NGC 2299 (which see) uncertain, and that he found it in the same sweep as N2338. In addition, the offsets from the correct position are about the same in both cases. This confirms the identities of both clusters. Brian Skiff and I independently found the cluster in the table looking for N2338; it matches JH's description "Very loose and straggling cluster" pretty well, is as good a candidate as any in the area, and -- given the position offsets -- better than most. ===== NGC 2340. See NGC 2330. ===== NGC 2343. See NGC 2351. ===== NGC 2347 and IC 2179. On 1 Nov 1788, William Herschel found a "vF, S, R, lbM" nebula 01h 04m 05s following, 48' south of 36 Camelopardalis (the observation is from Dreyer's 1912 collection of Herschel's papers). This position reduces to 07 16 09, +64 46 (J2000) using the Hipparcos position of 36 Cam (with a proper motion correction, too, though that changes the position by only about 7 arcsec between 1788 and 2000). The GC/NGC position precesses to 07 16 20, +64 48. Since no other reference for the position is given, I suspect that it comes from a preliminary reduction by CH using an older position for the star. Her position in her fair copy of WH's sweeps precesses to 07 16 19, +64 47. Finally, Arthur Auwers's reduction of WH's positions put the object at 07 16 09, +64 46 (my thanks to Steve Gottlieb for reminding me about Auwers's list -- "It takes a village"). All of these positions fall about 3-6 arcmin north-following a 13th magnitude spiral galaxy (at 07 16 04.1, +64 42 41) which is usually taken as NGC 2347. However, 9 arcmin south-preceding the NGC position is a smaller, but equally bright -- therefore, higher surface brightness -- S0 galaxy. This was found by Bigourdan while he was searching the area of N2347, and is in IC2 as IC 2179. The IC position is within 2 arcmin of the correct position (07 15 32.3, +64 55 34). Could this be the object that WH saw? Bigourdan apparently thought so, since he assigned the number "NGC 2347" to his observations of this smaller galaxy. However, he lists SA0 14129 as his comparison star. Using the 2000 position for this, we find a position for the galaxy of 07 16 15.1, +64 46 53, quite close to the NGC position for N2347. This certainly explains Bigourdan's choice of this object for N2347. If we look at this position on the sky, however, we find nothing at all. But applying Bigourdan's offsets to the position for BD +65 560 = GSC 4119-00435 (a star about a magnitude fainter, but still bright), we land exactly on IC 2179. But Bigourdan's observations, referred to SAO 14129, of what he calls "IC 2179," point exactly to the spiral usually called N2347. Thus, it's clear that not only has Bigourdan misidentified his comparison star for I2179, he has also switched the two catalogue numbers. So where did the correct IC position come from? Bigourdan published his "new" nebulae in several short lists in Comptes Rendus; these were Dreyer's primary souce for Bigourdan's positions. Indeed the position in Bigourdan's CR 123, 1243, 1896 is the IC position. Curiously, in his collected lists of "novae" in the introduction to his observations, Bigourdan prints the incorrect position given in the observations themselves, though does call it IC 2179. I have not yet found why he discarded his previously published position. In any event, the identifications are clear if we ignore Bigourdan's mistaken identifications for his comparison stars. NGC 2347 is the south-following spiral, and IC 2179 is the north-preceding lenticular. See also some additional discussion under IC 2179. ===== NGC 2349. This cluster was found by CH in 1783, and later catalogued by WH as VII 27. Their object, centered near 07 08 24, -08 30.6 (less than 30 arcsec from where they put it), is easily identified by the "extending branch towards the south-preceding." JH, however, called it a "poor straggling cluster," and took its position as that of a double star some 50 seconds west of the object observed by his father and his aunt. He adopted this position for GC, and Dreyer followed suit for the NGC. He must not have seen the same cluster as his father and aunt, however -- the positions and descriptions disagree too much. ===== NGC 2351. There is nothing in JH's position, but one degree north is a group of three bright and several faint stars that could be the object he saw. In particular, JH says "A loose straggling cl. Place of a D *." There is no double star within 15 arcmin of his nominal position, but in the group of stars to the north, there is one. And just to complicate the possibilities further, I've noticed a "loose straggling cl" with a double star in it just about 40 seconds of time preceding JH's position. I've included both of these in the table. Other possibilities: this object may be a duplicated observation of NGC 2343 or NGC 2353, though neither one has a position with an obvious digit change that might point to NGC 2351. ----- The data in the sweep are interesting. This cluster is the first object in the sweep, and it is followed by a star at nearly the same NPD. The degrees in the recorded NPD for the star is flagged with an "(a)" which leads to a footnote, "An obvious mistake of 1[degree]". Assuming that the same correction applies to the cluster -- observed just 2 minutes and 10 seconds earlier -- the NPD for 1830 becomes "100 12 14" rather than the recorded "101 12 14". This clearly identifies JH's double star and the cluster in which he found it. I've left the "companion cluster" in the position table for reference. ===== NGC 2352. WH found this cluster on the night of 6 March 1785 and noted it as "A small cluster of pretty compressed stars, not very rich". While there is nothing at his position matching this description, such a concentration is just 40 seconds of time west at the same declination. The match is good enough that I'm going to take this as WH's object. Andris Lauberts, who first noticed the clump of 15-20 stars, is not so sure it is a cluster. In ESO-B, he calls it merely a concentration of stars. Either way, it is a fair match to WH's observation. There are, by the way, no other candidates at other obvious digit errors in the position. ===== NGC 2353. See NGC 2351. ===== NGC 2354. Like many of the clusters that the Herschel's found, this one is relatively large and "straggling" to use one of JH's favorite words. He notes this as a "Loose straggling cl; the p part is rather separated from the f, and more compressed. Place that of 3 sts in the f part." I see the two parts clearly on the DSS, and make the entire thing about 16 arcmin in diameter. I put the center of the cluster about 4 arcmin northwest of JH's position (where I see only two stars, not three). ===== NGC 2355. See NGC 2356. ===== NGC 2356 is most likely NGC 2355 with a 10-12 arcmin error in declination. There is no other group of stars in the area that fits WH's description "A pretty rich and compressed cluster of stars" as well. JH did not see NGC 2356, but found NGC 2355 easily. Note, too, that WH's position for N2355 is about 1m 40s too far west; here is what Dreyer has to say in his 1912 edition of WH's catalogues: "H's R.A. is 1m 40s too small, but on the 'register sheet' it is stated that the star was not well taken. Transits both of the cluster and star only given to whole minutes. The Journal adds after the star: 'Windy, and liable to some small uncertainty on that account, especially in the P.D.'" ===== NGC 2358. Seen only once by WH, this may be the large (20 arcmin by 15 arcmin) scattering of stars around 07 14 42, -17 01.6. Alternatively, it could be the richest part of this group, on to the southeast at 07 14 59, -17 04.2, though this is further from WH's position. Since we don't have much to go on here, I've taken the former position for the larger group as the most likely. ===== NGC 2359. JH's description and sketch from his Cape Observations is very appropriate for this large object: A very singular nebula, much like the profile of a bust (head, neck, and shoulders) or a silhouette portrait; very large, pretty well-defined, light nearly uniform, about 12' diameter. In a crowded field of Milky Way stars, many of which are projected on it. See figure 4, Plate IV [in CGH]. However, his position is 1 minute of time too far west. WH's RA is OK, but his Dec is too far north by about 7 arcmin, roughly the size of the nebula. Both JH and Dreyer, of course, trusted JH's CGH positions, so the GC and NGC are correct in Dec but off in RA. Neither catalogue has a note about the one minute of time difference, so it was left to Herbert Howe to rediscover the error. He mentioned it twice in his Monthly Notices papers (58, 515, 1898 and 61, 29, 1900), bringing it to Dreyer's attention. Dreyer finally corrects the RA in a note in IC2, mentioning there that WH's RA is good. Howe also has some speculation about the relationship of NGC 2361 (which see) to NGC 2359 based on the one minute of time error. This may indeed, as Howe suggests, have played a role in Bigourdan's observations, but Howe's remarks led Dreyer to suggest that 2361 may be identical to H V 21, which it is not. What Dreyer apparently had in mind was that h 3075 and H V 21 are different objects, but they are, in fact, one and the same. ----- This nebula has gained some popularity in recent years as "Thor's Helmet" for it's resemblence to the helmet worn by the Viking god. It is, in fact, the result of the strong stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star at its center, HD 56925; and of the previous expulsion of the outer layers of the star into interstellar space. There are several other such nebulae within reach of small telescopes; see Steve Gottlieb's illuminating article in Sky & Telescope (August 2019; S&T 138, No. 2, p. 28). Other similar objects are NGC 2020 in the LMC, NGC 3199, and NGC 6888; as well as other fainter objects. ===== NGC 2361. Bigourdan did not have much luck with NGC 2359. He only saw it well on one night (out of three attempts) with his long-focus refractor. The only part of it suitable for micrometric measuring that he did see turned out to be the knot that we now know as NGC 2361. Another "nebula" in the area that he found, IC 468 (which see), is a triple star. ===== NGC 2363 and NGC 2366. Well, folks, it's bad news for those of us who have always identified NGC 2363 as the giant HII region in the low surface brightness irregular galaxy NGC 2366. WH's original description clearly refers to the HII region as the principal object with the bit of fuzz to the north as an incidental appendage. This view was further solidified by Ralph Copeland, observing with Lord Rosse's 72-inch reflector. Copeland identified the HII region as the center of an greatly extended object, stretching 9 or 10 arcmin to the northeast. He lists micrometric measurements of seven different objects in the surrounding area, and all are clearly referred to the HII region. Here is a list of his measurements, along with mine (made from the POSS1 blue print): Copeland Corwin Note Object P.A. Dist. P.A. Dist. * 9.5 6.3 214.9 7.5 211 * 10 337.9 191.9 335 193 * 10 340.8 235.8 339 236 * 8 351.0 396.6 351.5 400 Dif neb 265.9 71.4 274 70.5 Copeland quadrant error? Neb * 318.0 77.6 318 75.2 Star sup on F ext of galaxy "Tail" 30.9 [9-10min] 31 8min+- Main body of the galaxy So, the historical record is unmistakeable: NGC 2366 is the HII region. We can, of course, also include the rest of the galaxy under this number, since it was certainly seen. For the sake of the modern catalogues, this is also certainly the best thing to do. But what then is NGC 2363? One of Copeland's micrometric measures above -- for the "Diffused nebulosity preceding" -- is the one that Dreyer put into the NGC with the note "III 748 s[outh] f[ollowing]." This, combined with Copeland's measurement which Dreyer used, clearly points to the smaller object that we now call UGC 3847 = MCG +12-07-039 (N2366 is U3851) -- it is NGC 2363, not the HII region. I have usually taken this object to be a detached star cloud of N2366, but Steve Odewahn has shown through his detailed study of the velocity fields of the objects that it is indeed a separate galaxy interacting with N2366. So, we have two galaxies here, along with two NGC numbers clearly attached to each one. We shall just have to get used to calling the HII region "Markarian 71" (or one of its other names) since it is not N2363 as we've thought all these years. There is still one other nebulous object seen by Copeland in the area. This is the "Nebulous star or nebulous knot" which is listed in the table above. Why didn't Dreyer include it in the NGC, too? Other objects with just that sort of description were included. While this is an unanswerable question, it's possible that Dreyer had access to other notes that were not published. Or, since he and Copeland were colleagues at the time, the two of them may well have decided that the object was a star. The object is indeed a star superposed on a faint extension of NGC 2363. There may also be a distant background galaxy adding to the appearance of nebulosity -- see the lovely 200-inch photographs in the Revised Shapley Ames Catalogue (page 113) and in the Carnegie Atlas (Panel 327). ===== NGC 2366. See NGC 2363. ===== NGC 2364 is a curious object, probably a simple asterism of unrelated stars. It is composed of two n-s lines of half a dozen stars each, with a void between the lines. The two star streams are slightly tilted with respect to each other, and there is another star at the apparent apex to the north. There is a straggling line of similarly bright stars running east just to the south of the eastern stream. There is no question about the identification as JH's position and description are perfect for the object. Most of the stars may be bright enough that we can check their proper motions, too, in Tycho-2 or in UCACS. That is left as an exercise for the curious. Curiously, RNGC has this as "Not found" even though it is very clear on the DSS and, presumeably, the Palomar Sky Survey prints. I noted the NGC position and description correct when I scanned through for SEGC in the mid-80s, and Brian Skiff says "*ism, but real object". ===== NGC 2374 may be two clusters seen along the line of sight. A small, relatively compact cluster of fainter stars is at the southwestern edge of a larger scattered group that drew the attention of the Herschel's. WH called it 20 arcmin long, but I can only reliably come up with about 13 arcmin. Other field stars push it to well beyond 20 arcmin, so this may just the "core" of WH's cluster. JH called it "... a great sc cl or rather region, more crowded with stars than the rest of the milky way [sic] ..." We will need proper motion studies to learn if either or both of these clumps is a true cluster. ===== NGC 2378 is a double star precisely identified by Stephan's micrometric position, and his description, "Two stars, very faint and very close which, occasionally seem to be enveloped in a nearly imperceptible nebulosity." ===== NGC 2380 = NGC 2382, which see. ===== NGC 2382 = NGC 2380. JH found this nebula in two different sweeps just four days apart (1 and 5 February 1837), but catalogued it as two different objects. Dreyer called attention to JH's approximate position for N2382 in the IC2 notes where he also gave Howe's micrometric position for the galaxy. Curiously, neither noted the identity with N2380, though Howe had mentioned in an earlier Monthly Notices article (Vol. 58, p. 515, 1898) the relative ease with which he saw that object. It was there that he also noted unsuccessful searches on two nights for N2382. In his second note about the galaxy two years later (MN 61, 29, 1900), Howe notes the declination error of 10 arcmin, and the RA error of 18 seconds. But it was left to Andris and me to note the equality of the two NGC numbers in the 1980s when we published our southern catalogues. Finally, I should note that JH has a correction on the errata page of his CGH volume to the RA minutes of NGC 2380 where it appears there as h3079. ===== NGC 2383. JH's second observation of the cluster on 31 Jan 1837 gives an RA 10 seconds larger, and an NPD 5 arcminutes further north. He notes the NPD difference, but not the RA. The cluster itself is unmistakeable on the sky, so there is no difficulty with the identification. ===== NGC 2386 is a triple star near NGC 2388 and NGC 2389. Like many other asterisms found by Lord Rosse and his observers, it was taken to be part of a group of nebulae, probably on a night of poor seeing. ===== NGC 2387 is probably a double star. For decades, we have taken it as the faint spiral seen by Dreyer with LdR's Leviathan, CGCG 177-023 = CGCG 0725.6+3658. The galaxy, however, is over 8 arcmin north of the NGC position. I finally became suspicious of this in February 2014 looking at WH's description "pB, S, stellar" -- this clearly does not match the faint galaxy. Reducing WH's position from his offsets (7m 22s following, 0d 01' north of 65 Aurigae) revealed an error in the NGC RA of over 15 seconds of time (about 3.5 arcmin), and put WH's position within 1.5 arcmin of a double star. This is considerably brighter than the faint galaxy, and generally fits his description much better. The double star may well be the object WH saw on 10 March 1790. It's worth noting that WH has this comment in his observation: "The wind too high to verify it." Poor seeing often accompanies high winds, so the double star could have appeared nebulous under these conditions. Wolfgang suggests that the 12th magnitude star northwest of Herschel's position might be the correct object. This, too, is a possibility, so I've listed it in the big position table, though with a question mark. ===== NGC 2388. See NGC 2386 and NGC 2390. ===== NGC 2389. See NGC 2386 and NGC 2390. ===== NGC 2390 and NGC 2391 are both stars near NGC 2388 and NGC 2389. Both are shown in Ball's diagram of 10 Dec 1866, and he has a micrometric measurement of NGC 2390. ===== NGC 2391 is a star. See NGC 2390 for a bit more. ===== NGC 2394. WH says of this "A cluster of very coarsely scattered large stars form a cross; not rich." The comment about the cross makes his cluster unmistakable. ===== NGC 2395. WH's RA is about two minutes east and ten arcminutes north of the cluster usually taken as "NGC 2395". WH's position has only a scattering of field stars. The Herschel Archive simply confirms WH's published data, and would allow the 2 minute/10 arcminute error -- there are no other observations that would conflict with the corrected position. CH's reduction, by the way, gives the same position as the NGC, and must be the source of it as JH did not observe the cluster. Bigourdan could not find the cluster in a single observation in 1891 at the NGC position. Reinmuth (1926) also notes nothing at the NGC position, but was apparently the first to suggest the cluster to the west-southwest. I haven't checked all the cluster catalogues, but suspect they simply followed Reinmuth; AH's "Star Clusters" certainly does. So, lacking any reasonable alternative, I'm also going to accept Reinmuth's suggestion. ===== NGC 2396. The scattered bright stars that comprise this cluster did not much impress either WH ("A forming cluster of coarsely scattered stars 20 or 30 minutes in diameter") or JH ("A straggling portion of [the] Milky Way"). Nevertheless, they kept it in their lists, and it appears in the GC and NGC with JH's position (WH's position is 16 seconds on east). Given WH's estimate of the large size, it is not too difficult to pick out the "cluster" on the DSS images. ===== NGC 2398, found by Stephan, is the brightest of three galaxies. Javelle saw one of the other two, but his note is not clear on which one. Since he gave no other details, the second object does not have an IC number. ===== NGC 2399 and NGC 2400 are a pair of triple stars found by George Bond with the Harvard refractor on 26 Feb 1853. Bond gave only one position (closer to N2399), but Schultz later measured both. D'Arrest has the two 1 minute of time further east, but Bond and Schultz are correct. ===== NGC 2400 is a triple star. See NGC 2399. ===== NGC 2402. My old note read Though both WH and JH have this as a single nebula with a single star involved, there are actually two galaxies and two stars here. The south-western galaxy is the brighter, but has the fainter star superposed, while the fainter northeastern galaxy has the brighter star. I suspect that the Herschels saw the entire group of four objects as a nebulous blur with the brighter star occasionally glimmering through. This isn't quite right. WH notes "2 vS and close sts with nebulosity left doubtful". This reads like an observation of a nebulous double star. JH has three observations, of which the second (in Sweep 123) is the most explicit: "eF, R, lbM; = * 15 m; has the f of 4 stars near it." His first observation from Sweep 120 could also be helpful: "eF; among several sts 13 .. 14 m; one = 14 is in the neb." (His third observation from Sweep 132, simply reads "Most excessively F.") JH's four stars are actually a line running 2.7 arcminutes southeast from an eleventh magnitude star. The fourth star is just 20 arcseconds northeast of the nucleus of the brighter galaxy, and it is this galaxy that I now think that both Herschels saw. My guess is that WH also saw the star that his son noted explicitly, and thought it and the brighter galaxy's nucleus a double star. My current position table entries reflect this. ===== NGC 2403. See NGC 2253 and NGC 2404. ===== NGC 2404 is the brightest superassociation in NGC 2403. The NGC position, however, is wrong, as is the position in Bigourdan's first Comptes Rendus paper. The correct position appears twice in his lists of new nebulae in his massive "Observations ...," and the offsets he gives also reduce to the correct position. My earlier incorrect identification of this as a star is based on the NGC position. ===== NGC 2408 is probably a field irregularity. On DSS, I see a scatterering of 20-30 stars, roughly 10th - 12th magnitude, covering an area of about 25 by 20 arcmin. It is centered just west of the brightest star in the ensemble; this seems to be the star that JH took for his position. ===== NGC 2412 is a star found by J.G. Lohse. I suspect its companion 10 arcsec south, mentioned by Lohse, has contributed to an appearance of nebulosity at the eyepiece. The other star Lohse mentions in his notes is SAO 115663, a "star 8 following 59 seconds, 1.5 arcmin south." Lohse's position for N2412 is also good. ===== NGC 2422 is probably also M 47 = NGC 2478, which see. ===== NGC 2428. See NGC 2430. ===== NGC 2430 may be the large sparce group of relatively faint stars centered about 5 arcmin northeast of WH's position. There is a concentration within this group centered just 6 seconds following his position, but it is rather small (8 x 4 arcmin) for a cluster described as "very large." The larger grouping is 14 x 11 arcmin across, so that is the one I've tentatively taken. Another possibility is OCL 606 1.7 minutes following, and 5 arcmin north, of WH's position. The 1.7 minutes is not an easy mistake to make, however, so I'm doubtful about this. But that cluster does match WH's description, so it remains a possibility. NGC 2428 was found in the same sweep just 9 seconds preceding and 10 arcmin south of NGC 2430. Had the two been found in different sweeps, I would have confidently declared them to be identical. NGC 2428 is clearly a cluster that matches WH's description (and his position), and I could easily imagine that it could be stumbled across independently on different nights. However, having been found so close together, apparently within a few minutes of each other, the two objects that WH recorded are almost certainly different objects. ===== NGC 2431 is probably also NGC 2436, which see. ===== NGC 2432 is difficult to pick out against the rich Milky Way background. Both Herschel's saw it as elongated in the meridian, WH making the central, most compressed part 8 arcmin long and 2 arcmin wide. The cluster that we see on the DSS images is somewhat more scattered than that, but the major diameter is about what WH estimated. ===== NGC 2433 is a triple star at JH's position. The 15th magnitude field star that he noticed to the northwest is at 07 39 57.13, +09 23 17.4 (B1950.0, measured on DSS as are the rest of the positions in this note). Dreyer has an NGC note that questions whether JH or d'A has the correct RA, both having just a single observation of the object. Checking at d'A's position shows a double star: 07 39 40.64, +09 23 47.6 and 07 39 41.85, +09 23 59.8. D'A also notes a 12th magnitude star to the southwest: 07 39 36.75, +09 22 32.5 (blended into a single image on DSS). He was puzzled by the discrepancy with JH, suggesting that JH's position was 19 seconds off. Spitaler, by the way, has an observation of this in AN 3167 -- he has JH's object. I've of course adopted JH's triple star as the correct object. (LEDA makes NGC 2433 a faint galaxy on to the northeast, but this is clearly wrong.) ===== NGC 2436 is probably NGC 2431. JH's RA is exactly 1.0 min larger, and his Dec exactly 1 deg smaller than those for NGC 2431. The description matches the bright core of the galaxy, so I am pretty sure that the identity of the two numbers is correct. Nevertheless, there is a triple star about 3 arcmin southwest of JH's uncorrected position (07 41 57.4, +52 09 36; B1950.0). This might be the object he saw -- but I doubt it. The errors leading to NGC 2431 are too exact to ignore. ===== NGC 2441. Though there is no doubt about the identity of this galaxy -- it is the only one in the area bright enough for Tempel to have seen -- it is worth noting that the RA is one minute too large. The galaxy is so far north that that amounts to only a 4.3 arcminutes. The declination is a bit off, too, as might be expected since Tempel used the BD Atlas to estimate the position. ===== NGC 2442 and NGC 2443 are the southwest and northeast parts of a large, bright galaxy observed four times by JH. The last three times, he described it as a single large nebula, and measured a position for it that agrees very well with the modern position. His first observation, however, makes it "A double nebula, vF, vL, PA of centers = 40 deg, diameters 4' and 3' running together, and having a star 13 mag at their junction." This is the interpretation that he adopted for the GC, and that Dreyer used in the NGC. The "double star" that JH noted during one observation is the nucleus and a superposed star (or a compact HII region). In the main table, I've given the position of the nucleus under both numbers, and have also given positions for the approximate centers of the two parts of the galaxy. Unfortunately, JH has only an RA for the preceding part that he saw, but no NPD. For what it's worth, that RA is 13 seconds of time preceding his position for the nucleus; this is close to the brightest part of the southwestern arm of the galaxy. ===== NGC 2443. See NGC 2442. ===== NGC 2448. JH notes this as "A * 8 m followed by a poor cl of 18...20 sts, 11...13 m." The bright star is called Lalande 15134 in the NGC; its more recent names include HR 3004 and HD 62747. The "cluster" is hardly more than a group of about a dozen stars. I've given the position as the center of this group rather than that of the bright star preceding. ===== NGC 2456. See NGC 2457. ===== NGC 2457. The identity of this galaxy is not in doubt: Copeland gives a micrometric offset from NGC 2456 for it, and it is just where he claims to have seen it. What is interesting is his comment in the description, "About 3' north of the nova, there seemed to be another vF nebula. Telescope now at the limit of its range." There is in fact a fainter galaxy just three arcmin to the north of NGC 2457. Dreyer could well have included this in the NGC, but chose not to, apparently because of Copeland's apparent uncertainty about its existence. This makes at least three nebulae found by Copeland that are not in NGC -- interesting since Copeland was a friend and colleague of Dreyer's. ----- Since I wrote that some time ago, I have created the "notngc" files to collect all the non-stellar objects seen before the NGC was assembled but not included in it. This neighbor of NGC 2457, which is CGCG 267-047, is discussed a bit further in those files. ===== NGC 2458. See NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2459 is a group of five stars. WH described it only as "Suspected. eF, vS, lE", while JH said, "A l [sic] group of S sts which has a neb look, and perhaps there may be neb among them. No other near" and "A S group of sts; with attention counted 5 with power 320[X]; form a neb group 20 [arcsec] diam". No nebulosity was ever seen at Birr, so JH was pretty certain that the object was only a small group of stars. Dreyer was sure enough that he made this clear in note in the 1912 collection of WH's scientific papers. ===== NGC 2461 is a star. See the discussion under NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2462. See NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2463. See NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2464 is a triple star. See the discussion under NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2465 is a star. See the discussion under NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2467. The Herschel's saw this as a relatively large nebula, mentioning only a single star near the center. There is a small cluster northwest of the center (I put the cluster at 07 50 42, -26 14.2 for 1950), but neither father nor son mention it. When WH published his observations, he wrote, "L, pB, R, er, 6 or 7' d; a faint red color visible. A * 8 mag not far from the center, but not connected. 2nd obs 9 or 10' d". I've tracked down one of the two observations in the Herschel Archives by the observation date 9 Dec 1784. There, the description reads "L, almost R; 6 or 7' dia; entirely milky, a pS star not far from the center; a very curious appearance." In CH's fair copy, she has the reduced position "RA 7h 43' 53" PD 115d 55'::". This position is for equinox 1800, and precesses to 07 50 06, -26 17.6 for 1950.0. Another position is available from Auwers's reduction of WH's observations: 07 45 17, -25 55 (for 1830.0) where he notes the RA is uncertain. This precesses to 07 50 16, -26 13.2 (1950). Finally, reducing the offsets that WH published give 07 50 16, -26 12.7 for 1950.0 (I believe that Auwers worked from these published offsets). JH used his own position in the GC, and Dreyer copied it unquestioned into the NGC, though JH has a double colon on the RA. His description is curious, too: "A * 9 m with a W [sic] of sts and nebulosity or ? if not a vF neb about the stars -- (no red colour seen)." So, the historical position of the object is uncertain, and even the descriptions are not as clear as we'd like. But looking at the sky, there is a bright nebula with the diameter of its brightest inner section at 6.5 x 4.1 arcmin. Fainter extentions push it a good deal further with a diameter of 10 x 8 arcmin being a reasonable "outer" diameter as seen on the DSS2 red image. Nebulosity extends much further than that, but is quite faint; I don't expect it to be visible at the eyepiece beyond the 10 x 8 arcmin limit except under splendid conditions. I could be wrong -- give it try some evening. The star near the center is HD 64315 with V = 9.2, so JH's estimate was correct (he still adopted his father's estimate of m = 8, however). I've taken the position of the nebula to be this star though it is somewhat off the actual center. I give an approximate center for the brightest part of the nebulosity, as well one for the somewhat more extended nebula, too. Choose whichever one suits your purpose. ===== NGC 2469 group. Two objects here were seen by the Herschels: NGC 2463 (JH) and NGC 2469 (WH and JH). The identity of these two is certain since John Herschel's positions are good. Lord Rosse saw, but did not measure them. He has only a note: "Great many knots, reckoned 10 nearly in a line pf." So, Herschel added eight other GC numbers for the additional objects even though no positions were available for them. Dreyer followed Herschel's lead explicitly with 10 NGC numbers for all the objects. Bigourdan measured eight of the 10 objects in 1886, so Dreyer was able to adopt Bigourdan's positions and identifications for six of the non-Herschel objects: NGC 2458, 2461, 2462, 2464, 2465, and 2471. Bigourdan returned to the field in 1895 and 1900, measuring three other objects, one of which he mistook for NGC 2458, and another which became IC 2210. A third was not included in any of Dreyer's catalogues, and did not even receive a number in any of Bigourdan's lists of "novae." He did not observe NGC 2472 or 2473 -- the final two of Lord Rosse's 10 -- so they have only approximate positions in the NGC. The Palomar Sky Survey shows only seven galaxies here, one faint and small enough, and well enough away from the others, that it may not have been seen by Lord Rosse. It was certainly not seen by Bigourdan, who in fact saw only four of the galaxies (his first observation of N2458, N2462, 63, and 69). Five other of his objects are asterisms -- single stars (N2461, 65), doubles (N2471, I2210), or a triple (N2464). The two remaining nebulae in Bigourdan's list (his second observation of N2458 and the unnumbered "nova") are unidentifiable, with only very faint stars near -- but not at -- his positions. As I mentioned above, the chances are good that Lord Rosse only saw the six brightest of the galaxies (the others were probably stars as the rich field is at a fairly low Galactic latitude; it is not unusual to find stars among Lord Rosse's novae). Since Dreyer used Bigourdan's 1886 positions, four of the NGC numbers are assigned to galaxies, and four others are taken up by asterisms. There are thus two galaxies without NGC numbers -- and fortuitously, two NGC numbers (N2472 and N2473) without galaxies. Since N2472 has been used by the CGCG for one of the unnumbered galaxies, I suggest using N2473 for the other. The only unfortunate result is that this puts N2473 -- the last of the 10 numbers -- preceding all but one of the other objects (the exception is the very faint galaxy that Lord Rosse may not have seen): it is out of NGC order. It's clear that these two identifications are uncertain, even though they are logical given the facts we have. ===== NGC 2471 is a double star. See the discussion under NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2472. The identity is uncertain. See the discussion under NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2473. The identity is uncertain. See the discussion under NGC 2469. ===== NGC 2478 = M 47 is probably identical to NGC 2422. NGC 2478 is a place-holder for M 47 in the NGC; Dreyer simply copied JH's GC entry for the missing Messier cluster. He also noted Auwers's 4 minute RA difference for M 47 as being a "clerical error", along with a reference ("V.J.S., Vol. I, p. 183" which I have not seen). Precious little to go on if one were starting here to find the NGC object. Glyn Jones has a story, though, in his book on the Messier objects (he repeats it briefly in "The Search for the Nebulae"). This story apparently comes from Owen Gingerich's article in the October 1960 issue of Sky and Telescope (page 196) on "The Missing Messier Objects". He claims Messier apparently switched the signs of his offsets from his comparison star, 2 Navis (now 2 Puppis), and cites articles or notes by Oswald Thomas in 1934 and T. F. Morris in 1959. This, however, doesn't hold up very well if we precess the three positions to 1771 when Messier found M 47. 2 Pup ought to be about equidistant between the two positions for M 47: Messier's as recorded in the NGC for N2478 (this is the same as that given by Gingerich in his article), and the real position for N2422. WH found that in February 1785, coincidentally using 2 Pup as his comparison star. His offsets are 8m 55s preceding and 10 arcmin north of the star. The actual differences between the cluster and the star are 8m 54s and 9.7 arcmin (very close to WH's), while the differences with Messier's corrected position would be 9m 18s and 41.0 arcmin, well off being identical, as we would expect them to be. So, while I can accept that Messier actually saw NGC 2422 and recorded it as his 47th object -- his description fits and the cluster is certainly in the right part of the sky -- I'm skeptical about the explanation that Morris, Gingerich, and Glyn Jones have set forth. ===== NGC 2491 and NGC 2496. Swift saw these as a pair oriented southwest- northeast, with his position for the brighter (N2496) being within 30 arcsec of a fairly bright galaxy with a faint star just preceding it. However, Swift puts the star to the east (following) where there is none. So, I'm going to suggest that his direction is wrong, but will still keep the galaxy as the one he saw. The other galaxy, though, is a problem. The object adopted by RNGC as N2491 (CGCG 031-007) is quite faint, and there are two others 10 arcmin north (CGCG 031-005 and 031-008) that would be easier to pick up: the former is considerably brighter and larger, while the latter has two stars just following that would enhance its visibility. These would have been well within Swift's 33 arcmin field, and should have been more apparent to him than the RNGC galaxy. In addition, Swift notes a "bright star near west." There is a 12th magnitude star about 2.5 arcmin to the northwest of CGCG 031-007; this might qualify as "bright" in a 16-inch refractor, but Swift usually reserved the word for stars of 10th magnitude or brighter. So, we have three galaxies to choose from: one matching Swift's position and (perhaps) his description, and two others that might be more easily seen. One option is that Swift has confused more than just his direction of the star near N2496: he confused all of the directions. This would make the orientation of the two nebulae northwest-southeast, and the bright star would be east, not west. This would make the star SAO 116199, which -- at 8th magnitude -- is indeed bright. The second is to simply accept Swift's positions as did RNGC and say that the descriptions are confused about the field stars. Adding to the confusion is Howe's observation of the field. He places N2496 near Swift's place, and notes the star preceding. But then he says, "... 2491, after careful scrutiny on a fine night, resolved itself into a few stars of mag. 14." The only object in the area matching this description is CGCG 031-008 -- but Howe makes no comment about the 10 arcmin declination error that must result. In the end, the identity of NGC 2496 is pretty sure, but that for NGC 2491 is uncertain enough in my mind to warrant some colons and question marks in the main table. Perhaps Swift was looking at a completely different pair of galaxies and simply got his positions wrong. If so, I haven't found the correct objects yet. ===== NGC 2493. LdR's observations may refer to another galaxy. See NGC 2495 for details. ===== NGC 2494 = IC 487. Marth's position, accurately copied into the NGC, is one minute of time too small, an obvious digit error. Swift's position in the IC is not too bad, but is far enough off the NGC position that neither he nor Dreyer caught the identity. Herbert Howe missed it, too, and commented only on the position angle of the galaxy (he has it at 110 degrees, though I would put it closer to 95 degrees). Reinmuth, in his 1926 "Die Herschel Nebel," was, as far as I know now, the first to suggest the identity of the two objects. He describes the galaxy accurately, and provides an improved position for it, but also notes an "eFeS neb nnp 7.5'". The object most closely matching his distance from NGC 2494 is enough fainter than several other galaxies in the field that I do not believe that it is the object that Reinmuth found -- it could be a defect on the Heidelburg plate. ===== NGC 2495. There is a chance that we have misidentified this galaxy. LdR's observations of this and NGC 2493 may refer to other objects as some of his remarks are mystifying if these are the two objects he was indeed looking at. For NGC 2493, he says (twice, on 12 Jan 1855 and 14 Feb 1855), "A F * p", but the nearest stars are north-northwest and south-southwest, in other words, more north and south than preceding. Similarly, for NGC 2495, he says (on 14 Feb 1855), "a nebs knot follows 2' or 3' dist." But on 5 March 1867, he has "neb nf is eF, difficult, Pos 54[deg] (2), Dist 12 [arcsec] (2)." Dreyer noted the problem in the 1880 monograph, saying, "The estimated dist in the obs from 1855 is very different; was a different object seen? or should the Dist 12[arcsec] be increased by 65[arcsec] = 1[superscript 'r']?" Since the actual distance is 115 arcsec, it seems likely that the distance should have been recorded as 122 arcsec (two rotations of the micrometer screw plus the additional 12 arcsec). But even this change would still not explain the position angle which is 74 degrees, not 54 degrees. So, there is a minor mystery here. Finally, to add to the intrigue, the fainter galaxy is also Markarian 383 and KUG 0757+399, picked out in both surveys for its excess ultraviolet continuum. But the position given in the KUG list is for a star about 25 arcsec east of the galaxy. ===== NGC 2496. See NGC 2491. ===== NGC 2506. There was a bit of controversy about the declination of this cluster. Dreyer reports it in a note in the NGC itself copied from the GC, where JH acquiesces to two observations placing the cluster about 10 arcmin south of his position. Dreyer followed up with another note in the second IC with Howe's observation (reported in MN 58, 515, 1898) placing the cluster at JH's NPD. This turns out to be right. Curiously, CH's reduction in her fair copy of WH's sweep uses a different star in the sweep ("199 Mon" in Bode's catalogue which is HD 69997) puts the cluster at its correct position. My question has to be, "Did JH see his aunt's reduction after she had Bode's star catalogue in hand?" That reduction, of course, puts the cluster very close to JH's position. Had he seen that, he would not have had any compunction at dismissing Harding's incorrect position. But he must have only seen WH's published offsets from 26 Hydrae; those put the position about 7-8 arcmin north where the GC and NGC have it, and where Howe did not find it. So, JH was right all along, and WH was once again misled by some observing error that his sister later caught. In any event, the cluster is a relatively large and very rich one that would be a treat to observe in any good-sized telescope. ===== NGC 2509. See NGC 2319. ===== NGC 2515 is a double star. As with many of the other "nebulae" found at Harvard College Observatory during its early years in the 1850's and 1860's, there is no nebulosity associated with the stars. Poor seeing? Poor optics? Until someone examines the Observatory's early records in detail, we just won't know. In the meantime, however, the published position of NGC 2515 is very good, and the identity is certain. ===== NGC 2518 and NGC 2519 were "Two nebulae, F, L, R, gbM, delta RA = 42 seconds" found by J. G. Lohse. There is only one galaxy (UGC 4221) in the field about an arcmin from Lohse's position, but 39 seconds following it is a 14th magnitude star with 3 fainter stars in a triangle to the northwest. The asterism is about the size of the galaxy (35-40 arcsec across), and may be the object that Lohse saw. In any case, there is no other candidate object in the field. I've listed the position of the brighter star. ===== NGC 2519. See NGC 2518. ===== NGC 2520 = NGC 2527. JH has two observations of the cluster, one from Slough, the other from the Cape, both clearly of the same object. The RA of the earlier observation from Slough is marked "+-" and noted "... by working list." So, even though the RA for the Cape observation is out by 2.5 minutes of time, JH believed his own later RA rather than the one from his aunt's reduction of his father's observation. Given the possibility that there actually were two clusters rather than just one, JH included both positions in the GC. Dreyer of course, just carried both on over to the NGC. We can identify the cluster in the Cape Observations with no ambiguity, though, from JH's description of it: "Cluster 7th class, distinguished among milky way clusters; p rich; bright. The star taken is the chief of a condensed hook in the following part." The hook stands out clearly, and JH's RA turns out to be exactly 2.5 minutes of time smaller than the star's. However, even WH's RA is about 40 seconds of time too large, and his declination is about 14 arcmin too far north. Since there is a mild concentration of stars at his position, the possibility remains that there really are two clusters involved, though one is not one of those that JH had in mind. The Herschels did not do too well with this cluster, so we are left with a bit of a puzzle as well. In the end, I've taken the one cluster that we can identify with some confidence. ===== NGC 2524 and NGC 2528 are two galaxies found by Stephan in 1877. His positions are referred to BD +39 2062 = SAO 060607, so should be accurate within his measurement error of 2-3 arcsec. NGC 2524 is indeed where Stephan places it, but NGC 2528 is not south following as it should be if his position is correct. However, north preceding NGC 2524, there is a galaxy that fits Stephan's description perfectly. Looking at his measurements and plotting the galaxies and the comparison star, I found what Stephan must have done. The difference in position between the two galaxies is exactly equal to the difference in position between the star and NGC 2528. This means that Stephan actually measured NGC 2528 with respect to NGC 2524, not with respect to the star. He apparently forgot to make a note to that effect, so when he reduced his observations later, he assumed that both observations were referred to the star. Re-reducing his data taking this error into account gives positions in very close agreement with those in the GSC (aside from an offset in declination of about 15 arcsec because Stephan's declination for the comparison star is off by that amount). Esmiol has pretty well sorted out the problems, but his table entries are a bit misleading. The galaxy is labeled "Anon" and "Anonyme" in the tables of offsets and final positions, but "2528" in the table of descriptions. My thanks to Steve Gottlieb for pointing this out. The PGC and RC3 have the correct identifications. ===== NGC 2528. See NGC 2524. ===== NGC 2529, 30, and 31. Herschel did indeed discover N2530, and this is the name that, as Steve Gottlieb suggests, should be used for the galaxy. The other two objects were found by Bigourdan very close to N2530. Though he examined the field four times, he saw his two new objects only once. On that one night, he estimated positions with respect to N2530: N2529 is 1' distant at position angle 220 deg, and N2531 is 1' distant at PA = 150 deg. There is nothing in either position on the PSS. He also measured a thirteenth magnitude star the same distance away from N2530 on two nights; it is just where he saw it in = 15 deg. On the second night, Bigourdan claimed to see stellar objects at the very limit of visibility where he placed N2529 and N2531 earlier, but he did not attempt to measure them. It's clear to me that the two do not exist, probably being those faint illusions that we all see now and then when we get tired or try too hard to push the limits of our optics. May 2008. Jeffrey Corder has suggested that the southern arm of NGC 2530 might be NGC 2531. I think this is unlikely for several reasons. First, the arm's surface brightness is very low. It also does not extend as far to the south as the star at = 15 deg is to the north, yet Bigourdan estimated the distances to be equal. Third, on one night, he called NGC 2530 itself "extremely faint, only suspected," and did not mention any other objects near it. Fourth, while there is a faint knot at the end of the arm, its position angle with respect to the galaxy's nucleus is closer to 170 degrees rather than the 150 that Bigordan estimated. Finally, Bigourdan claimed to have seen two stellar objects south of the nucleus -- the arm would be only one of these were it one of Bigourdan's objects. While I think these are sufficient to cast doubt on Jeff's suggestion, I have not seen the field with a telescope of the size that Bigourdan used. It is just possible that he could have seen the galaxy's arm with his long-focus refractor. ===== NGC 2530. See NGC 2529. ===== NGC 2531. See NGC 2529. ===== NGC 2542 = 19 Puppis = SAO 153942 = ADS 6647. JH may have been misled by the faint companion to the brighter star. With a separation of only 2 arcsec, and a magnitude difference of 6.5, it would be very difficult to make out the fainter star except under extraordinarily fine conditions. Reading what I wrote "several" years ago in March 2014, I'm struck by its irrelavance with what JH had to say about the star: "A fine nebulous star 6' [sic] m, in the following part of the cluster [NGC 2539], and almost unconnected with it. The nebula is faint, but I feel confident that it is not the nebulous haze. (Notandum. -- Nothing more difficult than to prove a nebulous star of the 6th m and above.)" While this might be a description of a very close double star, it just doesn't read like it. Yet, the conclusion is still the same -- there is no obvious nebulosity around the star on any of the optical sky surveys. So what did JH see? We can only take him at his word, and accept the suggestion of faint nebulosity here that is overwhelmed by the light of the star on photographs. But we still need to prove that the nebulosity is indeed there. In the meantime -- was JH really taken in by the faint companion? ===== NGC 2543 = IC 2232. The galaxy was first seen by WH in Feb 1787, and was reobserved in Mar 1790. The two positions that he measured are not in particularly good agreement (08 09.6 +36 20 and 08 09.8 +36 35). JH picked it up once in Feb 1832. His position is 08 11 45, +36 24.6, also not in good agreement with either of his father's determinations. However, Sir John notes a "a coarse ** p points to it." This note is correct, and the "double star" is quite wide. The GC and NGC adopted sort of a mean of these three (08 10 43 +36 24.7) which was corrected by Dreyer in the IC 1 notes, following Spitaler (08 09 38 +36 24.7). Actually, Spitaler's micrometric position (measured in Dec 1891) reduces to 08 09 42.9 +36 24 07, using the GSC position for his comparison star, and ignoring its (unknown) proper motion. Javelle scanned the field in Feb 1896 and his position (for IC 2232) reduces to (again ignoring proper motion) 08 09 42.5 +36 24 12, agreeing well with Spitaler. Thus, there is no question that the two different numbers apply to the same object. This identity was first suggested as being the same as N2543 by Reinmuth in 1926, and every catalogue since has made the equality. The descriptions of the galaxy and the surrounding star field simply nail the lid, leaving no doubt about the equivalence of the two entries. ===== NGC 2546. JH found this cluster in three sweeps. His first position is representative of the entire cluster, very close to a position plucked from the DSS2R image. His other two positions point at the northeastern end of the cluster. Unfortunately, ESO put this number on a much larger, scattered group of stars, and made the position 45 seconds of time further east and 10 arcmin south. If this is indeed the center of a larger cluster, then NGC 2546 is just a small part of it. ===== NGC 2554. There is no problem with the identification of this galaxy, but as Steve Gottlieb recently (April 2014) pointed out, the faint companion (CGCG 119-032) was seen by LdR, but mistaken for a star. The SDSS photometry for this object makes it among the fainter galaxies picked up with the 72-inch (B = 16.53, V = 15.57, and R = 14.94), only half a magnitude brighter than NGC 2603 (which see). I also mention the companion in the "notngc" files, where I essentially repeat this note. ===== NGC 2571 is a scattered cluster that both Herschels noted as being at least 15 arcmin across if not larger. Brian Skiff made it only 8 arcmin, and the largest I can go is around 13 arcmin. But the position is good, and there is no doubting the identification. ===== NGC 2574. See NGC 2589. ===== NGC 2582 = IC 2359. Here is a curious case. This is clearly noted as NGC 2582 in Wolf's first list, yet Dreyer still assigned it an IC number. There is no particular reason that he should have done this that I can see. The NGC position (from the two Herschels) agrees well with the GSC position, and with Wolf's position, and the descriptions are compatible. Oh, well -- these things happen. ===== NGC 2583 is a minute west of its nominal position. See NGC 2586 for more. ===== NGC 2584 is a minute west of its nominal position. See NGC 2586 for more. ===== NGC 2585 is a minute west of its nominal position. See NGC 2586 for more. ===== NGC 2586. This is a triple star. The galaxy with this label in RC3 (MCG -01-22-012) is near the nominal position, but N2586 is noted as the fourth of four nebulae. The other three (NGC 2583-5) are a minute west of Muller's position, but their relative positions are good. If N2586's relative position is similarly good, then there is little doubt that it is the triple star. ===== NGC 2589 is probably lost. There are no bright galaxies near Swift's position, though NGC 2574 (4 minutes preceding and 9 arcmin south) is a possibility. Given Swift's meager description, however -- "pF, pS, lE in meridian" -- this is little more than a guess. ===== NGC 2590 is probably also IC 507, which see. ===== NGC 2597 is a double star. It is the preceding of two close "nebulae" that Marth found on New Year's night, 1864. The double is near Marth's place, as is his other object, NGC 2598, a galaxy. ===== NGC 2598. See NGC 2597. ===== NGC 2599. See NGC 2600. ===== NGC 2600, 2602, 2603, 2605, and 2606. There is a group of six galaxies here. Two (N2602 and N2606) of the three brightest were seen twice by JH, while he curiously missed the brightest, N2600 (LdR and Bigourdan picked this up). Of the three others seen by LdR, JH and Dreyer gave new GC and NGC numbers to only two, the other being taken as a star once, and being thought as one of the other two "novae" the second time. [There is also some confusion in LdR's 1861 PT paper, noted by JH in the GC Notes and by Dreyer in LdR's 1880 monograph, with NGC 2599 (= h507) 30 degrees south. Both JH and Dreyer come to the correct conclusion that this is a simple transcription error and that the correct numbers are h508 (= N2602) and h510 (= N2606).] JH's observations are relatively clear, though he does note a 10 second RA discrepancy between his first and second observations of N2602 (the second is more nearly correct). Also, his note "... np a star (about [PA =] 5 deg np)" should read "sp" instead of "np". As I've noted, his observations point at the second and third brightest in the group as being the two that he found. The first time LdR went over the group, he found three nebulae: 1850, Feb. 9. A fine object, 3 neb., one (N2600) B, another (N2606) f[ollowing] pB and E, the third (N2602) north and the last degree of faintness. [Dreyer appends the note about N2599.] LdR's second observation turned up four nebulae, and he provided a sketch: 1858, Mar. 11. 4 neb. found, alpha (N2603) is F, S, bM; beta (N2605) is vvF, gamma (N2602) F, S, lbM; delta is E and has a Nucl, a F * sf. alpha and gamma are about 5 arcmin dist. from one another, and beta and delta about the same dist. apart. Interestingly, he includes the faintest galaxy in the group in the sketch, but has it drawn as a star. Finally, a third observation yeilded only two nebulae: 1867, Mar. 5. 2 neb. seen nearly pf, p one (the unnumbered faintest galaxy in the group) eeF, f one (N2606) eF. Measures extremely difficult. Pos. 92 deg (2). Dist. 118 arcsec (1). In each case, the noted relative brightnesses and positions very clearly identify the objects that LdR and his observers are seeing. I find it informative that he turned up a different set of objects each night, pointing most likely to the importance of seeing, transparency, observer skill and fatigue, mirror reflectivity, and a host of other variables that determine the eventual outcome of any given observation. When Bigourdan went over the field, he found only the brightest three galaxies, N2600, N2602, and N2606, noting the others as simply "Non vue" (not seen). Making sense out of all of this is fairly straight-forward (though I swapped NGC 2602 and NGC 2605 in my first pass a few years ago; apologies to all). We simply adopt the NGC numbers for JH's two objects as given by Dreyer. JH's positions are not bad, either, though both he and Dreyer used a mean of the two discordant RAs for N2602. NGC 2600 is easy as its relatively good position comes from Bigourdan, and his comment about the two stars preceding is accurate. This leaves NGC 2603 and NGC 2605 to distribute among the three "novae" found by LdR. I've arbitrarily assigned these to the fourth and fifth brightest galaxies in the group (LdR's alpha and beta), leaving only the sixth and faintest without an NGC number. I've included this in the position table as "N2606 w comp". The final entry in the table, "N2606 e comp" is the "F * sf" that LdR notes in his 1858 observation. On the DSS, this looks like a close double, or perhaps another companion galaxy. ===== NGC 2602. See NGC 2600. ===== NGC 2603. Is this the faintest NGC galaxy? The SDSS photometry (cModel magnitudes), transformed to BVR, gives B = 16.96, V = 16.19, and R = 15.59. I'll look into other very faint ones, too. See also NGC 2600 for general notes on the field. ===== NGC 2605. See NGC 2600. ===== NGC 2606. See NGC 2600. ===== NGC 2617 is the brighter and western of two galaxies (it is MCG -01-22-026). The NGC position, from Stephan's careful micrometric measurements, is within a few arcseconds of being correct, so I'm puzzled by the occasional misidentification of this NGC number with the eastern galaxy (MCG -01-22-027). This is especially disconcerting since the eastern galaxy is considerably fainter as well. Oh, well. ===== NGC 2618. Courtney Seligman has pointed out a problem with the RA correction to the NGC position of this galaxy quoted by Dreyer in the IC1 Notes. Dreyer writes there, "R.A. is 8h 29m 1s (Bigourdan)." This, however, leads to the wrong position for the galaxy. Here is the (perhaps overly detailed) story, taken from an email to Courtney in September 2017. For reference, the J2000 position of NGC 2618 is 08 35 53.5, +00 42 25. WH discovered this on 20 December 1784, but with no stars in the sweep (Sw 346), he was forced to use a star from the previous sweep for his comparison. His resultant position is 08 36 36, +00 39.1 (precessed to J2000). JH published 08 36 01, +00 42.4 (again J2000) but marks both coordinates with "::" and comments "Extremely doubtful as I could not recover the object." I checked his observing log for 27 Jan 1832, Sweep 397 and found he has exactly the same comment penciled in place of a description. Nevertheless, JH's is the position that Dreyer adopted for the NGC without any comment about its being pretty uncertain. Dreyer, of course, has a note in his 1912 Scientific Papers (of WH) that reads "R.A. 48s too great (Bigourdan). There was no star in Sweep 346, so that H. had to use 13 Canis from the previous one." This leads us to Bigourdan's observations and comments. After looking into it, I am a bit puzzled by his comment in CR 112, 850, 1891: "Found 12s after the NGC position." Then, he apparently reworked the reduction as he says in his big table of observations: "This nebula is found 13 seconds before the NGC position." The galaxy actually precedes the NGC position by 7.5 seconds, and Bigourdan's observations of 15 March 1890 reduce to almost exactly the modern position for the galaxy. His comparison star is just where he says it is, 25 seconds west and 11 arcminutes south of BD +01 2137. I thought that the large proper motion of the star (-118.8 mas/yr in RA and +28.6 mas/yr in Dec) might have had something to do with the problem, but even ignoring the RA proper motion leads to a difference in the reduced position of only about 1 second of time, so that's not it. I checked Bigourdan's list of errata in his introduction to the full series of observations, but he has nothing for NGC 2618. So, it looks to me like WH was 42 seconds off in his RA, JH (and NGC) only 7.5 seconds off, and Bigourdan spot on. So, I just can't see where Bigourdan's +12 and -13 second comments come from. Even if he used the BD position for +01 2137 as his starting point, he would have ended up only about 5 seconds of time off, not the 13 he reports in the big table of observations. Also, I can't find anything near his position for Big 151 = IC 518. At least his comment in the big table "This object is found in the place given by the NGC for NGC 2618" is consistent with his comment for NGC 2618. But there is nothing in the area but the NGC galaxy. I suspect this problem might have a solution if we could see Bigourdan's reductions (if they still exist). But since we know the final answers -- a single galaxy called "NGC 2618" and nothing at all to hang "IC 518" on -- I'm not inclined to go out of my way to dig much further. Also see IC 518 for a bit more on that "object". ===== NGC 2623. See IC 2386. ===== NGC 2629. See NGC 2630. ===== NGC 2630 and NGC 2631. These two objects were found by Tempel (apparently in 1883), and described in his note in AN 2660. Of the twelve novae mentioned in the note, these are the only two not listed in his table. It is remarkable, too, that he nevertheless describes them as "much brighter" than NGC 2629 and NGC 2641, both seen and measured by the Herschels and by d'Arrest. At the moment, my feeling is that Tempel confused NGC 2633 with NGC 2629, and that his pair is actually NGC 2634 and NGC 2634A. These two galaxies are the only ones in the group that are close enough to be actually called a "pair." However, while N2634 is bright enough to rival the earlier observers' discoveries in the area, N2634A is certainly not. It's just conceiveable, however, that on a night of exceptional transparency, the pair may have stood out enough to capture Tempel's attention. He was, in fact, so struck by their brightness -- compared to the nearby nebulae that the Herschel's and d'Arrest found -- that he suggested variablility for them. This is a pretty weak argument, however, so until Tempel's discovery sketch (which he mentions explicitly) can be examined, the question of the identities of these two NGC numbers has to remain open. So, I've simply entered the NGC positions in the table for the time being. ===== NGC 2631. See NGC 2630. ===== NGC 2633. See NGC 2630. ===== NGC 2634. See NGC 2630. ===== NGC 2637 is one of two galaxies found in the eastern part of the Beehive by Marth in 1864 (the other is NGC 2643, which see). Both are placed by Marth too far south by about 10 arcmin, and too far east by 6 and 18 seconds, respectively. The eight other objects that Marth found that same night show no such offsets from the true positions, but these two are reasonably consistent with each other, and are fairly close on the sky. I'll take the identifications since nothing else in the area matches. ===== NGC 2641. See NGC 2630. ===== NGC 2643 = IC 2390. This identity, first suggested by Reinmuth, was taken up by RNGC. The object was found by Marth in 1864. Correcting his position by 18 seconds of time and 11 arcmin leads to IC 2390. The IC object matches Marth's description, and there is no other object in the area (the east edge of the Beehive) that would fit better. NGC 2637 (which see), found by Marth the same night, also suffers from a declination error of 8 arcmin of the same sign, though the RA is only off by 6 seconds. ===== NGC 2646 = IC 511, which see. This galaxy also has a curious history in my own work with the three Reference Catalogues, going all the way back to the summer of 1965, my first episode of working with Gerard and Antoinette de Vaucouleurs. My curiosity was piqued when I found that NGC 2646 was included in the Shapley-Ames Catalogue while IC 520 was not. What's going on here, that the brighter of a pair of galaxies just 12.5 arcminutes apart is an IC object object while the fainter is an NGC object? Shouldn't it be the other way around? In principle, perhaps, but Wilhelm Tempel, the discoverer of NGC 2646, has the following description for it on the night of 27 July 1883: "Nebel III, klein, es folgen sudlich, 2 1/2' entfernt, 2 Sternchen 12-13m". In my translation, this reads, "Nebula [Herschel class] III, small, followed south, 2 1/2' away [by] 2 stars 12-13m." The two stars are just where Tempel says they are for the galaxy usually taken as the NGC object; they are very definitely NOT on the sky near the brighter IC 520. Even though Tempel's position is flagged by "+-" in both coordinates, and is indeed not very accurate, the two stars clinch the identification. IC 520 was not discovered until five years later when Lewis Swift went over the field. He picked up NGC 2646, too, and also noted the two stars to the southeast. Because of the poor NGC position, Swift did not realize that his second "new" object had been discovered earlier. So, it now carries an IC number as well as the NGC number. See the note on IC 511 for more on that number. So, here is a case where I simply have to accept that the IC object is the brighter of the pair. These things happen ... ===== NGC 2648 has a faint companion seen first by LdR. See the note about it in the "notngc" files". ===== NGC 2652 = NGC 2974. Searching for NGC 2652 during work on SEGC, I could not find it. When I came back to the number two decades later, I tried larger errors. The galaxy finally showed up one hour later on the sky, and is NGC 2974 which was seen by both WH and JH. Stone's position is otherwise about 3/4 of a minute of time further east, a common error for him and his colleagues at Leander McCormick. His description is spot-on, including the 9th magnitude star at 240 degrees position angle, 0.8 arcmin distant. ===== NGC 2653 is a double star. It was found and well-described by Tempel who placed it 12 arcmin north of NGC 2655. That is very close to the actual distance, and the identity is not in doubt. (Carlson notes that the Lick observers corrected the declination to 10 arcmin further north. There is a much fainter asterism in that position, but it does not have the eye-catching appearance of Tempel's double.) ===== NGC 2655. See NGC 2653. ===== NGC 2662. JH's NPD is 10 arcmin too large. The error was pointed out by Howe and included in the Notes of the second IC. ===== NGC 2664, like NGC 2017 (which see), is probably not a cluster -- but it is a striking object of about a dozen stars. Villanova et al (A&A 428, 67, 2004) looked at the proper motions, radial velocities, and photometry to see if they form a cluster -- they almost certainly do not. Even so, this is an interesting object, and would probably be quite a sight at the eyepiece. ===== NGC 2666. JH's description reads only, "The chief * of a coarse cluster." There is nothing resembling this at his position (08 50 03, +47 03.6; 2000). Checking the sweep (139 on 19 March 1828) in the Herschel Archives, I found that JH made at least a two-degree error in his reduction of the NPD; the correct NPD should be approximately the same as those for NGC 2712 and NGC 2776, both found later in the same sweep. This makes it likely that the group of about a dozen stars around SAO 42564 (08 49 47.3, +44 42 16; J2000), which I had found earlier on the POSS1 print, is indeed the correct object. ----- Checking the sweep again in June 2016, I found that JH accidentally copied the reduced NPD of the preceding object in the sweep (a double star) into the column for the reduced NPD of this cluster. The difference in the NPD index between the two objects is 2d 21' 18", leading to a corrected position for JH's "chief *" of 08 38 14.8, 44 40 27 (NPD, 1830) or 08 49 49, +44 42.3 (J2000), very close to the position of the SAO star. The identity of JH's object with the sparce group is no longer in any doubt. ===== NGC 2667 = IC 2410, which see. ===== NGC 2669. There has been -- and continues to be -- some controversy about the correct identification of this cluster. JH didn't help much; his observation and description is sparce: [h] 3140 8 40 +- 143 21 +- Cluster VII class. A L, poor, loose cl of stars, 10....13m [Sweep] 440 Consulting the observing log gives us no more information than that; the RA and NPD are still marked "+-", they are properly reduced, and the description is copied correctly into the CGH. The GC, however, has no indication that the position is approximate aside from having the "number of observations used" marked "::". In particular, JH simply precessed the approximate position to 1860 and presented it with the tenths of seconds of time and arc in full view, just as if it were a micrometric position measured on a superb night with a state-of-the-art instrument and an expert observer. The only one of these apparently present was the expert observer, perhaps rushed ... Dreyer simply followed along, so the NGC has no clue at all that the position is simply an approximation. There the matter sat until Trumpler was searching for the cluster in the early 1930s. He suggested an error of 1 degree in the declination and another 1 minute 40 seconds in RA, leading to Harvard 3, found sometime during the 1920s by Harlow Shapley and his Harvard team. Brent Archinal, in "Star Clusters" has that whole story, and I can do no better than point you to that discussion. Brent's conclusion is, however, awkward in my opinion. He makes Harvard 3 the core of NGC 2669, with the four 7-8 magnitude stars around it as members. This is at odds with JH's estimate of the brightest cluster members being magnitude 10. Even granting Brent's point that JH's magnitude scale could be off, it was not THAT far off at the bright end. The position and diameters that I give in the position table for Harvard 3 is only for the "core" of the cluster. My feeling, without proof, is that the four brighter stars are unrelated field stars. We can, of course, now check this with photometry and proper motions. Furthermore, there IS a scattering of 20-25 stars in the right magnitude range centered just four arcminutes north of JH's position. I make the collection 12 by 8 arcminutes, and it looks exactly as JH describes it, "A large, poor, loose cluster of stars, 10th to 13th magnitude." Even giving some credence to Trumpler's idea, the cluster at JH's position is more in keeping with his observation, crude as it is. Finally, a side note. The NGC lists "[al] Sufi" as the original discoverer of this cluster. This notion, from an 1874 study of al-Sufi's observations by Schjellerup, is rejected by Glyn Jones in "The Search for the Nebulae" where he correctly identifies al-Sufi's object as IC 2391 (which see). There is no trace of IC 2391 in JH's CGH observations. ===== NGC 2674. Though Ormond Stone had doubts about this object, his RA is just one minute of time off, and his declination is good. Aside from his note, "neb?" his estimated magnitude (16.0) and diameter (0.4 arcmin) are appropriate for the object. ===== NGC 2678. There is almost certainly no cluster here, just a scattering of field stars about 35 arcmin southwest of M 67. Nevertheless, WH recorded "A cluster of very coarsely scattered stars, not rich" on 15 March 1785. His position is about 30 seconds of time west and 2 arcminutes north of the NGC position which comes from a mean of JH's four observations. JH was not very impressed with the field, calling it "a place rich in stars", "an insignificant cluster," "a very coarse and poor cluster", and finally, "A poor cluster of 4 or 5 large and a few scattered small stars." His positions are nearly as scattered as the stars in the field, but generally define two places within the group: one at the brightest star in the southern part, the other in the clump of stars at the northeastern side. Brian Skiff calls it "four m8 *s only", and AH follow along, branding it an "asterism". Following JH, I make the object a group of four or five brighter stars with about 15 fainter scattered around an area covering 28 by 17 arcminutes. Brian is right in one respect: Without the enhancement of the brighter stars, the Herschels would have never commented on the field. ===== NGC 2684. See NGC 2688. ===== NGC 2685 is the prototypical "polar ring galaxy" where a disk of material similar to that in a spiral galaxy is seen apparently orbiting around a cigar-like structure. See Sil'chenko (1998A&A...330..412S) for more information and references to earlier papers. There is a splendid image from a 200-inch plate by Allan Sandage in the Hubble Atlas. ===== NGC 2686. See NGC 2688. ===== NGC 2687. See NGC 2688. ===== NGC 2688 and NGC 2689. I've identified these using LdR's sketch. Though he saw the two objects on only one night, the sketch is a fair depiction of the sky in the area of NGC 2684. It also shows the bright galaxy, it shows NGC 2686 to be double in the correct orientation, and it shows NGC 2687 as well; all in their correct relative positions. ===== NGC 2689. See NGC 2688. ===== NGC 2696 may be MCG -01-23-004. The description and declination are close to those recorded by Stone, though the RA is about 4 minutes of time off. Stone's RA is further east -- this is in the same direction as many other of the poor positions from the first two lists of Leander McCormick nebula discoveries. ===== NGC 2699. See NGC 2700. ===== NGC 2700, 2702, 2703, 2705, and 2707 are almost certainly all stars, with 2703 being a double. Found by Tempel (and word of them apparently sent directly to Dreyer -- I can find no mention of them in Tempel's ten papers), there are no nebulae near NGC 2699 that he might have seen. The positions given in NGC fall only near stars. The 2 deg error in the NPD of NGC 2700 is apparently a typo. The descriptions are reasonably apt for the stars, however. NGC 2700 is within an arcminute northeast of N2699, NGC 2703 is indeed "little extended" as one might expect of a double faintly seen, N2705 has three stars following it with which it forms a trapezoid, and N2702 is about 4 arcmin northeast of NGC 2699. Only NGC 2707 has no additional description (it is only "eF, S"), but its position is close to a star that might have a faint, close companion that would enhance its appearance of nebulosity. So, while the positions are not exactly on the stars, and the identities are clearly not sure, what little evidence we have suggests that they are appropriate, if not completely correct. ===== NGC 2702 is a probably star. See NGC 2700 for more. ===== NGC 2703 is a double star. See NGC 2700 for more. ===== NGC 2704 = IC 2424. This is an identity first suggested by Bigourdan who found and measured I2424 on 18 March 1892. He could not, however, find the NGC galaxy at WH's position. Since that is just a minute of time preceding I2424, the brightest galaxy in the area, the identity is almost certain. Dreyer has a note about this in his 1912 paper and in his Notes to WH's observations; he, too, accepted the identity of the two nebulae. ===== NGC 2705 is probably a star. See NGC 2700 for more. ===== NGC 2707 is perhaps a star. See NGC 2700 for more. ===== NGC 2708 is probably also NGC 2727, which see. Also see IC 2425 for a brief mention. ===== NGC 2719 may possibly be NGC 2724, which see. ===== NGC 2722 is probably also NGC 2733, which see. ===== NGC 2724 is most likely UGC 4726 with an error of almost a minute of time in RA. It's just possible, however, that the NGC number refers to NGC 2719 since JH found that during another sweep. And U4726 is as far north of JH's declination as N2719 is south (about 2 arcmin). But N2719 is another 45 seconds west of U4726, so would require a larger RA correction. Thus, my preference is to set N2724 = U4726. ===== NGC 2727 is probably NGC 2708 five minutes west at the same declination. I'm no longer convinced that this is the correct identification, but I can find nothing better in the area. The RA difference is, within JH's usual errors, exactly five minutes, and the galaxy could be called "large". However, it is not "round", but is noticeably elongated. Another curiosity concerns the next galaxy that JH found in this sweep (number 21 on 12 March 1826, an early sweep), NGC 2733 (which see). The RA for that is also uncertain, but JH marks it "+-" and has a note, "[RA] between 52m 31s and 54m 41s" for equinox 1830. This suggests that he had problems of some sort during this sweep, making it more likely that the RA for N2727 is indeed off. ----- I've checked the sweep, where this is number 21. Unfortunately, the left page is too dimly reproduced in the Herschel Archive to be legible, but there is a bold entry "Not in Catal". NGC 2733 is number 22 and carries the same "Not in Catal" entry; it also has a bold entry in square brackets "Query Clock [alpha] how taken". So, the sweep won't help us until we can examine the original at the RAS in London. ===== NGC 2733 is most likely an observation of NGC 2722. JH marks his RA 08 53 00 "+-" and notes "[RA] between 52m 31s and 54m 41s" (for 1830). (His north polar distance is 93 03 54, also for 1830.) There are, however, no nebulae of any kind in this RA range that he could have seen. The declination (from his father's observations) of N2722 is the same, and the descriptions are not incompatible. Given that JH probably also had trouble with the RA for NGC 2727 (which see) in the same sweep, this is a likely identification. By the way, this is another case where the positional uncertainty that JH notes in his original list has gotten lost along the way to the NGC. In GC, the galaxy has its "Number of Observations by H and h" marked "::"; Dreyer did not carry this over into the NGC, so the position there appears as if it carries normal accuracy. Having said that, I have to also say that Dreyer has a note in his 1912 Herschel papers, and in his MN list of NGC corrections resulting from that collection, about the RA for NGC 2722. Dreyer says that the RA in the GC is too large by 44 seconds, saying that JH should probably have corrected it (as he did for other nebulae in the same sweep) to the meridian. This is indeed true, and the NGC position, corrected by the -34 seconds, lands within 9 seconds of the galaxy. ===== NGC 2736. On the SERC IIIa-J film, this appears to be the brightest patch in a supernova remnant that covers most of the 6.4 deg field with delicate whisps of nebulosity. On the ESO IIIa-F film, however, it is much brighter than the rest of the SNr, and I wonder if the relatively bright star immersed in it is exciting it as it passes by. In either case, it is certainly a diffuse gaseous nebula, not a galaxy. ===== NGC 2741. Marth's RA is 1 minute too far east. This misled Dreyer into noting the galaxy as the first of two (the second is NGC 2745, given its correct RA by Marth). Marth's declination is correct. ===== NGC 2742. A long time ago, I suggested that this "... is probably also NGC 2816, which see." But it's not. I was struck by the similarity of declinations and descriptions, so -- without looking carefully at JH's observations -- lept to an incorrect conclusion. Wolfgang found the correct answer: NGC 2816 is actually JH's mis-reduced observation of NGC 2820. ===== NGC 2745. Marth's position is good. Dreyer mistakenly added the note, "f of 2." See NGC 2741. ===== NGC 2753. The NGC position, from d'A, is one minute of time too large. This is an improvement over N3575 and N3760, found the same night, which both have errors of 1 hour in the positions listed by d'A (well, we all have bad nights ...). See them for more. Speaking of bad nights ... The galaxy is an SB(r)0+ with particularly bright patches where the bar intersects the ring. In the DSS1 images, the northern patch is bright enough that both Wolfgang and I mistook it for an interacting companion. The DSS2 images show us that we were wrong. ===== NGC 2754. See NGC 2757. ===== NGC 2757 is probably a triple star. It and two other objects, NGC 2754 and NGC 2758, were found by Frank Muller at Leander McCormick in 1886 or 1887. This is one case where the Leander McCormick discovery positions are quite good, so the identities of N2754 and 2758 with two neighboring galaxies are not in doubt. However, the third position of Muller's trio falls in a region where only stars are found. Herbert Howe, working with the 16-inch at Chamberlain Observatory in Denver around the turn of the century, noticed a double star near Muller's place. This is a relatively bright (15th magnitude), wide (12 arcsec) double, and I'd be surprised if Muller mistook it for a nebula in the 26-inch, even on a night of rather poor seeing. The 26-inch is optically quite good, and will certainly show fainter objects with considerably more clarity than any 16-inch, all else being equal. About an arcminute south-southeast of the double star, however, is a triple star of about the same total magnitude. The separation of the components is much less than the separation of the double's two stars. The triple was in fact picked up as a single non-stellar object by the Guide Star Catalogue software. My guess is that this is actually the object that Muller mistook as nebulous. The position, while a minute or so further from Muller's than the double star's position, is well within the usual Leander McCormick standard deviation. So, while we can't be certain about the identification (there is no surviving sketch), I'm going to take the triple as NGC 2757. ===== NGC 2758. See NGC 2757. ===== NGC 2760 might possibly be CGCG 350-021 -- there is certainly nothing near Swift's position that matches his description. In particular, he notes "nearly between *8 and *9." The stars flanking the CGCG object are at least two magnitudes fainter, so I don't want to push this identification too hard. The galaxy is also quite faint, and of pretty low surface brightness with no nucleus. This does not look to me like a galaxy that Swift could picked up easily. Coming back to this in 2014, I wonder if the correct object is CGCG 350-016. It's about half a degree south of Swift's position, and 1 min 30 sec west. The stars he mentions would then be at 09 14 18.5, +76 04 08 and 09 14 24.5, +75 50 53 (both J2000), well within his large 33-arcminute field. This, too, is a faint galaxy, but the surface brightness is at least "normal", so it would stand a better chance of being picked up in a sweep. But this also has to carry at least one question mark -- the position is well off in both coordinates. ===== NGC 2783. See IC 2449. ===== NGC 2786 may be UGC 4861. There is nothing closer to Marth's position that could be his object, though IC 530 is about 25 arcmin to the southwest of the nominal position. UGC 4861, however, is closer at about 19 arcmin, is also somewhat brighter, and more nearly fits Marth's meager description, "vF, vS, mbM". IC 530 is a pretty flat galaxy which Marth probably would have noted as considerably extended, but we cannot completely rule it out as his object. Neither object really thrills me, but I'm going with UGC 4861 for the time being -- with a question mark, of course. (My thanks to Steve Gottlieb for prodding me to write a note about this.) ===== NGC 2789 is also = NGC 3167, which see. ===== NGC 2804 probably also = IC 2455, which see. The NGC identification is not in doubt. ===== NGC 2806 is a star, and is certainly not the galaxy listed in RNGC. It is in just the place noted by Dreyer in Lord Rosse's observations. Here is Dreyer's description of the object: "A vF * or cS, eF neb p [N2809] (sky bad), forming an equilateral triangle with [2807] and [2809] (susp as neb by d'A, = [N2806])." Dreyer's descriptions and offsets for other objects in the field are exact, so there is no mistaking the true identity of N2806. ===== NGC 2807. See NGC 2806. ===== NGC 2809. See NGC 2806. ===== NGC 2816. Years ago, I wrote this about NGC 2816: [This] is probably JH's second observation of NGC 2742. The first came on 8 March 1832 where the galaxy is recorded at its correct position, close to where his father placed it when he found it in 1790. JH called it "vF, pL, R, vgbM, 60 arcsec; moon very troublesome. A * 8 m np." (This compares to his father's rather more interesting note, "cB, E near par., er, bM; 4' l, 2' b. I suppose, with a higher power and longer attention, the stars would become visible." WH's "er" means "extremely mottled," which leads to his comment about the stars.) Just three weeks later, on 30 March 1832, JH swept over the area again, this time recording a "F, pmE" nebula 13m 30s to the east at the same north polar distance. There is nothing at that position, a fact first noticed by Reinmuth in his 1926 "Die Herschel Nebel." Since the declination is the same, and the description for N2816 appropriate for N2742, I'm going to suggest that the two nebulae are the same. Even though the RA difference is large, there is nothing else around that JH might have seen that makes more sense to me. Still, I'm not convinced, so I've put colons on the identification. (At least I had the sense to mark the identity uncertain.) In fact, NGC 2816 is simply non-existent. The observation that led to it is indeed one by JH on 30 March 1832, but, as Wolfgang pointed out in March 2014, that was actually of NGC 2820. In that same sweep, JH picked up, just 45 seconds earlier, another galaxy that he believed to be H II 869 and became h 576. His second object, h 579, eventually led to the numbers GC 1800 and NGC 2816. But the north polar distance for this second object is clearly mis-reduced. In the log book for the sweep, preserved in the Herschel Archive, we find that the raw observations for the NPDs, referred to a zero point within the sweep, read 01 53 18 for h 576, and 01 54 30 for h 579. Yet the reduced north polar distances for 1830 read 25 02 45 for h 576, and 28 50 33 for h 579, over 3 3/4 degrees apart. (These are the numbers that also appear in JH's 1833 monograph. Only two other objects appear in the sweep, the stars HD 80953 and 81161; their positions are correctly reduced as is that for h 576 = NGC 2814). Using the difference between the raw and reduced NPDs for h 576 = NGC 2814 as a guide, the correct reduction of JH's NPD for h 579 becomes 25 01 33. His position is therefore a good match for NGC 2820, and there is no doubt that NGC 2816 is identical to this large, faint, edgewise spiral galaxy. So, the NGC needs fixing: Add the number h 576 to NGC 2814, note GC 1800 = NGC 2816 as being identical with GC 1798 = NGC 2820, and change the JH number "576" on NGC 2820 to "579". The NGC positions for the two galaxies are about 10 seconds of time too far east, but are otherwise OK, so there is no doubt about the identifications. By the way, the faint companion to NGC 2820, Markarian 108, is not IC 2458 (which see) as I and many others had suggested. The IC object is actually the northeastern part of NGC 2820 itself. I've retained the alternate designation for Markarian 108, however, so you will find it listed as "NGC 2820A" in the big position tables. ===== NGC 2822 is nearly lost in the glare of beta Carinae. Surprisingly, JH did not mention this in his description of the object. But it is obvious to any of us who attempt to view the galaxy on the sky survey plates or images. During my work on the SGC in Edinburgh in the late 1970s, I had to hold the III-aJ plate up to the sun to even see the galaxy through beta's corona! Fortunately, the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey image is almost completely clear of the glare of the star, showing us a slightly peculiar galaxy with a short patchy bar, faint dust lanes spiraling out from an inner ring into a broad diffuse lens that contains two arcs of a partial outer ring. Some of this detail can be seen on the red and near-infrared sky survey images, but it is all lost in the deeper blue image. ===== NGC 2823. See NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2825. See NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2826. See NGC 2829 and NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2827 = IC 2460, which see. Also see NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2828. See NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2829. Early in 2019, Courtney Seligman re-examined this field, and suggested that NGC 2829 is probably the faint star that I have listed now in the position table. This is a different object than I chose earlier. Here is what I had to say then: NGC 2829 is most likely the faint galaxy that I've included in the position table. This is tolerably close to the position shown in LdR's diagram. On the other hand, LdR's object may be a star, also close to the position in the diagram. In addition, it is sometimes identified with a faint double galaxy, but that is exactly on the line between NGC 2826 and NGC 2830 -- in the diagram, the object is off to the east of that line. In fact, as Courtney points out, the object closest to the position shown in the diagram (drawn by Bindon Stoney, apparently on 8 January 1851) is a star with a V magnitude of 14.5. Stoney labeled the object only "eF" and shows no others near it. The other candidates for the object are another considerably brighter star (V = 12.4), the single galaxy that I had chosen earlier (V = 15.3), and the double galaxy (combined V = 15.3; individual V magnitudes are 15.8 and 16.4). Given all this, I am going to follow Courtney's lead and choose the fainter star. First, it is closest to Stoney's place on the diagram. While some of these sketches are relatively crude, Courtney has shown that -- compared to the sky -- this sketch is quite accurate (see his web site where the sketch is rotated to match the north-south orientation of a comparison field from SDSS). Second, the brighter star, at V = 12.4, would probably have appeared as a star in LdR's 72-inch except on nights of bad seeing. Several other stars of similar brightness in the field are not on Stoney's sketch, so it is not surprising that he chose to omit this one as well -- it would have made the sketch needlessly cluttered. Third, the galaxies are nearly a magnitude fainter at V = 15.3. Given that they are fainter than other galaxies in the field not included in Stoney's sketch, I don't believe that he saw either of them. ===== NGC 2830. See NGC 2829 and NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2831. See NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2832 is the brightest galaxy in Abell 779, and was seen by WH and JH. The younger Herschel also picked up another galaxy in the area, as did d'Arrest -- who also saw three others, measuring two of them -- but it remained for Lord Rosse's 72-inch Leviathan to reveal the cluster of a dozen or so galaxies around the brightest. These are NGC 2823, 2825-2834, and 2839. Note that the identification of NGC 2829 is somewhat uncertain, and that NGC 2827 = IC 2460 (which see). Lord Rosse made micrometric measurements of only six of these (with respect to the brightest), but JH received notes from the Earl that allowed him (JH) to give good positions in the GC for six others. He had to give the remaining two of the 15 claimed nebulae estimated positions. In spite of JH's care, the GC is rather confused in the area. When Dreyer came around to the group during his preparation of LdR's observations, he sorted the area out pretty well, and the NGC reflects his careful work. In the process, he dropped two of the GC numbers, and combined two others so that the total number of nebulae here seen by LdR is just 12 -- the sketch shows those twelve in their correct relative positions. Only for NGC 2829 (which see) is there any uncertainty left about the identification. Curiously, however, Dreyer put WH's observation and the brightest of JH's on NGC 2830. LdR calls the brightest "alpha", and this is clearly the third of three in short line in the center of the cluster. Yet Dreyer is apparently claiming that WH and JH saw one of the fainter galaxies here, not the brightest (Dreyer of course switches the descriptions as well). I find it odd that, given his otherwise careful treatment of the area, he should have misidentified the brightest galaxy, and not one of the fainter. However, his note in the NGC gives an alternate (and correct) numbering of the galaxies, showing that he was not convinced that he had it right in the main body of the catalogue. Finally, Dreyer has a note appended to the second of WH's catalogues of nebulae for H I 113: "A second and better obs. in Sw. 549, Mar. 28, 1876, 40 Lyncis, p. 1m 11s, s. 39'." Reducing both this and the observation in WH's main table shows that this is not a "better" observation, but is further off in both coordinates than the presumeably "worse" one (09 16 40, +33 57.9 for WH's first observation w.r.t. 66 Cancri; vs. 09 16 51, +33 57.5 for his second. The modern position is 09 16 44.0, +33 57 43). In neither case, however, is there any chance for mistaking the identification of WH's object for anything but the brightest galaxy in the cluster. ===== NGC 2833. See NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2834. See NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2837 is a double star found by JH on 16 Dec 1827. He mistook it for a nebula, perhaps on a night of poor seeing, but correctly noted that it is west of a brighter star. His estimated distance to the star was 8.5 seconds, while the actual distance is 9.2 seconds, good enough agreement that the identity can be regarded as pretty certain. ===== NGC 2839. See NGC 2832. ===== NGC 2843. In spite of the faintness of this galaxy, and its proximity to the considerably brighter star, it is almost surely the object that WH found. He is cautious in his description, noting that it took 240X to show the object and the star. His position is just an arcminute east, too, well within his usual observational error. However, there is some question about this object. WH's description in full, taken from CH's fair copy in the Herschel Archives, reads, "A suspected nebula; but No. 4 [240X] shewed some S stars with suspected nebulosity; probably a deception from want of light and power. 47 ([delta]) Cancri f 36' 0" n 0[deg] 53' RA 9h 9' 18" PD 70[deg] 14'." (CH abbreviates "minutes of time" with a single quote and "seconds of time" with a double quote.) The position she gives for equinox 1800.0 precesses to 09 20 34, +18 55.8 for J2000. Note, too, that WH's published NPD offset is "52" arcminutes north of 47 Cnc, not "53" as CH has recorded. All considered, I think that WH actually did glimpse the faint galaxy in a moment of exceptional seeing, perhaps with averted vision. Steve Gottlieb has dug the galaxy out with his 18-inch reflector (the star at 13th magnitude is easy). So, I have listed the galaxy plus the star as the probable object that WH saw, though with a colon to reflect his unresolved suspicions. ===== NGC 2846 is a double star. This was found by Lord Rosse (or by his observer at the time, Ralph Copeland) who thought it a star with a very small nebula nearby. Even though no accurate position is given, micrometric offsets to nearby stars positively identify the star they thought nebulous. A few years later, Lord Rosse (or Dreyer, who was then the resident observer at Parsonstown) reobserved the object, but could see no nebulosity. Instead, he suggested a very small cluster. A correction to the position, by Bigourdan, appeared in the Notes to the first IC. However, there is some error in Bigourdan's observation, since his offsets point to a blank region of sky. Just north of his position is a 15th magnitude star; another is just west. He probably saw one or the other of these. In any case, he missed Lord Rosse's double star, so we have to discount his correction. My first thought was to accept the first observation of the single star as N2846, but Glen Deen pointed out that the two star images are actually in contact on the Sky Survey. While they would not have been merged on a fairly good night at the 72-inch, they are still clearly close enough together to have misled some veteran observers into believing that one star was nebulous, or that there was a cluster present. Since the NGC itself accepts the second observation, it seems best to follow that. ===== NGC 2847 is a faint star superposed on a star cloud in NGC 2848. LdR has only one observation of it on 15 March 1855, saying only "... F knot np [N2848] and a triple * nf, B * a little more distant nf". The four stars are just where LdR describes them, as is his "F knot". ===== NGC 2848. See NGC 3578 and NGC 2847. ===== NGC 2852 and NGC 2853. Courtney Seligman pointed out in an email in January 2019 that the classifications are reversed in RC3 and NED. Working backwards, I traced these through RC2 to RC1 where de Vaucouleurs is credited with the classifications from Mt. Wilson 100-inch plates. Most of these were from deV's article "Revised Classification for 1500 Bright Galaxies" (ApJ Supp 8, 31, 1963). However, these two galaxies do not appear in that paper, so the classifications must be from an unpublished source. Whatever happened, NGC 2852 is the early-type galaxy (I make it an E/S0- from SDSS images), and NGC 2853 is a spiral (Courtney suggested SA(rs)ab, but I would emphasize the ring a bit more with an underline: SA(_rs)b; again from the SDSS images). At first glance on the DSS, NGC 2853 is a near clone of M81, but the better images from SDSS and Pan-STARRS show the tight, nearly complete ring of blue knots around the nucleus, a feature that M81 lacks. NGC 2853's arms are also somewhat broader than M81's which also suggests the slightly later type. ===== NGC 2853. See NGC 2852. ===== NGC 2854. See CGCG 238-051 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 2856. See CGCG 238-051 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 2857. See CGCG 238-051 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 2863 = NGC 2869, which see. ===== NGC 2866 is a cluster found by JH. He described it simply as a "Cluster class VIII. Place of a small compact knot of sts." The knot of stars is obvious, and the position that I've adopted from ESO is for that knot. The larger, scattered "cluster" around the central knot is not so obvious. The dimensions I list are an approximation of the size. It could well be that the knot is the only real cluster here, while the other stars are simpley field stars. Astrometric and photometric surveys might resolve the issue. ===== NGC 2868 is a companion to NGC 2863 = NGC 2869, which see for the story. This is also Bigourdan 039; see CGCG 097-087 in the "notngc" files for more. ===== NGC 2869 is identical to NGC 2863. WH found N2863 in March of 1786, and JH observed it again forty years later. JH used his own position and most of his description in GC, but took an "average" of his and his father's brightness estimates: "vF" and "F" became "cF". All this is very close to the position and description we would make today from the Sky Survey. Dreyer copied this into the NGC. In 1885 or 1886, Frank Muller was sweeping across the field. He rediscovered N2863 and also found a fainter companion which became N2868. As usual, his positions from the circles of the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor were so bad that he thought he had found two "novae" rather than just one. He also suggested that the RA might actually be five minutes larger than that given in the table in the AJ paper. But there is nothing in either of his positions. Herbert Howe sorted all of this out satisfactorily in a Monthly Notices note which Dreyer quoted succinctly in the Notes to the second IC. Howe also got the positions correct. ===== NGC 2871 is a star just north-preceding NGC 2872. Lord Rosse has two detailed observations of the N2872/4 group, one of which includes micrometrically measured offsets which point exactly at the star. ===== NGC 2872. See NGC 2871. ===== NGC 2874. See NGC 2875. ===== NGC 2875. This is the north-following part of NGC 2874. Lord Rosse's micrometrically measured offsets point exactly at the rather knotty spiral arm, and his description is consistent with the appearance on the First Sky Survey prints. ===== NGC 2876. Courtney Seligman has pointed out that this is a colliding pair with several plumes or jets, including one plume to the east that extends at least five arcminutes away from the two "nuclei" of the system. The companion that I included in the table has a redshift (z = 0.0204) that is the same as the main pair, so it too may be contributing to the interaction. At the moment (January 2019), there are apparently no studies of these galaxies beyond their presence in the big survey catalogues and lists. ===== NGC 2879 is an asterism of four stars. D'Arrest saw it on three different nights, and on all three nights he mentioned the 15th magnitude star 11 time- seconds west. On one night, he also mentions the 9th magnitude star 17 time- seconds east and 3 3/4 arcmin north. These stars are just where he says they are, so the identification of the asterism is secure. ===== NGC 2881 is an interacting pair of spirals seen as just a single object by Lewis Swift and, later, Herbert Howe. Swift's position is pretty good, coming from one of his earlier discoveries at Warner Observatory in Rochester. Also accurate is his comment about the "coarse double star" 17 seconds following. Howe makes it south-following, but Swift is more nearly correct. ===== NGC 2883. There is no puzzle about the identification, or about the fact that JH got it wrong when he called it "A vF, S,[sic] cluster, class VI; vglbM; resolved so as to see the stars which are 15 m ..." On the other hand, he continued, "... almost to be called a vF, large nebula" -- this is more nearly correct for this peculiar galaxy. Just what the object actually is, however, is a bit uncertain, at least just looking at the image on the DSS. While I called it an "Im pec" in SGC, I wonder now if it isn't an interacting system. There could be as many as three separate galaxies here, so I give positions for all of them. ===== NGC 2885 = IC 538. John Herschel saw this on only one night. The RA is marked with a plus-minus sign, and his description reads, "eF, vS, E in parallel; RA very uncertain." His description is correct, and his RA is indeed about 25 seconds too large (there is nothing in his estimated place, not even a star). The comment "... E in parallel ..." (that is, the position angle is 90 deg) fits no other galaxy in the area. This is also the brightest galaxy around, so the identification is secure. Bigourdan made four observations of his "nova" Big. 154, the object that became the IC galaxy -- his reduced position is right on NGC 2885 itself. He also claims to have glimpsed "NGC 2885" (on one night only; on another night, he has this as "Non vue" [not seen]) about 1.4 arcmin north of JH's place. But as with JH position, there is nothing there, not even a star. Finally, R.S. Ball saw this galaxy and two companions on 10 January 1867. The story is told in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 2886 is probably the asterism of 4 stars about an arcminute following JH's position. There is nothing else in the area that fits his sparce description, "eeF; 50[arcsec]" from a single observation. ESO does not give an identification for the object, but simply gives the nominal position and a question mark for the object type. ===== NGC 2888 is a fairly bright galaxy just where JH found it during his time at the Cape of Good Hope. The Galactic latitude is fairly low (16 degrees), so it should come as no surprise to find a streamer of Galactic diffuse nebulosity superposed on the galaxy. Yet on the DSS images, the juxtaposition is striking. The background is rich in faint galaxies which simply adds to the interest of the field. ===== NGC 2897 has a beautiful companion galaxy with a nearly circular ring, almost exactly centered on the nucleus. These ring galaxies are relatively rare, but can be pretty well-explained by the face-on, centered collision of two galaxies. Theys and Spiegel (in ApJ 208, 650, 1976) were among the first to try to explain these ring galaxies in terms of a collision, and their model has held up reasonably well over the years. ===== NGC 2901 may be one of the galaxies (UGC 5070, 5074, or 5087) just over a degree south of Stone's especially crude position, estimated during a search for Winnecke's comet. There is nothing closer to his position that he might have mistaken as nebulous, unless it is one of the faint double stars in the area. Wolfgang has taken one of these, but I do not think that it appears especially non-stellar: One star is 13th magnitude, the other is 16th, and the two are separated by 16 arcseconds. Not a strong argument against these particular two stars, I admit, but there are many galaxies within two degrees of Stone's position that would be better candidates. Other objects worth a mention include NGC 2918 and CGCG 152-030, and there are many fainter CGCG galaxies as well. Without seeing Stone's original observing log, however, I think we are stuck with no viable candidates for this one. And even if Stone's log has other clues, why did he not pass them on to us? ===== NGC 2902 is not IC 543 (which see for details) as suggested in MCG. ===== NGC 2903. The nuclear region is patchy with several bright knots, probably star-forming HII regions, though generally refered to as "hot spots" in the literature. Rather than choose one as the "nucleus", I've taken the average of the five knots seen picked out by the 2MASS Point Source software within 12 arcsec of the brightest knot. This seems to be reasonably representative of the 15 accurate positions that I've collected up to May 2014. Also see NGC 2905 for the story on the northeastern arm of NGC 2903. ===== NGC 2905 is the northeastern arm of NGC 2903. JH has several observations of it in that position, as well as a sketch. The only slight mystery here is why WH made NGC 2905 one of his first class nebulae, ranking it in brightness with the central portion of NGC 2903 itself. I certainly never saw it that way in telescopes ranging in size from 6 inches to 30 inches. Fixing a position is a bit uncertain, too. There is a bright star cloud in the arm that is well-represented in the sky surveys by its brightest knot. However, that knot is somewhat to the east of the center of that part of the galaxy sketched by JH and LdR. So, I have adopted the mean value of seven knots from the 2MASS Point Source Catalog -- this position seems to be pretty representative of the part of the galaxy seen by the earlier observers. ===== NGC 2908. WH's position, reduced by CH and given in her fair copy of the Sweeps, lands closer to a double star than it does to the faint spiral that is usually taken as H III 977. This has led me to wonder whether WH might actually have picked up the brighter double star rather than the fainter galaxy. However, Dreyer (in his Notes to WH's catalogues in the Scientific Papers) notes the offsets from another star in the sweep. These give a position closer to the galaxy than to the double star. Dreyer also notes that Bigourdan's observation accords better with the position derived from this second star (Bigourdan certainly saw the galaxy on the one night he measured it; on a poorer night a few years later, however, he was unable to see it). All these positions are in the big table, credited to WH and Bigourdan as appropriate. Given that the second star is closer to the galaxy than the first, we should probably give it greater weight than the first when deciding on a position derived from WH's observations. The position from that second star is just an arcminute north of the galaxy; the double star is several arcminutes to the northwest. Thus, I'm pretty sure that WH did in fact see the galaxy, faint as it is. His full description, by the way, reads "eF, vS. I also saw it with 300. iF." The "iF", omitted from the GC and NGC summary descriptions, may also be relevant. The faint galaxy has two fainter stars superposed on it which may have lent the impression of "irregularity." ===== NGC 2909 is a double star about 30 arcsec following JH's position. Several observers have suggested other identifications for it, but nothing else in the area is as convincing. See also NGC 4512 for more on the sweep in which JH found this object. ===== NGC 2910. JH has three observations of this cluster, two in April 1834, the third on 5 January 1837. The positions scatter over nearly a minute of time, and three minutes of arc. Assuming that the second observation has an error of -1.0 minute in RA, that and the third observation are reasonably accordant. Since the NPD of the first observation is marked uncertain, and since the RA for that is well off the others, I've left it out of the mean position I calculated for the cluster. JH simply took the positions at face value and used them all for a mean that is about 16 seconds of time west of the cluster's apparent center. That is the position that appears in the GC and NGC. All this is not to suggest that there is doubt about the identity -- there is not. JH's descriptions are accordant with what we see on the sky, and are internally consistent, too. Only his positions have the minor problems noted here. ===== NGC 2911. See NGC 2912. ===== NGC 2912 is a star described only in Schultz's note for his observation of NGC 2911. The faint galaxy close following N2911 (taken as N2912 by all and sundry) is much too faint for Schultz to have picked up with his 9.6-inch refractor, especially given the considerably brighter star just a few arcsec following (the 1950 position for the star is 09 31 12.07, +10 22 57.2). Brian Skiff has suggested that N2912 is identical to N2914. But Schultz has observations of both objects on the same three nights, calling N2914 nearly as bright as N2911. Furthermore, Schultz's description of N2912 "eF, f h608 [N2911] some seconds, ab[out] 2' n, but not observable" places his "nova" northeast of N2911, not southeast. The only object in the area, bright enough that he could see, that matches his estimated offsets, is the star that I list in the table. This may not be a completely solid identification, but it is pretty close. ===== NGC 2914. See NGC 2912. ===== NGC 2915 is a nearby "dwarf" (more properly, a "sub-giant") galaxy. Its face is nearly uniform on the IIIa-J blue DSS image, but there is an apparently eccentric nucleus seen on the IIIa-F image. All of the positions in the table refer to this nucleus. Courtney Seligman's image of it includes the tremendous neutral hydrogen disk that extends many diameters of the galaxy itself beyond the optical boundaries. It is a spectacular demonstration of the power of non-optical methods to show us previously unseen parts of the universe. ===== NGC 2918. See NGC 2901. ===== NGC 2925. JH's position refers to a double star southeast of the center of the cluster. But there is apparently a further +20 time-second error in his RA which puts his position nearly half a minute east of our modern ones. ===== NGC 2932 is a patch of the Milky Way about 1 degree across, centered near JH's approximate position (he gives it only to a full minute of time and a full minute of arc). In his description, he notes that it is "... a degree or degree and half in diameter, very rich in stars of all magnitudes from 8 m downwards ..." This is just what we see on the IIIa-J plate today. ===== NGC 2938 was the first of fifteen nebulae found by WH in sweep 1096 of 2 April 1801. There was considerable confusion in the 19th century about the identities of these galaxies, confusion still not sorted out at the time the NGC and the ICs were published. It was, however, mostly laid to rest in an unsigned note in MNRAS 71, 509, 1911 "Communicated by the Astronomer Royal". This gives accurate positions for forty nebulae in the area covered by WH's sweep, and enabled Dreyer to finally publish (in the Scientific Papers) corrected NGC identifications for WH's galaxies. Dreyer, however, did not give cross-identifications to all of the NGC numbers, particularly those which came in from other observers (JH and d'A). I list those in my note to NGC 3752 (which see), where I give a fairly detailed account of the problem and its solution. NGC 2938 itself has been taken as not just the galaxy UGC 5115, but as the star that JH observed near his father's published position. This, in fact, was Dreyer's preference expressed in the 1912 Monthly Notices paper where he published corrections to the NGC based on his work on WH's lists for the Scientific Papers. However, because it is clear that WH did in fact see the galaxy -- once his observations are corrected for the telescope misalignment, his position agrees with that for the galaxy -- I have chosen to assign the number to the galaxy. I have to stress, however, that this is just one interpretation of the historical record. See NGC 3752 for more on all of this. Finally, while well-aware that WH actually did see the galaxy, Courtney Seligman originally chose in June 2015 to adopt Dreyer's identification of JH's star as the correct one for NGC 2938. Here, Courtney made the reasonable assumption that Dreyer's own corrections to the NGC represented the best way to present the catalogue today. I, however, have made the assumptions that Dreyer was primarily compiling and summarizing the known observations, and that -- had he had the advantage of today's deep sky surveys -- would have tried to give the objects actually listed by the original observers. For almost all of the NGC objects, the two different ways of correcting the errors will lead to the same objects. This is obviously not the case for NGC 2938 and a few others. While I clearly favor the second viewpoint, I've given both objects -- WH's galaxy and JH's star -- in the big table under NGC 2938. ----- Note that I blundered earlier and used a B1950.0 position for JH's star in the NGC position file, not the correct J2000.0 equinox position. Curiously, I had the position quoted at the correct equinox in the "notngcpos.all" file where the star also appears as "h 612". I've fixed the "ngcpos.all" file and apologize for any confusion my mistake may have caused. ===== NGC 2944. It has seemed strange to me that just three arcmin north-following this triple galaxy is a considerably brighter pair. Did Palisa perhaps see one of the pair rather than the galaxy we now call N2944? Tracking down Palisa's original observation to AN 2782, I found that his micrometrically measured position (based on six settings) falls within three arcsec of the GSC position of brightest of the triple. The identity is thus certain -- but why did Palisa not see the brighter galaxies just to the north? ===== NGC 2947 = IC 547 = IC 2494 is the only object that I am currently (May 2003) aware of which has an entry in all three of Dreyer's catalogues. See IC 547 for details. ===== NGC 2951 was not described as double by Marth, but his "pF, S, E" is a fair description of the two galaxies as they might be seen visually. Given that Marth's position is within 3/4 of an arcminute of the pair, the identity is certain. ===== NGC 2952. There is no sketch, so all we have to go on are the crude position and relatively detailed description that Muller has left us in the second paper from Leander McCormick. In particular, Muller has a 9.5-mag star following the nebula by 30 seconds. His full description is "Mag." = 15.5, "Size" = 0.6 arcmin, "Form" = iR, "Condensation" = sbM, and "Notes" = *9.5, f 30[seconds]. For SEGC, I chose a faint galaxy preceding an 11th magnitude star by about 30 seconds (the star is at 09 38 06.4, -10 11 40 for J2000). The star would have appeared brighter in the big Leander McCormick refractor, so the magnitude difference is not very bothersome. Also the RA of the galaxy is about 2 arcmin west of Muller's estimate, a common offset in these two Leander McCormick lists. There is also a star superposed just southeast of the nucleus; this would have made the object somewhat more noticeable during visual sweeping. While all this suggests that I've picked up the correct galaxy, I do have to put colons on the identification. We would need a sketch to be sure. ===== NGC 2953 is probably the star about 6 arcmin south-southeast of NGC 2954. JH found both during one of his rare excursions north of the equator during his South African sojourn on 18 March 1836. He says of this, "Suspected nebula. (N.B. These suspicions have been so constantly verified on reobservation, that I have little hesitation in registering it as an object in the catalogue.)" He adds in his description of NGC 2954, "Another suspected 6 arcmin south, nearly on the same meridian." JH gives the position only to a full minute of time and a full minute of arc; the seconds are missing in both coordinates. The star is almost strikingly isolated -- there is no brighter star within 4-5 arcminutes of it, and no galaxy or nebula aside from N2954 nearby, either. While we can't be absolutely certain about the identity -- the approximate position erodes confidence -- the lack of any other candidate matching JH's description lends considerable credibility to the star. ===== NGC 2954. See NGC 2953. ===== NGC 2957 is the brighter of a pair of galaxies, or perhaps the pair itself. JH describes it only as "eF; has a * 13 m near," and his RA is one minute of time too small. But his object is clearly identified by the star, as well as its proximity to NGC 2963 which shares the RA error. The fainter galaxy is Markarian 121, so has received somewhat more attention than its brighter companion. This probably accounts for the RC2 designation "N2957A" for the fainter object, and "N2957B" for the brighter. ===== NGC 2959. JH says this "is s of a S grp of sts". There are indeed 6 stars about 8-9 arcmin north. ===== NGC 2961 is sometimes called "NGC 2959A" following its designation in Keenan's ApJ 82, 62, 1935 paper. ===== NGC 2963. JH's RA is in error by -1 minute of time, an error shared by its neighboring galaxy (the brighter of a pair), NGC 2957 (which see). ===== NGC 2972 = NGC 2999, which see. ===== NGC 2973 is perhaps the triple star just following JH's position. If it is indeed the correct object, JH's note "a B * 8 m follows" is somewhat misleading since the star is clearly south-following. That raises the possibility that the double star also listed in the table is JH's object. However, JH describes his object as "eF, 40 arcsec." The triple is closer to that size than the double. So, both asterisms are candidates. For the present, I favor the triple -- but not by much. I also note that the two eastern stars of the triple have close companion stars. So, the triple is actually a quintuple, or as I've simply written over the years, an "asterism". ===== NGC 2974 is also NGC 2652, which see. Also see NGC 3382 where NGC 2974 may figure in the identification of this questionable object. ===== NGC 2977 was one of the galaxies found by WH on the night of 2 April 1801 for which large, systematic errors exist in the position. See NGC 3752 for more information. ===== NGC 2979 = NGC 3050, which see. ===== NGC 2982. JH had trouble with the position of this cluster. The NPD printed in CGH is corrected on the errata page of CGH, and even that corrected NPD is about 10 arcmin south of the scattered group that we've all taken to be his object. That the correction is necessary is confirmed by checking the sweep in the Herschel Archives: the north polar distance printed in CGH belongs to the next object in the sweep, a star. Otherwise, the position looks to be correctly reduced. However, JH's description is of some help: "A cluster of about 20 stars 11 m, and 2 of 10' [10.5] m, forming an oblong nearly in parallel; place of preceding * 10' m." This fits the appearance of the modern identification pretty well, though I do not see a "preceding * 10'". For lack of anything better, we'll go with this object for now. ===== NGC 2984 = IC 556, which see. ===== NGC 2986. WH saw a companion, ESO 566-G004, to this object. See that in the "notngc" files for more. ===== NGC 2995 appears to be a clump of stars roughly 20-25 arcmin across centered about 10 arcmin north of JH's position. His description reads "Cluster VIII class, at least 20 sts 11 m and upwards, and many smaller." This is what we see on the IIIa-J plate, though I doubt that it is a real cluster. ----- That was how I described the "cluster" in 1997. Looking at it again in May of 2014, I see a much smaller clump (8' x 5') centered at much the same place. There are possible extensions north and east to a size of roughly 20' x 20', much the same as I previously saw, but centered at 09 43 50, -54 33.2 (2000). This time around, I am happier with the smaller "cluster", so that is the one that I've put into the table. This clearly needs visual confirmation. JH, by the way, adds "fully [qualified?] to be called a cluster" in his sweep (784 on 5 April 1837). He uses similar phrases now and then for other clusters about which he apparently has some nagging doubt. In this case, the doubt is evident. ===== NGC 2996. JH's RA is well off and the star an arcminute following is 9th magnitude, not 20th as noted in CGH. An interesting pair of errors ... ===== NGC 2998. See NGC 3000, 3002, 3004, and 3008. ===== NGC 2999 = NGC 2972. JH's place for N2999 is only approximate. He says, "Observed for Dunlop 397, and place only rough. Possibly the same object with Sw 680, No. 27, which see above (No. 3183 [= N2972])." This is an entirely reasonable hypothesis, and JH's descriptions are the same, so I've adopted the identity. ===== NGC 3000 is a double star, accurately located by Dreyer's own micrometric observation referred to NGC 2998. He also measured NGC 3005, 3006, and 3008 on the same night (1 April 1878) with LdR's 72-inch. ===== NGC 3002 is a star. It and NGC 3004 were found by LdR with his 72-inch, and are both included in his chart of the NGC 2998 field. Of the three faint stars near the place shown for NGC 3002, the brightest (included in the main table) and closest to Dreyer's position as sketched, is most likely the one he saw. The second brightest star is at 09 45 52.0, +11 17 34 (B1950.0); or at 09 48 33.0, +11 03 35 for J2000.0. MCG +07-20-052 is a low surface brightness interacting system less than 2 arcmin southeast of the star. MCG unfortunately took this to be NGC 3002, so the object has been incorrectly saddled with the NGC number ever since. ===== NGC 3003 is a big, nearby, late-type spiral with a line of 4-5 knots in the middle of a relatively faint bar. The brightest knot is the western-most; it may have a star superposed, or it may be the actual nucleus. Whatever the case, that is the knot I've taken as the nucleus of the galaxy. I have given positions for the second- and third-brightest as well, so if one of them turns out to be the actual nucleus, we still have the galaxy pinned down. ===== NGC 3004 is, like NGC 3002, a star. LdR saw it only once, and included it on his chart, though did not letter it: it should be "alpha," between NGC 2998 and NGC 3005. ===== NGC 3005. See NGC 3000 and NGC 3004. ===== NGC 3006. See NGC 3000. ===== NGC 3008. There is no doubt about the identity of this galaxy. It is included in a sketch in Lord Rosse's big 1880 monograph, and was measured by Dreyer himself on 1 Apr 1878 while he was examining the area around NGC 2998 (he used this as a reference object for his measurements). However, of the four galaxies he measured, it is the furthest from N2998, and he has given the position angle to only a full degree, and the distance to a full arcsecond. The other three objects have an additional digit in each coordinate. Reducing the positions, we find that this one is the furthest off the true position on the sky, and I wonder if Dreyer didn't make an error of some sort here. If, for example, the position angle is 83 degrees rather than 88 as Dreyer has it, the position of the galaxy comes considerably closer to the truth (the distance he gives is 552 arcseconds). As I said, though, the identity of the object is not in doubt. ===== NGC 3009. The identification is uncertain. See NGC 3010 for the story. ===== NGC 3010. There are three galaxies here that are occasionally numbered "NGC 3010A", "NGC 3010B", and "NGC 3010C" (though I have deleted these suffixes from the position table; they made the table very difficult to read. For the record, "N3010A" is the middle galaxy, "N3010B" is the southwestern, and "N3010C" is the northeastern). JH's position is far enough off that it does not help, at least in an absolute sense, in identifying his object. However, his position for NGC 3009, seen in the same sweep and called "The first of 2" -- NGC 3010 is "The second of 2" -- is also off: the RA correction is +17 seconds, and the Dec correction is -1.6 arcmin for NGC 3009 if we take the larger and brighter (though lower surface brightness) spiral five arcminutes southwest of the triple as the first of the pair that JH saw. Applying these corrections to JH's position for NGC 3010 gives 09 50 17, +44 19.2 (J2000), still about 20 seconds of time west of the triple, though the declination has fallen in line. The problem with this is that the position for NGC 3009 is far enough off to throw its identification in doubt, too. So, how about JH's descriptions? As published, they read for NGC 3010: "F, psbM, r, stars seen. The second of 2." The "r, stars seen" could refer to the nuclei of the three galaxies. (But there are also a few faint stars to the north that JH might have picked up.) For NGC 3009, his published description reads "Not vF, R, bM, r. The first of 2." These -- setting aside "The first/second of 2" -- unfortunately are generic enough that they could fit any of the four galaxies. Finally, it is also possible that his observations here actually refer to two of the three galaxies of the triple. JH's RAs support this in that he has only six seconds of time between his two objects, the same difference as between the western and eastern galaxies of the triple. His declination difference is 1.5 arcmin, while the declination difference between the eastern and western galaxies of the triple is 1.0 arcmin, certainly within his nominal error bars. While my own inclination would be to select the two brightest galaxies of the triple as JH's pair, I don't think that he has left us quite enough to go on to select any two of the four galaxies as the ones his observations refer to. Unfortunately, this means that I am going to leave the "traditional" identifications in place, but with question marks on them. Not very edifying, I know, but there it is. ----- There things stood until May 2015: Courtney Seligman wrote about these two objects, saying essentially that he was not happy with the traditional identifications (this makes at least two of us!). This led me to check JH's sweep in the Herschel Archive. He has a note attached to his 17 March 1828 observation of the two nebulae: "Something unaccountable in the taking of the RA's here John[??] must surely mean[??] +12- -43 in the 2nd obs." The actual RA observation for the 2nd object reads "-12 -43", where the first number is found in the column where the minutes of RA on the clock is usually written. The "-43" is perhaps the chronometer correction (which JH calls the "beat"), though the minus sign is stronger than usual, and is in the column usually reserved for the seconds of time on the clock. I can see why JH was puzzled when he came to reduce these observations! My own guess is that the "-12" is seconds of time, and the "-43" is simply a repeat of the "beat" for the first object. JH's descriptions from the sweep are "a pair" with a bracket around that, and a simple diagram showing the two objects at roughly a 30 degree orientation with respect to one another, assuming horizontal on the page is east-west. If south is at the top in this diagram, then the brighter nebula is to the southwest. The next object in the sweep is the double star at 10 01 25.4, +44 58 09 [J2000]; its diagram has the same orientation as the diagram of the nebulae. On the sky, the orientation is southwest-northeast just as the nebulae are oriented. The description for the first object reads "not vF, bM, R, r, gbM". There are indeed two "bM" notations, probably to distinguish it from the second object, which is described as "F, resolvable, stars seen, psbM." Looking at the observation of the first nebula in the sweep, I see that it reads "9 39 50 -43" and is perhaps referred to the second wire (though the "2" is very close to being a flat line; perhaps it is not the second wire, but the first, the trailing edge of the field, or even a "null". I see other "2"s in these sweeps written the same way, but this is most extreme example I've noticed). The second nebula is definitely referred to the second wire; if so, the two RAs ought to be directly comparable. The NPD index for the first is "2 39 30", and for the second "1 1/2' north". For the star "15 Leo Min" -- observed just before the two galaxies -- JH has "9 37 15 -14" for the clock and chronometer beat, wire "1", and "0 56 55" for the NPD. All this implies offsets between the star and the first galaxy of +1m 27s and -1d 42' 35" which gives a position of 09 49 51, +44 18.6 (J2000), in close agreement with JH's own published position 09 49 54, +44 19.3 (precessed to J2000). If, however, we assume that the wire was mistaken and that wire 1 was the actual wire that JH used for the transit, then the RA offset becomes +2m 13s, and the J2000 position is 09 50 36, +44 18.6, close to the first galaxy in the triplet, MCG +07-20-065. This would imply that JH's second nebula is within 12 seconds of this one and 1.5 arcminutes north. This suggests that MCG +07-20-067, the northeastern galaxy in the triplet, is JH's second nebula. This, however, is the faintest of the three (see Steve Gottlieb's observations below). On the right-hand page where JH normally gives the reduced positions, he has another note, "Must be re-reduced". Under that are the two positions for the objects that became NGC 3009 and NGC 3010: "9 39 1:, 44 53 50" and "9 39 7:, 44 52 20" (RA and NPD 1830 for both). Just to the right of those is another column headed "Re reduced [sic] See Red. Book". The positions in this column read "9 39 6.4, 44 53 34" and "9 39 12.4::, 44 52 0:". These latter positions are those that JH published in his 1833 catalogue, but the published positions do NOT carry the uncertainty symbols. Putting all this together, I am going to suggest that JH observed two of the three galaxies that we in the past called "NGC 3010", perhaps the southwestern and the northeastern. These are separated only by 6 seconds in RA and a minute of arc, less than JH's estimates (assuming that the "-12" for the second object is indeed a difference in RA of 12 seconds), so I am obviously not going to insist that this is correct. His descriptions are puzzling, too, but as I mentioned above, they might be understood if he glimpsed the third galaxy and some of the nearby stars. [Wolfgang suggests that the "-12" is a chronometer difference; if so, the six second difference in RA matches JH's measurement given the two beats per second of the chronometer. I'll have more to say about this below.] What about the galaxy traditionally called "NGC 3009"? This is bracketed by JH's RAs from the two different wires with the declination being about an arcminute south. However, a 12 second and 1.5 arcminute difference to the second galaxy from this one works pretty well in declination, but not in RA. And while the western-most galaxy of the four, MCG +07-20-062, is larger, it has a lower surface brightness. Given the similarity of JH's descriptions for his two objects, I'm a little less happy with the idea that he saw this one and just one of the other three. But again, see Steve Gottlieb's notes that I've quoted below. So, I offer two of the galaxies in the northeastern triplet as a reasonable -- though obviously questionable -- interpretation based on the information in JH's sweep. Finally, Courtney's discussion has led me to look into other observations of the galaxies here. LdR reports two observations of the area. The first is from 1 March 1854, presumably by R.J. Mitchell who writes "One pB; 6'f and a little north are two others vF, about 3' apart pf; several others round about." (We'll come back to the "several others" in the addendum below.) On 1 April 1878, Dreyer at the eyepiece has "1933 [N3009] and 1935 [N3010] seen for a few minutes ..., the f one is smaller and in a rectangular [triangle] of 3 sts." These are pretty clear descriptions of the two brightest objects, the ones that we have taken as N3009 and N3010. On 17 Mar 1895, Bigourdan has micrometric observations of the two brightest galaxies in the area, MCG +07-20-062 and -065. In his description of "NGC 3010", he mentions "A star, even fainter than this object, is at P = 20deg, d = 0.'7." This "star" is actually the middle of the three galaxies. In June of 1991, Steve Gottlieb observed the objects with his 13-inch reflector. His notes: UGC 5264 = MCG +07-20-062: "F, S, R, even Surf Br" MCG +07-20-065: "vF, S, R" MCG +07-20-066: "vF, S, R" MCG +07-20-067: logged as a mag 15.5 "star". [O]f the 4 objects MCG +07-20-067 was the least obvious to me -- in fact, I recorded it as a dim star in my notes. Although MCG +07-20-062 has a lower surface brightness than -065 or -066, I think it was at least as obvious due to its larger size. This suggests that MCG +07-20-067 was less likely to have been seen by JH. So, we need to take all this into account, too. Bigourdan saw three galaxies here, but took one to be a star, while Steve picked up all four, but like Bigourdan, saw one as a star. In the end, I've arrived at the really messy identification list shown in the position table. Summarizing, here is how I've broken it all down: NGC Alternate RA (J2000) Dec Obs Notes IDs 3009 09 49 54 +44 19.3 oJH As published. 3009 09 50 36 +44 18.6 oJH Assumes wire 1, not wire 2. 3009:: +07-20-065 09 50 33.2 +44 18 52 c2MSP = NGC 3010sw = NGC 3010B 3009? +07-20-062 09 50 11.1 +44 17 42 cSDSS 3010 09 50 00 +44 20.8 oJH As published. 3010 09 50 48 +44 20.1 oJH Offset from N3009, wire 1. 3010:: +07-20-067 09 50 39.4 +44 19 52 c2MSP = NGC 3010ne = NGC 3010C 3010? +07-20-066 09 50 34.6 +44 19 24 c2MSP = NGC 3010m = NGC 3010A There are still other ways to interpret JH's observations (why, for example, did he make the RA difference just six seconds when the log book has "12"? Did he perhaps take that as a difference in the chronometer "beat" rather than as difference in seconds of time? Wolfgang, as I've said, agrees with this interpretation), so this is not the final word here. At least we know that JH saw two of the four galaxies here -- but which two, we just aren't sure. As before, not very edifying, but the observations just don't pin JH's objects down any better than this. ----- Another note in September 2015: I had an email from Wolfgang (mentioned above) that suggests this sequence of events that might account for JH's records here: 1) JH saw the first nebula -- call it "N1" for brevity -- nearly in the center of his field when the clock read 09 39 50. It had already passed wire 1, and took another 43 chronometer beats (= 21.5 seconds) to reach wire 2. 2) Another 12 beats later (6 seconds), the second nebula crossed wire 2 1.5 arcminutes north of N1. So, Wolfgang's interpretation is that JH's strange notation "-12 -43" means that N2 follows N1 by six seconds, and that N1 was in view for 21.5 seconds before it crossed the second wire. This is reasonable given that the field of view is just over 90 seconds of time wide at this declination, and that the separation of wires 1 and 2 is 45.3 seconds. This leads Wolfgang to say "The short distance N1-N2 speaks against the identification [of] NGC 3009/10." In other words, UGC 5264 = MCG +07-20-062 is NOT NGC 3009. Wolfgang goes on "So we must choose two of the components of the MCG triple (7-20-65, -66, -67). [But Steve Gottlieb has shown that] only the first two [of these] are bright enough -- but they are much closer [just 1.5 seconds] than JH's value." Wolfgang goes on to ask about the issue of JH's description of N2: "resolvable, stars seen". "What are the 'resolvable stars'? Perhaps JH has seen [MCG +07-20-0]65 as N1 and 66/67 plus the scattered stars around as N2. But this is a matter of 15th magnitude!" Wolfgang is right -- these would have been right at the limit of JH's telescope. Yet JH's description of N2's brightness is just "F", not "eF" or even "vF". Wolfgang ends by saying "But facing JH's possible error, N1 = ... NGC 3009 = UGC 5264 and N2 = ... NGC 3010 = [MCG +07-20-0]65 (or 66) could indeed be the correct identification!" ----- And a curious addendum: Looking at the GC, we find that JH includes not just his two nebulae, but has two other entries, GC 1936/37, which he credits to LdR, describing them only as "Several near", and giving a single position for the two "9 41 +-", "45 0 +-" (1860, NPD). Coincidentally, there are only two galaxies in the area aside from the two that JH observed. It is quite tempting to assign these two GC numbers to the two spare galaxies. If we do this, assuming that my double-coloned identifications are "correct", the two left-over objects are MCG +07-20-062 and MCG +07-20-066. (However, they could well be two others!) See the "notngc" files for a bit more on this. ===== NGC 3024. See IC 567. ===== NGC 3031 = M 81. This is one of the few bright, nearby galaxies that has a strong, compact radio source in its nucleus. As such, it is one of sources that define the International Celestial Reference System, the system of positions on the sky upon which all of astronomy and astrophysics rests. There is good reason for the branch of astronomy dealing with positions -- astrometry -- to be also called "fundamental astronomy." ===== NGC 3034 = M 82. The position for this large, bright irregular galaxy depends strongly on wavelength. The brightest optical knot is not coincident with the radio "nucleus" nor with the brightest infrared knot. And there are several bright X-ray sources scattered throughout the galaxy. The position I've finally chosen is the brightest 2MASS point source in the H and K bands. It looks like a good compromise position and represents the galaxy well enough. All the positions I've listed, though, fall within the boundaries of the galaxy, and there is of course no identification problem. But note that this is one of the few Messier objects which also received a number -- IV 79 -- in WH's catalogue. I've found it curious that WH put it in with his "planetary" nebulae, but it is the last of that class that he found. It was actually published, along with seven other of WH's unpublished nebulae, by JH as an appendix to his (JH's) list of nebulae and clusters in the CGH observations. ===== NGC 3040 is a triple system, though Stephan only measured and described the brightest. Holmberg has the brightest two in his catalogue of double galaxies from 1937, though does not note the NGC number. His number is Ho. 148 for the pair; Ho. 148a is NGC 3040. ===== NGC 3046 may be NGC 3051. But if it is, JH has made some strange mistake since he specifically says in a note in the GC "h3199 [N3046] and 3201 [N3051] are also distinct nebulae, and were observed consecutively in sweep 562 (h)." His CGH observation has the note "RA precarious; a hurried observation," and the Sweep itself, preserved in the Herschel Archive, has the RA marked with a double colon "::". Otherwise, this observation and that for NGC 3051 just following are properly reduced and unremarkable. I'm inclined to believe that the two observations refer to the same object, in spite of JH's protestations to the contrary. The descriptions are identical (as far as they go; N3046 is noted only as "pF,R" while N3051 is "pF,S,R,gbM; 20 [arcsec]"), and the positions are not all that much different. There are two very faint double stars near JH's position for N3046, but they are much fainter than N3051 and any other double star that I know that JH has mistaken as a nebula. This sort of mistake -- measuring the same galaxy twice in the same sweep, thinking it a different object -- has occured at least twice in his father's sweeps, and I would not doubt that it appears in JH's, too. Still, I'm listing the main entry as "Not found", and putting a question mark on the identity with N3051. Whatever the case, there is certainly only one bright galaxy here, not two as JH has it. The galaxy, by the way, is one of the "shell" galaxies, with coronae at alternating distances on either side of the bright bar. NGC 474 is a dramatic example; see Turnbull, Bridges, and Carter, MNRAS 307, 967, 1999 where the shells are interpreted as the result of a merger of at least two galaxies. ===== NGC 3047 is presumeably the brighter of a pair of galaxies just 1.1 arcminutes south of HD 85384. Apparently co-discovered by Burnham and Hough, there is no mention in their short note about a companion (nor about the star, for that matter). The companion has had the suffix "A" added at sometime or other, though I am choosing to call it simply "NGC 3047 comp". ===== NGC 3048 appears to be a double interacting system in the background of an undisturbed spiral. An earlier version of SDSS redshifts of the system suggested that the bright spiral and one of two "in the background" are at the same distance. However, the latest DR12 version (consulted in July 2015) has these redshifts: The brightest southwestern object has z = 0.02956 +- 0.00002 The faintest "middle" object has z = 0.03348 +- 0.00001 The northeastern object has z = 0.03349 +- 0.00001 These confirm the visual impression of an optical alignment. Marth's single observation has only a position -- given, as usual, to only a full minute of arc -- and the note "eF". While his observation is probably dominated by the foreground spiral, I've nevertheless given directional designations to all three. ===== NGC 3050 = NGC 2979. Frank Muller found N3050 with the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor. His description (m = 14.0, D = 0.6 arcmin, vlE at 200 deg, gbMN) suggests that it would be hard to miss -- it's among the brighter of the new nebulae found at Leander McCormick. However, there is nothing in Muller's position. NGC 2979, though, is 11m 15s preceding the place given by Muller. It matches the description perfectly, and the declination is within an arcminute of that given by Muller. If the RA is in error by 10 minutes of time, then the RA difference falls into the range often seen in the Leander McCormick positions, one to two minutes too far east. I'm pretty well convinced that this is the correct identification, though final proof is lacking. Unfortunately, there is no sketch, and Muller left us no descriptions of field stars around the galaxy that would help identify it. Still, the description and the Declination are right, and a digit error in the RA is likely, so I'm going with this. ===== NGC 3051 may also be NGC 3046, which see. ===== NGC 3058s = IC 573 was found by Leavenworth at Leander McCormick. As usual, the position is poor, though it was corrected by Howe. Leavenworth did note the object as double or bi-nuclear; it is, of course, double with the southern galaxy being the brighter. See IC 573 for more. ===== NGC 3061 was found by WH on the night of 2 April 1801. The positions of all fifteen nebulae in the sweep (No. 1096) are affected by large, systematic errors. See NGC 3752 where I give the story of how it all came to be sorted out, first by Dreyer; then by myself, Steve Gottlieb, and finally Wolfgang Steinicke who has actually found the cause of the problem. The field confused many observers trying to follow up WH's discoveries, not least JH. See the "notngc" files under h 653 for more confusion in the area. ===== NGC 3063 is the double star southwest of NGC 3065 and NGC 3066. Though N3063 was first seen by WH in 1802, he apparently described it only indirectly: "F, pL, R; the last of three, the others are II 333 and II 334." The position he gives is that of NGC 3066, and the description fits, too, so that is probably the object he mistakenly thought was new. If so, he also mistook the double star as one of his previous objects. His confusion was carried over through the GC and d'A's catalogue into NGC, and eventually into Dreyer's 1912 reprinting of WH's papers. I actually prefer the numbering that he has in the NGC itself as it more accurately reflects the history: NGC 3065 and 3066 are the true nebulae and are II 333 and II 334, respectively, while the last object found is II 909 = NGC 3063. This "last" object was not seen by JH, but was measured twice by d'A (his position appears in the NGC). d'A also has six measures of the other two objects, so he pinned down all three. - - - - - In August 2015, Courtney Seligman asked about the history of the discovery and numbering of these objects, so I collected almost all of the information available in the old papers. The only things missing here are d'A's extensive Latin notes describing his observations. Here are WH's notes from CH's fair copies of the sweeps: 3 April 1785, Sweep 390: Two, S, pF, bM. The most north a very little larger and brighter than the southern one; otherwise much alike; not far from being in the same meridian. 27 Ursa maj. f 20' 14" s 0o 2' RA 9h 45' 2" PD 16o 54'. (854, 855) ==> 10 02 04 +72 09.8 (J2000) Reduced wrt 27 UMa 10 02 43 +72 09.0 " Precessed from CH reduction 30 Sept 1802, Sweep 1112: Three, the place is that of the last, which is F, pL, R. The sp one eF, vS about 1' more south and, 1 F = 20" preceding. The np one pB stellar about 3' more north than that of which the place is taken, and, 15 [sic] F = 30" preceding. 27 Ursa f 20' 3" s 0o 5' RA 9h 44' 51" PD 16o 57' (854, 855, 2508), RA & PD of the 1st 9h 44" [sic] 21' [sic]. 16o 54'. Of the 2nd 9h 44' 31". 16o 58'. ==> 10 01 58 +72 07.1 (J2000) Reduced wrt 27 UMa sp 10 01 38 +72 06.1 " WH's estimated offset wrt measured neb. np 10 01 28 +72 10.1 " Ditto 10 02 32 +72 06.1 (J2000) Precessed from CH reduction 10 02 12 +72 05.1 " Ditto 10 02 04 +72 09.1 " Ditto Dreyer quotes the second of these in his 1912 edition of the Scientific Papers (under II 909) and adds, "These three are NGC 3063 = II 333, 3065 = II 334, and 3066 = II 909." The NGC positions are 3063 09 49 27 17 12.4 ==> 10 01 43 +72 07.6 (J2000) 3065 09 49 40 17 09.4 ==> 10 01 56 +72 10.5 (J2000) 3066 09 49 45 17 12.3 ==> 10 02 00 +72 07.6 (J2000) His NGC note for NGC 3063 reads Probably II 909 is = II 334, which is pL according to d'A; but H must have seen all three nebulae, as he says that II 909 is the last of the three. Finally, in his 1912 MNRAS paper, Dreyer has 3063 is II 333 3065 is II 334 3066 is II 909 with no further comment. JH (1833) has 654 II 333 09 46 01.4 17 00 57 vF, S, R, 10"; near * 11.12 m ==> 10 01 03.4 +72 10 41 (J2000) 655 II 334 09 46 16.4 17 03 48 F, R, 20", vglbM ==> 10 01 16.7 +72 07 48 (J2000) both in Sweep 382 on 4 Nov 1831. In CGH (1847), JH presents the "HON" list, including II 909 as Number 5 (his position is for 1830): 5 II 909 09 47 09.0 17 03 55 F, pL, R; the last of 3, the others are II 333 and 334. Follows 27 Ursae (G. 1563) 20m 3s, and is 0o 5' south of it. Discovered Sept. 30, 1802. ==> 10 02 06.9 +72 07 34 (J2000) For GC (1864), he has 1969 654 II 333 --- 09 48 42.7 17 09 25.2 pF, vS, R, bM; *11 nr Position from 1 observation, 3 total observations by H and h ==> 10 01 01.3 +72 10 37 (J2000) 1971 655 II 334 --- 09 48 57.4 17 12 16.5 vF, vS, vglbM Position from 1 observation, 3 total observations by H and h ==> 10 01 14.5 +72 07 44 (J2000) 1972 --- II 909 H.ON 5 09 49 50.5 17 12 24.7 F, pL, R; 3rd of 3 Position from 1 observation, 1 total observation by H ==> 10 02 05.7 +72 07 30 (J2000) In the GC Supplement (1879), Dreyer has two notes: 1969, 1971 The minute of RA should be 49 (H and D'Arrest). 1972 = II 909. Not found by D'Arrest, unless it is a Nebula observed by him in RA 9h 49m 27s (2 obs). d'A (1864; with extensive Latin commentary as well): H h 1861 J2000 II 909? --- 09 49 32.5 +72 47 21 n = 2 ==> 10 01 43.1 +72 07 35 II 333 654 09 49 45.0 +72 50 07 n = 6 ==> 10 01 56.0 +72 10 20 II 334 655 09 50 00.0 +72 47 34 n = 6 ==> 10 02 09.7 +72 07 45 ===== NGC 3065. See NGC 3063. ===== NGC 3066. See NGC 3063. ===== NGC 3069 = IC 580, which see. ===== NGC 3070. See IC 580. ===== NGC 3077 is one of the brighter satellites of M 81 = NGC 3031. Like M 82 = NGC 3034, it is classified as an I0 galaxy -- and like M 82 shows very little resolution into stars in spite of its being relatively nearby (contrast with M 81 itself, NGC 2403, or even NGC 2976; all at about the same distance, 3.5 to 4 Mpc). An additional peculiarity of this galaxy is its eccentric central bulge; the nucleus is well off the center of the outer isophotes. Consequently, I've given two positions in the table, one for the entire galaxy approximately centered on those outer isophotes, while the second refers to the nearly stellar red nucleus shown in the 2MASS and SDSS images. ===== NGC 3080 is close to IC 585. Both were seen by Bigourdan who got the NGC number on the correct object. I had some question about that as his position is somewhat different from the NGC position. The NGC position apparently comes from CH; it is based on a single observation by WH who compared it to "the Georgian Planet" on 1 April 1794. After some fussing about looking for an on-line ephemeris, Brian Skiff pointed me at JPL's "Horizons". Jon Giorgini, one of Horizons maintainers, set me straight on its use, so I was able to find that Uranus was at 09 57 30.0, +13 17 24 (B1950.0) on the night that WH used it as a comparison object. This position, combined with WH's offsets (16 seconds preceding, 2 arcmin south) fell within 1.5 arcmin of NGC 3080, the brighter of the two galaxies. Fortunately, not only did Bigourdan get it right, but he published a correction to the NGC position that ended up in the IC2 Notes. Even that position, however, is a bit off because he used the old BD position for his comparison star. Once that is corrected, and proper motion taken into account, his position lands within a few arcseconds of the modern ones. ===== NGC 3081 = IC 2529, which see. ===== NGC 3084 = IC 2528, which see. ===== NGC 3088. Neither of the Herschels commented on the faint, edgewise companion, so I've left the NGC number on the brighter galaxy. The suffixes come, like many others, from the RNGC. The galaxy has a faint companion on its east side that was seen by both R.J. Mitchell and C.E. Burton with the Birr Castle reflector. See the "notngc" files for more on the sightings. ===== NGC 3097. I cannot find this one. Here are the original observations from the Harvard Annals, Vol. 8, Part 1, page 62, 1882: "Date GC RA (1860.0) Dec Remarks 1870 Mar.24 -- 09 54 19.6 +60 47 58.2 G.C. 1998 s f neb; p 45 deg s 2'. [Place only approximate.] 1870 Mar.24 1998 09 54 36.7 +60 46 33.3 G.C. 1998: F; S; R; mbMN." There are three things to note about these observations: 1) The position of the second (GC 1998 = NGC 3102) is from the GC. 2) The "p 45 deg s 2' " means that the first (N3097) is 2' away from GC1998 at a position angle of 45 degrees. This is inconsistent with the position which implies the object to be northwest, not northeast, of N3102. 3) Both observations are credited to E. P. Austin, and there is a note for N3097: "Perhaps a nebulous star. It is half-way between G.C. 1998 and a star 11 magn." The positions don't tell us anything we don't already know since they are correctly transfered into NGC from GC and the Harvard list. Since Austin was observing with a 15-inch telescope, I don't think that he could have seen either of the faint stars Glen Deen measured during his MicroSky project. The magnitude estimate given by Austin for the "star 11 magn" is rough since there is nothing that bright near the galaxy. WH had this to say (N3102 = H III 916): "eF, vS, Stellar. Near a S st." And JH: "F, vS, R, bM; a coarse D * nf points to it; has a * 11 30 [arcsec] dist, pos 142.2 deg ." All of JH's stars are identifiable, and I think that his star 11 must be the same one mentioned by WH and by Austin. So, where does that leave N3097? My guess is that Austin has misidentified another nebula as N3102, but I don't see it or its purported companion in the area. A more thorough search may turn them up. ===== NGC 3099. Like NGC 3088 (which see), neither Herschel noted this as a double galaxy. It is, in fact, not -- the companion (itself a pair) is simply a member of the same group. Holmberg was the first to note the companion; it is Holmberg 160b, with NGC 3099 being Holmberg 160a. ===== NGC 3100 = NGC 3103, which see. ===== NGC 3102. See NGC 3097. ===== NGC 3103 = NGC 3100. Swift's position -- which is empty -- is roughly midway between NGC 3100 and NGC 3108, both found by JH. Swift notes a "coarse D* p"; it is actually following and a bit to the south of NGC 3100. Howe was the first to make this identification in one of his MN articles; Dreyer has the appropriate correction in the Notes to IC2. It is just possible that N3103 is actually NGC 3108. The RAs are exactly a minute of time different, and the declinations are within 0.1 arcmin. However, N3108 has a pretty bright star about 1 arcmin to the south that Swift probably would have mentioned (though JH didn't), and there are no double stars nearby, neither preceding nor following. ===== NGC 3105. JH has two observations of this in successive sweeps on 6 and 10 April 1834. In both sweeps, he notes "a train of large stars running out of it, sp" and "a great train of sts 12 ... 13 m on the sp side." The chain of stars is indeed there, but it looks to me like a random feature of the rich Milky Way field. I've not included it in the position or diameter given in the position table. ===== NGC 3107. Given WH's estimated position -- "3/4 deg following, 1/2 deg north [of the] Georgian planet," it's a wonder that this object was ever recovered. However, WH also noted that the object is "3 arcmin north of a pL red star." This pair of objects is unmistakeable enough that LdR had no trouble finding it in spite of the poor position, and the confusion in the GC description ("L red star north 3 arcmin"). It must be said, however, that the GC position, presumeably from CH's reduction of WH's observations, is remarkably good, being only 6 arcmin south and 5 seconds east of the galaxy. Dreyer picked the wrong star, however, as the "red" star near the nebula. This led him to assign the wrong position to the nebula in his note in the GC Supplement, in LdR's observations, and in the NGC. The correct star is SAO 98932 (spectral type K2), not SAO 98925 (spectral type F5). Using the SAO position for the correct star, and LdR's micrometric offsets, leads to a position for the galaxy that is within an arcsecond of the GSC position. ===== NGC 3108. See NGC 3103 = NGC 3100. ===== NGC 3109. This large, nearby galaxy, just beyond the Local Group, was found by JH in March of 1835. He took its position to be that of a superposed star near the center of the brightest part of the galaxy. However, the bar is to the east of the apparent center, and the approximate center of the bar is the position I've taken to represent the galaxy. ===== NGC 3110 = NGC 3122 = NGC 3518 (= MCG -01-26-014) and MCG -01-26-013 are an interacting pair separated by 1.9 arcminutes; N3110 is the brighter of the pair. N3122 is actually an observation of N3110, but WH confused his comparison stars. Stephan's position is very close to the actual position of the galaxy, but is about an arcmin off in declination. This is probably due to the incorrect declination that he quotes for his comparison star (which is not the same one that Herschel used). Both Stephan (in his 1885 AN paper) and Dreyer (in MNRAS 73, 37, 1912) suggest that the two NGC numbers refer to the same galaxy. Dreyer makes further comments in his notes to WH's first catalogue of nebulae, (included in WH's complete papers, edited by Dreyer in 1912) saying "Looked for but not found in 1787. It was the only object compared with `20 Sextantis,' but the star was in reality B.1414. This gives for 1860 9h57m04s, 95d49m, in perfect agreement with N3110 (Stephan XIII)." Stephan's position is actually 2 arcmin north of this one, but the agreement is close enough to make the identification clear. The two stars by the way, are SAO 137424 (20 Sex) and SAO 137400 (B.1414, from Bode's catalogue used by CH in her reduction of WH's observations). Coincidentally, there is a galaxy 2 arcmin south of WH's position. It is the one that Jack Sulentic picked up for RNGC, but it is not in MCG. The RNGC galaxy is at 10 03 47.1, -06 19 49 (GSC, B1950) and is much fainter. If WH looked for it again in 1787 at roughly this location, then I'm not surprised that he did not recover it. The identity with NGC 3518 (which see), is yet another story. ===== NGC 3114. JH gives three positions for this large cluster; I've included two in the table. The other is probably a repeat of the second with a 20 second error in the RA. JH's first position refers to "... the centre of a bright equilateral triangle". This is easy to identify, and JH's position is good. A second position (10 02 40, -60 10.7 for J2000) for "The chief * 9 m ..." points at only faint stars. As I said above, I think that it is 20 seconds in error and actually refers to the same star as his third position for "The chief * 8 m ...". JH had a different suggestion that he added when he was later preparing CGH for publication: "As both this and the last observation are distinctly written and correctly reduced, no doubt they belong to two distinct and nearly equal stars on the same parallel." As we've seen, though, there is only one bright star, HD 87436 that he probably picked up both times. The position, and indeed the composition, of the cluster is uncertain. I make it over half a degree in diameter, and centered more than 30 seconds of time west of either Brian Skiff's estimate or ESO's position. The cluster is more or less outlined -- as I see it in a 1 degree DSS image -- by a group of 6-8 stars that closely resemble the "home plate" of bright stars in the constellation Auriga. I'm sure that a study of the area has been done, and I would guess that there is indeed a real cluster here. But to my eye, it looks scattered and a bit "diluted" by the rich Milky Way background. ===== NGC 3119 is perhaps the same galaxy as NGC 3121. There is no doubt about the identification of N3121. This was found by William Lassell in 1848 (see AN 635; my thanks to Courtney Seligman for sending along a copy of the original paper) with one of his smaller telescopes. It was reobserved by Arthur Auwers, who noted the 9th magnitude star 4 arcmin north and 14-15 seconds of time preceding. The position listed by Auwers (1862) is very good. N3119 was found by Albert Marth in 1863 with Lassell's 48-inch reflector. He describes it only as "vF." His position, from one observation, falls about an arcmin southwest of NGC 3121; it is also 2.4 arcmin north of the galaxy that RNGC chose as N3119: CGCG 093-045. This is considerably fainter and smaller than N3121. Wolfgang also favors CGCG 093-045 and reports that it is visible in his 50-cm reflector as a slightly non-stellar patch. So, Marth almost certainly could have seen CGCG 093-045. However, since his position is closer to N3121, and since that galaxy is the brightest in the area, I think it more likely that Marth's observation refers to it. Wolfgang and RNGC could be right, of course -- but then, why didn't Marth mention reobserving the galaxy that his mentor had found 15 years before? Would he even know about it? We don't have answers to these questions. ===== NGC 3121. See NGC 3119. ===== NGC 3122 = NGC 3110 = NGC 3518 (both of which see). ===== NGC 3123. Here is my original note on this object: [This] may be one of the stars, or the double star, that I've listed in the table. There are no nebulae in the area that Sidney Coolidge could have seen with the 15-inch refractor at Harvard. His position is noted as having a range of 4 seconds of time in RA, and 2 arcmin in Dec. All of the objects I've noted as possibilities are more or less within those ranges, though the star that I've noted with a single question mark is closest. It has two faint companions to the south (one looks like a galaxy) that may have added a bit of fuzziness to the image. I should note, however, that many of the "nebulae" found during the Harvard refractor's first decade are actually single stars, presumeably found on nights of less than good seeing. This may be another of those. However, Steve Gottlieb wrote in March 2015 that he has examined the Harvard Zones where the object was first published. He has found that the only object in Zone 117 which has a note even suggesting nebulosity is number 47 with the remark "Has a perceptible disc?" The position of the object is given as 10 10 58.91, +00 44 39.3 for 1859.0; this precesses to 10 18 12.83, +00 02 26.6 for J2000. Given the proper motion of -37.1 mas/yr in RA and -6.1 mas/yr in Dec, the position for J2000 (10 18 12.5, +00 02 26) corresponds well enough that for UCAC4 451-050216 (10 18 11.89, +00 02 24.7). Thus, the Harvard star is pinned down. But where does Bond (in AN 1453) find the published position 09h 59m 48s +-4s, +00d 45' +-2' for 1859? The declination is correct if the star is indeed number 117-47, but the RA is wrong (there is nothing in the Harvard Zones at the position with that RA). I am also curious about the errors that Bond assigns to the position -- the typical differences in the overlap areas between measurements in the different Harvard Zones is around 2-3 arcseconds, not the 2 arcminutes that Bond gives. So, there are still some problems here. Still, I think that Steve has found the correct object -- star 47 in Zone 117 -- so give that in the main table, though with colons. ===== NGC 3125 = Tololo 1004-296 appears to be a close double galaxy, though may be single with at least two -- possibly more -- bright knots. The nominal nucleus is coincident with the western component, while the eastern appears to be more diffuse. I've given positions for both of the objects -- whatever they are -- and list the mean for "NGC 3125" itself. ----- After I wrote that, Courtney Seligman did a quick literature search for this galaxy and has found three papers that suggest that the bright knots are actually young star clusters with many supergiant stars, including Wolf-Rayet stars (see Wofford et al ApJ 781, 122, 2014; Hadfield and Crowther MNRAS 368, 1822, 2006; and Chandar et al ApJ 604, 153, 2004). Thus, these clusters are similar to well-known superassociations like NGC 2070 (30 Doradus) in the LMC and NGC 604 in M 33. Finally, Doublier et al, A&A 138, 213, 1999 find three Galactic stars superposed on the southern part of the galaxy. These are not, however, coincident with the bright knots in the central regions. ===== NGC 3129 is a double star seen by both WH and JH. WH's position, adopted by JH, is good, and both descriptions are appropriate. It appears, however, that LdR must have seen it as a star or a double star, as he could not find any nebulosity at WH's position on three different nights. Dreyer has a note in NGC to that effect. ===== NGC 3130. There is nothing wrong with the position of the galaxy in the NGC, but the note in the description "* 5 sf" needs to read "* 5 np". JH has this in his 1833 catalogue: "... follows 31 Leonis 16s.5, and is 1' 40" s of it"; this is correct. But the GC reads, "... 31 Leon sf 100" ". I take all this to mean that both JH and Dreyer were moving quickly through their cataloguing chores -- in this case, quickly enough to get the orientation of the star and the galaxy confused. I can empathize. ===== NGC 3134 is David Todd's number 21a, found during his search for "the trans- Neptunian planet." It can be more or less confidently identified with Todd's sketches, and his measurement of the separation between the galaxy and a star ("b" in his sketch; it is UCAC 512-048943 at 10 12 57.7 +12 22 50; J2000): 28.4 seconds of time. The only remaining problem is that another "star" in the sketch just northeast of "b" is not on the sky; could it have been an asteroid? See NGC 3604 for more on Todd's observations. ===== NGC 3140 and NGC 3141. The field exactly matches the sketch that Leavenworth made, and his descriptions also match, down to the bright nucleus in the brighter galaxy. His original descriptions make it clear that the galaxy that got the smaller NGC number is actually the brighter, northeastern member of the pair. Here are his data from AJ 7, 9, 1886: No. RA (1890) Dec Mag Size Form Condensation [NGC] 166 10 04 -16 06 15.5 0.5' R sbMN [3140] 167 10 04 -16 06 16.0 0.3 R --- [3141] Dreyer has added the notes "1st of 2" and "2nd of 2." I suspect that he thought that the larger and brighter galaxy was the preceding since it was listed first in the table. That turns out to be wrong, unfortunately, so the NGC numbers are reversed from the right ascensions. ===== NGC 3141. See NGC 3140. ===== NGC 3142. Dreyer squeezes a note "(d'A, PD 43'.3, 1 obs)" into the description of this in NGC. JH's minutes of polar distance are "47.9" for 1860.0, and he is correct. d'A's position is about 4.3 arcminutes too far north which makes it identical to the declination of 17 Sextanis. The star is very close to having the same RA as the galaxy, too. This makes it likely that d'A mistakenly inserted the position of the star -- perhaps it was his comparison star? -- rather than that of the galaxy, into his table. ===== NGC 3144 = NGC 3174. D'A found NGC 3144 in the late 1850s and measured its place pretty accurately. NGC 3174 is from WH's 2 April 1801 sweep 1096 which was affected by a large, systematic error of some sort. See NGC 3752 for more on this sweep, and how we sorted it out. ===== NGC 3148 = GM UMa = HD 88512 is only a star. JH's description reads "A star 7m has a photosphere 2 or 3 arcmin diam. Sky perfectly clear; glass quite clean; windy. Another * of same mag viewed presently after has no photosphere." There is certainly no bright nebulosity that large around the star, and it is not a double or multiple star, either. Its only "peculiarity" is that it is an eclipsing variable. JH has a couple of other stars which he suspected of nebulosity, too, which show none today. These must be illusions of some sort, though difficult to account for. Perhaps they were caused by very thin, evanescent clouds or fog? ===== NGC 3153, discovered by WH, is also David Todd's number (20b), found during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet." See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 3155 = NGC 3194. NGC 3155 was found by JH and later remeasured by d'A. Their position, used in the NGC, is quite accurate. NGC 3194 is from WH's sweep 1096 of 2 April 1801; all the nebulae in that sweep have large, systematic position problems. See NGC 3752 for more. ===== NGC 3157 = IC 2555, which see. ===== NGC 3162 = NGC 3575, which see. ===== NGC 3167 is almost certainly NGC 2789 with a 1 hour error in the RA and a 1 arcminute error in the declination. The "* 11 preceding 9.5 seconds, slightly north" that d'A notes in his description is just where he puts it in relation to the galaxy. There are few other objects in d'A's list with big digit errors (NGC 3575 is an example). D'A also notes that it could be a small cluster, but the night (1 May 1862) was bad, and he never reobserved the object. ===== NGC 3170 is a double star. JH's position is just an arcminute south- southwest, and the double is very much like the several others that he mistook as nebulae. Interestingly, the double is also Reiz 248. I do not have Reiz's catalogue available, but would suspect that he picked up the object from the NGC. Reiz, like Holmberg, worked from Bruce 24-inch plates, so mistook many faint stars near the plate limit as galaxies. ===== NGC 3174 = NGC 3144, which see. ===== NGC 3176 may possibly be the galaxy a degree south and 23 seconds preceding Ormond Stone's position. However, the object (ESO 567-G029) is about half the size that Stone estimated and nearly round. Stone's description in full is "Mag = 16.0, Diameter = 0.8 arcmin, iR, neb?" from a single observation. As usual in the first list of Leander McCormick nebulae, the position is given only to a full minute of time in RA and one arcmin in Dec. There is no sketch, and the galaxies near Stone's position that he might possibly have seen all have stars nearby that are bright enough that he would have mentioned them as neighbors. Consequently, the identification with the ESO galaxy is tentative at best. ===== NGC 3180 is part of the northwestern arm of NGC 3184. For a long time, I thought that the number applied only to an HII region or star cloud in the northern part of the arm. But there is a sketch in LdR's 1861 monograph that shows the spiral arm connecting NGC 3180 and NGC 3181. It has both as patches extended along the arm, with NGC 3180 at the northern end and NGC 3181 at the southern. I've left the positions of the HII region -- actually a line of three knots, the southern perhaps a star -- and the star cloud in the table to differentiate them from the arm itself. ===== NGC 3181 is the brightest HII region, and the area of the spiral arm around it, in NGC 3184. See NGC 3180. ===== NGC 3183 = NGC 3218. NGC 3183, found by d'A, has an accurate position given in the NGC. NGC 3218, found by WH on 2 April 1801, does not; all the galaxies found that night have large, systematic position errors. See NGC 3752 for more. ===== NGC 3184. See NGC 3180. ===== NGC 3185. See NGC 3189. ===== NGC 3186 is perhaps the northeastern component of CGCG 036-074. There is nothing at Marth's position, and the CGCG galaxy is 1 minute 30 seconds west and 6 arcmin south. There are, however, "sev F sts near" as noted in the NGC -- but not by Marth; more below -- about half a dozen within 5 arcmin of the galaxy. The southwestern component of the CGCG galaxy, by the way, is itself a double galaxy with a superposed star. The nearer, though fainter, candidate galaxy, CGCG 036-085 (20 seconds east, 5 arcmin south) has only three nearby stars that Marth may have seen, so may or may not match the NGC description, depending on one's notion of "several". But -- the NGC note about the nearby faint stars is not in Marth's original description. Dreyer had added it by the time he published the GC Supplement in 1878, but I have not been able to trace the source of the note. It is not in LdR's observations, and Dreyer has no reference in the Supplement. Given that uncertainty, I'm reluctant to discount either galaxy. Nor is there a systematic offset in Marth's positions for the other 25 objects he credits to the same date, 1865.23. NGC 3186 seems to be the only object from that date with a large offset from Marth's position. All in all, not a very satisfactory identity. ===== NGC 3187. The position I've adopted for this famous, distorted spiral is that of the faint, stellar nucleus. There is a possibility, worth checking, that the nucleus is actually a superposed star. See also NGC 3189. ===== NGC 3189 is the southwestern side of NGC 3190, a nearly edgewise galaxy split by a prominent dark lane. The galaxy itself is the brightest in a famous group also including NGC 3185, NGC 3187, and NGC 3193. ===== NGC 3190. See NGC 3189. ===== NGC 3191 = NGC 3192, which see. ===== NGC 3192 = NGC 3191. WH's NPD is -9 arcmin in error, close enough to 10 to make this pretty clearly a digit mistake in reduction or copying. WH's description, "eF, vS. Perhaps a patch of small stars" is also appropriate for NGC 3191 which has several OX knots in it. The identity was first suggested by JH, and was later taken up by Dreyer. ===== NGC 3193. See NGC 3189. ===== NGC 3194 = NGC 3155, which see. ===== NGC 3197 was found by WH on 2 April 1801. All fifteen objects he found this night are more or less affected by large position errors. See NGC 3752 for more on the sweep (No. 1096). ===== NGC 3199. Glen Cozens has found that this is Dunlop 332 with a one-degree error in Dunlop's south polar distance (he put it 1 degree too far north). JH rediscovered the object independently a decade later. He had the north polar distance correct, so did not notice the identity with Dunlop's object. The NGC object is the western part of a large, annular nebula being ionized by HD 89358, a Wolf-Rayet star (see NGC 2359 for a bit more on these evolved stars and the nebulae surrounding some of them). While my preferred position is for the star itself, I've also given an approximate center for the annulus, as well as JH's three slightly different positions for various stars within the 12' x 4' crescent that he saw. I've also given an approximate center for the entire 23' x 20' annulus. ESO did the same thing, but estimated the center to be about 10 seconds of time west of where I've put it. This may be because Andris Lauberts was looking at a blue plate, while I'm now restricted to the DSS2 red image. In any case, the object is far enough south, and large enough, that the 10 second difference is irrelevant to its identification and appreciation. ===== NGC 3210 is a star about an arcminute west-northwest of NGC 3212. (I had called it a double star earlier, but no longer see the very close companion that led to that conclusion.) WH's description is appropriate, and his position (for three objects; the third is NGC 3215) is good. There is another slightly fainter star about 23 arcsec preceding NGC 3210; is it possible that WH glimpsed this, too? If so, it may have added to the illusion of nebulosity. ===== NGC 3212. See NGC 3210. ===== NGC 3215. See NGC 3210. ===== NGC 3217 = IC 606. The IC position, from Javelle, is good, but the NGC position, from David Todd's paper chronicling his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet", is over two minutes of time off. Fortunately, Todd has left us a sketch in his article, so we can positively identify the galaxy he saw. (See NGC 3604 for more about Todd's objects.) Because he was searching for a new planet, Todd was concerned about observing possible motion across the sky. His note for this object (his number 29) is almost totally concerned about its motion, yet helps us to identify the galaxy, too. Here, for those interested, is the complete note from Todd's second observation ("a" is the object in question, "c" is a nearby star): "1878 Mar. 4.6, delta alpha (ac) = 5.2s +- 0.1s [the separation on the DSS is 5.5 seconds]. I feel quite sure that 'a' has not moved: the delta alpha (7.0s) [from the discovery night 28.5 Feb 1878] was put down from memory on March 2, without much hope of its being right. But, judging from the configuration, I say that 'a' has not moved appreciably." ===== NGC 3218 = NGC 3183, which see. ===== NGC 3220 = IC 604, which see. ===== NGC 3223 = IC 2571, which see. ===== NGC 3228. JH's position is crude and marked uncertain. But the group of stars is so striking and so perfectly described by JH, "A group of 9 L, and a few sc small stars", that there is no mistaking the correct object. ===== NGC 3229 is a triple star. It is very close to Coolidge's position, and is similar to several other asterisms discovered at Harvard in the early 1850's. The hours of RA (20) in the NGC is a typo there, not in the original paper in AN. ===== NGC 3231 may be a sparce cluster, but is more likely a random collection of stars. JH's description is exact: "A cluster of 20 stars more or less, 10, 11, and 12 m, scattered over a space 10' diam. A star 7 m s." This shows that it is considerably more than Brian Skiff's "2.5' diamond-shaped *ism of seven *s, m11-14." JH's position is for the brightest star on the western edge of the group. The center is about 30 seconds on east. Also see NGC 4512. ===== NGC 3234 is almost certainly = NGC 3235. JH's position is exactly 1 degree north, and his description fits. Dreyer was the first to suggest the identity and his NGC note documents his idea. Unfortunately, his note in IC1 confuses the issue: "3234 is not = 3235; both seen by Denning." While I've not seen Denning's observation (it is not in his short paper about the circumpolar nebulae where he announces the discovery of several IC objects), I suspect that he must have picked up the two objects that d'A found: N3232 and N3234. There is certainly nothing nebulous at the nominal position for N3234, and the exact 1 degree error in JH's position argues convincingly for Dreyer's first interpretation. ===== NGC 3235 = NGC 3234, which see. ===== NGC 3239 is a large, nearby, low-surface-brightness, late-type spiral. It is coincidentally seen on the sky around a 9th magnitude star noted by both WH and JH (in three different sweeps). I've given the position of the star in the table as well as that of the galaxy itself. The galaxy's position is relatively difficult to determine. There is no nucleus, and the bar is patchy with knots and resolved supergiants. However, the SDSS image shows a faint peachish haze in the brightest part of the bar toward the eastern end of the galaxy. This is what is left of the "nuclear bulge" in a galaxy of this type. I've estimated the position of this bulge on the DSSR2 image, and have adopted that as the position of the galaxy. There is a bright complex of HII regions south-southeast of the center of the bar, and I give a position for that as well. Finally, a neighboring galaxy, CGCG 094-042, was glimpsed by both Mitchell and Hunter with LdR's Birr Castle "Leviathan." See the short story on that in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 3247. JH's position is approximate. Though he has three observations of this, only one -- and possibly not even that -- was made on the meridian. The only thing matching his descriptions "Stars involved in evident nebula," "A decidedly nebulous group," and "There is a nebulous appearance, which merits re-examination," is the HII region I've listed in the table with its attached cluster. Brian Skiff identifies this cluster as "Westerlund 1", but Brent Archinal in "Star Clusters" corrects this to "Westerlund 2". Brent also notes that Collinder 220 is often mistakenly called "N3247", as it is in ESO -- and indeed was here until I stumbled across the little cluster in the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog. The nebula shows nicely in the DSS2 red image where it is about 6 x 4 arcmin across. The correct identification was first made by Stewart on a Harvard plate (and included by Dreyer as an IC2 Note), but his position is about 3 arcmin southwest of the center of the object. ===== NGC 3251 = IC 2579. D'Arrest's RA is just 1 minute of time off, an error first suggested by Dreyer in a note to IC2, as well as in the description for IC 2579. The galaxy is positively identified by d'A's note about the three stars to the southwest. There is no problem with Javelle's observation for the IC entry -- it is accurate. ===== NGC 3252 has a two minute error in its RA and a 4 arcmin error in its Dec. But it is far enough north that the RA error amounts to just over 8 arcmin, so there is no mistaking the bright galaxy that WH found. ===== NGC 3256. While there is no doubt about the identification of this well-known southern interacting galaxy, the optical image shows a chaotic central bulge with several bright points that could be the nucleus. However, the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (infrared) and the XMM-Newton Serentipitous Source Catalogue (X-ray) positions agree to within a tenth of an arcsecond. Both are close to my own measurement on the 2MASS J-band image, so probably pinpoint the nucleus of the galaxy. ----- The Gaia DR2 position is within a few tenths of an arcsecond of the previous accurate positions, so I have now (August 2019) adopted it. I would also call your attention to the spectacular HST image of the central regions that Courtney Seligman has reproduced on his NGC web pages at http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc32a.htm#3256. An optical nucleus is apparently seen there, but caution suggests that a detailed multi-wavelength study (such as that published by Sakamoto et al, ApJ 797, 90, 2014) should be consulted. ===== NGC 3257. See NGC 3260. ===== NGC 3258. See NGC 3260. ===== NGC 3260. Discovered by JH on 2 May 1834, he observed it in three additional sweeps. Even though it is in a compact group with NGC 3257 and NGC 3258, the relative positions within each sweep are accurate, and the mean positions given in CGH, GC, and NGC are good enough for positive identifications. An interesting sidelight on this galaxy came from Lewis Swift who found it on 30 December 1897. I find the story, brought to my attention by Gary Kronk in May 2017, to be a fascinating one, and illustrative of Swift's interests, publishing methods, and observational accuracy. He published the observation in four different places (AJ 18, 135; MNRAS 58, 331; Pop. Astron. 6, 18; and AN 147, 209 = AN 3517; all 1898), the first three carrying the following note (this is the AJ version): Here are two nebulas [the second is NGC 3333, which see] singularly placed, whose descriptions, as will be seen, are identical in every particular. I ran across a very faint nebula which I found to be NGC 3267 [actually NGC 3258]. Near following was an exceedingly faint and very close double star, which, with a power 132, looked as if the north one was an exceedingly small nebula of unimagined faintness. With a power of 200, my suspicion that it was not a star was confirmed. In a few minutes, I ran across another, which in every particular was exactly like it, both being north of its companion star, and the same distance apart, about 4", and of the same size and faintness. But for the excellent seeing and superiority of my periscopic eye-piece [sic] for revealing faint nebulas, they would have escaped detection. In the MNRAS version, "nebulas" becomes "nebulae" and Swift adds the following sentence: If they are as distant as their companion stars, they must vastly exceed in volume the orbit of Neptune, and yet are self-luminous. In the Popular Astronomy version, this final sentence becomes These minute objects if as distant as their companion stars must in volume vastly exceed the orbit of Neptune and yet are self luminous [sic]. In 1897, Neptune of course was the planet with the largest known orbit, so would be a natural comparison object for any other celestial object thought to be large. The Popular Astronomy version also omits the sentence concerning the seeing and the periscopic eyepiece. Almost all of this is omitted in the combined AN list where the note is combined with other objects: Nos. 115 [NGC 3333], 137 [IC 3290], 159 [IC 4299], 163 [IC 4350], 172 [IC 4453]. These appear at first glance like double stars 6" or 8" apart, like Nos. 6 [IC 1589] and 27 [IC 1740], but while each component of the latter are nebulous, only one of the former is a nebula. Here are Swift's observations from each of the four papers, leading off with the AJ: Date No. 1897 RA (1900) Dec Description 23 [Dec.] 30 10 24 30 -35 3 15 eeeF, eeS, R, eF st in contact s, p of 2 24 30 10 35 12 -35 31 35 eeeF, eeS, R, eF st in contact s, f of 2 Next, from the Monthly Notices: 23 [Dec.] 30 10 24 30 -35 3 15 eeeF, eeS, R, eF, * in contact S, p of 2. 24 30 10 35 12 -35 31 35 eeeF, eeS, R, eF, * in contact S, f of 2. Now, from Popular Astronomy: 23 [Dec.] 30 10 24 30 -35 3 15 eeeF. eeS. R. eF* in contact S. f of 2. Note. 24 " 30 10 35 12 -35 31 35 eeeF. eeS. R. eF* in contact S. f of 2. Note. Finally, from the combined AN 3517 list: 108 [Dec.] 30 10 24 30 -35 3.3 eeeF; eeS; R; eF * in contact s; sp of 3267 115 " 30 10 35 12 -35 31.6 eeeF; eeS; R; eF * in contact; sf of 2. Note These excerpts for the two galaxies show quite well the minor differences that exist in Swift's multiply-published lists. The style of the entries changes from journal to journal (perhaps an editorial touch?), as does the relatively mysterious notation "p of 2"/"f of 2". Which two objects is Swift thinking of here? If these two particular objects, they are over two degrees apart, hardly close enough to be worth mentioning. The sudden appearance of NGC 3267 in the AN description is easily explained by the omission of the more extensive note in the earlier three papers. And Swift's object is indeed "sp" (southwest) of NGC 3267 (by 18.5 arcminutes). But if this is mistake for NGC 3258 as I think it must be, then it should read "nf of 3258". Also worth mentioning here is that the dates and positions are the same -- this is not always true for Swift's objects found at Lowe. So, here is a close look at Swift's working methods in one of his more easily resolved cases. He has given us good positions and notes that help identify the objects he saw. Even if the relative position comments ("p of 2", "sf of 2", etc.) are somewhat garbled, the gist of each observation nevertheless comes through. Swift was a typical astronomer of his day, interested in virtually anything that appeared in the sky. If he chose to focus on comets and nebulae, he was as much driven by curiosity about these fuzzy apparitions as we are today. ===== NGC 3261. See NGC 3366. ===== NGC 3267. See NGC 3260 and NGC 3271. ===== NGC 3268. See NGC 3271. ===== NGC 3269. See NGC 3271. ===== NGC 3271 = IC 2585 has an error of 20 seconds in its NGC RA. The NGC identity is not in doubt as it is one of the four bright galaxies in the area, and JH has four nebulae in a group listed in his CGH Observations. However, his observations are a bit confused since he mentions a fifth nebula "... more remote and brighter ..." in his description for NGC 3268. Since there are only the four entries (corresponding to N3267, N3268, N3269, as well as N3271) in his CGH list, and since he mentions only four nebulae appearing in the diagram (not published) made during Sweep 571, we now have no way of knowing where he saw his fifth nebula. Aside from the 20 second RA error, the positions he adopted from the diagram for the CGH list and the GC (copied into the NGC, of course) are good enough to unambiguously identify his four listed objects, so it is unlikely that any of them are the fifth object. It's also clear that Stewart picked up the galaxy (on a Bruce plate taken at Arequipa) because of the RA error. Thus, it also carries the IC number. However, Stewart makes no mention of any of the NGC objects in the group. This is particularly puzzling since he obviously thought that N3271 was missing. Still, his position for it is good, and the identity with IC 2585 is secure. ===== NGC 3272 is a double star. Schultz's position is within an arcsecond of the modern position, and his complete description (F, vS, iR, stellar, r, m=12-13) fits perfectly. He also has a note that reads, "Nova VI an insignificant object; p h721 [= NGC 3277] about 68 seconds and 160 arcsec south; ..." Those distances also exactly point to the double. ===== NGC 3277. See NGC 3272. ===== NGC 3279 = IC 622 is another of David Todd's nebular discoveries (No. 30) dug out while searching for a "trans-Neptunian" planet. Todd has left us sketches of all of his objects (see NGC 3604 for more), so the poor positions that he also left can at least be used to get us into the right area of the sky. In this case, Lewis Swift picked up the galaxy a dozen years after Todd (on 4.5 March 1878, Swift on 29 Jan 1890). Swift's position, for once, is not too far off, though he notes a "9m * s" -- that star is actually north, and is the one Todd labels "b" on his sketch. ===== NGC 3280 = NGC 3295 is a triple galaxy discovered independently by both Ainslie Common with his 36-inch reflector (this telescope eventually found its way to Lick Observatory where it was called the "Crossley Reflector" after its purchaser, Edward Crossley of Halifax, England). Though Common noted only two nebulae in his object, Francis Leavenworth found and sketched all three with the Leander McCormick refractor. He also found (on the same night, 26 Feb 1886) NGC 3296 and 3297. The identities of these two are not quite as clear from his sketches, so having them near in both time and space helps us to identify them with certainty. Unfortunately, neither Common's nor Leavenworth's positions are very good. (Leavenworth's is, as usual for the LM nebulae, too far east, this time by 2m 40s. His declination, however, is less than an arcminute off. Common's RA is 20 seconds of time off, and his declination 8 arcmin too far north.) This led to the brightest galaxy being rediscovered by Stephane Javelle and included in IC1 as IC 617, which see. Herbert Howe finally suggested that N3280 and N3295 were the same object, but did not notice the identity with IC 617. ===== NGC 3283 is ESO 263-G48. JH puts a plus-minus sign on the RA and notes "RA coarsely taken by an auxillary star." In addition to the uncertain RA is the GC (and NGC) NPD -- it is 10 arcmin too small. This must be an error in transcribing/precessing the CGH position into the GC. Once these are taken into account, ESO 263-G48 is the obvious candidate. ===== NGC 3284 = NGC 3286 is the brighter of two galaxies found by WH in April of 1793 (the fainter is NGC 3288). The number N3284 applies to H III 912 seen on the 8th of April, while N3286 belongs to III 917, found the next night along with N3288 = III 918. The GC/NGC position of N3284 is 10 seconds too small (presumeably a reduction or transcription error) compared to my re-reduction of WH's position, so Dreyer did not comment on the possible identity until he prepared WH's papers for their 1912 publication. There he also notes that Bigourdan did not find N3284. A few other objects found the same night by WH show no systematic offset in their re-reduced positions, so the declination offset implied by the identity with N3286 is unique to III 912. The explanation adopted by RNGC (N3284 is a star) is considerably less likely. ===== NGC 3286 = NGC 3284, which see. ===== NGC 3288. See NGC 3284. ===== NGC 3291 is a star exactly at Bigourdan's position. Though he could not find it on a second night, his two measurements on the first are accurate. In addition, his comment "NGC 3294 is toward PA = 35 deg, d = 4.5 arcmin" is also correct. The identity is thus certain. ===== NGC 3294. See NGC 3291. ===== NGC 3295 = NGC 3280, which see. IC 617 is the brightest of this triple system; see that also. ===== NGC 3296 = IC 618. As with NGC 3295 = NGC 3280 (which see), Leavenworth's RA is nearly 3 minutes of time too far east. And as with N3295, Howe identified the correct galaxy, but did not notice the IC1 number, from Javelle's first list of new nebulae. Leavenworth left us a sketch of the galaxy, but the orientation is not sure, so I'm depending on the fact that the discovery date as well as the (incorrect) RA is the same as for N3295 and N3297. Leavenworth's declination is close, however, and his description is appropriate for the galaxy. ===== NGC 3297. This shares with NGC 3295 = NGC 3280 (which see), and NGC 3296 = IC 618 (also which see), a large error in RA. Leavenworth found it on the same night as the other two, however, so we can be pretty sure of the identity even if the orientation of his sketch is not quite sure. As with the other two, his declination and description is good. Herbert Howe looked for, but did not see this galaxy with any certainty. He says (in a note for IC 2593 which he found nearby), "On 1899 April 10 I measured the places of 3295 and 3296. I could only suspect 3297." Nevertheless, the galaxy is there. ===== NGC 3301 = NGC 3760, which see. ===== NGC 3303 = Arp 192. There are no identification problems here; both WH and JH have good observations of this galaxy. WH might have glimpsed the smaller interacting companion as he described his object as "r[esolvable]." Interestingly, though, Courtney Seligman has pointed out to me in an email in June 2020 that the "spike" shown in the Arp Atlas is actually an asteroid trail. Arp suggested that the spike originates from the companion galaxy, but the linear feature appears in no other image of the two galaxies. The asteroid was not discovered until 2002 (TU 240), and the "spike" in Arp's image was not recognized as a prediscovery image until 2009 by Jeff Kanipe (AAS Bulletin, 42, 368, 2010; the current ADS bibcode is 2010AAS...21543213K). The asteroid was subsequently named "84447 jeffkanipe". ===== NGC 3308. See NGC 5298. ===== NGC 3309. See NGC 5298. ===== NGC 3311. See NGC 5298. ===== NGC 3312 = IC 629, which see. ===== NGC 3314 is two superposed spirals, one with PA = 140 deg, the second somewhat smaller and fainter with PA = 40 deg. The nuclei are nearly coincident, making it very difficult to provide separate positions for them. I've tried, nevertheless, but I wouldn't put much weight on my attempts. In any case, you can find them well enough from the position for the NGC number. There is a spectacular image of the pair in the Hubble Heritage gallery that shows clearly what we're up against as we try to detangle the two objects. (Courtney Seligman has pointed out that the image is currently -- June 2020 -- at https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1208a/. I hope this does not change too often!) Also see See NGC 3315, where this plays a role in the identification of that object. ===== NGC 3315. My original thought that this might just be a duplicate observation of NGC 3314 is unlikely since the discoverer E.P. Austin has an observation of NGC 3314 on the same night. Also, Austin's description refers to a "star np neb 1 arcmin." While there is a star 1 arcmin northwest of NGC 3314, it is actually fainter than another star much nearer the pair, also on the north side. So, I now support the idea that there is a 30 arcmin error in Austin's declination (which was not micrometrically measured as some of his were), and that NGC 3315 is actually ESO 501-G48. RC3, therefore, is most likely correct. Still, colons go on the identification. ===== NGC 3317 is probably the triple star I've noted in the position table. Found 24 March 1870, probably during the same observing session as NGC 3314 and 3315 (both of which see), E. P. Austin gave this only an approximate position (10h 31m, -26d 48m for 1860). This is the only object five arcminutes north of NGC 3316 that Austin might have reasonably seen. There are galaxies in the area, but they are much too faint to have been picked up with Harvard 15-inch refractor. ===== NGC 3321 = NGC 3322. This was first found by Ainslie Common with his 36-inch reflector that finally ended up at Lick Observatory (where it was known as the "Crossley Reflector" after Edward Crossley, the intermediate owner who was persuaded to give it to Lick. The story is told in the Introduction to Volume VIII of the Lick Publications, the volume of beautifully-reproduced photographs taken with that telescope by James Keeler). Common claims in his short paper in Copernicus that this -- and about 30 other new nebulae -- were found in 1880. He estimated the position; his RA is OK, but his Dec is off. Seven years later, on Jan 3, Francis Leavenworth came across the galaxy with the 26-inch refractor at Leander McCormick. Like many of the positions of the objects found there, the RA is off, but the Dec is pretty good. Both Common and Leavenworth, by the way, provided adequate descriptions of the galaxy, noting the star to the northwest. Leavenworth seems to have confused east and west, though, at least as far as the position angle of the galaxy is concerned. He recorded it as 160 degrees, while the actual angle is close to 20 degrees, a simple quadrant error. Herbert Howe was the first to note the probable identity of the objects, making NGC 3322 (the entry with Common's name on it) "not seen on two nights." It's pretty clear, though, there being no other galaxy as bright within 30 arcmin, that both Common and Leavenworth found the same object. ===== NGC 3322 = NGC 3321, which see. ===== NGC 3324. On Brian Skiff's advice, I've taken the position to be JH's double star (HJ 4338 = HD 92206; JH makes the separation three arcsec, and the position angle 91.5 degrees on 1 April 1834). JH made it clear in his description of the nebula that it extended at least as far south as the brighter star (HD 92207) on the southern edge. But this splendid object is so large that no one will miss it with any of the positions I quote in the table. For the record, the two lobes of the nebula (presumeably as seen on the Harvard plates; see IC 2599 for more) are centered at 10 37 13, -58 36.6 (northern lobe) and 10 37 29, -58 41.9 (southern; both J2000 from the DSS1V image via SkyView). There is also a cluster of young stars involved in the nebulosity; see Juan Claria's paper in A&AS 27, 145, 1977 for more on that (I thank Brian for the reference). Also see IC 2599, the southern part of the NGC object, for more on this object and the bright stars in it. ===== NGC 3328 is probably a pair of stars near Peters's position. Spitaler's position given in a note in IC1, is for another pair of stars about 5 arcmin southwest. Both observers saw and measured NGC 3332 (which see) when they worked on N3328, and both have good positions for that. Since Peters saw both objects on two different nights (27 and 28 March 1880), I've taken the stars nearer his position as the most likely object. Spitaler's is also possible, but that would demand an error in Peters's relative positions, possible on one night, but unlikely on two. Dreyer also credits N3328 to Tempel, but Tempel gives no position in his fifth paper, so it is not now possible to tell exactly what he was looking at. He records two observations, however, so -- like Peters -- the objects must have appeared nebulous under even pretty good conditions. ===== NGC 3329 = NGC 3397. NGC 3329 was found by JH; his position is only an arcmin off the galaxy. NGC 3397, on the other hand, was found by his father in sweep 1096 on 2 April 1801 -- all fifteen of the galaxies that WH found in that sweep have very large, systematic errors in their positions. See NGC 3752 for more of the story, as well as h 917 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 3332 = NGC 3342 (which see) is probably the galaxy measured by Schoenfeld and Vogel, and mentioned in the notes to the GC Supplement by Dreyer. WH's first observation for H I 272 was referred to Uranus (his "Georgian Planet") and reduces to a place several arcmin away from the galaxy. But it is the only one in the area bright enough that he could have seen it, and the description fits as well. The galaxy is also number (24) in David Todd's list published as part of his search for "the trans-Neptunian" planet (see NGC 3604 for more on this). His sketch matches the sky very well, but his position, like WH's, is not very good. This must be one of the Todd objects for which Dreyer suspected an identity with a known nebula, as he does not mention Todd's observation of this object. ===== NGC 3333. Lewis Swift picked this up on 30 December 1897, more than 60 years after John Herschel discovered it on 2 February 1835 at the Cape of Good Hope. Herschel described it as "eF, vS, mE; appended like a tail to a * 15m." Swift was also taken with the star (see that story under NGC 3260). In spite of an entry in Swift's combined 11th list in AN 3517, this nebula does not appear in the second IC. Herbert Howe writes in his big MNRAS (61, 29, 1900) paper that "Swift says in a letter that these [numbers 115 and 116 of the 11th list] are to be dropped. The former is evidently identical with the h nebula 3333. The '* 15 att' is of mag. 13, and directly south of the nebula." Dreyer fortunately saw this note and took Howe at his word, so omitted Swift's object from the IC. Dreyer also omitted the second object, list 11 number 116. This appears in three other of Swift's papers as number 25 of his 6th list of nebulae found at the Lowe Observatory. The information is the same in all four papers: 1897 Dec. 29 10 36 00 -35 05.4 eeeF, eS, R; eeF D* nr s. There is nothing in this position, and as Howe apparently had no other details on why Swift deleted the object, we can only suppose that he (Swift) searched for it on at least one additional night and did not recover it. ----- I originally took the object superposed on the southern end of the spindle as a knot in the galaxy. However, Gaia DR2 has a significant proper motion for it (pmRA = -15.54 +- 0.05, pmDec = +13.31 +- 0.04 mas/yr), so I suspect now that it is a star. It certainly looks like it in the 2MASS image. ===== NGC 3335. See IC 625. ===== NGC 3339 is a faint star preceding NGC 3340. Marth's positions for both objects (found the same night) are good, and his descriptions apt: "eF, stellar" for NGC 3339 and "F, S, R" for NGC 3340. ===== NGC 3340. See NGC 3339. ===== NGC 3342 = NGC 3332 (which see). WH did not do well with his positions for this galaxy. His first observation of it (on 18 Jan 1784 as III 5), fully related by Dreyer in the 1912 Papers, reads "The faintest and smallest nebula imaginable. I viewed it a long while and with a higher power than the sweeper. Having no person at the clock, I went in to write down the time and found it impossible to recover the nebula. It appeared like a vS nebulous star, and is probably of the cometic sort; there was another vS star south- following (I think, or rather, am pretty sure), and it preceded a pB * [the nebula is south-preceding of a star by a diagram, about 6 arcmin][JLED]. It should have been secured before I went into the light. Its place must be about 2 1/2 deg following rho Leonis and about 10 arcmin more north than that star." WH's vivid description of the field is clear enough to unmistakeably identify N3342 with N3332, even though his position is over 2 minutes of time, and 15 arcmin off. Dreyer notes that neither Spitaler nor Bigourdan could find the object -- understandably, given the data they had. He has two other observations, somewhat better, of it as H I 272 (= N3332), but even those led to questions about its position. ===== NGC 3345 is a conflation of a double star found by JH and NGC 3351 = M 95. JH was looking for his father's H I 26, but did not find it at the recorded position. That position turns out to be just one minute of time preceding, and 20 arcmin north of M 95, the description fits the bright galaxy, and WH did not mention M 95 in the sweep; so -- as Dreyer suggested in the NGC Notes and in his 1912 "Corrections to the NGC ..." MN paper -- H I 26 is probably an observation of Messier's object. Wolfgang, going through WH's observations in considerable detail, agrees and emphasizes the identity with M 95. I don't believe that we should totally ignore JH's observation, however, so have listed it under the NGC number 3345. JH's position for the double is good, though he seems to have doubted his observation, calling the object "eF, hardly visible." Though Dreyer adopted JH's description as well as position for the NGC, he noted the identity with H I 26 as very questionable, and also noted that neither he nor d'A could find anything at JH's place. The GC entry is an amalgam of WH's description ("cB, pL, E, mbM") and JH's position. Dreyer recognized the discrepancy between the descriptions, so cleaned up the entry for the NGC. ===== NGC 3351 = M 95 = H I 26. See NGC 3345. ===== NGC 3355 could be any of a number of galaxies scattered over a 3x3 degree area near the nominal position. Found by S. P. Langley with Harvard's 15-inch refractor in April of 1866, he noted the position as "approximate." He was looking for Biela's comet at the time, so apparently recorded only a crude position for his nebula. ESO and SGC took the large late-type galaxy ESO 501-G079 as the most likely candidate, but this has a very low surface brightness and would be difficult to see in a long-focus telescope. A more likely candidate is ESO 501-G080, a "normal" early-type object with a surface brightness two magnitudes brighter than G079. Langley's position, however, does not fall very close to either object, so without further information from the historical record, these identifications can be no more than suggestions. ===== NGC 3366 = IC 2592. JH has a note: "The minute of RA is doubtful. The written record makes it 47; but as this is impossible from the context, 37 is assumed." Dreyer only noted in NGC that the RA was "very doubtful" and that the bright star that JH saw nearby was not in two catalogues. The actual RA is 27 (B1830); that is allowed in the context of the sweep. The next non-stellar object in the sweep is NGC 3446 at RA 10 44 44.6 (B1830), and the preceding object is NGC 3261 at 10 21 46.6 (again B1830). JH assumed a 10 minute error, but the actual 20 minute error still fits into the sweep. The galaxy was rediscovered by Delisle Stewart on an Arequipa plate taken about 70 years after JH's sweep. Stewart made no errors in this entry, but he also did not note that NGC 3366 was missing. Perhaps the nominal position is off the edge of his plate. Since he used a one-hour plate (number 3636), he did not give the central position of the plate, but simply included the plate number in a long paragraph of one-hour plates that he searched. ===== NGC 3371 is probably NGC 3384, and NGC 3373 is probably NGC 3389. JH's descriptions are appropriate for the galaxies, and his measured position angles -- 68.4 deg between his first and second objects, and 156.8 deg between his second and third -- are a close match for those between N3379 and N3384 (66.5 deg), and N3384 and N3389 (154.7 deg), especially when precession is taken into account. However, JH has left us positions that suggest that these are companions of NGC 3367, not NGC 3379. His position for N3367, the nominal first of the three, exactly matches the position for that object measured on another night when the additional two objects were not seen. Added to this is his observation of N3389 on the same night the two questionable objects were seen. Even so, my feeling is that he has somehow confused his observations of N3367 and N3379 on the night when he also measured the two companions. Adding more mystery to the case is Peters's comment: "[N3371] was distinctly seen by me 1880, Mar. 2; but [GC]2198, the third of the 'triple nebula,' could not be found." (Peters's position is within 10 arcseconds of JH's.) There are two faint stars within two arcmin of the nominal position for N3371; perhaps Peters saw one of these. Dreyer notes in the GC Supplement that no other observer had seen either N3371 or N3373 at JH's positions. ----- Checking the sweep, I find that JH did not measure the positions for NGC 3371 and NGC 3373. Instead, he has offsets -- the position angles that he published and [delta] RAs ("53" between his first and second objects and "24" between his second and third. I assume these are seconds of time; he has no units shown). I don't see [delta] NPDs, but it seems obvious that JH must have made a mistake in his calculation of the positions from the offsets. This leaves only Peters's observation to explain. Did he perhaps adopt JH's position more or less blindly? I would be surprised if he did, so his observation is still a mystery. ===== NGC 3372 is the nebula surrounding eta Carinae, or as JH knew it, "eta Argus". I've taken the position to be in the "keyhole", while JH chose the star itself to represent the complex nebulosity; I've given the star separately. Note that the ESO position is nearly twelve arcminutes south at the intersection of the three great wedges of nebulosity that we see on wide field images today ("Pearls of the Southern Sky" by Dieter Willasch and Auke Slotegraaf has just such an image). But this spectacular degrees-wide field of nebulosity is not JH's object; he described, sketched, and catalogued only the brightest, central region. ===== NGC 3373 is probably identical with NGC 3389. See NGC 3371. ===== NGC 3382 is probably just two stars, if it is indeed anything on the sky. It was found by Ralph Copeland (or perhaps the fourth Earl of Rosse) on 5 April 1874, who provided this description: "About 4 min p [NGC 3432]. pF, cL, R, bM, *14 mag in centre. *9 Pos 238.0, Dist 173.7." There is no nebula within a reasonably large field around the nominal position that matches that description. On 24 March 1878, Dreyer himself (or perhaps LdR) noted "4.0 min p and 6 arcmin +- n of [N3432]. vF, S, irr R, only a S group of sts. *9 Pos 192.0 deg, Dist 162.9 arcsec." This position is about an arcmin east-northeast of two faint stars where there is nothing else to be seen. There is a 10th mag star south-southwest of the widely-separated pair, but neither its distance (about 166 arcsec) nor position angle (about 192 deg) from the pair closely match Copeland's measurements. The agreement with Dreyer's lends some credence to the identification with the two stars, so I am fairly comfortable with them as Dreyer's object. I've entered the mean position of the two stars in the main table, but it seems more likely to me that Copeland misidentified his reference galaxy: rather than being N3432, it is perhaps some other object. There is a clue in the printed observation dates. There is no observation recorded from Birr of NGC 3432 on 5 April 1874 (there is one, however, on 24 March 1878, apparently by Dreyer): How is it that Copeland referred his observation of NGC 3382 to it if he did not observe it on the same date? (Probably pretty easy to do; we should see if the original log books still exist at Birr.) Other objects observed on 5 April 1874 include NGC 3182, NGC 3188, and Copeland's Septet (NGC 3745 et al.; see the story under NGC 3743). However, none of these have galaxies -- or even stars -- at the offsets noted by Copeland for N3382. Let's look instead at the date on which NGC 3432 was first observed, 18 March 1876. Other objects from that night that might be the reference object for N3382 are NGC 2718, NGC 2974, and NGC 4152. Only NGC 2974 has a galaxy near the offset: CGCG 007-015 at 09 38 29.86, -03 34 49.9 (J2000; 2MSP). The star, at 09 38 17.29 -03 35 48.6 (J2000, Ty2) is at bit further than claimed -- 197 arcsec rather than 174 arcsec -- and at a different PA -- 252 deg rather than 238 deg. Finally, there are two other stars, nearly as bright as the one Copeland measured, and at about the same distance from the galaxy, south-southeast and east-northeast. But the general configuration is approximately what Copeland has recorded, so I've included the galaxy as a distant possibility. ===== NGC 3384 is probably also NGC 3371, which see. ===== NGC 3385. See NGC 3386. ===== NGC 3386 and NGC 3387. John Herschel found these two and NGC 3385 (which is 4 arcmin south of N3386). They were reobserved by d'Arrest whose positions for N3385 and N3386 match Herschel's. However, d'Arrest placed N3387 very close following N3386. The Sky Survey shows nothing near d'Arrest's place except a very faint star that Herschel did not mention. The NGC adopted d'Arrest's position for NGC 3387. This turned out to be a mistake because very close to Herschel's position is a triple star. Brian Skiff has found that the two southern stars share a common proper motion, while the northern is apparently only an optical companion. There is a star east-northeast the triple that is probably Herschel's "B * near." Additional notes: CGCG calls the northern object "N3386/87" and notes it as a "double nebula." The MCG also calls it "N3386-7," but assigns the companion a magnitude of 19 and places it 0.3' northwest -- which describes its position and appearance exactly, and which makes it far too faint and in the wrong position relative to N3386 to have been seen by Herschel or d'Arrest. ===== NGC 3387 is a triple star. See NGC 3386 for the story. ===== NGC 3388, found by Ainslie Common with his 36-inch reflector, is probably NGC 3425. The declination is about right; and though Common's RA is 3 min too small, he marked it "+-" and his brief description ("F, R") is appropriate. ===== NGC 3389 is probably also NGC 3373. See NGC 3371 for the story. ===== NGC 3392. See NGC 3394 and NGC 4512. ===== NGC 3394. JH's RA -- adopted in the GC and NGC -- is 45 seconds too large. WH's RA is much closer to the truth, though we can't blame JH for preferring his position to his father's. Dreyer noticed the difference but, lacking any other observations, could do no more than comment on it. The only confusion that this causes is with NGC 3392 which is about 4 arcmin northeast, not northwest as implied by JH's observations. Though WH's positions are 2-3 arcmin northwest of the objects, his relative position is good, as are his (and JH's) descriptions. Most modern catalogues seem to have got the identities straight. Also see NGC 4512 for more on the sweep in which JH found this object. ===== NGC 3395 = IC 2613, which see. ===== NGC 3396. See IC 2613. ===== NGC 3397 = NGC 3329, which see. ===== NGC 3398 = IC 644. Considerable confusion has surrounded the identification of this object and its neighboring galaxies. The original observation is due to William Herschel, who found a "vF, S, E 20deg sp nf, er" nebulae on 17 April 1789 2m 11s preceding, 0d 50' north of 44 UMa. Reducing these offsets, taking the proper motion of 44 UMa into account, gives the position (for 1950) 10 48 24, +55 41.1. There are four galaxies in the area that might be the one that Herschel saw. Here are data for them: RA (1950.0) Dec B_t PA Type MCG CGCG UGC IC Notes 10 48 28.4 +55 39 23 14.55 73 SA:(rs:)ab? +09-18-038 267-18 5954 0644 * superposed 0.55 sp 10 48 32.1 +55 43 53 15.6 130 SA:(rs?)0^+ +09-18-039 267-19 -- 0646 10 48 44.8 +55 39 04 -- 55: E2/S0^-: +09-18-041 -- -- -- 10 48 59.9 +55 51 56 14.82 20 SAB(s)cd III +09-18-043 267-22 5976 -- Sev F sts, knots, comps near On the face of it, UGC 5976 is the most likely candidate: it is second brightest, the position angle is correct, it is knotty, and it is the largest of the galaxies in the area. However, its position is well off of Herschel's, and it has the lowest surface brightness of any of the galaxies here. I think it is doubtful that Herschel would have picked it up while sweeping. Instead, Herschel's position falls near UGC 5954, the brightest galaxy of the four, and also the one with the highest surface brightness. This means that it is the one that Herschel would be most likely to see. The position angle is at least in the correct quadrant, and Herschel's note "extremely mottled" could well be due the presence of the star near south-preceding combined with the galaxy's bright nucleus and pseudo-ring of uneven brightness. Still, visual verification of this theory would be nice to have. Finally, the identity of the two IC objects in the area -- I644 and I646 -- is unambiguous. While Swift's positions are often none too good, they are at least adequate in this case. The offset in RA is about 12 time-seconds for both, while the declinations are within a minute of arc. I644 turns out to be identical to NGC 3398, while I646 is MCG +09-18-039. ===== NGC 3401 may be a triple star. WH was the only one to observe it, his observation was apparently rushed (his description reads only, "eF, no time to verify"), and his data are not internally consistent. His table places it 5 min 42 sec preceding and 23 arcmin south of 56 Leonis. However, in his note in the 1912 Scientific Papers, Dreyer says, "In the sweep, it is 1.9 min p, 3 arcmin n of II 131 [N3423]." Reducing these two offsets leads to positions separated by 1 min and 5 arcmin. There is nothing at either position. Between five to ten arcmin southeast of the position reduced from the N3423 offset (10 46 45, +06 09.5; B1950.0), there are one or two asterisms of stars that WH might have picked up. The positions are far enough off, however, that I doubt these stars are WH's object. However, Jeffrey Corder has suggested that the triple star listed in the position table may be object that WH stumbled over. It has about the right total magnitude, and Jeff describes it as "... fuzzy-looking and hard to resolve." It is also reasonably close to WH's position, so could well be his object. ===== NGC 3402 is most likely a reobservation of NGC 3411. Common admits that his positions are approximate, and his sparce description "F, R" is appropriate for the galaxy. LEDA has chosen a much fainter galaxy close to the NGC position. I doubt, however, that even a observer of Common's experience using his 36-inch reflector would be able to dig this out. ===== NGC 3403. See NGC 3752. ===== NGC 3404 = IC 2609. Common's declination for N3404 is about 14 arcmin off, though his RA is close. Even though Dreyer has the corrected NPD in the IC2 Notes (from Herbert Howe), he did not make the connection with IC 2609. Nor did Bigourdan, who redisovered the galaxy and made it a "nova". He searched twice for N3404 at its nominal position, but only saw some faint stars in the area. His observations of the galaxy are good, though; reduced with respect to a modern position for his comparison star, they fall within a few arcsec of the nucleus. Knox Shaw, in Helwan Observatory Bulletin No. 15, also made the correction to the Dec of the NGC object. He was also the first to suggest the identity, repeating the position of N3404 for I2609, but putting a question mark on the note: "? = NGC 3404. There is, however, a vF, vS neb. susp. 1.2 arcmin n and 0.4 arcmin f 3404." This, of course, is not IC 2609. ===== NGC 3405. Though Marth says "close to a small star", the second object is really another galaxy. Marth presumeably saw the brighter, larger galaxy on the southwest as nebulous, so this is the object that bears the NGC number. ===== NGC 3411 = NGC 3402, which see. ===== NGC 3414. A faint companion -- which we now call 2MASX J10511304+2800221 -- was picked up by Bindon Stoney and R.J. Mitchell with LdR's 72-inch reflector. See the "notngc" files under "NGC 3414 companion" for the story. ===== NGC 3421 = IC 652 and NGC 3422. Among the nebulae found in 1880 by A. A. Common are two that received these NGC numbers. Common gave them a single rough position -- there are only faint stars near it. However, ten arcmin south is a pair that he could have easily seen in his 36-inch reflector. One of these was later picked up by Javelle, but because the position is so different -- and because Javelle misidentified his comparison star, driving his position even further south -- it was not recognized as one of Common's nebulae until I stumbled across it during work on SEGC. Javelle's object is in IC1 under the number IC 652, which see. Herbert Howe measured one of the galaxies, N3421, on two nights, but missed the other, probably because there is a much brighter star less than an arcminute to the south. Howe also commented about the possibility of two other nebulae in the field, but there is nothing at his approximate places (1.5 arcmin north, and 12 seconds preceding and 2 arcmin south) but faint stars. ===== NGC 3422. See NGC 3421. ===== NGC 3423. See NGC 3401. ===== NGC 3425 is probably also NGC 3388, which see. ===== NGC 3427, creditted in the NGC to Tempel, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet". It is Todd's number (4). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 3428 = NGC 3429. Both positions -- from Marth in 1865, and Common in 1880 -- are pretty good. I'm surprised that Dreyer did not catch the identity. Perhaps if one of the observations had been by one of the Herschels he might have. In any event, the identity is secure. ===== NGC 3429 = NGC 3428, which see. ===== NGC 3430 is not IC 2613, which see, in spite of being noted identically equal to the IC number in CGCG. The IC number applies to NGC 3395 instead. ===== NGC 3432. The nucleus of this edgewise, late-type spiral is hidden behind the arms and dust of the near side of the galaxy. So, the position is not well- determined. Most of the positions in the table probably apply to various knots along the spine of the galaxy. I'm inclined to give high weight to the infrared positions, so have chosen to take the mean of two 2MASS PSC values as the preferred position. This is obviously still uncertain. Also see NGC 3382. ===== NGC 3436. This is Todd's 6th nebulous object found during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" with the USNO 26-inch refractor (see NGC 3604 for more about Todd's list). As usual, he gives sketches of the field done through both the large refractor and its 5-inch finder. These clearly identify N3436 as CGCG 038-039. Also as usual, Todd's nominal position is well off. I hope he would have done better had he found his planet ... ===== NGC 3443. Swift's declination is 8.3 arcmin too small, but the identity is still clear. See IC 884 for more. Even though the identity is clear, the nucleus is not. Though the galaxy is inclined by only 60 degrees to the line of sight, and the central region is pretty clearly seen, there is no obvious nucleus. The SDSS image shows a very short, very faint bar with arms springing off its ends (the structure is the same as the LMC), but bar is nearly uniformly bright. The SDSS has four different positions listed for "objects" near the center of the galaxy, but just looking at the image, it's not obvious which one to take as representing the galaxy. So, I've simply taken the unweighted mean. This agrees pretty well with the position that I estimate on the DSS2R image, and with the GSC3 position as well, so I've taken the mean as being the "best" position for the object. ===== NGC 3445 has an interacting companion. It was actually seen by R.J. Mitchell with LdR's Birr Castle "Leviathan". See the "notngc" files under "NGC 3445 companion for more." ===== NGC 3446. JH has two positions for this: one for the brightest star (perhaps foreground?) CoD -44 6866, the second for the cluster itself. He made the cluster only 7 arcmin across, so Brian's inclusion of the sparcer group northwest of the bright star might make astrophysical sense (if the group in fact is part of the cluster), but it is not JH's object. So, the position I've taken (from ESO-B) is close to JH's own second position. ESO 264-G027, a background galaxy, shines through the eastern side of NGC 3446. The two objects make a nice sight on the Sky Survey images. The total V magnitude of the galaxy, though, is about 13.7 (from B_T and R_T in ESO-LV), so it would probably not be that striking a sight at the eyepiece. Also see NGC 3366 where the cluster figures in the identification of N3366. ===== NGC 3448 is one of the "classic" I0 galaxies. Its nucleus is hidden behind an array of dust and knots with a short dust lane almost directly across the center of the galaxy. Looking at the wonderful SDSS image, it's easy to see where the nucleus should be. Indeed, there is a 2MASS PSC source very close to that location, so that is the position I've chosen for the galaxy. ===== NGC 3457 is a bit of a puzzle. It was catalogued by JH who describes it as "Stellar. 2 or 3 stars with a nebulous blur observed by Mr. Bailey." (Is Mr. Bailey perhaps an observing assistant?) This is an excellent descripiton of IC 656 (a triple star, which see), but JH's position is very close to NGC 3460 (also which see). The description is persuasive, but JH usually does better with his positions: his declination is appropriate for either object, but his RA is 18 seconds off the triple star. Since it is only 1.5 seconds off the galaxy, that argues almost as persuasively for the identity with NGC 3460. Frankly, I'm undecided on this one, so have left the number ambiguous in the main table. ===== NGC 3460 and N3461 were first seen as a pair by LdR in 1854, then again in April of 1878. In March of that year, he says "Setting for this, I found an eS Cl with a * 12m in Pos 175.1 deg, Dist 305.0 arcsec." There is nothing in the area which matches this description as the star south-southeast of the galaxy is only 4 arcmin away, while that south-southeast of IC 656 (a triple star, which see) is over 6 arcmin distant. In LdR's 1880 monograph, Dreyer lists all the observations under the GC number for NGC 3457 (GC 2256 = h 793; which see), but as I note there, it's not clear that NGC 3460 was the object JH and his Mr. Bailey saw. Swift picked up the galaxy in 1885; it is the 9th nebula of more than a thousand which he catalogued as "novae." Given the difference in his RA and JH's (23 seconds), both he and Dreyer can be forgiven for thinking he had found a new nebula. Since there is no question about the identity of NGC 3461 -- it is the faint galaxy about 5.5 arcmin north-northeast of the brighter galaxy -- and since LdR saw the two as a pair twice, it makes sense to retain the number NGC 3460 for the bright object. I'm not so sure what to do about the number NGC 3457 (which see for more) -- it could belong to the brighter galaxy, or it could be for the triple star along with IC 656. ===== NGC 3461. See NGC 3460. ===== NGC 3462, discovered by WH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet". It is Todd's number (5). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 3465. Though credited only to JH in the NGC, this is probably also H III 967 (see NGC 3500 for more on this). WH found the galaxy on 2 April 1802, but it -- and the other fourteen in sweep 1096 -- has a large, systematic error in its position. Dreyer attempted to sort out the problem in his notes to his 1912 edition of WH's Scientific Papers; most of his conclusions are correct. See NGC 3752 for more, and for the correct solution which Wolfgang Steinicke finally worked out. Also see NGC 3484 for an unsolved mystery possibly related to NGC 3465 -- but probably not. Finally, this plays a peripheral role in the identification of h 917, which see in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 3472 may be ESO 572-G025, just an hour off of Stone's position -- but I don't think so. There is a bright double star, with a fainter star closer to the galaxy, just two arcmin to the southwest of the galaxy. Given his many other notes of bright stars near his nebulae, Stone would almost certainly have mentioned this in his description, and he does not. The entirety of his description is "Mag = 15.5, Dia = 0.4, R, gbM." He has left no sketch for us, either. So the ESO galaxy is a possibility, but no more. ===== NGC 3473. While looking for this galaxy with the Parsonstown "Leviathan", Dreyer stumbled across CGCG 095-086. See its entry in the "notngc" files for more on this mistaken identity. ===== NGC 3474. See IC 884. ===== NGC 3476 is probably also NGC 3480 (which see), and NGC 3477. The two smaller numbers apply to nebulae found by Marth. His relative positions are good, but are offset from the true positions by 3 arcmin in declination. His descriptions are apt, so there is little doubt about the identifications of his two objects. ===== NGC 3477. See NGC 3476. ===== NGC 3478. Just as Dreyer misidentified NGC 3473, so did Copeland misidentify this galaxy -- the big reflector at Birr Castle was not very good at absolute positions or pointing. See UGC 6076 in the "notngc" files for more on this particular case. ===== NGC 3479 = NGC 3502, which see. ===== NGC 3480 is probably NGC 3476. It is the 11th in Ainslie Common's list of nebulae found by him with his 36-inch reflector in 1880. None of his positions are very good, and this one seems to be worse than most -- there are no galaxies within 10 arcmin of his place. However, NGC 3476, the largest and brightest of a group, is about 12 arcmin southwest. It would probably match Common's scanty description ("Small, stellar"), even as seen in a fairly large telescope. It is possible that NGC 3480 is the same galaxy as NGC 3490. But that is also one of Common's discoveries (on the same night? he does not give us dates of observation), and is a fainter object as well. So, I think it a somewhat less likely candidate -- but other observers have rediscovered the same object, even on the same night (see e.g. NGC 1269 = NGC 1291). ===== NGC 3481 looks like one of the rare "ring" galaxies with a "nucleus" on the ring itself, and a hole in the galaxy where the nucleus normally would be. In this case, however, the nucleus appears to be elongated into a bar, and the remainder of the ring could be interpreted as distorted spiral arms springing from the ends of the bar. I give positions for both the "nucleus" as well as for the entire galaxy. ===== NGC 3484 = h 802 is lost. JH gives a position, suggests that it might be H III 967 (but that is NGC 3465), and says, "A very doubtful object." That's it. Dreyer searched for this on the Greenwich plates that he asked to have taken of the area covered by one of WH's very strange sweeps (see NGC 2938, NGC 3752, as well as h 653 and h 917 -- both in the "notngc" files -- for more). I've searched for it on the POSS1 prints. There are no candidate galaxies within 30-40 arcmin of JH's position. So, we just have to take JH's word for it -- "A very doubtful object," indeed! ===== NGC 3487. Swift's RA is about 35 seconds of time too small, but his Dec is good, and his description appropriate, for UGC 6092. ===== NGC 3489. See NGC 3498. ===== NGC 3490. Common's RA is marked "+-", but it is close enough to CGCG 066-080 (and the Dec is within an arcmin), to make the identification pretty certain. There are other equally bright galaxies around (including NGC 3480, which see), but none at the right declination. ===== NGC 3494 is may be the double star 8-9 arcmin north of NGC 3495. Tempel says only (in a very crude translation by yrs trly), "Six arcminutes north of the middle knot [of three in N3495], I repeatedly saw a very small nebula, which at first sight I took to be [part of] N3495." There is nothing in the implied position (calculated by Dreyer from N3495's position), but the double is only 3 arcmin further north, and is of similar brightness to other stars that Tempel mistook for nebulae. Jeffrey Corder wrote in January 2009, however, suggesting that one of the knots in NGC 3495 itself may be NGC 3494. I've looked at the field using the DSS and am skeptical. Aside from its nucleus, the brightest knots in N3495 are to the south, and only an arcminute away from the nucleus. Jeff, of course, has the advantage of having actually seen the galaxy and its field. But Tempel was an experienced observer, too. I can accept easily that he might have made one mistake in his description, but two begins to stretch credibility. However, I've marked the double star with a colon. I'm clearly not sure about the identification, but don't see a better alternative closer to the galaxy, either. So, maybe ... ===== NGC 3495. See NGC 3494. ===== NGC 3497 = NGC 3525 = NGC 3528 = IC 2624. This object may hold the record as the one with the most NGC and IC numbers. It was independently discovered four different times, first by WH. As Dreyer noted in 1912 (MN and Scientific Papers), there is a 6 minute error in the GC/NGC RA. Re-reducing WH's data in the Scientific Papers leads to the correct position. JH found it next during his stay at the Cape of Good Hope. He was also the first to see NGC 3528's brightest companion (N3529 = I2625). He got the identity with H III 824 correct in his Cape Observations, but separated his father's nebula from his brighter one for the GC. This suggests that the six-minute error is JH's rather than CH's. Dreyer copied the GC position into NGC, so it was not until his work on WH's papers that he noticed the discrepancy. Ormond Stone was the next in line -- his position is unusually good: only a minute of time off (his entry is NGC 3525). The identity is nevertheless pretty sure as there are no other nebulae in the area that he would have called magnitude 12.0. Finally, Lewis Swift picked up the pair in 1898. His RA is nearly correct, but his declination for N3528 = I2624 is about 5 arcmin too far south, nearly equal with that for N3529 = I2625. Again, there can be little doubt about the identity as Swift describes the brighter of the pair as "considerably bright;" there are no other galaxies near that are bright enough for that description. It was his observation that gave the pair their IC numbers. ===== NGC 3498 is probably the triple star three arcmin west-northwest of WH's position. Dreyer reprints WH's full note in which he says, "eF, not S. I had some doubt and put on 240, but there being no stars very near it, I could not adjust the focus, and therefore could not verify it." Dreyer also notes that d'A could not find the nebula during repeated attempts when N3489 was seen easily. ===== NGC 3500 is given as a double nebula with one number in the NGC, while JH in GC assigns two numbers with a single position. In each catalogue, the position comes from WH's observations on the night of 2 April 1801 which suffer from large, systematic position errors (see NGC 3752 for more). Dreyer more or less sorted out the problems for his edition of WH's Scientific Papers, based on accurate positions measured on 30-inch reflector plates taken at Greenwich in 1910 or 1911 (see MNRAS 71, 509, 1911). Unfortunately, neither Dreyer nor the Greenwich observer(s) assign NGC numbers to all of the galaxies in that list (I have those listed in my note to NGC 3752). I've taken a bit of a liberty here, and have split out WH's two numbers, III 967 and III 968, giving the first to NGC 3465 (which see), and the second to NGC 3500 (this may not be correct; see the next paragraph). I follow Dreyer's lead on the first, but use NGC 3500 for the second where he does not. Looking at WH's original sweep 1096, I'm not totally convinced that this is the correct solution. In CH's fair copy of the sweep (in the Herschel Archive), we read for the observation Two, the 1st vF, vS. The 2nd eF and smaller than the first. It is a little more north and following, but very near to it. The phrase "but very near to it" has caught my attention. Given that the galaxies are nine arcminutes apart -- and NGC 3523 is actually closer (seven arcminutes) to NGC 3500 than is NGC 3465 -- I wonder if one of the asterisms in the area might not be a better candidate for one of WH's objects. I have my eye in particular on the double star at 11 01 24.0, +75 11 34 (J2000) -- but is this brighter than the galaxy as WH suggests? For now, I will just leave this as a possibility in a sweep with known problems. ----- In December 2019, Courtney Seligman looked at the field and again ran into the questions about the identity of WH's III 967 and 968. He consulted Steve Gottlieb, and also looked into Steve's observations in an attempt to work out the problems. Steve was good enough to fill out his thoughts in a return email (all of this cc-ed to me): 1) I've made three observations of UGC 6090 [the galaxy I have taken as NGC 3500] and apparently did not notice a close double star (or fuzzy object) less than 2' W. Furthermore, these stars appear to be no brighter than 15-15.5 magnitude on the DSS, so I think they are too faint (and small) to be III 967, which Herschel described as slightly larger than III 968. 2) Comparing my observations of both UGC 6056 [my NGC 3465] and 6090 (on 3 nights, with 3 different scopes at least 17.5" aperture), they were comparable in visibility and size with UGC 6056 described as slightly brighter on two of these three nights (on the third night they were both "extremely faint" in poor transparency). My size estimates are close enough that I can't say with confidence that one appeared larger than the other, though UGC 6090 was noted on multiple observations as elongated in a 2:1 ratio. 3) John Herschel apparently searched for III 967 and 968 on two nights, but only found 1 object and that's UGC 6056 (NGC 3465)! There's nothing at his position for h802, which he called a "very doubtful object" and queried if it was III 968. In any case, he missed UGC 6090, which was in the same field as 6056. So although it seems unlikely that William Herschel observed both galaxies, it's also odd (based on my observations, as well as JH's) he would have picked up UGC 6090 and missed similar or slightly brighter UGC 6056. I realize, though, if this happened it wouldn't be the first time. Here's one more idea. Could Herschel have possibly picked up UGC 6056 (NGC 3465) and the second object was the star ~ 40" to its southeast? I noted this star on two of my own observations (estimating it once at mag 13.5 and another time as mag 14-14.5). That would require two mistakes -- he thought the star was non-stellar and called it a "little more north and following" instead of a "little more south and following". I've included in the position table the double star that I mentioned -- that Steve did not notice during his observations -- as a remote possibility for NGC 3465. In that case, the galaxy itself would be NGC 3500. As a similarly remote possibility for NGC 3500, I've also included Steve's single star southeast of the galaxy, which would take the number NGC 3465 in that case. So, the situation for H III 967/968 is still unsettled, at least until we can adopt Wolfgang's potential solution. See NGC 3752 for hints in that direction. ===== NGC 3502 = NGC 3479. The descriptions and declinations of the two entries (Nos. 180 by Leavenworth, and 181 by Stone) in the first Leander McCormick list are much the same, but the RA of the following nebula is 4 minutes of time too large. This is in the same sense as many other of the LM nebulae, so the identity is pretty certain. The suggestion in RNGC that the galaxy 50 arcmin north and a few tenths of a minute preceding Leavenworth's position strikes me as considerably less likely since RA errors are more common in the LM lists than Dec errors, though these also occur, of course. ===== NGC 3505 is perhaps a reobservation of NGC 3508 (which see). Even though JH's position is over 3/4 deg off in Dec, his description fits very well, including the "star 14 near." JH found it during his stay at the Cape. The large position error is bothersome, but there is nothing else within several degrees that matches the description. ----- I checked the sweep and found that JH's nebula was directly preceded by the star HD 95234 (the offsets are 3m 26s in RA and 4arcmin 50arcsec in Dec). These give a position for the nebula almost exactly that of NGC 3508, so given the matching description "pF, R, S, glbM, has * 14 v near", the identification is secure. I have still not yet been able to reproduce JH's reduction, so do not know the source of his error. Nevertheless, I'm confident that N3505 is indeed identical to N3508, so have removed the colons in the position table. Note, too, that the galaxy is also IC 2622 (which see) found by Lewis Swift. ===== NGC 3508 = IC 2622 (which see) and is probably also = NGC 3505 (also which see). WH called this "small" while his son saw it as "vL" -- WH is closer to the truth. Both positions are good, so there is no doubt that both men were looking at the same object. Similarly, Swift's note "... looks like a D *" in his description makes it clear that he, too, was looking at the same galaxy. In his case, however, the position is off by a few arcminutes to the northeast. ----- As noted above, re-reducing JH's observation of NGC 3505 (which see) definitively shows that it is identical to NGC 3508. His description of the galaxy in that observation also removes the size discrepancy. ===== NGC 3514. See NGC 3520. ===== NGC 3518 = NGC 3122 = NGC 3110. In the original AJ paper, Stone notes, "In same field with nebula discovered by Stephan." This is a bit puzzling as none of Stephan's nebulae are within 5 degrees of Stone's nominal position. Stone has left us a sketch, too, with the same nominal position on the cover sheet. The sketch shows a nice double nebula with four stars nearby. Again, there is nothing on the sky within 5 degrees of the nominal position that matches the sketch. So, I assumed some sort of error in Stone's position and began looking at possible digit errors. After ruling out a few, I found NGC 3122 in Stephan's 13th list (it is number 54 there) just an hour of time preceding Stone's position. Checking his sketch against the PSS, I found that the "double nebula" is actually the central bulge, and a very bright arm to the southeast, of a single galaxy. Furthermore, one of the "stars" sketched by Stone is the nucleus of an interacting companion galaxy, MCG -01-26-013. Were it not for the sketch, I would assign the NGC number to this companion (though the position angle is more than 20 degrees off Stone's estimate of 110 deg). As is, I am tempted to put the number on just the arm -- but that does not match Stone's description, either. By default, then, N3518 = N3122 = N3110 (which see for another story). ===== NGC 3520 is another of the Leander McCormick discoveries, this one by Leavenworth. His nominal position is close to an asterism of 4 or 5 stars spread over an area of 0.8 by 0.6 arcmin, but his description (m = 15.3, D = 0.4, iR, gpmbM, sev vF sts inv) does not match the appearance of the stars. In addition, they are too bright, being 13 to 15th magnitude. A more likely match is to ESO 570- G004, an interacting double system (with two stars superposed) 1 min 35 sec east and 5 arcmin south of the nominal position. It matches Leavenworth's description pretty well. The position I give for the entry includes all four objects. Other possible matches include the double star at 11 01 55.6, -17 40 23; and NGC 3514 = ESO 570- G001 at 11 01 32, -18 30.7 (both positions B1950). These don't match the description as well as the interacting system, however, so I view them as less likely to be Leavenworth's object. ===== NGC 3523 is H. II 904 from WH's problematic sweep 1096 of 2 April 1801; all the positions in that sweep suffer from large, systematic errors. See NGC 3752 for more. ===== NGC 3525 = NGC 3497 (which see) = NGC 3528 = IC 2624. ===== NGC 3526 = NGC 3531, which see. ===== NGC 3528 = NGC 3497 (which see) = NGC 3525 = IC 2624. ===== NGC 3529 = IC 2625. See NGC 3497. ===== NGC 3531 = NGC 3526. Holden misidentified the star he noticed 46.5 seconds preceding the galaxy. When the correct star is used (BD +7 2412, not 2413 as Holden wrote), his position falls close to that of NGC 3526 = Marth 215. The descriptions are virtually identical, and Holden notes the star just southwest of the galaxy. Spitaler was the first to suggest the identity. He found IC 670 near Holden's position, but that is fainter and does not agree with either of the earlier descriptions, so Spitaler -- correctly -- called IC 670 a "nova." ===== NGC 3533 = "NGC 3557A," which see. ===== NGC 3537 is an interacting galaxy pair about 15 arcmin north-northwest of N3541, and may have been found by Ainslie Common on the same night that he found the latter (though he does not give us the dates of his observations). His position and description is pretty good, being only about 1.5 arcmin off in Dec. The NGC position is even better, coming from two micrometric measurements by Tempel in 1881 and 1882. Nevertheless, RNGC has misidentified it, giving the number to the galaxy that is properly called NGC 3541 (which see). Curiously, Vorontsov-Velyaminov skipped over the object for MCG, though he has included many other even fainter interacting pairs as well as N3541. There is a bit of a mystery about Tempel's observations, too. He lists them as separate entries in his table of new nebulae in his fifth paper with no indication that they might refer to the same object. However, his positions -- once precessed to a common equinox -- are within a few arcsec of being identical. Tempel mentions a "star" on one side of the nebula in his second observation, but not the first. The nebula is described as fainter the first night, too, being a (WH) class III nebula rather than class II-III. On both nights, however, he mentions a faint "star" in the middle of the nebula. I suspect that both his observations apply to the brighter of the two galaxies; the "star" on the side of the nebula is almost certainly the fainter object, seen only on the better night. ===== NGC 3538 is a double star found by d'A. It is identified in the MNRAS 71, 509, 1911 article which helps sort out one of WH's sweeps suffering from large, systematic position errors (see NGC 3752 for more). ===== NGC 3540 = NGC 3548, which see. ===== NGC 3541. Common's position from his short Copernicus list is very close to 15 arcmin south of MCG -02-29-003, and is within 0.2 min in RA. His description is appropriate for the galaxy as it would be seen in a 36-inch telescope, so the position is probably due to his misreading the declination circle. RNGC has the object as non-existent. See NGC 3537 for more on this field. ===== NGC 3542. See NGC 3545. ===== NGC 3543. There is no identification problem with this edgewise galaxy, but the exact position is indeterminate: the nucleus is lost behind patchy dust and emission regions. The position I have finally chosen is from the 2MASS XSC, close to the unweighted mean of all the values that I list in the table. ===== NGC 3544 = NGC 3571. NGC 3544 was found 8 Jan 1886 UT by Ormond Stone with the Leander McCormick 66-cm refractor. The cover sheet on his sketch of the object (made 13 Jan 1886 UT) bears the note "near but prob. not G.C. 2330," in addition to the usual dates, position, magnification, and his initials. The position on the cover sheet is given as "11h 4.0m, -17d 41m." This was rounded off in RA to "11 4" in AJ 7, 9, 1886 where the discovery was published. The published paper also notes "G.C. 2330?" and there is no object at Stone's position. Stone's sketch also shows the elongated galaxy in the correct position angle. Unfortunately, the nearby field stars are not shown clearly on the sketch. A few specks on my copy are probably dust on the photocopier, but more or less correspond to nearby stars which Stone could have seen with the big refractor. Finally, the positions in the first two lists of nebulae found at LM are often 1-2 minutes of time west of the true positions. Assuming the identity with N3571, this is one of those cases. The NGC position for N3571 comes from William Herschel's single discovery observation on 8 March 1789, but is good enough to identify the galaxy unambiguously (the position was later verified by Bigourdan at Paris in 1888 and 1900, Kobold at Strassburg in 1901, Porter at Cincinnati in 1906 and 1908 -- though curiously, first by Leavenworth at Leander McCormick in 1887). The galaxy is just bright enough for Shapley-Ames, and it has been listed there and in the susequent literature under N3571 as the NGC position for that number is more nearly correct than the NGC position for N3544. So, in spite of Paturel's use of the number N3544 in RC3 (he perhaps followed ESO-B which has the listing as "N3544=N3571"), we should retain N3571 for consistency. ===== NGC 3545 is a double interacting galaxy. The components are approximately equal in brightness as judged in DSS images, so I wondered which one Stephan saw in March of 1884 when he found the object. Re-reducing his micrometric position suggests that he measured the western galaxy. While he does not mention the eastern galaxy explicitly, he does suggest that his object may be resolvable ("... semble resoluble.") On the same night, he found NGC 3542; his position for that, measured with respect to the same comparison star, HD 97287, is within 0.6 second of time in RA, and half an arcsecond in Dec, of the SDSS position. This suggests that his measurement of NGC 3545 really does apply to the western galaxy. ===== NGC 3548 = NGC 3540. Both numbers are from JH, but his position for N3548 is 1 min 9 sec too far east. This probably represents a 1 minute error somewhere along the line from observation to final position, but without JH's original papers, finding the error will be difficult. The identity of the two numbers is assured by JH's notes (for NGC 3540) "... a * 7m p, distance 7 arcmin to 8 arcmin" and (for N3548) "... a * 8m precedes." The star is very close to 8 arcmin preceding, and is about 25 arcsec south. ===== NGC 3550. I've been curious for some time about this galaxy, called a "double nebula" in CGCG. The object actually looks triple in the DSS image -- or are those superposed stars? I have wanted to examine it on one of the digital sky surveys. Finally, the SDSS has covered the area. While the two objects to the north are certainly galaxies, the southwestern component is quite stellar. However, 2MASS has three acceptable images in its three bands. It appears that all three objects are galaxies. This is confirmed by the redshifts given by John Tonry in AJ 90, 2431, 1985 (cz = 11000 km/s for the faint southwestern galaxy, 10447 km/s for the central galaxy, and 10388 km/s for the northeastern galaxy; all the redshifts have errors of +- 15 km/s). I have, by the way, taken the object closest to the middle of the entire image as NGC 3550. It may be better to take a mean position for the entire triple object. Note, too, that both JH and Dreyer have notes discussing possible variability of the galaxy. As Dreyer concludes in 1912 in his edition of WH's papers, the only really outstanding brightness estimates suggesting that come from JH himself: His six observations run from "B" to "eF". All the other visual observations suggest "vF" or "F". There is no hint in the modern literature of any of the galaxies being a Seyfert, nor have there been any observations suggesting the existence of a supernova remnant in NGC 3550. JH probably had to contend with variable seeing and a speculum mirror of variable condition. Also see NGC 3552 where this figures in the NGC identification problems in Abell 1185. ===== NGC 3551 and NGC 3555 are probably the two brightest galaxies in Abell 1177. Swift's RA's are just +1 minute of time in error. RNGC suggests that the brightest galaxy is NGC 3555. This would make N3551 one of the triple system about 2 arcmin southwest. However, these galaxies are considerably fainter than the second brightest galaxy in the cluster, which is about 3.5 arcmin to the northeast. There is also a star close to the middle of the three, and I think that the ensemble would appear as a "small nebulous cluster." Swift describes his object as "eeF, vS, R, difficult; south of two." His second he calls, "vF, R, n of 2." It may seem odd that he would call the brighter galaxy the fainter, but it has a lower surface brightness, and could well appear fainter at the eyepiece. Unfortunately, Swift's relative position between the two galaxies (10 seconds of time, and 30 seconds of arc) matches neither the RNGC interpretation, nor my own. So, the positions don't help us much in this case. We need some visual observations to check Swift's descriptions. ===== NGC 3552 and NGC 3553. William Herschel found two objects in 1785, and reobserved them in 1790, providing them with separate positions then. John Herschel has several sweeps over the area, finding four objects altogether. D'Arrest observed the same four galaxies, and picked up a fifth about 10 arcmin south. A sixth was found in 1885 by Bigourdan who also provided accurate positions for the other four (he also has one observation of a "nova" in the field, but his estimated position points at blank sky; see the discussion of this under NGC 3561). These six nebulae were included in NGC. Lord Rosse did not observe (or at least left no record of) any of them. If he had, there would almost certainly be more than the six objects in NGC that there are, since these six NGC objects are the brightest in the cluster Abell 1185. At least two other "historical" observations of Abell 1185 exist. First, Kobold measured accurate positions in 1902 for five objects here (one, which he called "Kobold 13," was discovered by him). One of his positions (for N3552) points at blank sky. Three other of his positions are systematically off the galaxies by about 20 arcsec. Because of the supposed care with which Kobold did his work, Hubble (in his PhD thesis, published in 1917) was misled into questioning his own work in the area where he measured positions and estimated types for several dozen galaxies. We'll come back to this particular problem in a bit. With all these positions and observations, one can be excused for believing that all is well, and that we know exactly which NGC number applies to which object. Not true! Only the numbers for three of the six NGC galaxies are pretty solid (N3550, N3554, and N3558). Questions arise for the other three. If we restrict ourselves to the early observations, we can be pretty sure which objects were seen by the Herschels and by d'Arrest -- the brightest five galaxies. While the positions are not exact, they are good enough to pin down the correct objects. The problems begin with Bigourdan's observations. While his positions (reduced using GSC positions for his comparison stars) are excellent, he assigned the number N3553 to the object which John Herschel and d'Arrest called N3552. For N3552, he chose a faint galaxy about an arcminute south-preceding. It has a brighter star superposed -- it is actually this star which Bigourdan measured; he describes the two objects as a single faint nebulous spot. Dreyer adopted Bigourdan's position for N3553. It's no surprise then, that the NGC positions for N3552 and 3553 are very close -- they apply to the same object. For this catalogue, we've followed historical precedent, and assigned the number N3552 to the brighter north-following object, leaving the south-preceding object (the one first seen by Bigourdan) as N3553. This is counter the prevailing idea that lower NGC numbers are always preceding, but explicitly acknowledges the actual history of the observations. Well, I promised a brief discussion of Kobold's and Hubble's data. Kobold's mistake, not found by Hubble, was a transposition of two numbers in the declination measurement of his comparison star with respect to an FK1 reference star (the comparison star is actually the same star used by Bigourdan for most of his measurements). This transposition (instead of -9' 42.5" as used and published by Kobold, read -9' 24.5") resulted in a systematic error of 18.6" in his declinations of N3550, N3552, N3554, and K13. Once corrected, the positions of N3550, N3554, and K13 agree very well with those measured by Bigourdan, by Hubble, and with those in GSC. However, Kobold's position for N3552 points at blank sky -- there is nothing within 3 arcmin in any direction brighter than the POSS1 plate limit. I suspect that Kobold's offsets apply to another star/galaxy pair, but I've not been able to find which objects would fit (I admit to not having looked very hard; perhaps a reader could unravel the mystery). In any event, Kobold's systematic error misled Hubble into thinking that his positions, measured on a plate taken with the 24-inch reflector at Yerkes Observatory, were somehow incorrect. In the end, however, Hubble printed his own positions and identifications. His positions are quite good, but his identifications are wrong for N3552 (he got K13) and N3554 (he got N3552); he did not identify N3553 at all -- but it is his number 81 in his Table XI. ===== NGC 3553. See NGC 3552. ===== NGC 3554. See NGC 3552. ===== NGC 3555. See NGC 3551. ===== "NGC 3557A" = NGC 3533. There is no problem with JH's position of NGC 3533, nor with de Vaucouleurs's for "NGC 3557A" as he called it in his Stromlo survey of southern Shapley-Ames galaxies. De Vaucouleurs simply missed the NGC entry for N3533. ===== NGC 3558. See NGC 3552. ===== NGC 3559 = NGC 3560, which see. ===== NGC 3560 = NGC 3559. During his MicroSky work, Glen Deen could not find NGC 3560. There is indeed nothing in its position, copied exactly from the GC by Dreyer, and before that from JH's 1833 catalogue. Checking that catalogue, though, I found that JH himself equates his 834th object with his father's III 79. The descriptions are similar, and Sir John himself says, "The PD of the working list is 6 arcmin out, owing to which I have often before looked for it in vain." So, he must have had the correct polar distance in front of him when he wrote this. But his NPD is exactly 50 arcmin out. I suspect that the 1833 NPD suffers from a typographical error: in place of "77 53 50," read "77 03 50." D'Arrest also noticed the 6 arcmin problem (he also marks the name III 79 with a question mark, and does not mention JH's number), and has two observations of this to Sir John's one. Thus, it is d'Arrest's presumably more accurate position that Dreyer adopted for NGC 3559. However, Dreyer had only JH's position for h834 to use. This is exactly 50 arcmin in declination out from d'Arrest's correct position for III 79. Since Sir John had included h834 in GC as a separate object, Dreyer followed JH's precedent. So, we are left with two numbers for the same object. Curiously, though, neither Dreyer nor JH have any note in GC or NGC about the identity, which JH himself had noted over 30 years earlier. ===== NGC 3561 is usually taken in modern catalogues as the entire double system Arp 105 = VV 237. However, the brighter (southern) of the two interacting galaxies is the one seen and measured by the visual observers, and by Hubble in his 1917 thesis. This is the one that I have labeled N3561 in the main position table. There is, however, an intriguing observation of a "nova" by Bigourdan about 15 arcsec north of the northern component of Arp 105. The right ascension offset estimated by Bigourdan, however, places the nova in a blank sky field four seconds of time preceding the galaxy. I wonder, though, if Bigourdan in fact saw the galaxy, but misplaced it because of its faintness. The question is a bit academic now, since the observation only exists in Bigourdan's list; he apparently did not publish it in any of his lists of new nebulae, so it did not receive an NGC or IC number. See NGC 3552 for more discussion about this field. ===== NGC 3565 and NGC 3566. These two objects were given the same poor position by Ormond Stone in the first Leander McCormick list. The identification with the close pair of galaxies listed in the table was made by noting that many of the first list nebulae were placed about two minutes of time too far west. Subtracting two minutes from the RA puts the position very close to the faint pair. The identification of this pair as NGC 3565 and 3566 is obviously not very secure because the discovery position is poor, and there are no sketches of the objects among Stone's papers. Another possibility is that N3565 and 3566 are identical to IC 2623 and the star superposed just south. However, this would require a 4 minute error in Stone's RA, as well as a 4 minute declination error. While a few of the Leander McCormick positions are indeed this far off, I think that this possibility is less likely. Still -- I've been bothered by the identification of the pair as Stone's objects because they are so close together, and because the optical and infrared sky surveys show an apparent nucleus BETWEEN the two components. This strongly suggests that there is but one peculiar galaxy here. Hence the question marks. I have to question, too -- if this is indeed Stone's pair -- whether he could see both objects. ===== NGC 3566. See NGC 3565. ===== NGC 3567. Though most cataloguers have taken the somewhat brighter northwestern galaxy as the NGC object, I've listed both objects here given JH's comments. He has this to say about it on 27 Dec 1827: "eF, R, sbM; with an appearance of stars." On 19 April 1830, he says, "vF; wind furious; perhaps only F stars." (WH has only "eF; a little doubtful" on 13 April 1784, the only night he recorded it.) Perhaps I wouldn't be as impressed with JH's use of the plural "stars" if he had only used it once. But with it appearing in both of his observations, it is too striking to ignore. ===== NGC 3570 was seen by E. Stephan on 15 March 1877. See UGC 3840 in the "notngc" files for more. ===== NGC 3571 = NGC 3544, which see. ===== NGC 3575 = NGC 3162. D'Arrest's RA is one hour too large. He must have had a bad night on 21 February 1863 since N2753 and N3760 (both of which see) are his other two novae from that night. In any event, when the one hour correction is made, d'A's position falls within one arcmin of NGC 3162, and his description is perfect for the object, including the 11th mag star 3 arcmin west, and the 16th mag star 1 arcmin southeast (actually superposed on the southeast arm of the galaxy). ===== NGC 3576. Even though Lauberts marks the identity as questionable, there is no doubt that this is the object that JH saw. His figure shows all six of the bright patches of nebulosity in the area, and matches the appearance of the sky pretty well. He notes that the position for this object (and a couple of others) comes from two figures he sketched for the group. This may account for his RA being a bit off for this southwest patch: it is shown too close to the rest of the nebulae in his sketch published in CGH. The other nebulae are NGC 3579, 3581, 3582, 3584, and 3586. JH's positions and descriptions for them are very good. ===== NGC 3578. JH found this on 16 Dec 1827 along with at least sixteen of his father's nebulae. Of these seventeen nebulae, only one other (NGC 2848) has a position in JH's table marked uncertain. This one, N3578, has the NPD given only to a full arcmin and is marked with a plus-minus sign. JH's description is also short and discouraging: "A doubtful object, but probably a nebula." Nevertheless, there is what I earlier took to be a close double star within JH's usual statistical error of his position. Looking again at this object on the several DSS images, and on the 2MASS J-band image, I now (November 2014) think that it is a single star. There is another double star seven arcminutes south. Given that my first choice has turned out to be a simple star, I think that the double is perhaps more likely a candidate than I had first considered it. But the question marks are staying on it! It is nevertheless, the sort of double star that JH mistook for a nebula several other times, so I'm going to at least leave it as a possibility for NGC 3578. ===== NGC 3579. See NGC 3576. ===== NGC 3581. See NGC 3576. ===== NGC 3580 is probably not IC 675, which see for more. ===== NGC 3582. See NGC 3576. ===== NGC 3584. See NGC 3576. ===== NGC 3586. See NGC 3576. ===== NGC 3588 is a double galaxy not too far south of delta Leonis. It is bright enough for the Herschels to have seen, but I suspect that the glare from the star hid it. That is certainly what happened with the SDSS. While the galaxies can be seen in the SDSS image, the field is covered with glare and diffraction spikes. Swift found the object on 26 April 1883 and described it as "cS, vF; f [delta] Leonis 4s. Easily overlooked." (He miswrote the difference in RA -- the galaxy actually precedes the star.) It's likely that he saw only the brighter southwestern galaxy of the pair, but most catalogues list both under the NGC number. I've followed along with that, and give a combined position for both objects. ===== NGC 3594. The NGC position falls between two galaxies that could be the object WH saw. The "standard" identification is with UGC 6286, though another possibility is CGCG 268-006, smaller but brighter than the UGC galaxy. However, it is considerably further from WH's positions than the UGC galaxy. Checking WH's sweeps (CH's fair copy in the Herschel Archives) gives another two positions, one from CH's reduction, the second from an offset from "279 Ursae of Bode's Cat." which turns out to be HD 100615. Both of these positions (given in the position table), are closer to UGC 6286 than is the position reduced from WH's 3rd list in his Scientific Papers. This suggests that the usual identification is correct. However, I noticed that a few other galaxies that WH found on the same night also had identification problems (specifically those flagged with Notes by Dreyer in the 3rd list in the Scientific Papers). Curious about this, I collected all of WH's observations from the night of 14 April 1789 that he referred to 64 Ursae Majoris. I've listed them here with WH's positions reduced from the offsets, given in the 3rd list, to the modern position of the star (corrected for proper motion). The differences, in the sense "True minus WH" follow, with a few notes appended. I've ordered them by declination; the reason for that is obvious, and is discussed below. NGC H RA (2000) Dec Delta Pos (T - WH) Notes RA Sec Dec Min 3780 I 227 11 38 51 +56 19.0 +31 -2.8 3804 III 773 11 40 16 +56 14.0 +38 -1.9 = NGC 3794 3898 I 228 11 48 40 +56 05.8 +35 -0.7 3594 III 770 11 15 29 +55 45.3 +43 -3.0 3888 II 785 11 47 00 +55 59.8 +34 -1.8 3850 III 776 11 44 34 +55 53.9 +61 -0.7 WH notes "time inaccurate" 3990 II 791 11 57 08 +55 29.6 +28 -2.1 3998 I 229 11 57 29 +55 28.6 +27 -1.4 3913 II 786 11 50 25 +55 20.7 +14 +0.5 3972 II 789 11 55 22 +55 19.6 +23 -0.4 Obs includes N3977=N3980 3916 II 787 11 50 53 +55 08.7 - 2 -0.1 3921 II 788 11 50 48 +55 05.7 +19 -1.0 3737 III 772 11 35 21 +54 58.2 +15 +1.3 3733 III 771 11 34 47 +54 50.2 +15 +0.8 3738 II 783 11 35 41 +54 32.2 + 8 -0.7 3756 II 784 11 36 38 +54 19.1 +10 -1.4 3656 II 782 11 23 34 +53 49.8 + 5 +0.7 3631 I 226 11 21 11 +53 08.9 - 8 +1.3 3824 III 774 11 43 28 +52 43.9 -43 +2.9 3829 III 775 11 43 47 +52 40.9 -20 +1.8 Mean Delta +16.7 -0.44 Sigma n +- 5.1 +-0.34 Sigma 1 +-22.8 +-1.54 Note that the largest declination and RA offsets occur at the extreme northern and southern limits of the sweep. While the mean RA difference is west by 16.7 seconds of time (or about 2.4 arcminutes at the mean declination), and the mean Dec difference is 0.44 arcmin north, the trends in both RA and Dec with declination are clear. I'm going to suggest that, as on the notorious night of 2 April 1801 (see NGC 3752 for details), WH was not sweeping along the meridian, but along a great circle turned at some small angle to the meridian. All this suggests that UGC 6286 is indeed WH's galaxy, and is the correct identification for NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3596. See NGC 3616. ===== NGC 3599. See NGC 3632. ===== NGC 3604 = NGC 3611. WH's RA is one minute too small, but his description is apt for NGC 3611. Dreyer, without benefit of wide-field plates, comments in his notes to WH's catalogue, "Should probably be rejected, together with III 88 (sic) and III 598 (NGC 3509), the only other neb this night, as there was fog `which indeed was so strong as to make everything swim about me.' " NGC 3509 is also a minute of time east of WH's RA, reinforcing Reinmuth's suggestion of the identity of N3604 with N3611. I'm not sure, however, which object Dreyer means by "III 88." III 88 is NGC 3401 (which see), and was found two and a half years earlier than the other two objects. In WH's catalogues, only NGC 3509 is noted as being found on the same night (30 Dec 1786) as N3604. Did Dreyer mean to have only III 598 in his comment? Probably so, but we can't be sure without seeing his MS. Coincidentally, this object is also the first of 36 numbered and lettered nebulae and stars that David Todd found during his 1877-1878 "Telescopic search for the trans-Neptunian planet" with the USNO 26-inch refractor. He has given us a nearly complete transcription of his observing notes in his AN 2698 article; this makes digging out the nebulae, and all the comments about a single object, rather more difficult than is ideal. Also, Todd's positions are very crude (apparently read from the refractor's setting circles), though he has given us sketches of each object's field so that we can still positively identify all but one of his objects (Dreyer, I'm sure, would have done this had he had a sky survey at hand). Todd found at least two other objects which were bright enough that he (correctly) assumed them to be known nebulae. Several people, including Wolfgang Steinicke, Steve Gottlieb, Klaus Wenzel (inspired by one of Wolfgang's articles), Courtney Seligman, and me, have tackled the list. Here are the identifications of each of his sketched objects. Todd's Modern name Type Note number (1) NGC 3604 = NGC 3611 Galaxy (2) GSC 0838-0889 Star (3) GSC 0848-1219 Star (4) NGC 3427 Galaxy (5) NGC 3462 Galaxy (6) NGC 3436 Galaxy (7) --- --- See comments below. (8) IC 669 Galaxy (9) NGC 3685 Galaxy (10) NGC 3849 = IC 730 Galaxy (11) NGC 4075 Galaxy (12a) NGC 4073 Galaxy (12d) NGC 4063 Galaxy (13a) NGC 4045A Galaxy = CGCG 013-045 (13b) NGC 4045 Galaxy (13e) CGCG 013-049 Galaxy (14a) NGC 4077 = NGC 4140 Galaxy Same as (16a) (14b) NGC 4139 = IC 2989 Galaxy Same as (16b) (15) NGC 4179 Galaxy (16a) NGC 4077 = NGC 4140 Galaxy Same as (14a) (16b) NGC 4139 = IC 2989 Galaxy Same as (14b) (17) NGC 4355 = NGC 4418 Galaxy (18) NGC 4202 Galaxy (19) GSC 0836-0339 Star (20a) UCAC 514-051250 Star (20b) NGC 3153 Galaxy (20c) HIP 50085 Star This is not CGCG 064-091. (21a) NGC 3134 Galaxy (21b) UCAC 512-048943 Star (22) IC 591 Galaxy (23) CGCG 064-093 Galaxy = MCG +02-26-033 (24) NGC 3332 = NGC 3342 Galaxy (25) CGCG 066-007 Galaxy = UGC 5864 (26) CGCG 065-074 Galaxy = MCG +02-27-033 (27) GSC 0841-1088 Star (28) CGCG 065-073 Galaxy (29) NGC 3217 = IC 606 Galaxy (30) NGC 3279 = IC 622 Galaxy Note that Courtney Seligman has found that Todd 20c is a star, and not -- as I had previously supposed -- CGCG 064-091 (see the note under this number in the "notngc" files). I've checked that each of the sketches matches the sky as it appears on the POSS1 prints or on the DSS. The stars were initially identified by Klaus Wenzel; I have confirmed his identifications with one exception. That exception is number (7). Klaus suggests that number (7) is also a star, GSC 0268-0113, but the field around it does not match Todd's sketch with the 26-inch telescope. In addition, this star is just 2 arcmin south of IC 670 which is bright enough that Todd would have recorded it had he seen it. I cannot find any star field that matches Todd's detailed sketch for number (7), though his second sketch of the finder field (from 12 December 1877) pretty closely matches the sky. Unfortunately, his detailed field as sketched through the 26-inch is not at the center of this finder field. His first finder field sketch from 3 December 1877 accompanying the 26-inch sketch is also unmatchable -- at least by me -- with the sky. Todd gives two different crude positions (11h00m, +07d10' on 3 Dec; and 11h00m, +07d17' on 12 Dec, both presumeably for the equinox of the date) for that field center. These led me to the second finder field, but not the first. He has several measurements of the stars in the field; you can see these in his paper which is available at ADS (AN 113, 153, 1886). If you can recover this object, or think that you can convince me that it is indeed Klaus's star, please let me know. Thanks! The remainder of the non-NGC objects are discussed in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 3607. See NGC 3632. ===== NGC 3608. See NGC 3632. ===== NGC 3609 is also NGC 3612. Steve Gottlieb noticed that Otto Struve found this galaxy twice while searching for Comet Winnecke in the spring of 1869 at St. Petersburg. Struve's first observation came on 16 March 1869 and clearly refers to NGC 3609 -- but is listed in the NGC as "3612". The second observation comes from 18 March 1869 and describes the same galaxy. The positions are slightly different which misled both Struve and Dreyer into thinking that Struve had seen two galaxies here, while he had in fact seen only one. Here are Struve's observations: March 16 [1869]. alpha = 11h 10m 47s, delta = 27d 20m. Faint nebula about 30"-40" in diameter. Approximately 2 arcminutes north-following is a star (10. 11), from which the nebula is in position angle 225d. March 18 [1869]. alpha = 11h 10m 36s, delta = 27d 21m. Significantly brighter than the previous one [NGC 3534], 20" in diameter, with evident concentration towards the middle. Position angle from a 10th magnitude star = 226d. There are indeed two galaxies here, one about 25 seconds of time east of the first. However, that second galaxy is fainter, has a lower surface brightness, and -- in particular -- does not have the 10th-11th magnitude star two arcminutes to the northeast. Steve has also noticed that Struve's position for NGC 3534, mentioned in the second observation on the same night, is offset from the true position by -13 seconds of time, close to the -15 seconds that Struve's position for NGC 3612 is offset from the true position. (The other galaxy from the same night, NGC 3563, has a position offset of only 4 seconds, but in the same direction.) All of this makes it clear that Struve discovered the same galaxy twice. The preferred number, by the way, is NGC 3609. ===== NGC 3611 = NGC 3604, which see. ===== NGC 3612 = NGC 3609, which see. ===== NGC 3616 is probably lost. It may be one of the stars I've noted in the position table, but I'm not sanquine about the possibility. Found 8 April 1784 by WH, and never seen again by anyone, he published it as merely "eF, pL; easily ver[ified with] 240[power]." The star I chose decades ago when I was young and naive is surely not WH's object, and I am pretty sure that the double star close to WH's place is not it, either. Neither of these is "pretty large", and while the double star might appear somewhat nebulous on a poor night, I don't see how WH could have seen anything but "vS" or "eS" for it. In the sweep, he is not much more forthcoming: "Excessively F, pL; some doubts were removed by putting on 240. 70 (theta) Leonis f 4[m] 0[s], s 0[d] 41[arcmin]." CH's reduction to 1800 is "RA 11h 7[m] 44[s] PD 74[d] 10[arcmin]" which is very close to the position re-reduced with a modern position and proper motion for the comparison star. WH also had trouble with the previous class III object in the same sweep (NGC 3498, which see), though not with the immediately preceding NGC 3596 (= II 102). It's possible that the declination is off, but that would pull this one object out of the zone of all the other nebulae found this same night. I would rather think that the RA is out, but that, too, is a problem because of the solidity of WH's observation with respect to NGC 3596 (Dreyer notes, "In the sweep, it is 3.2m f, 3' s of II. 102 [= N3596], the place of which is correct."). Still, it's a field rich in galaxies, so we may yet dig this out. But after examining the sweep, I am less confident than ever about that. ===== NGC 3622. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 3626 is also = NGC 3632, which see. ===== NGC 3630. See NGC 3645. ===== NGC 3631. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3632 = NGC 3626. This is an identity first suggested by Dreyer, and was adopted by him in his notes to his 1912 edition of WH's Scientific Papers. It is most likely correct since WH found II 30 (which later became N3632) during one of his earlier sweeps (on 15 February 1784) when he was still perfecting his techniques. I did notice, however, that NGC 3599 is just 5 minutes of time preceding the position WH gave for N3632. The problem with that galaxy, though, is that it does not match WH's description -- "A pB nebula, it seems to contain stars; it is of some extent" -- very well. Also, if WH had seen N3599, I would have expected him to also record the much brighter NGC 3607 and 3608 just a minute and a half following at essentially the same declination. He did not record these until a month later. All considered, then (well, all that I can think of given the field), Dreyer's solution is the best one, so is the one that I fully endorse. ===== NGC 3643, NGC 3644 = IC 684, and NGC 3647. Even though Marth's positions for N3643, 3644, and 3647 are pretty good, this has not prevented later observers from misidentifying these at one time or another. In particular, Bigourdan's "N3647" is a star, and he labeled N3644 as "new" (his positions for both are accurate). Thus, this latter galaxy received an IC number (684) as well as its NGC number. Kobold got the right galaxies for N3643 and N3644, but both he and Wirtz list N3644 as "NGC 3645(?)" (though Kobold does have an erratum saying that though the identity is uncertain it is probably N3644). RNGC has misidentified N3643 and N3645 (which see), and CGCG makes yet another object in the group N3645. Finally, just about everyone, including me, has misidentified NGC 3647. There are four CGCG galaxies here. Most of us have chosen CGCG 039-141 -- the easternmost -- but the brightest (by half a magnitude) of the three is CGCG 039-135, the westernmost. Steve Gottlieb has gently reminded us that brighter objects are usually easier to see than fainter ones. Even with a 48-inch reflector, Marth called this one an "eF neb *." And he saw only one object here, not four, so the obvious choice is the brightest. ===== NGC 3644 = IC 684, which see. Also see NGC 3643. ===== NGC 3645. This, and five other NGC/IC objects (N3643, N3644, and N3647, which see; and I683 and I684), lie in a relatively crowded field. There has been considerable confusion about the identifications here because of the crowding -- and because the NGC position of the (presumeably) brightest object, N3645, lies in a blank area of sky a few arcminutes northwest of the group center. This brightest object was found first by William Herschel on 23 Feb 1784. He placed it 6m 30s preceding and 7' north of 84 (tau) Leo. The NGC position comes from John Herschel's single uncertain observation during Sweep 143; the object is h867 in his 1833 list, though he notes both it and h861 as being II 32. This latter object is considerably brighter than any of the galaxies in the group, and precedes it by 1.3 min. JH saw it during two sweeps (141 and 238), but did not pick it up during Sweep 143. Similarly, h867 was seen only during Sweep 143, but not during sweeps 141 and 238. That, combined with the relative brightness of the object compared to those in the group and JH's uncertain position for h867, strongly suggests that h867 = h861; i.e. N3645 = N3630. N3645 is also credited to Tempel who has a long discussion of the field in AN 2212 (pp.51-2). I've not translated this yet, but I do not easily see any precise offset from a known object in the text. Is it possible that Tempel was misled by JH's attribution of H II 32 to two different objects? A translation is clearly needed. ===== NGC 3646. See IC 682 = NGC 3649 where I suggest that Swift's note of a "very faint star close north preceding" actually applies to his observation of this galaxy. He somehow confused it with his observation of the fainter galaxy. Curiously, WH puts this object, as well as NGC 3649 which he observed in the same sweep, into his third ("very faint nebulae") class of objects. This is fully three magnitudes brighter than N3649. The only reason I can see is that the surface brightness is lower. JH has them right, though the final "brightness" in GC and NGC ("cF") is an unsatisfactory compromise. ===== NGC 3647. See NGC 3643. ===== NGC 3649 = IC 682, which see. ===== NGC 3656. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3661 = IC 689, which see. ===== NGC 3667. See IC 689. ===== NGC 3671. WH says of this, "vF, vS; 2 vS sts in it." JH was a bit uncertain of this faint object: "This must be my father's neb, but it is a suspicious object, and I doubt whether it be not a little knot of 3 or 4 stars." There is no doubt about the identification, but I think it is worth noting that WH's two stars are the nucleus and a star just to the east. Otherwise, this is an interesting galaxy with a bright, obviously star-like nucleus; and a considerably disturbed, though very faint corona, with plumes. There is no sign of an obvious companion, though. Is this perhaps the result of a merger? ===== NGC 3674. See the entry for NGC 3683A in the "notngc" files for confusion in the Birr Castle observations of this and NGC 3683. ===== NGC 3676 is MCG -02-29-029. The declination given by Muller and the NGC is about 30 arcmin too large, but the description is accurate. Muller's note, in particular, "star 10 north-following, star 10 south-following" is correct: each star is 0.95 arcmin from the galaxy. ===== NGC 3677. See CGCG 242-042 which LdR probably saw; this NGC object figures in its identification. ===== NGC 3679 and NGC 3915 are H III 112 and III 113, both found the night of 24 April 1784, and both referred to the same star, 74 Leo (SAO 138102). There is nothing at either position reduced from WH's offsets from this star. The other brighter objects found on that night (N4697 and N4941 = H I 39 and 40; and N4593, N4602, and N4989 = H II 183,4,5) were all compared with 51 Virginis and are close enough to the derived positions to identify without problems. JH, however, noted that Mayer 510 (SAO 138798), taken later in the same sweep, is a better comparison star. He determined the positions of the two objects given in GC using this star, and Dreyer adopted these positions for NGC, too. He also discusses the problem of the comparison stars in a note to NGC, as well as in the Notes to his 1912 edition of WH's papers. Unfortunately, there are still no nebulae at either position. At this point, it's worth noting that, regardless of which star is used, WH's relative position between the two objects is 24 minutes 12 seconds in RA and 49 arcmin in Dec. This suggests that we should look for objects matching his descriptions separated by these amounts. We'll keep these relative positions in mind as we discuss other observers. Now, other observers begin to cloud the picture. Dreyer credits Peters with an observation of N3915. But as with WH's observation, there is nothing at Peters's position (he says that he determined it by plotting the object on charts of his own construction). His note for N3915 reads, "AR in GC from 15 sec to 20 sec too small, and also the declination differs rather much. The nebula is vL, and not eS, as H. III. 113 has it." Just what nebula he saw is something of a mystery. It could have been IC 2963, but Peters's RA is over a minute off, and his Dec is nearly 2 arcmin off as well. Another object sometimes suggested as NGC 3915 is IC 738. However, that is about 1m 40s and 29 arcmin off Peters's position, so seems an unlikely candidate. There are, however a couple of galaxies that would correspond to NGC 3679 at approximately the correct position, assuming WH's difference in position (24min 12sec and 49 arcmin). The brighter is MCG -01-29-017, the fainter is 2MASX J11244816-0531565. Neither, however, has a bright star nearby that would match WH's description for NGC 3679. Spitaler has a series of good micrometric observations of nebulae which includes N3679. He makes it the object we now call MCG -01-29-021 = Markarian 1294. But this is nearly 15 arcmin away from the nearest of WH's positions, and does not match his description of being "very near a very bright star." Dreyer makes a note of Spitaler's observation in his IC1 Notes, and again in the 1912 Scientific Papers Notes. So, we're left with a puzzle: what did WH and Peters see? Let's assume that WH's descriptions are good [for N3679 he says, "eF, cL, R, r (v nr vB *)" and for N3915, "eF, eS w 240. 2 vS sts and nebulosity."]. The only objects in the area matching these descriptions are MCG -01-29-012 (at 11 19 15.35, -05 29 00.6; B1950.0 from GSC) which has SAO 138156 about 2 arcmin to the north, and the previously uncatalogued galaxy at 11 44 22.20, -04 54 35.4 (again, GSC for B1950.0) which has a somewhat fainter star superposed about 15 arcsec to the southwest of its bright core. The relative positions of these two galaxies in 1784 was 25 min 04 sec, and 35.3 arcmin, not wildly off WH's "observed" offsets -- but not very close, either. In the end, I've taken MCG -01-29-012 and the uncatalogued object as perhaps the two that WH saw. It's clear, however, that there are unexplained large errors in WH's offsets for these two objects. So, these identifications are quite uncertain, and could well be completely wrong. ----- In July 2016, I looked at WH's sweep. Here is what he has to say about this object (CH's fair copy in the Herschel Archives with her reduced position for 1800 also given): cL, excessively F, R, r; just preceding, and very near a B st. The nebulosity touches the star. There is so much moon light that I do not see it satisfactorily, and am, even not without some doubts as to the reality, but must defer the verification till [sic] a darker night. Mayer's 510 p 1h 1' 48" s 1d 20' RA 11h 15' 49" PD 94d 50' CH gives the position of Mayer's 510 as 12 17 37.1, 93 30 20 (NPD) for 1800. This becomes 12 27 53.5, -04 36 50 for J2000 which identifies the star as FT Vir = HD 108506. As noted above, there is nothing in WH's offset from this star. Going through the sweep, I see several other objects referred to HD 108506, and I notice that the RA corrections (to WH's clock readings) for this sweep (and the next on the same night) vary by over a minute of time from +4m 32s to +5m 47s, with that for HD 108506 being +4m 49s. The NPD corrections also differ with one group of five stars close to +92d 30s, and two others -- including HD 108506 -- being +93d 00s. So, WH's zero points through these sweeps were inconsistent. Finally, I note that he has the bright star just following the nebula and "touching" it, while the star near MCG -01-29-012 is two arcminutes south of SAO 138156. I would not say that the nebula "touches" the star, and the direction certainly does not match WH's description. The star's proper motion is small enough in both coordinates that it would not significantly change its position relative to the galaxy over the 216 years between WH's observation and 2000 (to which the proper motions have been reduced). So, the puzzles remain. I'll be interested in seeing what Wolfgang has to say about this in his evaluation of WH's observations. In the meantime, I've changed the colon on the identification of NGC 3679 to a question mark to more accurately reflect the uncertainty in WH's observation. ===== NGC 3682. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 3683. See the entry for NGC 3683A in the "notngc" files for confusion in the Birr Castle observations of this and NGC 3674. ===== NGC 3684 may be H II 160. Wolfgang Steinicke has recently (2013) suggested that WH's sweeps over this area only partially overlapped, so that he (WH) could not have seen N3686 in the second of them (sweep 198 on 17 April 1784). Therefore, Dreyer's suggestion that N3686 = III 28 is also H II 160, is probably incorrect. The equivalence with N3686 makes sense, however, given that the reduced position from WH's observation is just 1 minute of time more and at the same declination -- within the errors -- as the position for N3686. The difference for N3684 is half a minute of time, and 10 minutes of arc. A mistaken reading of a single minute of time seems more likely than errors in both RA and Dec, but the two errors are what Wolfgang is suggesting. Looking at CH's fair copies of the sweeps, I do not see information that can help determine the path of the telescope on the sky, so cannot reproduce Wolfgang's argument. The information may be in other of the Herschel Archive files that I haven't examined yet. In particular, there is a large section with CH's work on her brother's observations that may be quite helpful in circumstances like these. I have, however, re-reduced the observation of WH's nebula with all three stars that he observed in the sweep (81, 85, and 90 Leonis), and the positions are coincident to within WH's known errors. The problem therefore is certainly in the observation of the nebula itself. I also see in the fair copy that the nebula is the only one for which the time is recorded with minutes and seconds rather than minutes and decimals. Was there something special about this observation that WH has not told us? His full description, by the way, reads, "cL, R, brightest in the M, but the brightness goes off very gradually." This description could apply to either galaxy. A not-so-by-the-way: There is no problem with the NGC identifications of these two objects. JH adopted his own pretty good positions for them in GC, and Dreyer adopted very similar positions for the NGC. Only the WH number, II 160, may be wrong on the galaxies. ===== NGC 3685 is CGCG 039-192. Though Todd's position is off (as it is for nearly all of the nebulae he found during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet") his sketchs of the field are very good, as are his measurements of distances between stars and nebulae within each field. In this case, he found the higher surface brightness component of a pair of CGCG galaxies; the other is UGC 6466, a pretty low surface brightness barred spiral. This is Todd's number (9). See NGC 3604 for more about Todd's search. ===== NGC 3686. See NGC 3684. ===== NGC 3690 and IC 694 (which see for more discussion). These are not, as is often supposed, the two components of the peculiar interacting system, Arp 299. Instead, NGC 3690 refers to these two peculiar galaxies, while IC 694 is the small elliptical or lenticular about an arcmin northwest. Lord Rosse clearly resolved the two components in at least one of his observations, and he also noted IC 694 as an "appendage" to the north-west of the pair. Swift later rediscovered the IC object; this led Dreyer to assign it its own number in the first IC. Note, too, that the numbers NGC 3690 and IC 694 are incorrectly assigned to Arp 296 in the tables in the Arp Atlas. This has further exacerbated the naming problem, as Arp 296 is another interacting pair just a few arcmin following Arp 299. ===== NGC 3694. See NGC 3698 = NGC 3695. ===== NGC 3695 = NGC 3698, which see for more. Ball's description of the field with this, NGC 3694, and NGC 3700 is accurate. So, even though the NGC position is off, there is no doubt about the correct identifications. ===== NGC 3696 is probably the galaxy that I've listed in the table. It is 10 seconds, and 10 arcmin off the nominal place listed by Leavenworth. Still, there is little besides the position to go on (Leavenworth's description could apply to just about any of the faint galaxies in the area), so I am not confident about the identification. There is no sketch. Another candidate galaxy that I considered, but dropped, was NGC 3704, but that does not have such neat offsets from the nominal position, and is brighter than Leavenworth's description (Mag = 15.6, Size = 0.1', R, bMN) would make it. ===== NGC 3698 = NGC 3695. In March 1867, using LdR's 72-inch telescope, Ball found two nebulae here forming a triangle with h899 = NGC 3694, and suspected others. He did not measure the offsets from JH's nebula; he comments, in fact, "There being no great difference of brightness, it is not easy to see which is h899," but did give the relative positions of "the 2 nf ones, Pos 310 deg, Dist 339[arcsec]." These numbers are accurate for NGC 3695 and NGC 3700. JH's position for NGC 3694 is very good, too. Nine years later, Dreyer re-examined the field, noting that "nnp [h899] is a pS, eeF neb [= N3695] in Pos 357.2, Dist 256.7." This is actually a star. Dreyer goes on, "About 15' n and a few minutes f is another eF, vS neb [= N3700] with an eF * 2' sf." This is actually a reobservation of NGC 3695, (the star is indeed 2 arcmin southeast), though Dreyer took it to be a new nebula and gave it a new number, NGC 3698. The object itself has a double nucleus, easily seen in DSS2R and IR images. The nuclear bulge on blue image suggests a peculiar amorphous bar with faint arms. The SDSS clarifies the picture, showing two superposed spiral galaxies, not obviously interacting -- though I suspect they are. The system is reminiscent of NGC 3314, but considerably more distant. ===== NGC 3700. Though the NGC position is off, Ball's description of the field, including his measurement of the offset between this and NGC 3695, makes clear the nebulae he found. See NGC 3698 = NGC 3695 for more. ===== NGC 3702. As with so many of the Leander McCormick nebulae, there is nothing at the nominal position from a single observation by Frank Leavenworth. His description is "Mag." = 15.2, "Size" = 0.1 arcminutes, "Form" = R, "Condensation" = glbM; all from one observation. His Notes read, "* 10, p 30[seconds of time]; * 10, f 30[seconds of time]". Dreyer summarized this as "eF, eS, R, glbM" with no mention of the stars. The galaxy that RNGC chose, and that I unfortunately did not earlier follow up on, is the brightest in a group. However, it is well off Leavenworth's position in declination as well as RA. This caught Courtney Seligman's attention, and he alerted me in October 2019 to my neglect of the object. I found that at V = 13.4 and 1.7' x 1.0', the RNGC galaxy (also = MCG -01-29-026) is both brighter and larger than Leavenworth's description would suggest. The 10th magnitude stars are also nowhere in the field. Instead, HD 100031 (V = 9.3) is about 5 arcminutes (20 seconds of time) east-northeast. The galaxy is also the brightest in a small group, including two other objects about 35 seconds of time to the east. A fourth galaxy, actually the second brightest at V = 14.5, with diameters of 0.8' x 0.6', is nine arcminutes south at just an arcminute off Leavenworth's declination. It is indeed flanked by stars, the western (V = 12.4) at 30 seconds distance from the galaxy. There are, however, two stars to the east, one (V = 12.8) 20 seconds away, the second (V = 11.1) is 50 seconds from the galaxy. All three stars are fainter than Leavenworth's estimated 10th magnitude, so we cannot be certain that the galaxy is the one that he saw. However, given the southern galaxy's matching declination, magnitude, and closer size, I think it has a better chance of being Leavenworth's object, and hence NGC 3702, than the brighter object 9 arcminutes north. So, it goes into the table with a colon, and the brighter object gets a question mark. One last comment: Why didn't Leavenworth pick up both galaxies, particularly the brighter if he could see the fainter? A possible answer lies in the size of the field he was working with, about 12 arcminutes judging by that of the sketches the LM observers have left us. With one of the galaxies centered in the field, the other would be 3 arcminutes outside of it. So, if Leavenworth was "sweeping" by simply letting the sky drift by in RA, he would not have seen both galaxies. But that is speculation on my part. Perhaps there is information in the Leander McCormick observatory publications that could provide more details about the early observing equipment and procedures. ===== NGC 3703 is one of Ormond Stone's discoveries. He made a sketch of the field, but it only vaguely matches the galaxy and its surrounding stars, 10 arcmin north and 25 seconds preceding the published nominal position (the position on the sketch is another 30 seconds on east, which puts it just a minute of time east of the galaxy in question). In particular, the orientation of the sketch is unusual if the identification is correct -- south is normally at the top of the sketches; this would have south at about 10 o'clock. Also, the brightest star shown on the sketch is actually the faintest on the sky. In the end, this is a possible identification, but no more. ===== NGC 3704 and 3707. This pair was found by Ainslie Common around 1880. His position for the pair is only approximate, but his description clearly identifies the nebulae, "2, F, R, on the parallel, star symmetrically placed between." The star is indeed there. The brighter object (N3704) was also seen (in 1878) by Wilhelm Tempel who published a micrometrically measured position for it in his fifth paper on nebulae. His descriptive note on the nebula reads, "Class III; a star 15m (nebulous?) follows 2 sec; near the comparison star is another fainter nebula." The star 2 sec following the measured nebula is the same one mentioned by Common. The positions that Dreyer adopted for NGC come from a letter to him from Tempel. In this letter, summarized by Dreyer in a note in IC2, Tempel says that he saw the brighter (which Dreyer mistakenly calls N3707) four times, but the fainter only once. Further, the position of the fainter comes from a sketch made on 25 May 1881, the same night on which Tempel measured the brighter. After quoting Common's description, Dreyer continues, "I assumed, perhaps erroneously, that 3704,07 are the same as Common's, the place of which is 11h 22m 57s, 100d 33.3m [1860], though Tempel's nebulae are not on the parallel." Dreyer's first assumption was correct, at least concerning the brighter nebula. What is wrong, however, is Tempel's place for the fainter. There is nothing in that position in spite of its being just about 2 arcmin north of his comparison star, and -- presumeably -- shown in that place on the sketch he sent to Dreyer. My guess is that Tempel somehow confused his observations, and that his note about the star and the fainter nebula refers to another field altogether. In any event, Common's observation is clear enough, even if his position isn't, to reliably assign the two numbers to the two galaxies in the field. There is also the faint possibility that Ormond Stone saw NGC 3704; see NGC 3696 for that. Finally, the pair may also be IC 703 and IC 704 (which see). But the case for that is very weak. ===== NGC 3707. See NGC 3704. ===== NGC 3708 and NGC 3709 are lost. Seen only by Ormond Stone with the 26-inch refractor at Leander McCormick, he gave them his usual crude positions. He also left us a sketch of NGC 3708, showing it midway between two stars near the edge of his field (positioned at 2 o'clock and 8 o'clock). From other sketches with positively-identified galaxies, the field is only 6-8 arcmin across, so the stars are separated by about that amount. There is no trace of N3709 in the sketch. Since it is supposed to be just two arcmin south of N3708, I wonder if it is the same galaxy, but seen on a different night. I searched at all the reasonable digit error offsets where I've found other "lost" Leander McCormick nebulae, but found nothing that resembles the north- south pair in the table, nor the galaxy flanked by stars in the sketch. So, unfortunately, two lost nebulae. In early June 2009, Jeff Corder wrote to suggest that N3708 might be NGC 3776. I don't think this is likely as the star field just does not match the sketch. There turns out to be another galaxy nearby (at 11 35 20.8, -03 09 14; B1950.0) that does have approximately equally bright stars diagonally across the galaxy from one another. However, there are also other brighter stars close to the field that I'd expect to be in Stone's sketch. There is a fainter galaxy at 11 35 29.1, -03 11 30 that might be N3709 if the brighter is taken as N3708, but one of the brighter stars I mentioned is just 1.5 arcmin to the west-southwest. Stone could not have missed this star, and would probably have mentioned it in his notes for N3709. ===== NGC 3709 is lost. See NGC 3708 for the story. ===== NGC 3711. Herbert Howe has identified this object for us. Found by F. P. Leavenworth with the 26-inch Leander McCormick refractor, and given a typically rough position in the second list of nebulae discovered at the observatory, Howe must have recovered it by noting the 9th magnitude star four arcminutes south that Leavenworth noted. Howe's position given in MN 58, 515, 1898 is a good micrometric one. With the star just where Leavenworth put it (though there is a second, nearly equally bright star just two arcminutes east-southeast of the first star), the identification is pretty secure. Courtney Seligman, in an email in October 2019, points out that the object is probably an optical pair of galaxies. While the two appear to be somewhat distorted -- especially in their outer regions -- the differing redshifts (cz = +3981 for the spiral, cz = +5327 for the elliptical) suggest the galaxies are unrelated. The large redshift difference is common in clusters of galaxies, but is very unusual in isolated close pairs. ===== NGC 3712 is probably NGC 3714. JH observed the objects during different sweeps, and his position for N3712 is enough off his others to lead him to think he'd found a new nebula. There is nothing at his position, though, and the descriptions of his two different nebulae are very similar. There are, however, some curiosities here. JH was looking for two of his father's nebulae, II 367 (N3713) and III 353 (probably N3714), in the area. JH assigned the numbers to two of his own nebulae (h906 = N3713, and h907 = N3714), but in his description of N3713 (never seen on the same nights as N3714), he says "No companion seen." Similarly, in his description of N3714, he claims, "No other near on the same parallel." The two galaxies are only 12.6 arcmin apart. How does it happen that neither appeared in the same sweep with the other -- aside from Sweep 68 where JH gives a crude declination and no RA to h905 = N3712 -- though he went over the area in 8 different sweeps? JH also noted the 10 minute error in his father's position for III 353. The galaxy, however, is neither at WH's "wrong" position, nor at the "corrected" one. (I thought I had found it just 10 seconds of time off the "wrong" one, but I, too, made an error in RA, this one of 1 hour. Is it possible that WH also made a 1 hour error? Nope -- in that case, the object would have appeared preceding 44 LMi, not following it, and would have been the first object referred to that star that night, not the last.) JH had to stretch a bit to make III 353 fit his position, but he managed it in the note in GC, saying that WH's position (first corrected by CH), when corrected, falls within 35 seconds of his (JH's) own. Finally, N3714 is a rather peculiar galaxy, having a faint, disturbed corona with a broad plume to the southwest. I am unable to decide if two objects -- one superposed on the galaxy just to the northeast of the center, the second 32 arcseconds to the southwest -- are stars or compact companion galaxies. I am guessing here: the superposed object is a compact galaxy, the more distant object is a star. Based on their appearances in the SDSS image, both are stars -- but the distortion of the big spiral is even more noticeable. Spectra are clearly needed. ===== NGC 3713 is probably also NGC 3927 (which see). Also see NGC 3712 = NGC 3714. ===== NGC 3714 = NGC 3712, which see. ===== NGC 3721, 3722, 3724, and 3730. Here is another of the Leander McCormick fields that is irksome at best, frustrating at worst, and will probably never be sorted out satisfactorily. These four numbers are usually applied to various members of a group of galaxies north of NGC 3732 (found by WH, reobserved by JH, there is no problem with the identification of this galaxy). There is some justification for this; the true RAs for the Leander McCormick objects are often east of the nominal RAs, while the Decs are often (though not always!) fairly accurate. I've listed these identifications in the big table with two question marks. In this case, however, there is another group of galaxies to the west of Leavenworth's nominal positions. The brightest is IC 2910. With two others, this matches the relative positions, brightnesses, and diameters estimated by Leavenworth for three (N3721/22/24 of the four objects (though the declination for the northern-most, N3721, is 4 arcmin off). I've marked these candidate objects with a single question mark. This leaves NGC 3730, which Dreyer credits jointly to Leavenworth and A. A. Common. I'm not convinced that they both saw the same object. If Leavenworth saw it the same night as the other three, he rezeroed his RA because there is no galaxy offset from the other three by the amount in his table. This applies to both groups of galaxies, the one to the east as well as that to the west. Here is where we turn to Common's observation. He lists a single nebula at the position of NGC 3732 calling it "F, R", and adds the note "... a cluster of 3 similar ones 15' n." Dreyer, noting that Leavenworth's position is about 15 arcmin north of N3732, supposed that one of Common's "cluster" was the object that Leavenworth saw. However, Dreyer adopted Leavenworth's RA, nearly a full minute of time preceding N3732. He also has a note in the NGC reading "Common has '3, F, R, 15[arcmin] n of h913 [N3732].' This is not what Common actually wrote, of course, though it summarizes the situation pretty well. But we are still left to wonder which galaxy to take for NGC 3730. Not quite pulling things out of the hat, I'm going to go with the usual choice for this, the brightest galaxy in the "cluster" north of NGC 3732. There is a question mark on it, of course. The fainter spindle just to the south was apparently not seen by any of the visual observers. Had it been, then the situation with at least the number 3730 would be a lot clearer. What about Common's other two galaxies? If the object we take as NGC 3730 is one of his, then the other two are logically those that are sometimes called N3722 and N3724 (those with double question marks in the table). It's not beyond reason, though, to think that he saw those two and the third on to the east in the line, MCG -01-30-008. But all this is speculation. We don't have good positions from the original observers for any of these, so all we can do is -- speculate. Frustrating, isn't it? ----- Yann Pothier pointed out in an email from April 2016 that the pair I've called "NGC 3722?" and "NGC 3724 ?= IC 2910" better match Leavenworth's relative positions for his pair than any other galaxies in the area. I take this as another indication that these are reasonable candidates for Leavenworth's objects. ===== NGC 3722. See NGC 3721. ===== NGC 3724. See NGC 3721. ===== NGC 3726. This has a companion probably picked up by LdR in 1848. The story is in the "notngc" files under CGCG 242-042. ===== NGC 3730. See NGC 3721. ===== NGC 3732. See NGC 3721. ===== NGC 3733. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3737. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3738. This Magellanic irregular galaxy does not have a nucleus per se; the short bar -- the dominant structure in the galaxy -- is covered with knots and patches, presumeably HII regions. The position I've adopted from GSCA is the approximate center for the entire galaxy, and is probably about as good as we can do without picking out individual knots. Also see NGC 3594 where this and a few other galaxies figure in the identification of NGC 3594 itself. ===== NGC 3743, 3744, 3745, 3746, 3748, 3750, 3751, 3753, and 3754. The last seven of these are Copeland's Septet. The Notes to IC1 relate how the positions in NGC came to be calculated incorrectly. Briefly, Dreyer took Copeland's reference to the comparison star as "reddish" to apply to the wrong star. Thus, the differences between the NGC positions and the correct positions is a simple offset in RA and Dec. Here are tables showing corrected identifications and information for the Septet area in the four major catalogues from which we drew information for RC2: RNGC, Zwicky's CGCG, VV's MCG, and Nilson's UGC. Here are identifications for the galaxies with objects listed in MCG, UGC, and CGCG: NGC MCG UGC CGCG (Vol. II, pp. 176 and 180) 3743 --- --- 11 33.2 +22 00, mp = 15.6 3744 --- --- 33.2 +23 16, mp = 15.4 3758 +04-27-073 --- 33.8 +21 52, mp = 14.8 3745 +04-28-004 --- ---- 3746 +04-28-005 06597 35.1 +22 17, mp = 15.3 3748 +04-28-007 --- 35.2 +22 18, mp = 15.5 3750 +04-28-008 --- 35.3 +22 15, mp = 15.2 3751 +04-28-009 06601* ---- 3753 +04-28-010 06602 -\ - 35.4 +22 16, mp = 14.6* 3754 +04-28-011 --- -/ *UGC 6601 - coordinates and magnitude wrong in UGC, but the Note clearly points to the correct object. *NGC 3753 are 3754 both included in the same CGCG entry. Finally, there is a bit of a mystery concerning the name "Copeland's Septet." When the de Vaucouleurs and I adopted this for RC2 (see Table 16b, page 52) in the early 1970's, we thought we were following our self-imposed rule to not provide new names for objects, but to merely copy those used in the literature. Since that time, I've been unable to find the source of the name. My query about this in the Webb Society Quarterly Journal (No. 90, 1992 October, page 41) has brought no response. It's possible, then, that we were the first to use the name. Wherever it came from, it is now in common use. ===== NGC 3744. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3745. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3746. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3747 is H. III 969, one of the fifteen nebulae found by WH on the night of 2 April 1801, where all the positions suffer from a large, systematic error. See NGC 3752 for more about this sweep. ===== NGC 3748. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3750. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3751. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3752. The night of 2 April 1801 was, as far as WH and CH were concerned, a typical observing night. They made only one sweep that night, number 1096, and found fifteen new nebulae in it. They also recorded four stars, but only one had a catalogued position, 4 Draconis. The reductions were made under the usual assumptions that the times and north polar indices could be reduced to RA and NPD by reference to the single catalogued star, 4 Draconis. Unfortunately, unknown to them, the telescope was not sweeping along the meridian, but along a great circle seven degrees east of the meridian. WH did not discover this until a few days later. Appended to his sweep of 5 April is this note: On examination, I find by an accident of taking down the 25 feet telescope, my instrument has been drawn out of the meridian towards the east at least 5 or 6 degrees in azimuthe [sic], perhaps more. He discarded the April 5th sweep, but did not realize that the same problem affected the April 2nd sweep. The only indication he gives that something might be wrong is this note at the end of that sweep: 4 Draconis Hevelii as taken from Bode's Cat. (NB Woll[aston] & Bode agree) gives 1' 46" more minus than when it was determined (in the Origional [sic] Sweep) by 5 Draconis Hevelii of 1099 Sw; but the place from the Catalogue appears to be the most correct, as it agrees better with another additional star (206) [sic] Cam.) taken in that sweep; besides by 1066 and 1668 [sic; 1068 is probably meant as there is no sweep "1668"] sweeps it seems that 5 Draconis Hev. did not give so strong a correction minus, as some other stars. (The discarded sweep of 5 April 1801, by the way, has only 7 objects included -- four stars, a double star, and two "vF, vS" nebulae, both confirmed with the 300X eyepiece. There is a note at the top of this short sweep "Not to be Numbered or registered", clearly motivated by the alignment problem. I'll reduce this someday to find out what WH saw that night.) In 2011-12, Wolfgang Steinicke had the opportunity to examine WH's and CH's original records now in the possession of the RAS in London. Doing so, he found the problem with telescope alignment, and was able to properly reduce the observations of sweep 1096. In the meantime, however, I had already tackled the problem and -- without realizing its origin -- had managed to recover all of the galaxies that WH found. Here are my original notes on the matter, with new material inserted in square brackets: The problem is discussed in an article in Monthly Notices (Volume 71, pages 509-511) in 1911 where the anonymous author [possibly the Astronomer Royal at the time, Frank Dyson; though Wolfgang has found relevant correspondence between the previous Astronomer Royal, William Christie, and Dreyer] gives accurate positions for forty nebulae. These were found on Royal Observatory, Greenwich (RGO in modern parlance) 30-inch plates covering the area of WH's sweep 1096 on 2 April 1801. WH's positions in that sweep are affected by a large, systematic error, so Dreyer had requested that the Astronomer Royal have plates taken in an effort to sort out the problems. They largely succeeded, but the paper is incorrect in saying in a note that h917 = N3752; actually, N3752 = H II 905. Dreyer and the article's author correctly concluded that h917 and H II 905 are two different galaxies, but they got the NGC number on the wrong one. The MN note should actually read "NGC 3752 = No. 36 above = H II 905, but not h 917 = No. 38 above." This unfortunately leaves h917 without an NGC number (hence its entry in the "notngc" files. (Following the time-honored tradition of muddying the waters with suffixes, I suppose we could call it "NGC 3752A", but I've not done that. Yet. I may eventually change my mind.) (But as of April 2020, I haven't.) Since John Herschel gave his own position, but his father's description, to GC 2460 = NGC 3752, and since it is clear that WH saw the brighter of the two galaxies (more on this below), the GC and NGC positions should be changed. To reach these conclusions, I re-reduced WH's offsets from his comparison stars (as given by Dreyer in the Scientific Papers) [Dreyer must have seen WH's note about the 4 Draconis problem as he identified and used the other stars, not 4 Draconis, to calculate new offsets for the nebulae] for all the objects in the sweep, using the SAO positions for the stars. The positions for the nebulae so found are very poor, ranging up to almost 6 minutes of time and 45 arcmin from the true positions. Nevertheless, there are no other galaxies in the area of WH's positions that could match his descriptions. By following along chronologically through the sweep, we can be pretty sure which galaxies correspond to which numbers in WH's list (only H III 966 = NGC 3197 is out of RA order, but its identity is clear from the declination). This includes N3752 which, as Steve Gottlieb independently suggested, is certainly H II 905. Further "proof" of the correctness of these identifications comes from plots (shown in crude form below) of the differences between WH's positions and the true positions from the RGO plates. (By the way, I've verified the RGO positions with modern measurements.) The differences are systematic, increasing towards higher right ascension. Though [Dreyer] used three different comparison stars for these observations, he used one of these, BD +78 317, for only one object; another, BD +78 412, for two; but the third, BD +76 393, for the remaining 12 objects. [At this point, I had a note about Dreyer's use of the these three stars and the possible problems that might introduce; all that is no longer relevant since I found WH's note about 4 Draconis.] For this third star in particular, the systematic errors are therefore quite well-determined. If corrected for these systematic errors, WH's positions would be good to his nominal accuracy of a few arcminutes. To clinch this interpretation, I calculated the offset of John Herschel's position for h917 from the true position of N3752 = H II 905. The resulting points are coincidentally very close to the offset predicted if [Dreyer] had used BD +78 412 as his comparison star. But, as we can see on the graph, the points are very discrepant from the offset of the actual comparison star BD +76 393. So, again, N3752 is almost certainly II 905 and not h917. Here is a list of the galaxies from the 1911 MNRAS paper, along with the NGC numbers, the numbers assigned by other observers, and the differences between WH's positions and the RGO positions. The objects flagged with asterisks are those found by WH during sweep 1096. MN NGC WH Others Delta RA Delta Dec (WH - RGO) 1* 2938 III 963 [h 612, a star] -1m 54s -17.8 arcmin 3* 2977 I 282 -3 17 -17.5 6* 3061 II 903 [h 653, not found] -1 49 -14.3 7* 3197 III 966 +1 34 + 6.9 8* 3144=3174 III 964 d'Arrest -2 16 - 2.1 9* 3155=3194 III 965 h 676, d'Arrest -1 53 - 0.9 11* 3183=3218 I 283 d'Arrest -2 25 + 1.2 13 3252 III 316 --- --- 15* 3329=3397 I 284 h 733 +4 01 +26.6 25 3403 II 335 h 767 --- --- 27* 3465 III 967 h 795 [h 802, n.f.] +0 50 +11.4 29* 3500 III 968 -1 33 +10.7 30* 3523 II 904 +1 12 + 9.9 34 3538 ... d'Arrest --- --- 36* 3752 II 905 +2 29 +14.8 37* 3747 III 969 +1 51 +12.7 38 .... ... [h 917, a star] (+5 22 +39.1) 39* 3901 III 970 +5 40 +42.9 40* 3890=3939 III 971 H III 940, d'Arrest +1 43 +25.3 Finally, here is a crude representation of the plots of the position differences, taken in the sense WH minus RGO: Delta Dec (arcmin) -- + Comparison stars used * = BD +76 393 +40 -- (*) N3752 if h 917 + = BD +78 412 x = BD +78 317 -- +30 -- -- * + +20 -- -- * N3752 if II 905 * +10 -- *** x -- * 0 -- * * -- -10 -- -- * -20 -- * * | | | | | | | 12h 11h30m 11h 10h30m 10h 9h30m 9h RA Delta RA (minutes) +6 -- + +5 -- (*) N3752 if h 917 +4 -- + +3 -- * N3752 if II 905 +2 -- * * x +1 -- * * 0 -- -1 -- * -2 -- * * * * * -3 -- * -4 -- | | | | | | | 12h 11h30m 11h 10h30m 10h 9h30m 9h RA I thank Wolfgang for correspondence about this, and answers to my subsequent questions, early in 2013. I'm also grateful to Courtney Seligman who brought this up again in June 2015 in the context of the identification of NGC 2938 (which see). Courtney revisited the area in December 2019 working on NGC 3465 and NGC 3500; see both of those for additional comments, particularly observational notes from Steve Gottlieb. ===== NGC 3753. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3754. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3756. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3758. See NGC 3743. ===== NGC 3760 = NGC 3301. As with N3575 = N3162 (which see), d'Arrest's RA is 1 hour too large (he measured both on the same night, 21 February 1863). In addition, his note "* 10-11 p 4.0 sec, 175'' south" should place the star north of the galaxy, not south. With these two changes, his single observation of his "nova" is in perfect accord with his three observations of NGC 3301. Dreyer notes (in the NGC Notes) Copeland's not finding the object at Birr, discovering instead "a large group of novae preceding it" (Copeland's Septet, which see under NGC 3743). He further comments in IC1 that the Strassburg observer (Kobold, who apparently first suggested the equality with N3301) also could not find N3760. ===== NGC 3763 = IC 714. For once, the Leander McCormick observation, this one a micrometric one by Francis Leavenworth, referred to an unmistakeable star, is correct (though perhaps with a 10-arcsec declination error). Even A. A. Common's position is fairly close, only 12 seconds of time and one arcminute off. So Dreyer must have been feeling cautious when he did not mention that the two entries might refer to the same object -- or perhaps he just missed them. Leavenworth does list his comparison star as "Wash. Cat. 4946" -- it is theta Crateris with a V magnitude of 4.7 -- so it would not be instantly recognizeable to someone reading through the list of Leander McCormick observations. Also, Common has an odd note about it (at least I suppose his note refers to the star.) His full description reads "F, diffused, sp 7 stars." The galaxy is indeed "sp", but what does "7 stars" mean? I don't see any other galaxy in the area that has seven obvious stars to the northeast, so given that Common's position is not all that bad, I'll leave this particular mystery to someone else to solve. Perhaps an eyepiece view with the same power and field as Common used on his 36-inch would be more revealing than the DSS. ===== NGC 3764. This, as noted in CGCG and MCG, is part of a double system; only the eastern component is bright enough that d'A could have seen it. Somewhat unusually, the two galaxies have quite different types. The western object is a late-type spiral, perhaps an SBd III-IV with pretty low surface brightness. (What, at first sight, appears to be a knot on its northern edge, is probably a background galaxy; the SDSS spectrum confirms this). The brighter eastern galaxy is an S0 (or perhaps an elliptical). There hardly appears to be any interaction between the two, though the redshifts reported by NED are similar (given that they come from different sources, it's possible that they both refer to the brighter eastern object). Another obvious nearby galaxy is on to the east by a few arcminutes; it, too, is well in the background given its SDSS spectrum. ===== NGC 3769. One of the nearby galaxies is often called "NGC 3769A" following its entry in Holmberg's 1937 list of double and multiple galaxies. However, it was first seen by LdR in 1852 with his 72-inch reflector at Birr Castle. See the entry for NGC 3769A in the "notngc" files for the full story. ===== NGC 3771. My previous note on this was not very helpful, so here is a better one. This is another of the Leander McCormick objects found by Leavenworth with very poor discovery positions. In this case, Leavenworth's position is about 1m 40s west of a galaxy that matches his description (m = 14.5, diameter = 0.1 arcmin, round), with a star of the appropriate magnitude (10) preceding 15 seconds of time. The galaxy is the brightest of a group. As I've noted several times here, the LM positions are often fairly good in declination, but well off in RA. This appears to be the case here, so I've adopted the identification, though with some uncertainty. ===== NGC 3774. Amazingly, Leavenworth's position is pretty good for this barred spiral. Furthermore, his description has the bar in the correct position angle, though his note about a 9th magnitude star 3 arcmin "np" is wrong -- the star is "sp", that is southwest, not northwest. But most everything else matches up well enough that I have little doubt that this is the galaxy that Leavenworth saw at Leander McCormick. In particular, his sketch matches the sky pretty well. Curiously, that sketch includes, in Leavenworth's note "another neb or eF * p 0.5[arcmin]". The sketch shows it closer to the bar than that, so I wonder if he didn't glimpse the bright patch that actually defines the southwestern end of the bar. Another option, of course, is that he noticed a supernova. In that case, the date of the sketch, "Feb 7 [18]87" is worth noting. ===== NGC 3775. See both numbers: NGC 3779 = IC 717. ===== NGC 3776. See NGC 3708. ===== NGC 3779 = IC 717, which also see. A. A. Common found this sometime in 1880 along with NGC 3775. He gives a position for N3775, but notes this as only "... another 5' nf, eeF." Dreyer either concocted a position for the object from Common's published information, or asked Common to provide one. I suspect the latter because the NGC position is given with the usual precision that Dreyer adopts for other of Common's nebulae (see NGC 3858 = NGC 3866 for a case where this usual precision is not used). That position is not all that bad as it turns out. Unfortunately, Frank Muller only measured a right ascension for the galaxy, and that is marred by what I think is a transcription error (see the IC 717 note for more), but his description fits the galaxy perfectly. So, the identification with IC 717 is certain in spite of the missing declination and the bad RA. The identity of the two numbers was first suggested by Herbert Howe in 1899. Curiously, his position is just one arcminute too far north, one of the few times that we find an error in his work. I wonder if this, too, is due to a transcription error. Howe also "... suspected another [nebula] between it [N3779] and 3775." But this is only a faint star; it would have been near the limit of his 20-inch refractor. ===== NGC 3780. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3786. See NGC 3793. ===== NGC 3788. See NGC 3793. ===== NGC 3789 is much more likely to be MCG -01-30-015 than MCG -01-30-019. The western galaxy is much brighter, and Leavenworth's description matches the bar (which extends north-south) very well. The eastern galaxy is considerably fainter, almost round, and has a fainter companion about 30 arcsec west. Had Leavenworth seen this pair, he would more likely have described it as extended east-west. It's true that Leavenworth's position is closer to MCG -01-30-019 than to -015. However, his position is about 1.5 minutes east of -015, an error that many other of his observations share. ===== NGC 3790. See NGC 3807. ===== NGC 3792 is probably the double star listed in the table. Holden has two observations of it, noting in the second that the "Neb makes an isosceles triangle with DM 2523 and 2525." The only likely object making that triangle with the two BD stars is the double. ===== NGC 3793 and NGC 3797 are most probably stars. Tempel has this to say about them in his paper in AN 2439 (1882): "For the fine double nebula [GC] 2479-80 = h. 331-32 [should be 'h. 931-32' = N3786,8], I have one hasty sketch from 12 Febr. '82, which shows two very small nebulae +18 sec and +30 sec following the southern component [of the double nebula], which I cannot find catalogued." (He goes on to describe his observations of NGC 3786 and 3788.) There are two 15th magnitude stars at the appropriate offsets in RA, just a minute or two south of the declination of the brighter galaxies. For the NGC, Dreyer placed Tempel's two novae following the northern component, NGC 3788. This makes the RA's of the novae too large by 2-3 seconds, and displaces the positions well off the stars. This has misled RNGC to assign NGC 3793 to the much fainter galaxy VV 575 = CGCG 157-007 south- preceding NGC 3786,8. When the correct reference galaxy is used, the RA's come to within a second or two of the stars. Thus, these are almost certainly the objects that Tempel saw. ===== NGC 3794 = NGC 3804. There is no doubt that the objects are identical. Herschel's positions are 30 seconds of time apart, his descriptions are similar, and there is no galaxy at the position of NGC 3794. The RNGC got the wrong galaxy for NGC 3794, supposing that Herschel made a 1 degree error in the declination as well as a 1 minute error in RA. It is more likely that WH made a single smaller error rather than two larger ones. See NGC 3594 where the errors in WH's position for NGC 3804 can be explained. ===== NGC 3797. See NGC 3793. ===== NGC 3801. Steve Gottlieb suggests that WH saw this brighter of the pair -- NGC 3802 is the fainter -- twice, so that H III 30 = H II 161 = h 939 = GC 2490 = NGC 3801. This leaves JH as the sole discoverer of NGC 3802. See also NGC 3807 where this figures in observations by LdR. ===== NGC 3802. As I note above with NGC 3801, Steve Gottlieb suggests that WH saw only that galaxy in his two sweeps in the spring of 1784, rather than this fainter object in one of the sweeps (14 March) and the brighter object in the other (17 April). This does not change the NGC identifications of either galaxy, just their discovery history. Wolfgang suggests that WH missed seeing NGC 3802 because he was using the optically-inferior Newtonian focus of his telescope (he did not change to the Herschelian focus until September of 1786). This raised his limiting magnitude by about 0.5, enough to insure that NGC 3802 remained undetected until JH -- using the Herschelian focus from the beginning of his observations -- came across it in March of 1827. See NGC 3801 for a bit more on this, and NGC 3807 where this figures in LdR's observations of the area. ===== NGC 3803. See NGC 3807. ===== NGC 3804. See NGC 3794. ===== NGC 3806. See NGC 3807. ===== NGC 3807 is a star, identified on LdR's diagram (it is labeled "C"). Steve Gottlieb has convinced me (April 2010) that Bob Erdmann and I got the wrong star when we went over the field a few years ago. The one Steve favors is correctly situated to be the object shown on LdR's diagram, while the somewhat brighter star that Bob and I had picked out earlier is nearly a full minute of time on further east. That would place it well off the diagram, so it is almost certainly not the object that LdR and his observer saw. Other nebulae also shown on the diagram are N3790, N3801-03, and N3806, the first three observed by the Herschels, the last also seen by d'Arrest. ===== NGC 3810. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 3817. See NGC 3848. ===== NGC 3819. See NGC 3848. ===== NGC 3820. See NGC 3848. ===== NGC 3822 = NGC 3848, which see. ===== NGC 3823. JH has a note in CGH that reads "It is just possible that by a double mistake of 1m in RA, and 1[deg] in PD, this nebula may be h 957 [NGC 3831]. Both observations are correctly reduced." In fact, there are two galaxies matching JH's descriptions close to his positions, so we can be reasonably certain that he did in fact see and measure the two with no errors in his reductions. ===== NGC 3824. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3825 = NGC 3852. See NGC 3848. ===== NGC 3826 = NGC 3830, which see. ===== NGC 3828. The NGC position is within a minute of arc of the GSC position. Also, Bigourdan's original position, if reduced with respect to the GSC position for his comparison star, is within 3 arcsec. So how did CGCG -- and by extension, UGC -- miss the identification? Perhaps a mistake in precessing the position? In any event, the identification needs to be added to CGCG 1140.4+1646. The UGC Notes for UGC 6686 (6 arcmin east of NGC 3828) give data for the NGC galaxy, but only under the CGCG number. These notes, too, should have the NGC identification added. ===== NGC 3829. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3830 is probably the same galaxy as NGC 3826. The only observer to see N3830 (= h956) was John Herschel -- and his one observation is doubtful. His description reads (in full): "Cloudy; hardly discernable." This is from Sweep 416 of 19 April 1832. JH's position for N3830 follows that for NGC 3826 (= H II 341 = h954) by 43 seconds of time; the declinations are identical. In addition, N3826 was seen during three sweeps (115, 343, and 417), all different from the single sweep during which N3830 was found. JH's three positions for N3826 are all in agreement. My guess is that because of the clouds, JH did not zero Sweep 416 on stars as well as he usually did. This half-baked idea could be checked by comparing JH's RA's for other objects in the same sweep with modern RA's: are they also off in RA by about 40 arcsec of time? See NGC 898 where this sort of error has undoubtedly been made. Another, probably more correct guess, is that JH simply made an error in the RA. ===== NGC 3831. See NGC 3823. ===== NGC 3833. See NGC 3848. ===== NGC 3837. See NGC 3842. ===== NGC 3841. We used to think that NGC 3841 is the small elliptical galaxy 1.3 arcminutes north of NGC 3842 (which see for a minor problem of its own), the brightest galaxy in the core of Abell 1367. The galaxy was discovered by JH in Sweep 63 on 25 March 1827 and seen again by him in Sweep 334 on 17 March 1831. However, while his description ("F, R" in Sweep 63; "vF, S; the first of 4" in Sweep 334) is appropriate, his position (as Steve Gottlieb notes) is about 14 seconds of time west of that galaxy. It is also just 35 arcseconds south of UGC 06697 = CGCG 097-087, a large edgewise Sd that is as bright as the elliptical, even if with a lower surface brightness. Is this a coincidence, or is the spindle JH's object? JH, with his 18.7-inch reflector, could have seen both objects. The next to measure a position for h 960 was d'A on 8 and 9 May 1864 -- he put it a full 10 seconds of time east of JH's position and clearly picked up the elliptical with the 28.5-cm Merz refractor at Copenhagen. We know that he saw the elliptical because of his comments about the star 10 seconds of time on east of the galaxy. He, like JH, has two accordant observations of the object. Dreyer adopted d'A's position for the NGC, knowing that there are fewer problems in d'A's places than in JH's. Bigourdan saw and measured both objects with the 31.5-cm refractor at Paris, calling the Sd NGC 3841, and the elliptical "Big. 48" believing it to be a newly-discovered nebula. All of his micrometric offsets from BD +20 2643 were made on the night of 8 February 1886, and point accurately at the galaxies. His description of the spindle is interesting (my translation from his original French): "Diffuse nebula, [nearly] imperceptible and about 20" extended; it is a little brighter in the center, without a nucleus. [He adds a note in italics:] This object passes 8 seconds ahead of the NGC position [of NGC 3841]." Like JH, he makes no mention of the object being extended, yet his observed positions make it very clear that he was indeed measuring the spindle. His other observations of galaxies in the cluster also reduce to positions accurate to a few arcseconds, so we can be quite sure about the galaxies he saw. So, the problem we are faced with is this: Which galaxy did JH see? His descriptions are not much help, though the "round" in Sweep 63 is clearly more appropriate for the elliptical. I am, however, considerably swayed by his accordant positions in two different sweeps four years apart. I've looked at the sweeps themselves in the Herschel Archive. In Sweep 63, there are queries on his father's numbers for NGC 3837 and NGC 3842 (which see), but that is not relevant to the current problem. In Sweep 334, the NPD measurement is marked with a double colon "::", which JH did not carry that over into his published table. Nevertheless, it is very close to the NPD that he measured in the earlier Sweep. The question finally reduces to which object do we assign the number NGC 3841? JH probably saw the spindle, d'A saw the elliptical, and Bigourdan saw both. Dreyer combined JH's and d'A's observations not realizing they might be for different nebulae, so I've separated them again. In that same spirit, I've marked the entries for the spindle with colons in the big position table, and the entries for the fainter elliptical with question marks. I'm not sure this is the correct priority, but at least both galaxies are in the table. Also see CGCG 097-090 in the "notngc" files for more on Bigourdan's observations. ===== NGC 3842 is the brightest galaxy in Abell 1367. See CGCG 097-087 in the "notngc" files for some of Bigourdan's work in the cluster, and comments about others of his discoveries. ----- In June 2018, Ted Forte emailed asking about the identity of H III 377. The short answer is that JH got it wrong the first night he swept over the field, putting it on h 962 = NGC 3842 rather than the correct h 961 = NGC 3837. But the whole story is a bit more "fun" than that; here is my answer to Ted with all the details: I had not looked closely before now at the WH numbers here since the NGC identities in the cluster are pretty clear. Dreyer had the two Herschel's observations pretty well sorted out by 1888 -- or at least thought he had. You've no doubt seen his comments appended to WH's second list of nebulae that Dreyer reprinted in 1912 in his big collection of WH's papers. Briefly, he found that his only mistakes were in assigning H III 377 and III 378 to the wrong NGC numbers. And he made those mistakes only because he was echoing JH who put III 377 on h 962 and III 378 on h 966 -- the correct nebulae, as Dreyer found, are III 377 = h 961 and III 378 = h 962. JH's positions for the two are very good (his only problem in the cluster is for h 960 = N3841, but that's another story!). WH's single position, claimed to be for the northern of the two he saw, is very good in Dec, but the RA is 10 seconds of time too small, actually closer to that for N3837. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but there are several "bright" galaxies in the cluster, so the question arises as to which two WH saw. As it happens, the two he picked up, NGC 3837 and 3842 are the two brightest in the core of the cluster. Finally, I wondered how JH came to his mistaken identities. He swept over the field three times, 1st on 24 Feb 1827 (Sweep 59), next on 25 March 1827 (Sweep 63), and finally on 17 March 1831 (Sweep 334). On that first night, he saw just two nebulae, h 962 and h 966 which he took to be III 377 and III 378. On the second and third nights, he saw h 962 again, but not h 966, picking up instead h 960, 961, and 963 as well as h 962. His positions (for all but h 960 = N3841) are good enough to unambiguously identify all the galaxies. So, his only mistakes are the incorrect assignment of his father's two numbers to two of his own. Well, at least he got one right! So, in the end we have H III 377 = h 961 = NGC 3837, and H III 378 = h 962 = NGC 3842. Wolfgang got it right -- he usually does. ===== NGC 3847 is just where JH put it, in spite of the note in IC2. Wolf chose the wrong galaxy for N3847 (his object is actually IC 2952); coincidentally, the difference in declinations is just 10 arcmin. See also NGC 3855 where I suggest that this galaxy might also be NGC 3856. ===== NGC 3848 is probably NGC 3822, and NGC 3852 is probably NGC 3825. The two questionable identifications are a pair found by William Herschel on 15 March 1784, III 35 and III 36. He describes them as "Two on parallel, 3 or 4 arcmin distant. Both eF, vS," and assigns a single position to the pair. Dreyer, in the Notes to his 1912 edition of WH's papers, claims for N3848, "Observed by Bigourdan, place correct." For N3852, he says, "RA possibly 1 minute too great (see II 64 [NGC 4352]). Not found by Bigourdan." This is curious, as Bigourdan clearly states "Not seen, at least in a sure way" for N3848, and "Not seen" for N3852. Perhaps there is a note in one of Bigourdan's Comptes Rendus papers. In any case, Bigourdan has precise measurements for NGC 3822 and NGC 3825, and identifies them correctly. They are 2 minutes west (not 1 minute) of WH's positions for N3848 and N3852, and they match WH's description well. Other fainter galaxies in the area include NGC 3817, 3819, 3820, 3833, and several CGCG/MCG objects. Since N3822 and N3825 are the brightest of the lot, they are most probably the ones that WH picked up. Incidentally, the five brightest of the galaxies (NGC 3822, 3825, 3817, 3819, and 3820, in order of descending brightness) form Hickson's compact group number 58. The group is in the foreground of a very rich distant field of galaxies, well seen in the red DSS2 image. ===== NGC 3849 = IC 730. Todd's sketches [this is his number (10)] from 14 Dec 1877 positively identify the galaxy, though his position (read from the setting circles of the Naval Observatory's 26-inch refractor) is -- as usual -- well off. In spite of his poor position, he was able to recover the object on 11 Feb 1878, and changed his description of it from "large and nebulous" to "small, quite condensed, somewhat nebulous, and faint." See NGC 3604 for more about the nebulae that Todd found. The galaxy was rediscovered by Javelle about 15 years later. Aside from the uncertainty in the position (from the BD) of his comparison star, Javelle's position for the galaxy is very good. His description (with the 30-inch refractor at Nice) is accordant with Todd's second observation. ===== NGC 3850. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3852 = NGC 3825. See NGC 3848. ===== NGC 3853. Wolfgang Steinicke has suggested that this galaxy was actually discovered by WH on 30 December 1783, early in WH's amazing first year of sweeping the sky with his 20-foot reflector. WH says of it (from CH's fair copy in the Herschel Archives): Some minutes after 32 [clock time] I saw a S Neb. but in looking a good while at the finder to determine is [sic] place lost it again. I suspect partly that it only consisted of a few vS st. but shall look for it another night. 95 (o) Leonis f .... n 0[deg] 54[arcmin] RA 11h 3[min]:: .. PD 72[deg] 20[arcmin]. It never made it into WH's catalogues, probably because of the uncertain RA. He certainly never recorded it again, so probably did not search for it as he said he would. There are only three objects in the sweep: this one, 95 Leo, and NGC 4028 (which see). Unfortunately, WH did not record a time for the transit of the star (or the first nebula), so had no way to reduce the right ascensions of the two nebulae. He managed to find an approximate position for NGC 4028 using the clock correction from the previous sweep on the same night, but with no time recorded for this nebula, only an approximate RA could be deduced -- and it is well off the true value which should be 11 34 06, 72 20. However, the declinations for all three objects are correct, and the objects at least occur in the sweep in the same order as they appear on the sky. It was left to Alphonse Borelly to rediscover NGC 3853 in 1872 (and he measured it micrometrically), so he is its sole observer credited by Dreyer in the NGC. ===== NGC 3854 = NGC 3865. Here is another case where neither discovery position is particularly good. Common's is his usual estimate, while Leavenworth's RA is, as usual, just bad. Leavenworth also, rather unusually, has a 10 arcmin Dec error as well for this galaxy. Unfortunately, there is no surviving sketch. But there is still no mistaking the object. His description is appropriate for the brighter central part of the galaxy, and his estimate of the position angle (70 degrees) is not too far off. Finally, he has another nebula in the correct relative position (assuming the 10 arcmin error is fixed), and that nebula (N3858 = N3866, which see) also bears an appropriate description. Finally, while Brian suggested that the object he measured the position for is the "brighter of two merged", the second object looks very much like a superposed star on the DSS2 and 2MASS images. However, Allan Sandage, in the Carnegie Atlas, agrees with Brian. Radial velocities will tell us for sure. ----- As of early 2020, we do not yet have a spectrum of the superposed object. However, Courtney Seligman has written that the nucleus is not "solarized" in the Pan-STARRS image as it would be if it were a star. Courtney also mentioned that there appears to be a corona around the object. All of this is apparent in progressively smaller Pan-STARRS fields centered on the object. So, Skiff and Sandage are indeed correct: The superposed object is a compact E0. I would still like to have a redshift for the object, though ... And my thanks to Courtney for bringing the galaxy back to my attention. ===== NGC 3855 may be IC 2953 and NGC 3856 may be NGC 3847. These were both found by d'A. Unfortunately, he provides only a crude position for the first; the second is mentioned only in his description, with not even an offset given. Dreyer concocted the position in the GC Supplement and the NGC from the scanty information that d'A has in his description of N3855. So, there have been several guesses made at the identities by Wolf, Spitaler, CGCG, and RNGC. I think they are all wrong, and that d'A probably saw IC 2953 and NGC 3847. These are the brightest galaxies in the area, so would be the ones most likely seen during a hurried observation. However, this too is a guess -- a better one, I think -- but still a guess. ===== NGC 3856 may be NGC 3847. See NGC 3855 for the story. ===== NGC 3858 = NGC 3866 is the southeastern of a pair of big spirals, both with relatively low surface brightnesses. I'm a bit surprised the Herschel's missed them; both have many other galaxies that are considerably fainter. In any event, A. A. Common found both objects, but gave a position for only the brighter northwestern. For this one, he says only "... another sf not so L." Dreyer rounded off the RA to a full minute of time, and put a plus-minus sign on the NPD. But once we've identified the brighter object -- it is N3854 = N3865, which see -- this one falls into place, too. For this one, Leavenworth has his usual approximately correct declination, and his usual sloppy RA. But his description is very good for the central part of the galaxy, and he mentions the "* 9.5, p 3 seconds." There is no doubt about the identification. ===== NGC 3862 is not IC 2955. Bigourdan saw and measured both on the same nights, so the two numbers cannot refer to the same object. ===== NGC 3865 = NGC 3854, which see. ===== NGC 3866 = NGC 3858, which see. ===== NGC 3871 = IC 2959 is an edgewise Sa or Sab, the western-most of a group of four first seen by JH in April of 1827. Curiously, he saw only three of the four then, those forming "... an unequally divided line of 3." These three are NGC 3878, 3880, and 3881. Four years later in April of 1831, he saw "... 3 forming an equilateral triangle." These three are NGC 3871, 3880, and 3881. Considering the extremely crude positions he measured in 1831 (given to only a full minute of time, and a full arcmin, all marked +- with the exception of the NPD for NGC 3880), he sorted out the area remarkably well, recoginizing that he had actually seen all four of the brighter galaxies here. Fortunately, his earlier positions are very good so led not just him, but later micrometric observers to the correct objects. Spitaler saw all four in 1892 and measured positions for three of them. In March 1856, Lord Rosse saw only the three forming the equilateral triangle, so Dreyer was understandably puzzled by JH's note for N3871: "1 minute added to the R.A.; it is evidently the first of the group of 4." In any event, the confusion was sorted out in time for a clarifying note in the first IC. Unfortunately, Javelle seems to have not seen that, so N3871 picked up an IC number in IC2 from his observation in June of 1896. ===== NGC 3873 and NGC 3875 Steve Gottlieb notes that there is some confusion in the NGC concerning WH's number: It actually belongs on NGC 3873. The note "III 387 sf" should also be transferred to NGC 3875 where it will read "III 387 np". The confusion arose because of a comment d'A made in his description of NGC 3875: "Double nebula H. III. 387 follows to the south." This may be a mistranslation of d'A's Latin text; if so, then Dreyer made the same mistake! The NGC identifications are not affected. ===== NGC 3874 is probably the double star that Reinmuth noted. WH's position is close following the double, and his description "vF, vS, left doubtful. Twilight" is appropriate. Dreyer notes that Bigourdan did not find the nebula; Bigourdan searched unsuccessfully for it twice. ===== NGC 3875. See NGC 3873. ===== NGC 3878. See NGC 3871 = IC 2959. ===== NGC 3880. See NGC 3871 = IC 2959. ===== NGC 3881. See NGC 3871 = IC 2959. ===== NGC 3888. See NGC 3594 and NGC 3889. ===== NGC 3889. The NGC has this as 5' south of NGC 3888. This is incorrect; the original observation by Lord Rosse in 1852 places the nebula 5' north of NGC 3888. Of the three galaxies there, I've taken the brightest as N3889. [Note added June 1999: My old friend Tom DeMary has pointed out that the brief explanation above might not be enough to cover the situation. Here is a fuller story.] Lord Rosse's original observation of NGC 3888 in 1852 has a second nebula five arcmin north (he most likely saw the brightest of the three galaxies north and northeast, so that is the one I've taken). In 1878, Dreyer revisited the field, but found nothing to the north. Instead, he measured an object at a position angle of 167.5 deg with a distance of 340.5 arcsec from N3888. It was this measurement that led to the position and note in NGC for N3889. Using the DSS position for NGC 3888, Dreyer's measurement reduces to 11 45 03.36, +56 09 09.3. There is nothing at Dreyer's measured position. However, if he made a transcription error in his distance -- read 240.5 for 340.5 -- then his position falls close to a faint star (his position is 11 45 00.81, +56 10 47.0 for B1950.0; the star is at [end figures only] 01.51 and 52.6). It seems likely that this is the object that he measured and mistook as the nebula seen by Lord Rosse. ===== NGC 3890 = NGC 3939, which see. ===== NGC 3898. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3899 = NGC 3912. Though JH's position falls close to a very close double star (merged on POSS1), it is more likely that his observation refers to NGC 3912. His descriptions are the same, and his position for N3899 is just 1 minute of time west of N3912. Reinmuth first suggested the identity. ===== NGC 3901. This is one of fifteen nebulae found by WH on the night of 2 April 1801 which have positions affected by a large, systematic error. See NGC 3752 for more. ===== NGC 3905. Is this also possibly IC 2962 (which see)? I doubt it. ===== NGC 3908. Though Swift describes his object as "F, vS, R, mbM," I have my doubts that he could have seen the galaxy listed in the table. At 16th magnitude, it is too faint to have been included in CGCG, and it is not large enough to have captured VV's attention when he was compiling MCG. Still, there is nothing else in the area, or at reasonable digit errors, that Swift might have seen. The only other object Swift found the same night (10 April 1885) was NGC 5304. That shares an RA offset with NGC 3908 (-15 arcsec for N5304, -13 arcsec for N3908), but the declination of N5304 is just 1.4 arcmin off, essentially perfect agreement for Swift. So, the faint elliptical is as good a guess as any as to which object Swift actually saw, but visual verification would be nice. ===== NGC 3909 is a very large scattered group of fifty to sixty pretty bright stars; I'm not sure that it is a real cluster, however. JH took as its position one of two double stars which he saw in it. The same double served as the source of Brian Skiff's position, too. However, ESO's position, on to the east another 38 seconds of time, is more appropriate for the apparent center of group. ESO made its dimensions roughly 20 by 15 arcmin, but I measure it to be 24 x 14 arcmin. Coincidentally close to the center, and shining right through, is ESO 217-G007, a small Sa or Sb galaxy. ===== NGC 3911 and NGC 3920. Here is what I had to say about these two galaxies when I looked at this field earlier: NGC 3911 is the brighter and following of two galaxies (the other is NGC 3920). It was found by WH whose position is very good. JH also saw it, but because his RA was off, thought it a nova and noted, "Follows III 341 on same parallel." The galaxy he thought to be his father's was actually the nova, however. Since JH's RA is about 45 seconds too far east, this, and his note, have confused the identifications of the two objects ever since. Neither d'A nor Dreyer found a nebula at JH's position, of course. In spite of the correct NGC position for N3911, most modern catalogues place the two in numerical order. This necessitates changing the RA's of both. In placing NGC 3911 on the following galaxy, I am giving precedence to the historical order of discovery, attributing to WH the brighter galaxy he actually saw. Since JH was the first to see the fainter preceding object, the number NGC 3920 given by Dreyer to h 996 (JH's nova) necessarily applies to it. This leaves the numbers out of RA order, and also disagrees with the NGC notes about which is preceding and following, but better represents the history in this case. ----- Courtney Seligman has questioned this interpretation in an email of September 2018. In short, he favors keeping the NGC numbers in RA (1860) order. He also puts "H III 314" where it belongs on NGC 3920, the brighter galaxy, and notes that JH's RA's for both objects are roughly 45 seconds of time too far east. In fact, JH has simply adopted his father's RA for the galaxy they have in common here. He has not actually measured the RA for either object, though apparently has measured north polar distances (more on this below). My guess is that he believed that the fainter western of the two to be the object WH discovered, and that the brighter eastern one was a nova. It is unfortunate that JH as left us no description of his nova -- is it brighter and/or larger than the other object? is there a star close to it, or is it isolated? (There is a 12th-magnitude star just 0.7 arcminutes west of the western galaxy that JH could well have seen.) Answers to these questions would have helped us considerably to sort this out. JH's observations, though, were apparently rushed, with the galaxies past the meridian. As I often do when JH's published record leaves questions, I turned to the Herschel Archive to look at his sweeps. These two galaxies are numbered 22 and 23 in Sweep 407 on 28 March 1832. The reduced positions for them on the right-hand page are clear, and agree with JH's published positions (though the north polar distance for number 22 lacks the colon that JH added to his table in the 1833 monograph). However, the left-hand page is nearly illegible in the RA column. It looks as if the lack of good RA's is simply the result of JH's not measuring them because the galaxies were indeed past the meridian when he saw them. There is no wire notation for either object, also an indication that JH did not measure the RAs. He apparently *did* measure the north polar distances; the reduced polar distances are identical in the Archives (aside from the published colon on h 991) to the numbers published by JH in his 1833 monograph. Did JH actually see both objects? The actual separation of the galaxies is close to JH's estimated separation, so I'll take JH at his word that he did see both. The lack of descriptions is regrettable, but understandable if the telescope was off the meridian, and JH was hurrying to move it back. The poor RAs are then simply the result of JH not being able to measure them. In the end, I am going to keep the NGC numbers as I originally had them, with NGC 3911 = H III 341 = h 991 on WH's brighter, eastern object, and NGC 3920 = h 996 on the fainter, western object that JH discovered. I have to admit that this interpretation verges on the arbitrary, and I can see how Courtney has taken another path out of the tangle. As I noted above, however, my solution to the problem respects the historical record from the Herschels. William saw only the brighter galaxy, while John saw both, even if he did not correctly identify his father's object. ===== NGC 3912 = NGC 3899, which see. ===== NGC 3913 = IC 740. WH's RA is just far enough off (14 seconds of time) that neither Swift nor Dreyer recognized Swift's 33rd object in his 9th list as being a reobservation of WH's object. Swift's position is just 6 seconds off in RA, so being as far north as it is, the galaxy is unambiguously identified. See NGC 3594 for more on the source of WH's RA error. ===== NGC 3915. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 3916. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3920. See NGC 3911. ===== NGC 3921. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3922 = NGC 3924, which see. ===== NGC 3924 = NGC 3922. "Both" objects were discovered by William Herschel, but the positions that he gave them were rather discordant. He found N3922 = H III 716 on 9 March 1788, and placed it at 11 48.5, +50 29. N3924 = H II 825 was placed at 11 51.1, +50 33 (1950) by its discovery observation on 8 March 1789. But the next year (17 March 1790), Herschel redetermined its position and found 11 48.9, +50 28. Within Herschel's usual errors, this position is identical with that for III 716. Dreyer realized the identity when he was preparing his edition of William Herschel's Scientific Papers which he collected and published in 1912. He also has a brief note about it in MNRAS 73, 37, 1912. I think the NGC positions come from d'Arrest or Tempel, but haven't chased them down yet. Dreyer also has an intriguing note on the pair in the NGC itself: Tempel apparently saw two nebulae here, though d'Arrest picked up only the brightest. The confusion in the current catalogues comes from both CGCG and MCG which identify both numbers differently. There are many faint galaxies in the area (which is right in the plane of the Local Supercluster, and in the heart of the Ursa Major Cloud), but only one with a surface brightness high enough to be picked up easily at the eyepiece. This is the one that Herschel observed at least three times, and can be confidently called "NGC 3922 = NGC 3924." This is MCG +08-22-017 = UGC 6824. Though CGCG and UGC put the number N3924 on UGC 6849 = MCG +08-22-026, this is a low surface brightness galaxy that Herschel probably would not have noticed while sweeping. (Could this be Tempel's second nebula, though? I'll have to check.) Unfortunately, UGC, RNGC, and RC3 copied CGCG's incorrect identification for UGC 6849. ===== NGC 3926. It's not quite clear which of these two galaxies is the one that the Herschels saw. WH might actually have glimpsed both. He writes, "vF, vS, lE, er or S patch of sts." JH, too, may have seen both: "eF, R, S, near a star." The nearest star is over three arcminutes away (to the northwest), so I think that JH's "star" may have been the second galaxy. It is logical to suppose that the primary nebula seen by the Herschels is the brighter of the pair. So, this is how I have relabeled the objects when I looked at them again in February 2015. The A/B suffixes come from RNGC. ===== NGC 3927 is probably NGC 3713. D'A has only one observation of it, and his comment reads, "Satis pallida; modicae magnitudinis. Observatio haud dubia, [c]oelum vero non favebat. Defesso caeteroquin oculo et hebetato." (My translation with the help of Google Translate: "Quite faint, medium size. While there is no doubting the observation, the sky was not favorable. Tired and dull eye, too." Someone who knows Latin can probably do better.) Given that, it's perhaps not strange that there is nothing at all at his position. While I checked at positions resulting from a few digit errors, Steve Gottlieb found NGC 3713 at the correct declination just 20 minutes of time preceding d'A's position. We're reasonably confident that this is the correct galaxy, but I've still put colons on the number as a flag. ===== NGC 3928 may well be the faintest galaxy known with well-developed spiral structure. See Sidney van den Bergh's short article and splendid photograph in PASP 92, 409, 1980. Also see NGC 3932. ===== NGC 3931. WH's RA is 1 minute too large. This was first mentioned, as far as I can determine, by Anders Reiz in his thesis published in the Lund Annals, No. 9, in 1941. Reinmuth took a much fainter galaxy closer to WH's position as N3931. But even though it is a high-surface-brightness object, it is quite faint and very small. If WH could have seen it, I think he would have simply counted it as a star. Perhaps a visual investigation is in order, but this galaxy is so much fainter than the one just a minute of time preceding, that I think that Reiz must have chosen the correct object. Here is a curious footnote. Dreyer reports in his 1912 notes to WH's lists that Bigourdan could not find NGC 3931. However, looking at Bigourdan's big published table, we find a "Nova" as the very next object following his entry for NGC 3931. He found it the same night that he searched for N3931. Bigourdan did not include this new nebula in any of his lists of new objects, so it has no IC number. Reducing this observation, however, shows that it refers to the very object that Reiz picked up 40 years later. Finally, the number "NGC 3917A" is sometimes put on this object. This was first done by Philip Keenan in a 1935 paper (ApJ 82, 62); I've copied the number only to make it clear which galaxy Keenan actually listed. Let's not carry this any further, shall we? ===== NGC 3932 is a star. D'A has only one observation of it included in his AN 1500 list (where it is No. 125), and in the shorter list (where it is No. 84) that he sent to JH for inclusion in GC (where the NPD is 6 arcsec larger than the NGC NPD). He chose to not include it in his big 2nd monograph; Wolfgang suggests that this was because d'A knew it was a star by that time. In the AN list, d'A describes it as "vF, S. Companion of h. 999 [N3928]," while in the GC, the description reads "vF, v diffic, H.II.740 np." JH is surely responsible for substituting his father's catalogue number for his own, but I suspect that the "v diffic" comes from d'A. I would guess that d'A prepared the two lists at different times from the same observing logs. Perhaps the logs have both "S" and "v diffic" in them. In any event, the faint galaxy chosen by CGCG is not d'A's object -- it is 17 arcmin off his position, and is probably too faint for him to have seen with his 11-inch refractor. RC1 got it right: In the note for NGC 3928, the de Vaucouleurs say "NGC 3932 sf 5.5 arcmin is a star." They also have a reference to Reinmuth (1926, "Die Herschel-Nebel", in Vol. 9 of the Heidelberg publications) who gave the NGC position (d'Arrest's), a diameter of 0.3? x 0.3? arcmin, and the description "* 11.0 in eeF neb?" Reinmuth also classified the object as "(c)" on Wolf's system -- this means a star (or stellar nucleus) surrounded by a corona of faint nebulosity. There is, however, no trace of nebulosity surrounding the star on POSS1 or on POSS2. ===== NGC 3933 and NGC 3934. Dreyer credits these two galaxies only to Borelly, but they were independently discovered by Pechule. I suspect that he does not list Pechule as the positions for the five galaxies in Pechules paper are only estimates from the BD charts while Borelly measured his micrometrically. See NGC 4239 for more about Pechule's discoveries. ===== NGC 3937. See NGC 4055 and IC 2968. ===== NGC 3939 = NGC 3890. This was identified on a plate taken at RGO at Dreyer's request to sort out WH's positions during his sweep 1096 on 2 April 1801; the results were published in MN 71, 509, 1911. Dreyer then labeled III 971 in his 1912 collection of WH's papers as NGC 3890. Curiously, he mentions N3890 in his 1912 MN note giving NGC corrections, but not N3939. See NGC 3752 for more information. ===== NGC 3948 is a star identified precisely by Bigourdan's one measurement in 1886. The RNGC identification with N3954 is wrong. ===== NGC 3949. See NGC 3950. ===== NGC 3950 is probably the faint elliptical galaxy 1.6 arcmin north of NGC 3949. However, LdR's estimated distance from the brighter galaxy on the first night he picked up the companion, and his accordant micrometric measurement three years later in 1875, are clearly 1 arcmin too great. This is all the more puzzling since he gives a table of measurements of six stars surrounding N3949 -- all of those measurements are very good (he notes one as possibly nebulous; it is not). Still, he could have seen the fainter galaxy, and it seems likely that he made a simple error in its distance from the brighter. ===== NGC 3952 = IC 2972, which see. The NGC identification is not in doubt. ===== NGC 3953 has a faint companion seen once by Bindon Stoney in 1851 with LdR's big telescope. See the story under "NGC 3953 companion" in the "notngc" files. ----- Is this M109? Henk Bril thinks so. See his argument at http://www.astrobril.nl/FortinOther.html#M109. I will follow up on this soon! ===== NGC 3954 is not NGC 3948, which see. ===== NGC 3955. See IC 2970. ===== NGC 3957 = IC 2965, which see. ===== NGC 3964. See NGC 3927. ===== NGC 3965 is probably the faint galaxy that I've noted in the table. It has a star 4 arcmin north-preceding as noted by Francis Leavenworth. The star is not as bright as his "9.5" -- V = 11.3, according to AC2000.2, but I would expect him to overestimate the magnitude with a telescope as large as the 26-inch he was using. Nor is the galaxy unreasonably far off his position, 44 seconds of time preceding. The mystery here is why neither I in SEGC, nor Jack Sulentic in RNGC, noted the object. The declination is right, and I knew about the poor RA's in the Leander McCormick lists, so why did I not pick it up? The magnitude more or less matches Leavenworth's estimate (16.0), and the size is appropriate, too (0.1 arcmin), as is his "R, bMN" note. Perhaps I just did not believe that he could dig out a galaxy that faint. While this should be checked visually, I'm fairly certain that the galaxy is Leavenworth's object. ===== NGC 3966 = NGC 3986. d'A's position (from a single observation) is one of the few verifiably bad ones in his list. His description fits NGC 3986 perfectly, and he notes the unresolved 12th magnitude double just southwest exactly in its place relative to the galaxy. Finally, he comments, "Found while looking for [N3986]; this is either a nova, or my RA is inexplicably erroneous." His RA is 1m 30s off, and his declination is 10 arcmin off, too. The galaxy chosen by Max Wolf as N3966 is actually IC 2981 (which see as it has problems of its own). Wolf's note about N3966 in his 8th list was copied into the IC2 notes by Dreyer, apparently during its final stages of preparation since Dreyer did not include any of the 8th list objects in the IC itself. ===== NGC 3971 = NGC 3984, which see. ===== NGC 3972. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3975 may possibly also be IC 3166, which see. ===== NGC 3977 = NGC 3980, which see. ===== NGC 3978 may possibly also be IC 3180. See IC 3166 for the story. ===== NGC 3979 = IC 2976. Here is a galaxy discovered twice by Lewis Swift, once toward the beginning of his systematic sweeping for new nebulae (April 1886), and once toward the end (May 1897). His first position is not too bad, being only 8 seconds of time and 1.2 arcmin off the galaxy. But he was not the first to see it; that was Edward Holden in April of 1881. Holden found it first on the 23rd, but only estimated the RA then. On the 27th, he measured it at 42 seconds of time preceding the star BD -1d 2593. And that position is close to the modern one. But for the NGC entry, Dreyer chose to use an average, at least in RA, of Holden's and Swift's; he adopted Holden's declination (about 1.5 arcmin north of the galaxy). For the IC, of course, Dreyer had only Swift's second position, 1.5 minutes off -- no wonder he thought Swift had found a new nebula! But there is nothing in Swift's position. The identification is ensured by Swift's comment about the "vF * near nf". This is the same star that Holden called "A star 11.5 n and f 30 [arcsec]." ===== NGC 3980 = NGC 3977. Swift's position is only an arcminute following N3977, there is nothing there, and the double star he notes is 3 arcmin following the galaxy. The identity is sure. ===== NGC 3981. There is a fairly wide range in positions from the various sources; they pick out bright spots on the short bar which is oriented ssw-nne. I've finally chosen the UCAC position as representative of the bar, but it may be that there is a real nucleus hiding in the overexposed part that we can't see easily. ===== NGC 3984 is almost certainly the same object as NGC 3971. John Herschel found N3984 during his Sweep 342 (10 April 1831), and described it as "eF, R, bM, 25 arcsec." He adds an interesting note (aluded to in the IC2 Notes by Dreyer): "Supposed at the time to be II.724 [NGC 3971], but on reducing the obs, it differs 1 min in RA and 1 deg in PD, BOTH which can hardly be mistakes" (Sir John's emphasis). Yet the only reasonable solution is to say that both ARE mistakes. JH found N3971 in Sweep 67 (2 April 1827), describing it "pB, R, bM. An exact obs." The difference in estimated brightness is significant, but many of JH's multiply-observed objects have the same wide range of description. Otherwise, however, the descriptions for these two objects are the same. Also, the position that he gives for N3971 is (within his usual statistical errors) 1 degree north, and 1 minute preceding N3984, just as he noted. Since each nebula was noted in only one sweep, and since there are only very faint stars in the vicinity of his position for N3984, I am going to adopt the identity. ===== NGC 3986 = NGC 3966, which see. ===== NGC 3990. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 3993 is not H III 324. WH's object is, instead, NGC 3997, which see. ===== NGC 3996 is not NGC 4019, which see. ===== NGC 3997 is the second brightest galaxy in a group of three found by WH in 1785. JH found it again 40 years later during his northern sweeps from Slough, and LdR and his observers noted over a dozen companions in the area. All these are in NGC, and Dreyer has the numbers pretty well sorted out (though NGC 4009, which see, is a star; and NGC 4007, which also see -- due to a 2 deg error in GC or in CH's reduction [the error is in GC; see NGC 4007] -- is identical to NGC 4005 also seen by Otto Struve at St. Petersberg). However, Dreyer, in his 1912 Scientific Papers of WH, has put the number H III 324 on NGC 3993, presumably because it is the closest galaxy northeast of H III 323 (= N3987). WH says only, "Suspected another nf, eF, 5 or 6 arcmin dist, pretty sure." Though his estimated distance falls directly between N3993 and N3997, the latter galaxy is brighter, larger, and (in the central regions at least) has a higher surface brightness. So, I'm pretty sure that it is the one seen by WH. As I noted above, it was also seen by JH -- it is, in fact, the only one of the group seen by him. He rather confused the issue a bit by listing it as "III 323" in his 1833 catalogue. ===== NGC 3998. See NGC 3594. ===== NGC 4004 = NGC 4004A. The secondary designation comes from Holmberg's 1937 monograph and catalogue of multiple galaxies. He always called the brightest galaxy of a multiplet "a", the second "b", and so on. In this case, "NGC 4004B" is IC 2982 (which see). ===== NGC 4005 = NGC 4007, which see. ===== NGC 4006 is not IC 2983, which see. ===== NGC 4007 = NGC 4005. First found by WH in 1785, this object was recovered by LdR and his observers, and by Otto Struve. Dreyer caught the identity when he revisited the area during preparation of WH's Scientific Papers. In GC, JH has the galaxy two degrees too far south, either because of a transcription error by him or a reduction error by CH. See NGC 3997 for more on this group. ----- Courtney Seligman found in April 2020 that the two-degree error is from GC. CH's reduction of the position in the "fair copy" is correct, so JH must have made the error in precessing or transferring the position into the General Catalogue. ===== NGC 4008. See NGC 3927. ===== NGC 4009 is a star identified exactly by LdR's micrometric measurements referred to a brighter star. It is often taken as the fainter galaxy 3.5 arcmin further northeast, but the measurements leave no doubt as to its correct identity. ===== NGC 4010. Found by JH, this large, almost exactly edge-on late-type galaxy is rather similar to NGC 55 in having an eccentric bulge. In this case, the bulge is offset to the northeast from the center of the outer isophotes. I've chosen the SDSS position for most of the image as representative of the center of the bulge, even though the galaxy is cut off at the southwestern end by the edge of a scan. The position is obviously less certain than most. ===== NGC 4013 is another edgewise galaxy, this one a somewhat earlier spiral than NGC 4010 (which see). Finding the position for this one is somewhat complicated by the star superposed almost exactly on the dust lane just northeast of the center of the galaxy. For this galaxy, the SDSS position is a bit south of the center of the galaxy, so I've taken instead the mean of six 2MASS point sources clustered around the approximate center of the bulge. Again, the position is more uncertain than usual. ===== NGC 4014 = NGC 4028, which see. ===== NGC 4015. This is a double galaxy in the NGC 4005 group. Steve Gottlieb notes that LdR picked up both objects on at least one night, though simply called the northern object "... a tail n[orth] of Nucl[eus] ..." The NGC does not comment on the "tail", nor does it note the object as double. Not too long ago, I wrote here, "Nevertheless, I've included positions for both objects in the position table with the NGC number." I've changed my mind and have listed the northern object as a companion galaxy because it is clear that the primary object that the visual observers picked up is the much brighter southern one. I went on to say, "Another place for the northern object might well be the 'notngc' files, but I've left it with its southern companion in the main NGC position table." This comment needs no change or qualification at the moment. ===== NGC 4019 = IC 755. Though JH's position is 2 min 16 sec and 6 arcmin off the true position of IC 755, the IC object is the only galaxy in the area to have a 9th magnitude star 5 arcmin southeast, matching JH's note. Other possibilities include NGC 3996 (but seen in the same sweep as N4019), NGC 4037 (this has an 8th magnitude star following by 6-7 arcmin, but the star is a bit north, not south), and CGCG 069-010 (but that has a pretty low surface brightness and no bright star near). There is nothing at JH's position, so I'm pretty sure that IC 755 is the correct object. Malcolm notes, however, that there is a 9th magnitude star southeast of JH's (empty) position. This throws a little doubt on the IC 755 identity, but requires that JH's object be a comet. This is a possibility, but I think that the equality with IC 755 is more likely. ----- Using JPL's "Small Body Identifier", I found that Comet 55/P Tempel-Tuttle was about five degrees north of JH's position on the date of his observation of NGC 4019. However, its predicted nuclear magnitude was 23.5. That, and the position offset effectively rules it out as JH's object. Checking the sweep (419 on 23 April 1832), I see that the RA is not only marked with a colon, but that JH thought he was observing H III 3 = NGC 4028. The position measurement is one of those that JH referred to a previous measure, in this case a star with a clock, beat, and wire listed (11 51 45, -19, leaving the field), but no NPD index. NGC 4019 has "-19" for the clock, "-38" for the beat, "X" (leaving the field) for the wire, and "2 41 50" for the NPD index. The nearest star in the sweep is [beta] Leonis at "11 40 35", "-15", "1", and "2 19 36". Re-reducing JH's observation yeilds a position with the RA two minutes larger than JH's published value. This brings JH's object to within 20 seconds of time of the position of IC 755, so makes it even more likely that the IC object is also JH's. The object itself is a patchy spindle, and many of the positions collected in the main table are for knots southeast of the center of the galaxy. The Pan-STARRS1 position that I chosen is very close to the center of the faint bulge of the galaxy (best seen in the SDSS color image). My own estimate from the SDSS, and the two 2MASS positions are close, also. The nucleus is probably hidden behind the intervening dust, gas, and star clouds. A radio observation might find the nucleus for us. ===== NGC 4028 = NGC 4014, in spite of what JH had to say in a note in GC (repeated by Dreyer in the NGC Notes). This is one of WH's early discoveries (30 Dec 1783). As with other objects found during the fall and winter of 1783-1784, the position is not very good. However, WH's full record can be found in the Herschel Archives (CH's fair copy) and was also published by Dreyer in the 1912 Scientific Papers. There, we find the note, "... It forms an isosceles triangle with two small stars {Dreyer's note:} [by a diagram, these are about 6 arcmin sp.]. ..." The stars precede N4014 by the correct amount, so I am pretty sure that it is WH's nebula. This requires WH to have made two 2 min errors in his RA offsets from two different stars on two different nights. While it is highly unlikely that he would make two such errors leading to much the same position -- this is what prompted JH's comment -- this is apparently exactly what happened. The configuration on the sky is too outstanding to be mistaken. ===== NGC 4032 is probably not NGC 4042, which see. Also see NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4037. See NGC 4019. ===== NGC 4042 is Marth 227, found the same night in March 1865 as N4056 (which see) and N4060. If the offsets (about 10 seconds of time, and 1 arcmin) suggested for those other two galaxies are even roughly correct, then N4042 can be tentatively identified with a galaxy in GSC at 12 00 13.2 +20 26 31. The declination offset would be the same as for the other objects, but the RA offset would be considerably larger at 26 seconds. Still, there are no other galaxies even remotely close to Marth's position that would match his description. Another possibility is that N4042 is a star somewhere in the area. RC1 raises the possiblility that it is identical to NGC 4032, but that would lead to an error of over 2 minutes of time and 5 arcmin, making it unique amoung Marth's objects of that night. In the end, I'm not sure what Marth really saw, but the galaxy 26 seconds off his position seems the best choice. ===== NGC 4045 (is also NGC 4046, which see), discovered by WH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (13b). See NGC 3604 above, as well as CGCG 013-049 (in the "notngc" files) for more. ===== NGC 4046 = NGC 4045. D'Arrest himself first suggested this identity, and Dreyer repeated the suggestion in an NGC note. Unfortunately, the Mt. Wilson observers (probably Hubble) took another, fainter galaxy on to the east (CGCG 013-049). This appeared as a "correction" to the NGC position in Table 3 of Dorothy Carlson's 1940 ApJ paper. However, reading d'A's full description makes it clear that he did in fact see NGC 4045 (a joint translation from his Latin by James Bryan and me): "Makes a triangle with two stars 13 and 16, southward and following the nebula 6.6 seconds." While the Mt. Wilson object does make a triangle with two stars, they are nearly of equal brightness, and they are north and west of the galaxy, not east and south. The stars near NGC 4045 are close to where d'A says they are -- though it is just possible that his southern star is actually CGCG 013-045 (sometimes called "NGC 4045A"). This fainter galaxy has a faint star just southwest that d'A might have seen. Eyepiece work is called for here. D'A's eastern star, the brighter of the two, is closer to 5.5 seconds east rather than his 6.6 seconds. Is this perhaps a typographical error of some sort? It seems more likely to me to be simply a rough observation. So, the bottom line is that d'A certainly made a 15 arcminute error in his declination. The identity is therefore sure. ===== NGC 4052. There is nothing at JH's place, but 1 minute of time west is a cluster, about 9 arcmin by 9 arcmin, that fits his description ("Cluster VII class; loose and scattered, but pretty rich."). I have no doubt that this is his intended object. This is one of the very few that Brian missed; his position (12 00 00, -63 13.6; J2000) is for a random star field two minutes of time preceding the cluster. His estimated diameter, however, 7.5 arcmin is roughly correct. Is the RA perhaps a typo? ===== NGC 4055 = NGC 4061, NGC 4057 = NGC 4065, and NGC 4059 = NGC 4070. John Herschel found these three nebulae during his Sweep 423 on 29 April 1832. They have not been positively identified in any published catalogue since, though Reinmuth and PGC have made suggestions. Here is the story. Steve Gottlieb started the case by noting that Reinmuth's identifications were unlikely. Bob Erdmann followed up with the suggestion that these might be identical to some of the galaxies in the NGC 4065 group 0.8 deg south. Then, Brent Archinal suggested a check of the other objects seen by Herschel in the same sweep. Here is what is in his 1833 catalog credited to Sweep 423 (there may be one or two others lurking in the list, but I haven't found them in two reasonably careful searches. My comments are in square brackets): NGC h RA (1830) NPD Desc 3937 1003 11 43 56 68 25.1 vF, S, R 4032 1049 11 51 49 68 58.2 pB, R, gbM, 40" [N.B. Seen in 5 other sweeps where the brightness ranges from "B" to "eF"; the positions agree] 4055 1062 11 55 00: 68+- pB 4057 1063 11 55 04: 68+- pB 4059 1064 11 55 08: 68+- pB. On merid[ian] with two more [I presume the other two are N4055 and N4057] 4066 1068 11 55 26 68 41.9 No description [Seen in 3 other sweeps; the positions agree. Those descriptions are "Not vF. Another seen", "pB", and "The third of 5"] 4095 1079 11 57 13 68 28.1 eF [seen in one other sweep; position agrees, but no description] 4098 1082 11 57 22 68 25.5 No description [two other sweeps: positions agree; "vF, R, bM" and "No description"] Looking at this table, I was struck by a couple of things. First, the north polar distances of the three questionable objects have been assigned the same number of degrees as the other five objects. This suggests to me that the minutes of NPD should be similar to the others -- say 68 30 to 68 50 -- since Herschel's sweeps were pretty limited in declination. This would make the NPD's roughly equivalent to the other bright objects in the core of the NGC 4065 group where the NPD's range from 68 38 to 68 53. Second, the descriptions suggest that the objects are not faint, and that they are aligned pretty closely along the same meridian of RA. The NGC 4065 group has four bright objects: N4061, N4065, N4066, and N4070. Since Sir John saw N4066 during the sweep in question, this leaves N4061, N4065, and N4070 as the possible candidates. Interestingly, his more exact positions for N4055, 57, and 59 given in GC (from "a most careful consideration of all the observations and records in the sweeping books" [note in GC], and copied into NGC by Dreyer) are roughly coincident with these three galaxies if a systematic offset of about -0.88 degrees in Dec and +20 seconds in RA is applied. Putting all this together, Occam's Razor (the simplest hypothesis that fits the facts) suggests that NGC 4055 = NGC 4061 NGC 4057 = NGC 4065 NGC 4059 = NGC 4070 I'm not sure about this, of course. But this is certainly a reasonable solution to the problem. There is more discussion of the identities in the group under NGC 4056 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4056 and NGC 4060. Albert Marth found these two objects in the area of the N4065 group during his Malta observations of March 1865 with William Lassell's 48-inch reflector (these are m229 = N4056 and m230 = N4060; their data are transcribed correctly into NGC). These do not have good positions (neither was "verified" by Marth), and the descriptions are vague enough to make identifications unsure. One possibility is N4060 = RNGC 4056; Marth's position is close to that galaxy. However, that leaves the question of N4056. Marth's position is near a very faint galaxy that I doubt could be dug out visually even with the 48-inch -- is N4056 perhaps the star preceding Marth's position by about two arcmin? Another possibility is that N4060 = RNGC 4069 and N4056 = RNGC 4056; this would require a systematic offset of about 10 sec in RA and 1 min in dec for Marth's positions. (Another object, m227 = N4042, which see, found by him the same night, could then be identified with a faint galaxy in the GSC with the same declination offset, but would require an RA offset of 26 seconds.) Even with the offsets, however, the positions would not be good matches for the positions of the galaxies in the group. Finally, there is the RNGC "brute force" solution: ignore the positions and simply assign the numbers to the two relatively bright galaxies in the area that do not have other NGC numbers. If we accept this idea, N4060 is at least north-following N4056, though the difference in RA is about one-third of the difference given by Marth. Still, this could be the correct interpretation, so we'll go with it for the time being. See NGC 4069 for more on this confused field. ===== NGC 4057 = NGC 4065. See NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4059 = NGC 4070. See NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4060. See NGC 4042, NGC 4056, and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4061. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4063, discovered by Stephan, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (12d). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4065 = NGC 4057. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4066. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4067. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4068 = IC 757, which see. Bigourdan misidentified a star as NGC 4068 on two nights, apparently misled by the NGC description "stellar." This led him to rediscover the galaxy and claim it as a "nova." WH's own description "A pS star involved in nebulosity of no great extent; the star does not seem to belong to it" matches the galaxy and its brightest superposed star very well. I suspect that JH condensed the description while preparing the GC. The position in the big table is for a fainter star near the relatively indeterminate center of the galaxy. See IC 757 for more. ===== NGC 4069. This is one of the galaxies found by John Herschel during the problematic Sweep 423 of 29 April 1832 (see NGC 4055 for a list of the nebulae found during the sweep). Unfortunately, Herschel saw it only during that one sweep, so its position is not well-determined. Also, it is in the midst of a group of nebulae found by William Herschel, and later reobserved by Heinrich d'Arrest. Making reasonable assumptions about the six objects found by Sir William (he measured positions only for the northern three of those he saw, saying only that the other three were 10-12 arcmin south) leads to the conclusion that d'Arrest got the same six. NGC 4069 (= h1070) is not among them, in spite of the identity with H III 392 given in NGC. The three measured by Herschel are N4066, N4070, and N4074; and his other three to the south must be N4061, N4065, and N4076. These are the six brightest objects in the group. There are four other NGC objects scattered through the group. Unfortunately, only one can be pinned down with any certainty. That one is NGC 4072, discovered by Ralph Copeland with Lord Rosse's Leviathan. His description (dated 3 April 1872) also makes it clear that he saw the fainter galaxy two minutes north-following N4076. The confusion in the positions, though, led Dreyer to not assign an NGC number to this galaxy. In any case, N4069 is one of the remaining three (the other two are N4056 and N4060, found by Marth; see the discussion of these). RNGC makes N4069 the faint galaxy just north-preceding a star (both are in GSC), but the nearby RNGC 4060 is considerably brighter. Herschel's description, however, "vF, R, 4th of 5; has another on same meridian, north" doesn't support the identity with RNGC 4060. There is the possibility, however, that the star just south-following RNGC 4069 was "blended" with the galaxy so that the two objects together would appear as a single brighter nebula. This would save the description of "another on the same meridian, north," and would be relatively close to Sir John's position. Lacking any better hypothesis at the moment, we'll adopt the RNGC identification. ===== NGC 4070 = NGC 4059. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4072. See NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4073, discovered by WH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (12a). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4074. See NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4075, creditted in the NGC to JH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (11). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4076. See NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4077 is also NGC 4140. See NGC 4139 for more. ===== NGC 4078 = NGC 4107, which see. ===== NGC 4082. See NGC 4107. ===== NGC 4083. See NGC 4107. ===== NGC 4086. See NGC 4090 and IC 759. ===== NGC 4090 is not IC 2997 (which see). Both were seen on the same night by Bigourdan, though he included only his observations for I2997 in his big table. The observations for N4090 are in his Appendix VIII of complementary observations. Another curiosity with this object is its NGC right ascension from d'Arrest's observation. D'A found both this and NGC 4086 on the same night, and mentions this object in his note for N4086. However, while his RA for N4086 is about right, he puts this object about 10 seconds of time following its true position 1.5 seconds preceding N4086. Since both are visible in the same eyepiece field, I suspect that this is a simple digit error somewhere in d'A's reduction. ===== NGC 4092, not NGC 4093, is almost certainly H III 382. WH saw three galaxies in this group, most plausibly the brightest three. So, Dreyer's supposition that the first of the three is N4093 is probably wrong, just as JH's idea that III 382 is NGC 4095 (note, too, that JH has a misprint in his list making his father's object "II 382"). N4092 is a magnitude brighter and considerably larger than N4093, so is probably WH's object. His other two are NGC 4095 and NGC 4098 = NGC 4099, both of which see. ===== NGC 4093 is probably not H III 382. See NGC 4092 for more. ===== NGC 4095. The RC3 position is from MCG. GSC has 12 03 21.05 +20 51 03.6 (1950) for this galaxy. The relatively small difference in position normally wouldn't matter to the identification, but the galaxy is in a fairly compact group with five other NGC objects. Four of the six galaxies are in RC3, and as far as I can tell with a quick check of MCG, UGC, and CGCG, the data for each have been assigned correctly. This is also the second of the three objects that WH found (III 383). The first is NGC 4092 (which see), and the third is NGC 4098 = NGC 4099 (also which see). Dreyer reassigned WH's numbers in the 1912 Scientific Papers, getting this one and III 384 correct. Also see NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4098 = NGC 4099, which see. Also see NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4099 = NGC 4098. WH found three nebulae in this group. It's reasonable to suppose that he saw the three brightest (two of these were seen by JH, and the others were found by d'A); these are NGC 4092, 4095, and 4098. As Dreyer realized in 1912, this would make the number 4099 = GC 2714 irrelevant as it was added (by JH) explicitly for H III 384, the third of his father's three. On the DSS image, this looks like an interacting double galaxy (it may be a triple -- there is a broad plume extending on to the southeast that may be a third component). The two are well merged, so the early observers would not have seen them as separate objects. So that won't save the extra NGC number (nor IC 2998, which see). ===== NGC 4107 = NGC 4078 with a 2 minute error in d'A's RA. The object is positively identified by the "star 10-11 30.2 seconds following, 1 arcmin south." Just north of this star is a line of three faint galaxies, two (N4082 and N4083) seen by Marth with William Lassel's 48-inch reflector, the third found by Frost on a Harvard plate. All are faint enough that d'A could not have seen them with his 11-inch refractor. There is a curious footnote to this: Burnham claims to have seen the nebula in 1891 with the Lick 36-inch, and also says that the star is north-preceding, not south-following as d'A has it. Since I haven't yet seen Burnham's notes, I can't say anything about this except to speculate that Burnham saw a different object. We can also speculate that he would have noticed the RA error had he picked up N4078. ----- Since I wrote that previous paragraph, Wolfgang has kindly sent me a copy of Burnham's note which appears in Publ. Lick Obs. 2, 163, 1894 (his discoveries of IC 258 and IC 259, which see, are at the end of this paper). It reads in full: No. 4107 R.A. 11 59 35 Decl. +11 23 Not planetary, but it is brighter in the middle, and extended in the direction of 115 deg. In Dreyer, it is described as having a star 10-11m south following. There is nothing in that place, but there is a star of that magnitude north preceding. Wolfgang points out that there is a fainter star very near to the west of the galaxy. Since Burnham does not mention a distance to his star, and since d'A's star is a considerable distance away, it's possible that Burnham did not notice d'A's star. It is also possible that he simply got his directions confused. Whatever happened, it's clear that Burnham got the right galaxy -- his position angle is accurate for NGC 4107. ===== NGC 4108. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4113 = NGC 4122. JH has only one observation of N4113, calling it only "eF." His position -- from a different sweep -- is exactly 1 degree north, and 1 minute of time west of N4122, and his brief description is appropriate. His position for NGC 4122 is correct. ===== NGC 4115 is perhaps the 14th magnitude star near JH's position. There are no nebulae nearby, or at digit errors from his nominal position, that he might have picked up while sweeping. He also notes it as "A suspected nebula, extremely faint" which the star would have been were it seen on a less than perfect night. ----- The sweep has exactly the same information, and the position is correctly reduced, so the star seems the likely object that JH picked up. ===== NGC 4119 = IC 3011 (which see) is also probably NGC 4124 as suggested by Dreyer in WH's Scientific Papers. WH's final position is just 50 arcmin south of N4124, and there are no other bright galaxies nearby that he might have picked up. It is worth noting, too, that this is one of his early discoveries (18 Jan 1784). Many other of his nebulae and clusters found during the winter of 1783-84 (his first season of sweeping) have relatively poor positions (see e.g. NGC 4153 and NGC 6533). Dreyer notes that N4124 already has two certain numbers in WH's lists, I 33 and II 60. The positions for these observations are better, but are still enough different -- along with the differing descriptions "B, L, ..." and "F, S" -- that WH listed them separately. ===== NGC 4122 is also = NGC 4113, which see. ===== NGC 4124 = IC 3011 is also probably = NGC 4119, both of which see. ===== NGC 4129 = NGC 4130, which see. ===== NGC 4130 = NGC 4129. D'A's declination error of 5 degrees for NGC 4130 is comfirmed by his exact description of the galaxy and the star 21 seconds preceding it. There is no problem with the Herschels' several observations of NGC 4129. ===== NGC 4139 = IC 2989. The RA's of this and its companion NGC 4140 are 5 minutes of time too large. When corrected by this amount, the positions agree closely with those for IC 2989 and NGC 4077, respectively. The descriptions clinch the identities, and RC3 is correct. This pair was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans- Neptunian planet." It is his numbers (14a) and (14b), as well as (16a) and (16b). See NGC 3604 for more about David Todd and his search. ===== NGC 4140 = NGC 4077. See NGC 4139. ===== NGC 4147. See NGC 4153. ===== NGC 4149 = NGC 4154. The two NGC numbers are due to WH having swept this galaxy up twice in succesive years, 1789 and 1790. JH has only one observation of it with no description which he put on his father's 1789 observation. Dreyer noted that Bigourdan did not find NGC 4154 (the 1790 observation), but WH's position for this is actually closer to the galaxy than his position for N4149 which Bigourdan did observe. In any event, there is no doubt that the two numbers apply to the same galaxy. Steve Gottlieb (who called my attention to this) and Wolfgang Steinicke were apparently the first to notice the identity. Though I have the correct position for each object, they are just far enough apart in my working table (separated by many good positions for NGC 4151) that I did not see the identity. Good catch, guys! ===== NGC 4152. See IC 765. ===== NGC 4153 is probably NGC 4147. This was found by WH on 15 Feb 1784, only two months after he started observing with his first "20-feet" telescope. He put the nebula 1m 30s preceding, 2d 11m south of 5 Comae. This gives 12 08.1 +18 38 (1950) for the nebula. Herschel described it as "B, pL, lE, bM, m[ilky]." It has not been seen since at this position. The closest reasonable object that might be the missing nebula is another early discovery of WH's, NGC 4147 = H I 19, the bright globular northwest of the Virgo Cluster. Herschel found this just a month after N4153 (14 March 1784), and placed it at 10m 30s preceding, 0d 46m north of 11 Comae. This becomes 12 07.7, +18 50 (1950), in pretty good agreement with modern positions for the cluster. WH's description is very much the same as that for N4153: "vB, pL, gbM." At the time WH found N4153, he was still improving his method of determining positions. So, I suspect that the February observation, earlier on the "learning curve," actually refers to NGC 4147. I also recall a Sky and Telescope article on this mystery object. It appeared many years ago, perhaps in the late 50s or early 60s. Someone whose S&T's are not buried in the storeroom might want to dig it out. It is not a "Deep Sky Wonders" article, since Walter Scott Houston's article -- at least as printed in the book edited by Stephen James O'Meara -- that mentions N4153 calls it a "true faint external galaxy ... about 13' south and about 8' east of NGC 4147." The declination would be close to WH's, but the RA is well off. And there is nothing in this position, either. ----- The old reference to NGC 4153 that is hanging in the back of my mind may actually be to Norton's Star Atlas. Is the number plotted at WH's position in some of the early editions? This could be where I saw it as I used Norton's extensively as a teenager in the 1950s. ===== NGC 4154 = NGC 4149, which see. ===== NGC 4160. Bigourdan has two accordant observations of this object on 27 May 1886 which place it 12.87 seconds east and 1 arcmin 24.8 arcsec north of "AG Bonn 8386" = SAO 044068. However, there is nothing there. A quick glance at the POSS1 shows another star about 35 seconds following and 40 arcsec north with a faint double star north following. The DSS gives the 1950 position of the double as 12 09 31.0, +44 00 49. Assuming that this is Bigourdan's object, and that he misidentified his comparison star, I reduced his observation. The resulting position is 12 09 41.0, +44 00 59. The 10 second and 10 arcsec differences are striking, but are difficult to understand given that Bigourdan read his micrometer in terms of position angle and distance and later reduced them to RA and Dec offsets. Since there is still nothing at Bigourdan's place (assuming the mistaken identity for the comparison star), I'm tempted to assume some kind of error in his observation leading to the digit errors. But so far, I've not been able to find it. ===== NGC 4163 = NGC 4167, which see. ===== NGC 4164 and 4165. There is no doubt concerning the identifications of these two galaxies, yet UGC missed the NGC number for N4164. This is probably just an oversight. However, one comment: Tempel expresses some surprise that d'Arrest should have missed N4164; Tempel seems to think that the two galaxies are nearly equal in brightness. However, N4164 is a full magnitude fainter, and much smaller than N4165. There is a 15th magnitude star about 30 arcsec south-following that may have provided the illusion of a brighter nebula in Tempel's relatively small 11-inch refractor. Still, I'm not at all surprised that d'Arrest picked up N4165 alone. N4165 itself is identical to IC 3035, which is from Schwassmann's list of photographically discovered nebulae in the Virgo Cluster. There can be no doubt about this as Schwassmann included other NGC objects, and his position falls much closer to N4165 than to the tiny companion just north-preceding. Nilson realized this, too, and corrected the mistaken entry in CGCG where the north-preceding galaxy is called I3035. Since Schwassmann was working on a plate taken with a telescope of 6-inches aperture, it's doubtful that the fainter galaxy is on the plate at all (the plate, by the way, has been lost. Wayne Johnson requested a print of it from Heidelberg along with the other prints of the discovery plates for many of Wolf's IC objects, but Schwassmann's plate could not be found). ===== NGC 4165. See NGC 4164. ===== NGC 4167 = NGC 4163. JH first suggested the identity of his h1118 with his father's H III 399 in his 1833 catalogue -- it is clinched by the existence of the bright double star (SAO 62887/8) 10 arcmin southwest of the galaxy; JH mentions the double in his description. His position is exactly 20 arcmin off; when that is taken into account, his position falls close to his father's place for the galaxy. ===== NGC 4169. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4170 and 4171. Found by d'Arrest near the group of four galaxies NGC 4169, 4173, 4174, and 4175, these two objects are probably stars picked up on a night of below-average seeing. D'A's entire observation (translated to colloquial English by a Latin teacher, and relayed courtesy of Steven Dick and Brent Archinal at USNO) reads in full: "In addition, I think I see two other nebulae very close to this one [NGC 4169]; a clearer sky would help." His note for the night (10 May 1864) reads: "Wind; not perfectly clear." The approximate positions in the NGC apparently come from Dreyer. And that is the extent of the original "data." There are no other nebulae near the quartet found by the Herschels. Given d'A's scanty observation, we can safely conclude that these two objects do not exist as nebulae. As I said above, I suspect they are stars. An interesting side note: Yann Pothier brought these objects back to my attention. His mother, also fluent in Latin, commented -- based on the sentence describing these nebulae -- that d'A's Latin was not very good. Here is the complete sentence for those of you who would be able to read my PhD diploma: "Praeterea visus sum mihi videre duas alias nebulas huic valde vicinas, quae Astronomis, Coelo adjutis sereniore, relinquuntur." ===== NGC 4171. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4173. The position I've chosen applies to a very faint red knot, possibly the nucleus, in the center of the eccentric bar. The approximate center of the outer isophotes is close to 20 arcseconds northwest of this position; the SDSS algorithm took this as the center of the entire galaxy, as did the Hickson Atlas, and Jaffe and Gavazzi in their Coma Supercluster study of 1986. It's possible that a position intermediate between these two may best represent the galaxy. However, I have retained the position for what appears to be the nucleus, as it is the brightest part of the bar in the DSS2 infrared image. The galaxy itself is probably a slightly distorted SB(s)dm pec seen nearly edge-on. It is the largest galaxy in the compact group Hickson 61 with NGC 4169, NGC 4174, and NGC 4175. See NGC 4170 for a mystery concerning two other NGC objects in the area. ===== NGC 4174. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4175. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4178 also carries the number IC 3042, which see. ===== NGC 4179, discovered by WH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (15). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4180 is perhaps also NGC 4182, which see. ===== NGC 4182 may be NGC 4180, or it may simply be a star at Peters's position. That position is 3 degrees south and 17 seconds following NGC 4180. Arguing for the identity is his observation of NGC 4191. Both it and NGC 4180 are about 13th magnitude, and close enough together on the sky that it is difficult to understand how an observer could see one but miss the other. On the other hand, Peters's position for NGC 4191 is only 4 seconds following the true position -- his measured separation for the objects (assuming only a 3 deg error in declination) does not match their separation on the sky. And the star at his quoted position is faint enough that it could have been mistaken for a nebula. In the end, we would need to re-examine Peters's charts to find the objects that he thought were nebulae. Until then, I slightly favor the NGC 4182 = NGC 4180 idea, though not by much. ===== NGC 4184 is a group of faint stars just where JH says it is. The object was rediscovered over a century later by Ruprecht (it is his number 102), but the NGC number was not attached. Thus, the "non-existent" status in RNGC. It has two concentrations of stars. While JH's position more closely coincides with the eastern, it seems likely that the somewhat richer western one is also a part of the cluster. But there is considerable patchy Galactic obscuration in the area, so only a full investigation of the field will serve to clearly delineate the real cluster here. I've estimated positions for both concentrations. There is a richer cluster of much fainter stars nearby at 12 13 03.6, -62 42 24 (J2000; HCsv, DSS2IR). This is Alessi J12130-6242, discussed by Archinal and Hynes in their 2003 book, "Star Clusters". This is much too faint to have been seen by JH, so is only coincidentally near NGC 4184. ===== NGC 4185 may also be NGC 4209 (which see) -- but is probably not. ===== NGC 4186. Tempel mentions this object in two of his papers (AN 2212 and AN 2439). In the earlier paper, the offset from M 98 (= N4192 = GC2786) is given as -10s and -10', leading to a position listed as 12 06 15 +15 32 (1855) [12 06 30 +15 30 (1860)] which is 10s off the NGC place (12 06 20 +15 31). However, the later paper lists the offset as +20s, -9.5m which gives 12 07 00 +15 31 (1860). This position agrees with that from Zwicky for an Sa galaxy with mp = 14.9; this was also earlier mentioned by Carlson (1940). The mistake seems to have been Dreyer's: he applied the right ascension offset (from Tempel's later paper) with the wrong sign. Carlson and RC2 are correct; RNGC, UGC, and VCC are incorrect. ===== NGC 4189 = IC 3050, which see. ===== NGC 4191. See NGC 4182. ===== NGC 4192 = M 98. See NGC 4186, NGC 4548, and NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4193 = IC 3051. See IC 3050. ===== NGC 4196. See NGC 4209. ===== NGC 4198 = IC 778, which see. ===== NGC 4199. Dreyer has a note in his 1912 collection of WH's papers that caught my curiosity: "Also observed in Sw. 953, Mar. 19, 1790, 76 Ursae p. 27m 59s, s. 2d 50', or I.253, f. 13m 47s, s. 1d 59'. This agrees well with the place of Bigourdan, which is = N.G.C. -37s +4'." This seems to suggest that WH might have seen two nebulae here, not just one. However, reducing his observations, I find just a single galaxy with considerable scatter in WH's reduced positions. For 2000, those positions and the reference objects are: 12 14 31 +59 57.9 69 Ursae Majoris 12 14 26 +59 57.5 71 Ursae Majoris 12 14 44 +59 52.0 76 Ursae Majoris 12 14 44 +59 54.8 I.253 = NGC 4036 Only the last is fairly close to the faint double galaxy that WH must have seen. It has a superposed star involved, too, that must have enhanced its visibility a bit. I've taken all three objects as WH's object, though the southwestern galaxy is the brighter of the pair. While I suggested earlier that the star might be brighter than either galaxy, it is actually the second-brightest of the three objects, at least in V. The southwestern galaxy is therefore almost certainly the object that WH saw. Bigourdan found the correct object, but made two errors in transcribing his observations for publication. First, he makes his declination offset negative instead of positive; and second, he has a -1 minute error in the RA offset between BD +60 1384 and his actual comparison star, a 12th magnitude star fortunately picked up in the Astrographic Catalogue zone; this means that we have a good position for it at an epoch close to Bigourdan's observation date. Once these problems are corrected, Bigourdan's position falls within a few arcsec of the star superposed on the galaxy pair. The galaxies, by the way, are probably members of the nearby galaxy cluster Abell 1507. The redshift of the northeastern galaxy is z = 0.0612, while that of the southwestern is z = 0.0605; the redshift of the cluster is z = 0.0604. ===== NGC 4202. David Todd's published article has a sketch of the field of this galaxy that unambiguously identifies it with UGC 7337. It is his number (18). The RC3 is correct; RNGC is not. See NGC 3604 for more about Todd's search for "the trans-Neptunian planet." ===== NGC 4206 = IC 3064. See IC 3050. ===== NGC 4208 = NGC 4212. This one requires a coincidence of errors by both WH and JH. Though both nebulae were seen by WH in a single sweep, Dreyer has shown (in the Scientific Papers) that the objects could be identical if WH reset his telescope after fixing on a star. In his NGC note, Dreyer suggests that JH made a simple digit error in the RA of h1142 = N4208 -- it was seen only once in a different sweep than h1144 = N4212 (which has four accordant observations). This placed h1142 close enough to H II 107 that JH assumed the identity. Though remarkable, such a coincidence is almost sure to happen at least once in the crowded area of the Supergalactic equator. Since there are plausible explanations for both errors, I'm willing to accept Dreyer's identity of the "two" nebulae. ===== NGC 4209 may be NGC 4185. Or it may be a star about 2 arcmin south-southwest of WH's position. The problem with equating N4209 and N4185 (which is about 2 minutes west of N4209) is that WH found them both during the same sweep (396 on 11 April 1785). Dreyer's note in the Scientific Papers is a bit misleading as it suggests that the position of NGC 4209 is somehow dependent on that of NGC 4196 (which precedes NGC 4209 by 1min 18sec in the sweep) -- it is not. NGC 4196 indeed has its transit recorded to a full minute only, but NGC 4209 has both minutes and seconds recorded. Dreyer was right, however, that JH, d'A, and Bigourdan all did not find the object. I also do not see anything in the sweep that would suggest that either NGC 4185 or NGC 4209 was observed out of order, or that they could be the same galaxy. However, Dreyer has shown us (see e.g. NGC 4208) that WH, at least once, probably unknowingly observed the same galaxy twice in the same sweep. But that does not seem to have happened here. Wolfgang Steinicke has chosen the star noted above as being N4209. This is certainly possible as there is nothing else within 5 arcmin of WH's position that he could have seen. However, WH's description "F, pS" does not give us very much to go on. The size "pS", by the way, would make the object larger than NGC 4196 which is described as "F, S". If it were the star, I would have expected WH to say "vS" or "eS". Perhaps there was a momentary burst of very bad seeing ... At the moment, I favor taking Wolfgang's star, but am not yet convinced that this is WH's object. ===== NGC 4210. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4212 = NGC 4208, which see. ===== NGC 4214 = NGC 4228, which see. ===== NGC 4215. There is no question about the identification of this galaxy. However, Schwassmann's photographic position is exactly six arcminutes too far south. This must be a simple typo as his printed differences between the NGC position and that from Monnichmeyer from micrometric measurements at Bonn are very small. Fortunately, though NGC 4215 is the very first object in Schwassmann's list, its position is not representative of any systematic problem in the remainder of the list. There are a few more accidental mistakes, and some missed NGC identifications, but in general, the positions are quite clean, and reasonably accurate. ===== NGC 4216 has a faint companion to the north see first by Samuel Hunter with LdR's giant Parsonstown reflector in 1860. See the short story under CGCG 069-113 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 4217 is a large, almost exactly edge-on spiral. Its nucleus is completely obscured by the thick dark lane. Given this, one of the 2MASS positions is the obvious one to use, so I've taken the position from the Extended Source Catalog -- it is the closest to the mean of the 17 positions I've collected by March 2015. This is perhaps a coincidence, but the 2MASS XSC position is nevertheless representative of how we see the galaxy optically and in the near-infrared. I have not yet seen a radio position of equivalent accuracy. ===== NGC 4221. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4222 is not IC 3087, which see. It is, however, a late-type spiral seen virtually edge-on, just as NGC 4217 is. Thus, its position is difficult to determine. The one I have finally adopted is from the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog, and is centered on an IR-bright knot just northeast of the apparent center of the nearly non-existent bulge. ===== NGC 4223 = IC 3102 and NGC 4241 = IC 3115. There are several curious things going on here, the least of which are the equalities with the IC numbers! Here are two galaxies, both seen by both Herschels, yet Dreyer has all but insisted on dropping the NGC number 4223. I'm not really in favor of this at the end of the story -- but we need the story first. WH found the brightest (H II 137) of the two galaxies on 13 April 1784, placing it "f 11 Virginis 7 min 18 sec, 0 deg 55 arcmin north." As Dreyer noted, these offsets reduce to 12 15 13, +06 58.6 (B1950). WH's second observation, from 28 Dec 1784, reduces to 12 14 49, +07 00.1, which is close to the actual position of the brighter galaxy of the pair. That these observations refer to the same nebula is obvious from WH's note about III 480 (seen only on the second night): "L, vF, would not have been seen if it had not been for the preceding [II 137]." WH's position for the fainter object is also very close to the true position. JH also has two observations of the brighter galaxy -- his positions are accordant with each other, and with his father's second position. However -- and here is where the confusion sets in -- he calls this brighter galaxy III 480. On his second sweep, he also has an observation of an object which he calls II 137, but of it he says, "pB, R, RA estimated from III 480, which it precedes on the same parallel." All that is true. But the position he gives for this brighter object is a minute of time earlier than it should be -- there is no nebula there. Somehow, JH has got his absolute positions about a minute of time west of the true positions. JH, of course, used his own positions in GC, and Dreyer copied them into the NGC noting that d'A never saw the preceding of the pair. However, while working on the Scientific Papers, Dreyer looked again at the problem, this time finding that H III 480 is = IC 3115, and that II 137 = NGC 4241 (apparently not noticing that N4241 would also be = IC 3102 in this scenario). This leaves the number 4223 without a galaxy -- yet WH's observations are very clear that his II 137 applies to the brighter, western object. This would be N4223. This makes the fainter eastern object III 480 = N4241. All this is in accordance with the numbers in the GC and the NGC itself. The only incorrect data are the RA's which are about a minute of time (N4223) and 30 seconds (N4241) too far west. This leads me to suggest that the simplest solution is to adopt WH's positions, descriptions, and numbers. The only problem is that the number N4241 has been applied to the brighter galaxy for so long that confusion will undoubtedly result. My feeling is, "So be it." The IC numbers are unambiguous as Schwassmann's positions are very good. The question of why he did not assign the NGC numbers is pretty clear from the mess above. I would have thought, however, that either he or Dreyer would have caught the equality of the positions for I3102 and N4241 (as published in NGC); apparently, neither checked carefully enough, perhaps thrown off by the RA problems. An addendum: The mess with these two NGC numbers may not be the reason that Schwassmann did not assign them in his list -- he may simply have missed them. There are at least two other NGC/IC equalities in his list: NGC 4235 = IC 3098, and NGC 4246 = IC 3113. There are no big problems with the NGC positions in these cases, yet he has not put the NGC numbers into his list. So, the galaxies also went into the IC. See those IC numbers for a bit more discussion. ===== NGC 4228 = NGC 4214. The equality was first implied by d'A, and later taken up at Lick, by Reinmuth, Carlson, and in RC1 and RNGC. The problem is simply an error of 1 minute of time in JH's position for the galaxy the first time he saw it (Sweep 72). He got it right the second time (Sweep 331). ===== NGC 4230 was misidentified in ESO and by Brian Skiff (and perhaps by others as well). Their positions point at an apparently real cluster roughly 12 arcmin northeast of JH's position. There is a bright star, HD 106826, superposed on the cluster just northwest of the core, a star with V = 8.5 that JH surely would not have called "12th magnitude" as he did the star near the center of his object. Brian took the position of the HD star as that of the cluster, while Andris Lauberts measure the position of the core itself. My own estimated position may be also for just the core. JH's object is a much more scattered grouping and may not be a real cluster. It is centered about an arcminute northeast of the 12th magnitude star which JH measured and took as the position of his cluster. The V magnitude of the star is 11.6, close to JH's estimate. I make his cluster 7 arcmin by 5 arcmin in diameter on the DSS cutout, in good agreement with JH's estimate of 6 arcmin. ===== NGC 4235 = IC 3098, which see. Also see NGC 4223 = IC 3102. ===== NGC 4236. While there is no question about the identification of this large, low surface brightness galaxy, its accurate position is not easily determined. There is no nucleus visible at any wavelength in which the galaxy has yet been examined, so the published positions are all either estimates, or refer to various other features within the galaxy. The position that I've adopted is an estimated center of the bar as seen on the red DSS2 image. This position is within about 20 arcseconds of a superposed "late G-type star" (according to Lira et al, MNRAS 382, 1552, 2007, who have a spectrum). ===== NGC 4239 is the only one of Pechule's five nebulae listed in AN 2710 to have been listed in the NGC with a credit to him. In spite of his being a careful observer with access to micrometers (he regularly measured planets, asteroids, and comets at with the 11-inch Merz refractor at Copenhagen through the latter part of the 19th century), he gave only crude positions for the nebulae (0.1 min of time and 0.1 deg), estimated from the BD charts. That for N4239 is nevertheless within two arcmin of the modern position. Dreyer credited two of Pechule's nebulae only to Borelly (NGC 3933 and 3934); this is probably a good thing as Borelly's positions are much better. And the remaining two nebulae in Pechule's paper are not in NGC at all. They did not enter the catalogues again until they were picked up for CGCG and MCG: CGCG 098-033 = MCG +03-31-025 and CGCG 098-035 = MCG +03-31-027 = UGC 7032. Pechule has only a single position for these two along with a comment that they are possibly no more than stars. I suspect that this is why Dreyer skipped them. ===== NGC 4240 = NGC 4243, which see. ===== NGC 4241 = IC 3115. See NGC 4223 = IC 3102. ===== NGC 4243 = NGC 4240. Swift's declination is 1 deg 22 arcmin too far south, but his description makes it entirely clear which object he saw. There are no other galaxies in the area with a similarly bright star just 30 arcsec west. Tempel and Common described the galaxy/star pair the same way. Tempel actually saw the object on four different nights, finally measuring it on 24 May 1881. This is position that Dreyer adopted for the NGC 4240 entry. ===== NGC 4244. What I had previously taken as a superposed star near the center of the bulge of this large, nearby, edge-on galaxy is, in fact, the nucleus (see e.g. Seth et al, AJ 129, 1331, 2005 and Seth et al ApJ 687, 997, 2008). HST images clearly show the elongation of the rotating nucleus, so it is obviously not a star in spite of its classification as one based on the SDSS spectrum, or in spite of its appearance as one based on survey images. Consequently, I have adopted the position of the nucleus as the position of the galaxy. ===== NGC 4246 = IC 3113 (which also see). In a note in the NGC, Dreyer defends the use of the declination from a Harvard observation by G. M. Searle rather than from WH's single observation. As it happens, Searle is correct. The RA is only five seconds out, so the identity with IC 3113 is solid. Since there are other NGC objects in the area that Schwassmann did not identify as such (see e.g. NGC 4223 = IC 3102), I am beginning to think that he had a reason to omit the numbers from his table. Perhaps the confusion explained in the note about N4223 above had something to do with it. I'll have to dig into Schwassmann's text a bit to see if anything obvious falls out. ===== NGC 4248 is a peculiar, low-surface-brightness galaxy -- perhaps an I0 or a peculiar dwarf spiral, quite nearby in the Ursa Major I Cloud. It has no obvious nucleus, though it does have several stars, presumeably supergiants, and knots scattered across it. There are a few superposed stars as well. The rest of the galaxy shows incipient resolution in the SDSS image. The position I've adopted is from SDSS; it seems as good as any, and is centered on one of the bright stars in the dusty central part of the galaxy. ===== NGC 4250. This galaxy also carries the designation "NGC 4250A". This was assigned by Philip Keenan in a 1935 paper (ApJ 82, 62) where he listed "approximate positions" for 32 "previously uncatalogued nebulae". See IC 381 for another previously catalogued example from this paper. Keenan gave the "previously uncatalogued" galaxies names based on the nearest NGC galaxy, with suffixes attached to differentiate them from each other. This is perhaps the earliest use of suffixed NGC numbers, and set a bad example that others have followed through the years. ===== NGC 4254 = M 99. See NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4263 = NGC 4265, which see. ===== NGC 4265 = NGC 4263. WH looked for his galaxy a second time, but could not find it. JH suggested that it might have been a comet. I doubt that Swift was aware of this -- his position is so close to WH's in the GC that he almost certainly just overlooked the GC entry. Howe settled the matter when he wrote in his second Monthly Notices paper, "I saw only one nebula here." Dreyer took this to heart and set the two numbers equal to one another in the IC2 Notes, in his 1912 Monthly Notices list of NGC corrections, and in a note in his edition of WH's Scientific Papers. Curiously, Dreyer seems to suggest that we use NGC 4265 instead of NGC 4263. I don't see why we should -- this is Swift's error, not WH's. Finally, I note that Bigourdan also looked for two galaxies here, but found only one. Unlike Dreyer, he adopts the number derived from WH's observation. ===== NGC 4279. See NGC 4280. ===== NGC 4280 may be the short line of three stars between N4279 and N4285. Swift has it as the "2nd of 3," but there are only two galaxies here. Howe calls them N4280 and N4285, but modern catalogs (including SEGC) have made them the two outer objects of the triple Swift claimed to have seen. Unfortunately, he has no notes about stars in the area, so we are left only with his poor positions and inconsistent descriptions of brightness (he calls the last of the three the brightest; Howe noted correctly that it is actually fainter than the preceding galaxy). There are also no systematic offsets in the positions of the other galaxies he found the same night (see also N6059), so we can't recover the missing nebula that way. So, the only faintly reasonable explanation is that Swift's middle "nebula" is the line of stars, but this is little more than a guess. ===== NGC 4284 may also be IC 3166, which see. ===== NGC 4285. See NGC 4280. ===== NGC 4286 = IC 3181, which see. ===== NGC 4290 may also be IC 3180. See IC 3166 for the story. ===== NGC 4292. See NGC 4301, as well as NGC 4292A in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 4294. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4296. See NGC 4297. ===== NGC 4297. Though noted as not found by d'A and Reinmuth, this galaxy is indeed where WH found it: "... close by ..." N4296. It is actually north, and just a bit preceding the larger, brighter galaxy. It is very faint, though, and very small, so I'm not surprised that d'A did not see it. It probably appears stellar on the Bruce plates that Reinmuth examined. ===== NGC 4301 is one of the "classic" cases of a problem NGC object. People have been puzzling over it since Bindon Stoney found it on 1 March 1851 with LdR's Parsonstown Leviathan. Sue French just (May 2006) asked about it, so I am finally digging into the records to find out what I can about it. I must mention, too, that Malcolm Thomson has made valuable contributions to solving this puzzle. More on that as we go along. (There is a bit more in the "notngc" files under NGC 4292A.) Here is the story: In his 1861 paper, LdR has NGC 4292 and NGC 4303 listed together as having been observed five times. He continues, Sketched 4 times. March 1, 1851. [h]1196 [= N4292] is bM and has a vF comp.; [h]1202 [= N4303 = M 61] is a spiral, B. centre, and 2 knots. There is another neb. 10' nf. Here's the first bit of confusion. Is the nebula 10 arcmin northeast of N4292 or N4303? LdR's note can be read either way. I'll lay out some arguments below suggesting that it is northeast of N4303 and not N4292 as many, including Dreyer himself, have supposed. A second bit of confusion follows immediately, still apparently in the same observation of N4292 and N4303: About 84[deg] 34' N.P.D., and 12h 25m AR. There is a scarlet * 10m. and a F. E. neb. 10' s. of it, with *s in it. See fig. 21, Plate XXVII. This comment turns out to be totally unrelated to N4292 or N4303; it applies instead to NGC 4480. But LdR finishes up this section of his Description with his note about the figure. I should note here that LdR misidentifies the figure, calling it "h1196" while it is really M 61 = h1202. Finally, he finishes the comments on N4292/N4303 with April 9, 1852. Last year's observations confirmed. So, LdR gives us two new nebulae in his 1861 monograph: a very faint companion for NGC 4292 (NGC 4292A; see the brief comments about this in the "notngc" files), and another nebula 10 arcmin north-following either N4292 or N4303. And he initiated a chain of confusion with his two errors and the one ambiguous statement. JH received the monograph soon after it was published, in time for him to scan it thoroughly for the GC which he was then preparing. His note in the GC shows that he took LdR's published description at face value: [GC]2884 1202,a. Under h. 1196 and 1202, two nebulae, unidentifiable, are described as companions, but there must be some great error in Lord Rosse's account of them, as the place of one is referred to a scarlet star "10 [arcmin] south of a scarlet star R.A. 12h 25'[sic]." Now h. 1202 is in R.A. 12h 14m. To afford a fair chance of reobserving them, the companion 10' nf h. 1202 is entered here as 1202,a, and that south of the scarlet star, under No. 3060 as 1196, a." His entries in GC are credited as "R. nova?" and "R. nova", respectively, so he apparently placed greater reliance on the observation of the nebula south of the scarlet star. The next observers trying to find nebulae here were d'A and Schultz. Neither were successful. d'A's note is in Latin, and is available elsewhere on the NGC/IC Project's web site; Schultz merely says "GC. 2884. Not a trace of it discernible." The next mention of the field comes from Dreyer himself in two notes in his 1878 Supplement to the GC. The first is for GC 2884 which became NGC 4301 itself: Not found by D'Arrest (Query, did he search "10' ad austrum" instead of 10' nf?). Not seen by Schultz. There is not any "great error in Lord Rosse's account." The Nebula south of the scarlet star ([GC] 3060) was seen after h. 1196 and 1202 had been observed, probably while the telescope was being moved back to the meridian. He is arguing that LdR's description is not at all misleading and that JH simply misread it. I'm siding with JH on this one; the comment about NGC 4480 is just out of place, and is too easy to read as JH did, and as I first did. It clearly needed its own entry in the 1861 monograph. However one reads the note, Dreyer continues with another in the GC Supplement that gives some further details on the interpolated observation: [GC] 3060. To be struck out, = h. 1299 ([GC] 3032) [= NGC 4480], the star is B. W. 12h 378 (Sch. red star 148). JH and I would have appreciated having this information in the 1861 monograph. The next information comes just two years later in LdR's 1880 monograph, prepared, of course, by Dreyer himself. Four observations are assigned to NGC 4292 (GC 2870 = h 1196; in what follows, the square brackets enclose comments by Dreyer, and appear just as I have typed them in here): 1851, Mar. 1. bM and has a vF companion [2' n by a diagr]. 1851, Apr. 21. Another neb 10' nf. [Entered as a nova (2884) nf h 1202 in the G.C., but nothing was found there by d'A. and Schultz. The place 10' nf h 1196 does not appear to have been examined by anyone yet.] 1861, Mar. 17. (F Moonlight.) About 15' p and 8' n is a F neb with a * or Nucl in centre and a * 8m close on its np side. 1878, Mar. 28. F, S, R, vglbM. *9m Pos. 333[deg].7, Dist. 72".3. 16'+- n and 9'+- p is a vF object, sbM, most probably only a F *, it has a * 8.9m np v nr. (IV. obs.) Let's take these one by one. The 1 March 1851 observation is correct as far as I can tell -- the vF companion is 2.4 arcmin north of NGC 4292. This is the first of LdR's "novae" in this field that should have been in GC and NGC, but were omitted (as noted above, this is NGC 4292A and is discussed briefly in the "notngc" files). The 21 April observation probably applies to NGC 4303. While there is a galaxy (UGC 7411, m_B = 14.9) north-northeast of NGC 4292, the actual distance is 11.9 arcmin. This compares with UGC 7439 (m_B = 14.1) at 9.6 arcmin north- east of NGC 4303. On 17 March 1861, LdR says nothing about the galaxy itself, but notes another faint nebula 15 arcmin west and 8 arcmin north. There is nothing at all at those offsets; in particular, there is no star 8 in the area. The north-south distance between N4303 and N4292 is 7.5 arcmin, so I wonder if this is an observation of N4303 with a slightly erroneous description of N4292 -- which does indeed have a brighter star "close on its np side." Finally, Dreyer's own observation on 28 March 1878 is pretty clearly of N4292 -- except that again there is no object 16 arcmin north and 9 arcmin west with a star 8-9 magnitude "np v nr." Is this yet another garbled observation of N4303, but this time mixed in with a real measurement of N4292 and its nearby star? I measure a separation of 71 arcsec at a position angle of 335 degrees, very close to Dreyer's more precise measures. The note "(IV. obs.)", by the way, is just the total number of observations of the object. This raises an interesting point about NGC 4303 (= GC 2878): Dreyer has the note "(VII. obs.)", but only lists three of them: 1851, Mar. 1. Spiral, 2 knots, centre B. 1851, Mar. 7. Drawn [P.T. 1861, pl. XXVII., fig. 21, both on the plate and in the G. C., p. 42, this figure is erroneously stated to represent h 1196]. 1878, Mar. 28. Neby E ns, branch from s end turning p towards a * 13.14m in Pos. 254[deg].3, Dist. 70".9. (VII. obs.) All of these, including the correction to the figure captions, clearly point to NGC 4303. But where are the other three observations? I've not been able to find them in the published monograph. If the observing notes of the third and fourth Earls of Rosse are still extant, we might be able to do a search for the missing observations. (Just to cover all the objects thoroughly, here are the 1880 monograph descriptions on NGC 4480 = GC 3032 = h1299 = H II 531: 1851, Apr. 21. At 84[deg] 34'+- and 12h 25m+- I found a scarlet * 10m. and a F, E neb. 10' s of it, with st[s] in it. 1852, Apr. 9. About 12h 23m and NPD 84[deg] 43' there is a ruddy (not scarlet) * 10m. and a F neb. 10' s of it. [As already pointed out by d'A, this neb is = h 1299 and the * = B.W. 12h, 378, Schj. red stars No. 148. G.C. 3060 is to be struck out.] (II. obs.) This is a fair description of NGC 4480 and HIP 61022, V_Tycho2 = 8.33, (B-V)_Tycho2 = 1.43, indeed a red star. So, here at last is the information that JH needed to have in the 1861 monograph to correctly identify the object inserted willy-nilly into the descriptions for N4292 and N4303.) At last we come to the NGC where Dreyer's note reads 4301. The place of 2884 is wrong in G.C., as the nova is 10' nf of h 1196 and not of h 1202. It was therefore not found by d'A and Schultz. Dreyer adjusted the position of NGC 4301 appropriately, and most people have taken the entry to point to UGC 7411. I certainly did this for years until Malcolm pointed out the inconsistencies and errors in LdR's two monographs. So, I now think that the evidence points to UGC 7439 as the correct object. It is twice as bright and considerably larger than U7411, as well as closer to N4303 than U7411 is to N4292 -- and therefore more likely to be noticed. As for d'A and Schultz not being able to find it -- they were using 11-inch and 9.6-inch refractors, respectively. These would allow them to dig out the Herschel's objects, but -- with all due respect -- not objects discovered with a 72-inch reflector. So, to summarize. I think it is likely that Lord Rosse's garbled observations point to UGC 7439 (sometimes called NGC 4303A in modern catalogues) as NGC 4301. I've put colons on this object. However, it is just possible that Lord Rosse saw UGC 7411. Even though this is 0.8 magnitudes fainter, and half the size of UGC 7439, he could still have run across it -- many of his discoveries are considerably fainter, including the tiny galaxy just north of NGC 4292. So, I've put U7411 into the position table with question marks as a caution that this case is not entirely closed. ===== NGC 4303 = M 61 = h1202 = H I 139 is one of the few Messier objects to also carry a number in WH's lists. It also figures in the identifications of NGC 4301 (which see, along with the short entry on NGC 4292A in the "notngc" files) and M 91, which see under both NGC 4548 and NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4305. The position given for this by Schwassmann in his list of Virgo Cluster galaxies is about an arcmin off to the south of the true position. Since Schwassmann was a pioneer in the measurement of accurate positions on photographic plates, this -- and a few other buggy numbers in his list -- are a bit of a puzzle. They most likely come from numerical errors in the reduction of the measured rectangular coordinates to RA and Dec. In our present age of electronic computers, we often forget that the calculations at the turn of the century were all done by hand. Accidental errors were thus more likely. My guess is that this is one, though it may, of course, come from any number of sources including measuring error, simple transcription error, and so on. See also NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4306. In the NGC, this is credited only to d'A who found it on 16 April 1865. However, Steve Gottlieb points out that the galaxy was actually first seen by Johnstone Stoney on 13 April 1849 with LdR's big telescope. The galaxy is labeled [beta] on Stoney's sketch, and he describes it (along with NGC 4305, which see for another story) as "... nearly in merid, both F, alpha [N4305] the larger ...". Dreyer apparently overlooked Stoney's priority when he was assembling the NGC. Another case from this same observation by Stoney is NGC 4402, whch see. See also NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4310 = NGC 4338, which see. Also see NGC 4311 and NGC 4317. ===== NGC 4311. JH has only one observation of this, calling it "Faint; the south-following of two." The "north-preceding" of the two is N4310 which JH called "Very bright." There is only one galaxy here, N4310, and that was also seen by WH, as well as by JH during the sweep previous to the one during which he saw two objects in this place. It is possible that JH misidentified another pair -- but there is no other pair near his place, nor at any reasonable digit error from his place. In addition, his measured position for N4311 is less than 20 arcsec from the single galaxy here. This is would be a remarkable coincidence if the position actually applies to another object. So, we are confronted with another lost NGC object. ===== NGC 4313. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4314. See NGC 4317. ===== NGC 4315 may be one of the two 13th magnitude stars south of NGC 4316. Tempel mentioned the object in his descriptive note that accompanies his micrometric position for NGC 4316 in his fifth paper including new nebulae. In that list, he places N4315 at 2 seconds preceding and 1.5 arcmin south of NGC 4316 -- there isn't anything there. The brighter star is at the required declination offset, but its RA is about 3 seconds larger than N4316's. This would require that Tempel made a mistake in the sign of his RA offset. This isn't unknown -- see NGC 4186 for another example. The fainter star is another candidate. The RA offset is in the right direction (it is 3 seconds preceding the RA of the galaxy), however, it is nearly 3 arcmin south of N4316, not 1.5 as Tempel made it. So, I feel that this is less likely to be his object (though it is the one that I chose the first time I went over the field without Tempel's paper at hand). In either case, Tempel has mistaken other stars near other galaxies as nebulous (see e.g. N577, N4322, N4327, and N4768/9), so having one near N4316 is no surprise. ===== NGC 4316. See NGC 4315. ===== NGC 4317 is lost. WH's observation (this is II 324) fits in order with the rest of the nebulae he found the same night 13 March 1785, many of which were compared with 13 CVn (= 37 Comae = SAO 63288). II 324 has the same RA offset as I 76 = N4314, though is supposed to be 1 deg 9 arcmin north of that galaxy. There is nothing at WH's position. A possibility for WH's object is NGC 4310 = NGC 4338 (which see). It is at roughly the correct RA (17 seconds preceding WH's), but is 1 deg 50 arcmin south of WH's Dec. This makes it unlikely that this is the object he saw. Finally, Reinmuth, RNGC, and Steinicke have called N4317 a star. I think this is unlikely as WH would have probably noted the object "very small" or "extremely small" rather than simply "small." ===== NGC 4319 = NGC 4345, which see. ===== NGC 4320. Is this possibly also NGC 4368? See that for the speculation. ===== NGC 4321 = M 100. See NGC 4322, NGC 4323, NGC 4327, and NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4322 is probably a star. It, NGC 4323, and NGC 4327 were all found by Tempel while he was observing NGC 4321 (M 100) and NGC 4328. He only gives descriptive places for them with respect to the brighter objects, so the NGC positions are only approximate. His entire note for the three objects reads (translation by me), "... on my drawing, there are three other very faint nebulae in the vicinity, two north of and close to 2890 [N4321], and the third south of 2894 [N4328]." Given Tempel's propensity for seeing nebulae where only stars exist, I think that the star northwest of M 100, and one of the stars southeast, along with the galaxy to the northeast, are Tempel's three objects. It's certainly possible to argue with this since Tempel gives no details about the appearance of his objects, but this is a reasonable hypothesis under the circumstances. The galaxy to the northeast has been called "NGC 4322 = NGC 4323" by many observers. Since Tempel's description is very clear about his having seen two "nebulae" north of M 100, the identity cannot be true. This has the unfortunate consequence that the number 4322 is put onto a star, but I prefer this to inverting the RA order. ===== NGC 4323 is the galaxy northeast of M 100 (= NGC 4321) that has been called "NGC 4322 = NGC 4323" in many catalogues and lists. See NGC 4322 for the story on this. ===== NGC 4325 is probably also NGC 4368, which see. ===== NGC 4327 is perhaps one of the two stars near NGC 4321 and NGC 4328 listed in the table. I don't see anything else "south of [N4328]" that Tempel might have included in his sketch. See NGC 4322 for more details. There is what appears to be an asterism of four stars on the POSS1 version of DSS near the nominal position for N4327. This is in fact a single star with a group of four plate defects superposed. Malcolm noticed this, and I'm grateful that he called my attention to it. ===== NGC 4328. See NGC 4322, NGC 4323, and NGC 4327. ===== NGC 4332. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4336 = IC 3254, which see. Frost must have thought that IC 3254 was a new object as he measured its position to be over 2.5 arcmin away from that for NGC 4336. The GC/NGC position itself, from JH's two observations, is even further. (D'Arrest's position is within a few arcsec of the modern position, but JH did not get a copy of d'A's monograph in time to cross-check the GC positions.) In any case, as I explain in the story for I3254, the identity seems likely, so I've adopted it for the main table. ===== NGC 4338 = NGC 4310. d'A's RA is just one minute following NGC 4310, and his description is apt. Also, he measured N4310 on three nights (his numbers 80, 164, and 380), and N4338 on only one other night (night 110). This makes it almost certain that his RA on that one night is just one minute too large. ===== NGC 4341 = IC 3260, NGC 4342 = IC 3256, and NGC 4343. There is a group of five galaxies here to which three NGC numbers and four IC numbers apply. Needless to say, the identifications are pretty thoroughly scrambled in the literature. Here is the story: William Herschel (1786) saw three objects (III. 94-96) here, but gave only one position for the them. John Herschel included only one of the objects in his 1833 catalogue, calling it "III. 94," the first of the three numbers assigned by his father. When he prepared the GC, he used his position for this brightest object, but his father's position for the other two, thus giving the lowest of WH's numbers to the object with the largest right ascension. Dreyer used a mean value of JH's position and one from d'Arrest (1867) for the brightest object, but still had only WH's positions for the remaining two. Thus, the inverted order of WH's numbers remains in NGC, with the largest NGC number (4343) receiving the smallest WH number (III. 94). In sorting out the NGC numbers, I've simply assumed that WH saw the brightest three galaxies here, and that JH and d'Arrest measured the brightest one of these. These three galaxies also have the highest surface brightnesses of the five objects in question, so this is an entirely reasonable assumption to make (see RC3 for the data). This means, however, that the brightest object, NGC 4343, has the smallest right ascension on the sky, but the largest RA in NGC. Also, I've followed RC1 (and most other modern catalogues) by assigning N4342 to the middle of the three galaxies, and N4341 to the remaining (following) object, thus retaining the reverse order. Bigourdan's observations of 1895 and 1907 of all five objects here yielded four numbers in the second IC. Schwassmann measured four of the five objects on a Heidelberg plate (the fifth object that he did not measure probably appears stellar on the plate). Dreyer used these four accurate positions in IC2; this has led Herzog (1967 and CGCG) to suggest dropping the questionable NGC numbers altogether, and simply use the unambiguous IC numbers instead. RC2 and RC3 adopted this solution. However, this discards two NGC numbers which we can now assign based on modern photometric data. So, I have adopted the identifications suggested here. Appendix 6 in RC3 is a table of most known identifications for all five of the galaxies. The curious are referred to it for cross-references into the modern literature and catalogues. You should also see NED for the new names added to these galaxies since 1991. ===== NGC 4342 = IC 3256. See NGC 4341. ===== NGC 4343. See NGC 4341. ===== NGC 4345 = NGC 4319. This was found by J. G. Lohse with Mr. Wigglesworth's 15-inch refractor. Lohse's position (which has nothing in it) is just a minute of time following N4319, and his description fits the galaxy. Since Lohse does not mention N4319 in the observation, this is almost certainly identical to it. Carlson called N4345 a star, an identification picked up by RNGC. I think it very unlikely that a star would be mistaken for a "F, pL, gbM" nebula in a 15-inch telescope. The more likely explanation is simply a 1 minute error in the RA. ===== NGC 4347 may be NGC 4348, or it may be the star noted in the position list. There is another fainter star to the southwest of the brighter one that may play a role in this object, too. This was found by Peters, included on his charts, and published as a "nova" in his first list of positions. He notes there that the object "... hardly can be G.C. 2911 [N4348] ...; but upon my chart I find no nebula drawn in this place." At the end of his second list, he appends this note, "The note to Nova 12h 16m42s; -2d 27.7m [1860.0] should be cancelled, as on 1881, May 5, I have seen and drawn upon my chart also the nebula G.C. 2911." It is still possible that the N4347 = N4348 -- Peters never says that he saw both nebulae at the same time. Nevertheless, that is his clear implication, so the equality is a possibility, no more. I'm slightly more inclined to the notion that he somehow mistook the two stars as a nebula. Whether this is true or not may never be known as both objects must be shown on his charts. Whatever the case, there is certainly no nebula at the position Peters gives for NGC 4347. ===== NGC 4348 may also be NGC 4347, which see. ===== NGC 4349 is a large, rich cluster embedded in the plane of the Milky Way. JH has three observations of it; in one, he makes it 10 arcmin across and puts the position northwest of a 9-10th magnitude star. For the other two, he says it "fills the field", and he gives the position of that bright star, but notes that is indeed southeast of the center. I've estimated the center to be two arcmin north of that star, and see it as an elliptical cluster of stars, 16 arcmin by 11 arcmin, elongated in PA = 135 degrees. This seems to be more or less what JH was describing. Whether it is a real cluster needs to be determined by a careful study of the stars in the area. My guess is that the core really is a cluster, but that many of the stars in the outskirts are just random field stars. ===== NGC 4351 = NGC 4354, which see. See also NGC 4367. ===== NGC 4352. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4353 = IC 3266. Peters's position is not very good. That led Schwassmann to miss the NGC number when he picked up the galaxy in three of his 6-inch plate zones from Heidelburg. Still, Adelaide Ames caught the identity when she prepared her Virgo Cluster catalogue in 1930. However, CGCG muddied the picture again by calling the galaxy "I3265 = I3266 (= N4353?)". IC 3265, which see, is a star north-northwest of the galaxy. The nucleus is quite faint; this has made it difficult for the centering algorithms of the automated surveys to find an accurate position. I have finally chosen the GSC-A position. That seems to pretty well represent the galaxy. ===== NGC 4354 = NGC 4351. Swift's position is only 5 seconds of time following N4351, and his note "in vacancy" makes the identity virtually certain. Had there been another galaxy nearby, Swift would have noted that instead. The identity was first suggested in one of the Harvard papers (Dreyer has an IC2 Note that Frost did not find the object on a 4-hour plate), and was copied into Carlson's 1940 paper. RC1 and RNGC picked it up from there. ===== NGC 4355 = NGC 4418. This is one of the 30-odd nebulae that David Todd ran across during his search for "the trans-neptunian" planet in 1877 and 1878. He estimated very crude positions for most of them using the setting circles on the USNO's 26-inch refractor. Fortunately, he also gave us sketches of the star fields around each of the objects and, often, measurements of RA differences between the stars and the nebulae. Unfortunately, these were not enough to allow Dreyer to identify the objects. Dreyer included in the NGC some objects that he thought might be "novae", but he skipped others that seem, to me, just as likely to be included -- and that were, in fact, new nebulae. In any event, Dreyer did include Todd's 17th nebula as NGC 4355. Using the sketch of that nebula's field, it's easy to see on the Sky Survey prints/films (even in a DSS field at least 15 arcmin on a side) that it clearly refers to NGC 4418. See NGC 3604 for more about Todd's search. ===== NGC 4356 = IC 3273, which see. ===== NGC 4357 = NGC 4381, which see. ===== NGC 4358, and NGC 4362 = NGC 4364. All three numbers are credited to WH, who recorded them as follows on 17 April 1789: WH delta RA delta Dec Star Desc III 799 1m 12s p 1d 36m n 71 UMa vF, vS III 800 1m 09s p 1d 37m n 71 UMa } } Two, both cF, cS, R. III 801 " " " " } The "lE" notation in NGC comes from John Herschel, who observed only two of these on 1 May 1831: JH WH RA (1830) NPD Desc 1230 III 799 12 15 42.1 30 40 32 F, lE, the p of 2 1233 III 800 12 15 50.1 30 41 32 eF, the last of 2 (the other was III 799; III 801 not seen). Note the relative positions, "p of 2" and "last of 2." These notes about the positions should take precedence over any comments about shape since apparent axis ratios depend on the limiting isophote of a galaxy (the deeper the isophote, the rounder a galaxy appears). This is how matters stood when JH put together the GC. There he assigned three numbers (GC 2914, 18, 20) assuming that all three objects existed, and added a comment about the RA of the first possibly being a minute later than listed. I've not been able to track the source of this comment, as all the positions measured up to that time are pretty much in agreement. The other pre-NGC observation was by d'Arrest, who also saw only two objects here (on 4 Oct 1866): h H RA (1860) Dec 1230 III 799 12 17 28.1 +59 09 38 1233 III 800 12 17 32.1 +59 08 02 d'Arrest's descriptions and comments are all in Latin which I don't read. I can make out the comment "III 800 is south-following" in the description for III 799, and there is a four-line note about III 801 in the description for III 800 (which also mentions the star just to the south). Unfortunately, Lord Rosse and his observers did not look at these galaxies. Based on JH's work on the GC, Dreyer again assigned three numbers. Later (WH's Scientific Papers, and MN 73, 37, 1912), he noted: "Very probably the word `two' refers to III 799 and III 800, as nobody seems to have seen three nebulae in the place." Both Bigourdan and Reinmuth also only saw two of the three -- though Bigourdan claimed to have missed N4362 while Reinmuth could not find N4364 -- so that has added to the confusion. As Glen (Deen) noted, there are indeed three galaxies here; all are mentioned in CGCG (only two entries, but the north-preceding is a pair), MCG (all three), and UGC (the brightest is UGC 7479; the other two are in the Notes). RNGC, of course, assigns one number to each galaxy (but not the ones you might expect; more below). Modern data for the three galaxies are as follows: RA (B1950.0) Dec D d m(p) CGCG MCG Other 12 21 34.56 +58 39 27.5 0.3 x 0.2 16.9 293-017w +10-18-037 NPM1G +58.0113 12 21 39.15 +58 39 43.7 0.9 x 0.7 14.4 293-017e +10-18-038 UGC 7479 12 21 48.45 +58 38 15.6 0.7 x 0.4 15.2 293-018 +10-18-039 --- Positions are from GSC, diameters are my own measured on POSS, and are roughly at the 25th mag/sq arcsec isophote. Magnitudes are from the CGCG. For 293-017 which has a combined magnitude of 14.3, I've assumed that the surface brightnesses of the two components are equal, and have simply apportioned the combined magnitude according to the ratio of the areas of the galaxies (the first covers 9% of the total area covered by both, so has 9% of the total light, etc.). In short, these numbers support Dreyer's contention that WH actually saw only two galaxies -- the third is most likely much too faint for WH to have seen (JH, d'Arrest, and Bigourdan, using similar-sized telescopes, certainly did not see it; it was also apparently not recorded on the plate which Reinmuth examined). Therefore, only the two brighter galaxies get NGC numbers. Since it is clear that the relative orientation seen by everyone (except WH) is nw-se, the nw object must be h1230 and the se must be h1233. Since Dreyer has assigned these to N4358 and N4362, respectively, the last number (N4364) is left by itself. This one comes only from WH's description ("Two"). Since it is the last number in the sequence of three, I propose that it be put on the 2nd galaxy. Finally, RNGC did its usual hatchet job on the field, leaving a mess behind. It put one number on each of the three galaxies, managing only one correct out of the three: N4358 = CGCG 293-017w -- wrong. N4362 = CGCG 293-018 -- right. N4364 = CGCG 293-017e -- wrong. ===== NGC 4359. This galaxy is nearly edgewise and shows no obvious nucleus. There is a knot at the northwestern end of the central "bar" that several of the automated surveys picked up, but the center of the "bar" is best represented by one of the 2MASS PSC positions. This is the one I finally chose for the galaxy. ===== NGC 4362 = NGC 4364. See NGC 4358. ===== NGC 4364 = NGC 4362. See NGC 4358. ===== NGC 4365. There is just the slightest whisper of a possibility that this may also be IC 3281 (which see) -- but I did not write it loudly enough for you to hear. ===== NGC 4367 is probably the double star near d'A's position. In his description, d'A has this 35 seconds following a brighter nebula also found by him. That nebula is NGC 4351, and the separation is correct. Also, d'A has two accordant observations of N4367, so it is reasonably clear that he saw a real object, nebulous or not. The second of the two stars is quite faint, though. This may account for Frost's not finding any nebulosity at d'A's position on a 4-hour Bruce plate. Dreyer, in an IC2 note, has this nebula among several that Frost did not find. ===== NGC 4368 is probably NGC 4325. Dreyer notes that WH's "... RA is possibly 1 min too great (see under II 64 [= N4352]). Not found by Bigourdan." The note for N4352 reads, "RA is 1 min too great. The same is the case with several other nebulae observed this night (Sw 174, March 15, 1784) ..." The actual differences between WH's RA's and the true RA's varies from about 40 sec to well over a minute for the seven objects mentioned by Dreyer (N3810, N4067, N4294, N4313, N4352, N4371, and N4429). If N4368 is indeed N4325 (discovered by d'A), its difference is 1 min 28 sec, not an unreasonable value considering the other errors. The declination is 1.5 arcmin different, well within WH's usual observing errors. I can only speculate about the source of WH's error, since it does not affect every object observed in Sweep 174. Thus, it could be a correction due to a mistimed comparison star -- but different affected objects have different comparison stars. Or it could be that WH forgot to make the correction to the center of the field for the objects -- but since his field was only 15 arcmin across, the largest correction could only be half that value, or a bit less than 30 seconds of time at a declination of +10 deg. Also, this is a necessary correction for every object which does not sweep across the field center -- which is almost every object observed. I can't see WH forgetting such an obvious correction for a few objects in a sweep, but not for most others. Whatever caused the errors, the fact that they exist is clear, and N4368 seems to be affected. Finally, there is also the faint possibility that N4368 is N4320 (also found by d'A). However, that is fainter and smaller than N4325, and WH's Dec would be off by 3.0 arcmin rather than the 1.5 arcmin to N4325. The RA would also be further off, too, 1 min 40 sec, so overall, I do not think this is a strong possibility. ===== NGC 4371. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4374 = M 84. See NGC 4443 and NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4376 is a late-type spiral with considerable patchiness across its face. There is a trace of a nucleus in the infrared images, though this may just be another of the knots. Nevertheless, I've chosen it to represent the galaxy; it's near the geometric center of the isophotes and gives an acceptable position for the galaxy. ===== NGC 4381 = NGC 4357. The equality was suggested by Dreyer, and confirmed by Bigourdan who did not find N4381, but who did discover N4357 and made eight observations of it on two different nights. Dreyer suggests a simple 1 minute error in WH's RA. Since the descriptions match, the identity is almost certain. ===== NGC 4382 = M 85. See NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4387. See NGC 4407 = NGC 4413, and NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4388. See NGC 4407 = NGC 4413, and NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4390 = IC 3320, which is probably also = IC 3319 (which see). WH's position is enough off that the identity of the nebula was questioned by d'A (he got it right). Dreyer adopted d'A's position. See N4398 for more on this field. ===== NGC 4393 is identical to neither IC 3323 (a foreground star) nor to IC 3329 (a knot in the galaxy); CGCG is wrong. See the IC numbers for a bit more. ===== NGC 4394. See NGC 4397. ===== NGC 4395. See NGC 4399 which, along with NGC 4400 and NGC 4401, are HII regions in NGC 4395. ===== NGC 4397 is an asterism of three stars, located where Tempel saw it, "... 5 seconds following, 6 arcminutes north of II 55 [N4394]." I had earlier called this an asterism of four stars, but I now (April 2015) see only three on the DSS1, DSS2, and SDSS images. (The SDSS actually shows a fourth, but it is an extremely faint red star, perhaps seen just above the plate limit of the DSS2R. It certainly would not figure in Tempel's object.) Another apparent asterism exists another three arcmin to the north -- but only on the POSS1 red plate and, therefore, on the DSS. It looked real enough to fool me, but Malcolm caught it. My thanks to him for letting me know about my mistake. ===== NGC 4398 is a star. d'A has only one observation of this, found while he was looking for N4390 (which see). His description for N4398 includes mention of two stars to the southwest: an 11th magnitude star 16.35 seconds preceding, and a 13th magnitude star 11.60 seconds preceding his "nebula." Both stars are there (the separations for 1950 are 16.58 seconds and 11.18 seconds, both well within the error bounds of the expected values). So, the identification is secure. ===== NGC 4399, NGC 4400, and NGC 4401 are bright HII regions in NGC 4395. WH found N4395 and N4401, the main body of the galaxy and the brightest HII region, recording them as two nebulae under one number. Thus, the NGC has the WH numbers given rather awkwardly as "V 29.1" and "V 29.2." Lord Rosse (or his observers) found the other two objects, but did not measure their offsets from nearby stars or the nucleus. Instead, they printed a diagram which can be pretty easily related to the sky, in spite of some distortion. The lack of offsets also allowed Dreyer to give only approximate positions for N4399 and N4400. Lord Rosse's sketch of the field, however, makes the identifications clear. ===== NGC 4400. See NGC 4399. ===== NGC 4401. See NGC 4399. ===== NGC 4402. Here is another of the 11 galaxies seen by Johnstone Stoney on the night of 13 April 1849 that Dreyer does not credit to "LdR" in the NGC (Steve Gottlieb noticed the omission; see also NGC 4306). The galaxy is [eta] in the sketch, and Stoney describes it like this: "... hollow in the middle, probably a ring seen obliquely, F * n of its middle, seen best with the single lens..." His comment "hollow in the middle" clearly refers to the dust lane, and the star is indeed 1.3 arcmin to the north. See also NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4405 = IC 788, which see. ===== NGC 4406 = M 86. See NGC 4443 and NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4407 = NGC 4413. This came about because JH has two observations of this (and NGC 4388 in the same sweeps) which he did not equate. N4407 comes from the second observation and is described only as "The following of 2." His description for N4388 reads, "vF, E, the p of 2, dist about 30 sec in RA." He marks the RA of N4407 with two colons (very uncertain), and the declination with a plus/minus sign. So, it is clear that he measured only N4388, and simply estimated the position of N4407 from the preceding galaxy. The only galaxy that JH could have seen roughly 30 sec following N4388 is N4413, so the identity of N4407 is almost certain. The identity with N4413 was suggested at both Lick and Harvard. Both are quoted in Carlson's 1940 list. As a result of JH's observations, N4388 has two separate GC numbers (2949 and 2956). Curiously, Dreyer caught the identity of the GC numbers for N4388, but not for N4407 (= GC 2968) and N4413 (= GC 2974). Perhaps he was a bit confused by WH's observations here which (correctly) call N4388 the south- following of a pair (with N4387) rather than the preceding of a pair with N4413 as noted -- also correctly -- by JH. ===== NGC 4409 = NGC 4420. WH found NGC 4409 (= III 17) on 23 Feb 1784; he has only the one observation of it. He found NGC 4420 (= II 23) a month earlier on 24 January, and made a second observation of it sometime later. JH found N4420, but not N4409, so speculated that "This (N4420) may possibly be identical with III 17." Since there is nothing at all in either of WH's positions (that for N4409 precedes the galaxy by 33 seconds and is 2.5 arcmin north; and that for N4420 follows the true position by 14 seconds and is 3.8 arcmin south), and since there are no other galaxies in the area that WH could have seen, JH's suggestion is probably correct. Dreyer carried it over into the NGC description, and from there, it was adopted by Reinmuth, Harvard, Carlson, and RC1. ===== NGC 4410. JH described this as "eF, vL, R, gbM; 2 1/2' diam" from a single observation on 28 January 1828. But the pair of galaxies is just an arcminute across. Did JH actually see one of the NGC 4411 pair (which see for confusion of its own)? I frankly doubt it. The surface brightness of the NGC 4410 pair is considerably higher, and JH's position is much closer to them than to NGC 4411. There is also no problem in JH's position. The offset from the nearest "standard" star in his sweep, 12 Virginis, is +12m 55s, -1d 15m 25s; so, the reduced position for NGC 4410 is within 2 seconds of time and 6 arcseconds of the position that JH himself reduced considering all the stars in the sweep. This pair of galaxies is interesting in its own right as an interacting pair with a very faint distorted corona. There is a bridge leading to IC 790 and CGCG 070-079 beyond that, also connected by a bridge. All of the galaxies have similar redshifts in the 0.023 to 0.026 range, so they are all part of the same group. ===== NGC 4411 = IC 3339 (which see) and "NGC 4411B." We know now that there are a pair of low-surface-brightness spirals here, one at the position of NGC 4411 = IC 3339, and the other at the position of Bigourdan 298 noted by Dreyer in an IC2 Note for N4411. Dreyer, however, assumed the two positions to apply to just a single galaxy, so there has been some confusion in the modern catalogues as to which galaxy bears the number NGC 4411. The solution I've adopted is to follow the historical positions -- Peters's and Schwassmann's clearly apply to the preceding of the pair of galaxies -- as well as to give a bit of credit to Bigourdan for finding the second galaxy. The slightly awkward numbering that apparently started with Holmberg in his 1958 monograph on galaxy photometry puts the numbers "N4411A" and "N4411B" on the galaxies. This was adopted by the de Vaucouleurs for RC1, and persisted through RC3 -- so we're probably stuck with it. Still, as I said, it gives some credit to Bigourdan for digging out the eastern galaxy. It is actually about half a magnitude brighter than the western, though I think that the star superposed on the western might shield the galaxy from sight in some circumstances or enhance it in others. ===== NGC 4413 = NGC 4407, which see. ===== NGC 4417 is not NGC 4437 = NGC 4517. A typo in Dorothy Carlson's list of NGC corrections of 1940 is responsible for the confusion in some mid-20th century catalogues. See NGC 4437 for more. ===== NGC 4418 = NGC 4355, which see. N4418 itself has notes in the GC and NGC. There is enough slop in the original position from WH, and enough of a difference between his description and JH's, that JH was not convinced of the identity between his nebula and his father's. In the event, he sorted it out correctly, and Dreyer -- citing additional observations by Lord Rosse and d'Arrest -- confirmed the identity. The NGC 4355 label comes from an observation by David Todd. See the brief discussion under that number, and under NGC 3604, for additional identification adventures in Todd's list. ===== NGC 4420 = NGC 4409, which see. See also NGC 4910. ===== NGC 4424. See IC 793 and IC 3366. ===== NGC 4425. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4426 = NGC 4427 is a double star. This is one of the very few objects which shows a bit of haste on Dreyer's part in his final work on assembling the NGC. D'Arrest's and Bigourdan's positions and descriptions are clearly pointing at the same object, and the two objects are adjacent in the NGC, yet not until he saw the proofs did Dreyer add the note "These are evidently identical (note added in press)." In IC2, he has an additional note: "According to M. Wolf (list IV.) only two stars 36 arcsec apart, n and s." The stars are actually separated by only 13-14 arcsec, and Wolf's southern position points to empty sky -- this may be a defect on his plate. In any event, there is no doubting the identification as both d'A and Bigourdan have two observations of the double, and both describe it as a small cluster, perhaps with nebulosity involved (there is none). There is a mistake in Bigourdan's notes, though his published position (in his first Comptes Rendus list) is correct. He chose an anonymous comparison star for NGC 4426, noting that it is "+1m 31s, -7 arcmin" from BD +28 deg 2116. The correct distance in RA is -29.8s, so Bigourdan may have meant to write -31s. Note, too, that Bigourdan came back to this after the NGC was published to measure NGC 4426 on 17 April 1888. His earlier position for NGC 4427 is from one estimate on 22 April 1886 with respect to NGC 4408 (which is 52s west and 2 arcmin north according to Bigourdan). The descriptions for both observations are virtually identical. ===== NGC 4427 = NGC 4426 (which see) is a double star. ===== NGC 4429. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4430. See NGC 4453. ===== NGC 4435. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4437 = NGC 4517 with a 5 minute error in the RA. Reinmuth first suggested the identity, but when Dorothy Carlson picked it up, a typo in her list made N4437 = N4417. This was copied into RC1 where it hung on until I fixed it for RC2. JH's description leaves no room for uncertainty about the identification; he describes the galaxy and the nearby star perfectly. His father's position and description are also appropriate for the galaxy and star. Interestingly, WH lists it as the 5th of his class of "planetary" nebulae, apparently because of the supposed interaction with the nearby star. This shows that his classification system had not yet settled down early in 1784 when he first saw the galaxy. WH's reference to "Fig. 6", by the way, points back to his 1784 paper, "Account of some Observations tending to investigate the Construction of the Heavens," where he first discussed the "stratum" of nebulae that we now call the Local Supercluster. This paper has sketches of 15 of his nebulae and clusters, unfortunately poorly reproduced in the 2003 reprinting of the Scientific Papers. Michael Hoskin's 1963 book "William Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens" has a far better reproduction of WH's sketches as its Plate 1. The position I've adopted is for the stellar object near the center of the bulge, just south of the dust lane. This may be a superposed star, but is nevertheless at an adequate position to represent the galaxy. ===== NGC 4438. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4441. This galaxy is apparently a "merger remnant", the result of a collision and gravitational merger of two (or perhaps more) galaxies. It's central regions are patchy with dust and a few blue knots, and the inner corona is disturbed. There are spectacular plumes and loops in the outer corona that show up especially well on the blue DSS2 image. Also see NGC 4512 where this figures in the identification of that galaxy. ===== NGC 4442. See IC 793. ===== NGC 4443 has usually been taken as a star following NGC 4435 and NGC 4438. Exactly which star, I'm not sure as there is nothing at the NGC position aside from a 19th or 20th magnitude object. In any event, the only evidence we have for this object comes from one observation in 1849 when LdR's observer, Johnstone Stoney, sketched it as the last of 11 nebulae. The sketch is fairly crude and the distances between the objects do not correspond well to what we see on the sky. Indeed, LdR himself says, "Found the objects as in sketch, positions being put down very rudely." Nevertheless, we -- and Dreyer who identified the objects for LdR's 1880 monograph -- can recognize the brightest galaxies in an east-west swath of sky through the center of the Virgo Cluster. His objects are as follows (in his order): alpha = NGC 4305 beta = NGC 4306 gamma = NGC 4374 delta = NGC 4387 epsilon = NGC 4388 zeta = NGC 4406 eta = NGC 4402 lambda = NGC 4425 theta = NGC 4435 iota = NGC 4438 kappa = NGC 4443 As I noted above, there is nothing in the exact position of LdR's "kappa", but NGC 4461 is not too far away. It is certainly not a big stretch to get to this galaxy, and its description is a relative fit to the others. The objection to this is that only one galaxy is shown in the sketch, whereas there are, of course, two on the sky: NGC 4458 is not too far northwest of N4461. Given the hurried nature of the observations, though, it may be that Stoney thought N4458 to be a star. It is considerably smaller and fainter than its companion, so this is a possibility. So, I'm going to take N4443 to be a duplicate discovery of N4461, but with some uncertainty. ===== NGC 4445 = IC 793, which see. ===== NGC 4446 and NGC 4447. I grumble and gripe about Swift's poor positions all through these notes, but I do have to take my hat off to him for his keen and practiced eyes. These two galaxies surprised me as I worked my way through the many brighter objects in the plane of the Local Supercluster -- who could have found these faint things? Lewis Swift! He was using a 16-inch refractor that was apparently quite good optically, and his observing location and techniques insured that he could fairly often pick up 14th and even 15th magnitude galaxies. While it is true that his positions for even these two lack the final polish of a micrometer, they are good enough to insure that we can recover the galaxies today. Unfortunately, the Mt. Wilson and Harvard observers saw the two positions southeast of the pair and decided that both apply to the single brighter southeastern object. Swift's description for NGC 4446 should set any such concerns aside: "eeF, pS, R, ee diff; D, triplicity suspected; 2 = mag sts range with it n and s; 3012 [NGC 4459] in field f." For NGC 4447, found the same night (17 April 1787), he merely says, "eeF, pS, R; ee diff." (I think he put the second galaxy in his 6th list to insure that it did not get lost in the description for the first.) The note about the stars is not as clear as it could be -- the two stars are directly north of NGC 4447 and are aligned with the galaxy. In any event, Swift certainly saw the two objects here, and gave us positions just good enough to recover them. ===== NGC 4451. See IC 793. ===== NGC 4453. While there is probably no question about the identity of JH's object, h 1283 (but see below), there is a problem with WH's (H II 26). Dreyer notes in the Scientific Papers that the observations in Sweep 131 are "very unsatisfactory" (a criticism that extends to Sweep 132 as well; see NGC 4577 for more). This was the only nebula found in Sweep 131, so there is little to compare it with aside from the "unsatisfactory" observations of the stars. The galaxy that JH found is "eF" in his catalogue -- this does indeed match CGCG 042-121 with V = 15.4 and B = 16.1 (SDSS) -- while WH's is "pB, pL, brighter toward the following side." Dreyer suggests a possible identity with NGC 4430, but that is 20 arcmin in Dec off the position of N4453 and 30 seconds off in RA. He also has a note from WH that there is a "very large star" 9 minutes, 6 seconds preceding and 22 arcmin south of the nebula. Assuming that N4430 is indeed WH's object, the description fits. But there is no star at his offsets for N4430. The star that Dreyer suggests (BD +6 deg 2588) is 7 minutes, 29 seconds preceding, and 13 arcmin south. A somewhat brighter star (HD 107258) is at 12 19 55.3, +05 40 18 (J2000.0) -- 7 minutes, 31 seconds preceding, and 35 arcmin south. Neither is a good match for WH's offsets. JH's much fainter galaxy (the one that I've adopted as NGC 4453), however, is 9 min 0 sec following, and 28 minutes north of BD +6 deg 2588, a better -- though not prefect -- match to WH's observation. But the galaxy can hardly be the one WH saw; it is far too faint, too small, and is not at all brighter toward the east. There is also a double star a couple of arcminutes northwest that could well be the object JH saw. The stars are considerably brighter than the galaxy at V = 14.4, B = 15.1; and V = 15.0, B = 16.1; again, from the SDSS. At the end of all this, I'm leaning toward adopting NGC 4430 as II 26, though with considerable uncertainty. At this point, you are probably asking "Why bother? We know where NGC 4453 is." Knowing which galaxy is II 26 will help with the puzzle of NGC 4577 = H III 13, found the same night, and supposedly referred to the same star. See NGC 4577 for more. ===== NGC 4456. Courtney Seligman has just pointed out (July 2019) that the NGC RA for this galaxy is 2 minutes of time too large. Dreyer copied the RA correctly from the GC, and there is no glaring error in the sweep (number 564 from JH's time at the Cape), nor in his CGH monograph. Unfortunately, I've not yet been able to identify the stars in JH's sweep -- they are several degrees away from the galaxy -- so I've not yet re-reduced JH's position. When I've managed that, I'll update this note. ===== NGC 4458. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4461 is probably also NGC 4443, which see. ===== NGC 4464. See NGC 4471. ===== NGC 4470 = NGC 4610, which see. This may also be IC 3281 (which also see), but that is extremely unlikely. It is certainly not IC 3417 (which finally see) -- that is a star 2.3 arcmin north of the galaxy. ===== NGC 4471 is apparently one of the two stars flanking Schmidt's estimated position given in AN 64, 1, 1865 (my thanks to Wolfgang for digging out this paper). This is one of four "very faint and small objects" in the vicinity of M 49 that Schmidt found and measured in the summer of 1861, and remeasured a year later. D'Arrest points out (less than two months later in AN 64, 125, 1865) that three of the nebulae (N4464, N4470, and N4492) were observed by WH and JH, and suggests that the fourth -- this one, N4471 -- is perhaps H II 498 (but that is NGC 4470; this was a confused field until LdR sorted it out -- see Dreyer's note for M 49 in the NGC). D'A goes on with his own observations of the field, noting that he could find neither II 498 nor Schmidt's object at their published discovery positions. There is a considerably fainter compact galaxy about 1.5 arcmin on to the northwest from the stars, but Schmidt has no other objects in his list that are that faint. I doubt that he could have seen it with the 11-inch refractor that he was using in Athens. Finally, this is the only object without a micrometric measurement in Schmidt's table of 27 stars and nebulae around M 49 (he also did not measure a declination for one of the stars, but gives an RA). Precessing his positions for the other nebulae, I found that the declinations are very good, but the RAs are systematically too large by 0.6 to 0.7 seconds of time compared to modern positions (the RA for his comparison star is perhaps affected by proper motion). Unfortunately, this does not help us decide which star (if either) Schmidt mistook for the nebula, as both are much further from his position than this. ===== NGC 4472 = M 49 is the brightest galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. See NGC 4471, NGC 4486, NGC 4548, and NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4480. See NGC 4301. ===== NGC 4482 = IC 3427. WH's RA's for many of the objects in Sweep 174 on 15 March 1784 are too large by up to a minute of time. In this case, the error is only 30 seconds. See IC 3427 for more. ===== NGC 4485 is the irregular companion galaxy to NGC 4490. There is no obvious nucleus, just a north-south string of blue knots across the middle of the galaxy. The position for the galaxy that I've finally adopted -- from GSC-A -- is just west of one of these knots. ===== NGC 4486 = M 87 is the second brightest galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. NGC 4472 = M 49 is the brightest. Also see NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4486A is an 11th magnitude star superposed on a 14th magnitude galaxy. The SDSS and the 2MASS images show the two objects reasonably well-separated. The individual positions are not very easy to determine; none of the automated surveys have split the objects, so the resulting positions are dominated by the brighter star. ===== NGC 4486B is a prototypical red compact elliptical galaxy. Indeed, some might argue that it is THE prototype of the class, close enough to be well-studied, but far enough to appear nearly stellar in the various sky survey images. Another similar galaxy, much closer to us, is M 32. Moved out to the distance of the Virgo Cluster, it would appear very similar to NGC 4486B. ===== NGC 4490. See NGC 4485. ===== NGC 4492 = IC 3438, which see; and NGC 4471. ===== NGC 4496. There are three galaxies in the printed edition of RC3 bearing this number. One of these, VCC 1364 at 12 28 56.4 +04 14 54, has nothing to do with the real NGC 4496 at 12 29 06.6 +04 12 54. This is the brighter of a double galaxy, so is usually called NGC 4496A. Delete the NGC number from the listing for PGC 41450 in RC3. Also delete T, L, B(T), and m'(25). Also see NGC 5765 for a note about the objects noted as double by WH or JH, but given only a single position. Finally, see NGC 4505 for a genuine NGC mystery related to this galaxy, rather than simple modern bungling. ===== NGC 4497 is also IC 3452, which see. ===== NGC 4501 = M 88. See NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4505 is probably NGC 4496. Originally found by William Herschel on 23 February 1784, there is no trace of this on the sky. Yet John Herschel claims to have observed it, too, and it is listed in Reinmuth's photographic reobservation of the Herschel's nebulae. After that, however, it disappears from the catalogues except to appear in errata lists. RC1, for example, considers it to be identical to NGC 4496. Sir William has only one observation of it, and that is referred to a different star than his discovery observation of the nearby NGC 4496, of which he has 3 observations altogether. His description of NGC 4505 -- "vF, cL, r" is brief and could just be construed as a hurried observation of NGC 4496. The positions are not that much different, either. Sir John's single observation places NGC 4505 close to his father's position. His description is even briefer: "eF; the f of 2 in the field." His right ascension is marked "+-", so it is likely that we shall never know exactly what he saw, but there are several faint stars near his place that he could have mistaken for an "eF" nebula. Reinmuth's extended description, "eeF, eS, R; = neb * or *14; *8 sp 7', *11.8 sp 2'; NGC 4505, *11.8, *8 in line" pinpoints a 14th magnitude star near Sir John's place. This may be the star that Sir John himself saw and mistook for a nebula. We are left, then, with Sir William's lone discovery observation to explain. Arguing against the equality with NGC 4496 are the different positions, and the fact that both nebulae were found the same night. However, since different comparison stars were used, it is indeed possible that the two observations that night refer to the same object -- NGC 4496. Until Sir William's original observing notes can be scrutinized, I'll adopt the identity as a working hypothesis. ----- Looking into this again after being directed to LdR's observation of NGC 4496, I checked the sweep and found some very odd things there. This is 13th object in the sweep (not counting a meteor), and is said to be 11' 45" following 16 Virginis and north by 38 arcminutes. Just a minute of time earlier, however, is another nebula at exactly the same distance north of 16 Vir. Reducing these observations gives positions about 30 seconds east and west of NGC 4496 where there is nothing on the sky. Assuming errors of 1 degree in recording the NPD also leads to areas on the sky where there is nothing. Did WH somehow manage to record NGC 4496 twice? The descriptions are suspiciously similar, too. For the western object, he writes, "A faintish pL nebula, it seems to be resolveable [sic]", and for the eastern, "vF of a consid size; it seems to be resolvable [sic], is more F than the foregoing and rather larger." Reading through the rest of the sweep also leads to some rather curious circumstances. For instance, about 45 minutes before WH recorded these two nebulae, he wrote, "An accident happened to the pulleys, but being set right immediately, I suppose it has made no change, neither in time nor zero." Other objects in the sweep referred to 16 Vir are WH Position Modern Position W - M RA (2000) Dec RA (2000) Dec DelRA DelDec NGC 4409 12 26 25 +02 29.1 12 26 58.5 +02 29 40 -33.5 -34 NGC 4412 12 27 09 +03 57.2 12 26 36.1 +03 57 53 32.9 -41 NGC 4457 12 29 09 +03 34.2 12 28 59.0 +03 34 14 10.0 -02 NGC 4527 12 33 40 +02 37.4 12 34 08.4 +02 39 14 -28.4 -110 This is an early sweep, and WH was recording his objects with a precision of only of 15 seconds. In this set of seven observations -- the star and the six nebulae -- only 16 Vir, NGC 4409, and NGC 4527 were recorded to that accuracy. The other four are given to a full minute of time only. It's no wonder that their RAs are not very good. In any event, all this convinces me that WH somehow did in fact record NGC 4496 twice in the sweep, once ahead of its true meridian passage, and once following. I also note that his published offset for NGC 4496 comes from another later sweep where the galaxy was referred to 60 Virginis. That observation is considerably more accurate than the ones recorded here, one of which was apparently taken as the first observation of NGC 4496. So, the conclusion is that NGC 4505 is indeed identical to NGC 4496. ===== NGC 4508 is a double star at JH's position. He describes it as "vS, R, a * 13 with a burr." This is just how it appears on the POSS1 as the two images are merged. ===== NGC 4509. JH's position is just one minute of time too small. As far as I can determine, this was first noted by Bigourdan who wrote, "This nebula, far removed from the GC position ..." His measured position is correct. Reinmuth flagged the corrected position, and Seyfert (yes, the same Seyfert) noted it in his paper in HA 105, 219, 1937. This is where it was picked up later by RC1. MCG and UGC have the correct position with no comment about the source of the correction. The galaxy itself is an odd little irregular galaxy with no trace of a nucleus, but with many patches and knots over its face. The position I've chosen is from GSC-A; it seems to represent the object as well as possible given the lack of structure. ===== NGC 4510. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4512 is probably NGC 4521. Steve Gottlieb has questioned the identity of NGC 4512 as given in the modern catalogues. CGCG, UGC, and MCG all point to UGC 7700 at 12 32 32.9 +63 52 47 (J2000) as N4512. However, this object is a pretty faint, low surface brightness spiral, and does not at all match JH's description, "pB, R, psbM; 20[arcsec]". Reinmuth (1926) suggested that this may be the same as NGC 4521. I looked at the field, and at all the objects which John Herschel found in Sweep 412 (N2909, 3231, 3392, 3394, 3622, 3682, 4108, 4210, 4221, 4332, and 4441, as well as 4512; there are no significant systematic offsets in Sir John's positions from the true positions), and only see one other possible candidate for N4512: N4510 (curiously, d'Arrest calls this a very small cluster; his position is accurately on the galaxy, though). This is just 30 arcmin north of JH's position, and a bit preceding. However, JH calls the object "pB", the same as N4521 which is 1.2 mag brighter than N4510. Aside from that, though, JH's description fits N4510 pretty well. But the magnitude difference makes me cautious about accepting the identity. In addition, N4521 is closer to JH's position for N4512. Everything considered, N4521 is the better match, so is the object that I've adopted as N4512. ----- Just to complicate things even further ... As Dreyer notes in the NGC, JH's polar distance for NGC 4521 is south by 20 arcminutes from d'A's and WH's. Given that correction, however, the above discussion works for the field, and the general conclusion that NGC 4512 is identical to NGC 4521 holds. ===== NGC 4513 has a remarkably thin, and very beautiful, faint blue outer ring. It could well serve as a prototype of the lenticular RINGED galaxies. It shows well on the DSS2B image. Coincidentally, it is just south of the other type of RING galaxy, in this case, VII Zw 466 = A1229+66. The origin of the rings is completely different. In the case of NGC 4513, gravitational resonances internal to the galaxy generate the ring, while VII Zw 466 is probably the result of a nearly direct collision between two galaxies, at least one of which is a spiral. ===== NGC 4517 is also NGC 4437, which see. ===== NGC 4520 = IC 799, which see. ===== NGC 4521 is probably = NGC 4512 (which see). ===== NGC 4526 is probably also NGC 4560 (which see), and figures peripherally in the identification of M 91; see NGC 4579 for that. ===== NGC 4529 may be UGC 7697, but the evidence is not very good. Here are my comments in response to a question about this object from Steve Gottlieb in October 1999. Though WH has two observations, neither of his positions fall near any galaxy he could have seen. His earlier position (which JH and Dreyer discount in notes in the GC and NGC; more below) is 1m 20s east and 4.9 arcmin north of UGC 7697, and 2m 39s east and 12.0 arcmin south of CGCG 129-006. His second position is 1m 14s east and 20.5 arcmin north of UGC 7697, and 2m 23s east and 2.4 arcmin north of CGCG 129-006. None of this inspires much confidence in WH's positions, especially given that Dreyer quotes his first observation in the Papers: "Suspected a L, eF neb, but tho' I looked at it a good while, I could not verify the suspicion, nor could I convince myself that it was a deception." Dreyer than adds "P.D. apparently only approximate," but the offset in the table is not marked with a colon. UGC 7697 is somewhat larger and brighter than CGCG 129-006, and has a slightly higher surface brightness. So, if WH actually saw a galaxy in this area, I think it is more likely that he saw UGC 7697. All in all, however, the situation for making a clear identification for NGC 4529 does not look good, hence the several question marks in the main table. Some additional comments: The NGC note is a slightly reworded version of JH's GC note with the "erratum" in WH's published list merged in. Fortunately, Dreyer decided to give WH's original data in the main table of his 1912 reprinting of WH's first list. Along with the second observation from 6 years later in Dreyer's notes, we apparently have all the data WH collected. Bigourdan's position -- 12 33 56.4, +20 31 20 for J2000.0 -- which Dreyer cites in support of WH's second observation, is about 15 arcseconds off a faint star that Bigourdan must have just barely seen, if, in fact, he saw anything at all. Wolfgang's position makes his galaxy = MCG +04-30-003 = CGCG 129-006. I do not know where the PGC's separate entry for NGC 4529 comes from, but the position is closer to PGC 41463 = CGCG 129-006 than to anything else, so that probably means that PGC 41482 = PGC 41463. ===== NGC 4530 = 8 Canum Venaticorum (Beta CVn) is a star, though JH recorded a "nebulous atmosphere" around it on four different nights. Dreyer notes in the NGC that of the late 19th century observers, only Tempel suspected the nebulosity, and even he was unsure about its existence. There is no trace of nebulosity on modern photographs, and the star's spectrum shows it to be a normal G0 V main sequence star with no strong emission lines. Thus, it was probably just JH's bad luck to have seen the star on four poor nights. Or his imagination may have been triggered three times by one poor night. In any event, there is only a star here. ===== NGC 4536. Note that the galaxy with this name included in UGC is actually an incorrect reference to IC 3556, which is not NGC 4563. See both the other NGC number and the IC number for more discussion. ===== NGC 4537 is probably the same galaxy as NGC 4542. John Herschel's place for N4542 is good, but Swift's place for N4537 is 49 seconds off in RA (his declination is good, however). Swift's description fits the galaxy nicely, including his note "nearly between two stars." In addition, this galaxy is the brightest of the three in the area. However, south-preceding N4542 is MCG +09-21-019 = CGCG 270-010. It, too, could easily fit Swift's description: "eeF, S, R." It is also "nearly between two stars." However, if this identification is correct, then Swift made errors in both RA (30 seconds of time) and Dec (8.6 arcmin). The galaxy is also considerably smaller and fainter than N4542, and would have been more difficult to dig out. Thus, I'm sticking with the idea, suggested by Steve Gottlieb, that N4537 is most likely the same galaxy as N4542. The RNGC suggestion that it is MCG +09-21-022 is very unlikely as this is the faintest galaxy in the group. ===== NGC 4542. See NGC 4537. ===== NGC 4544. See NGC 4740. ===== NGC 4547 and 4549. These two galaxies are differently identified in CGCG and MCG. William Herschel found both, measured the brighter south-preceding galaxy twice, but the fainter north-following one just once. His positions reduce to (equinox 1950) N4547 12 32 32 +59 11 N4549 12 33 04 +59 15 These are not the positions used in the NGC, however. Those come from John Herschel. Precessing his measurements gives (again for 1950.0) N4547 12 32 26 +59 10.8 N4549 12 32 33 +59 12.4 At least his relative orientation of the objects is the same as his father's, even though he places the two objects much closer together. And the positions of NGC 4547 agree to within the errors of the Herschels' observations. Checking the GSC and the Sky Survey shows five galaxies in the area. MCG labels MCG +10-18-068 as N4547 and the preceding of the pair MCG +10-18-069 and -070 as N4549, while CGCG labels the pair as NGC 4547/9. The GSC positions of these and the other two in the area are MCG +10-18-068 12 32 16.24 +59 13 35.7 MCG +10-18-069 12 32 34.39 +59 11 31.4 = CGCG 293-030w = N4547 MCG +10-18-070 12 32 37.27 +59 11 16.6 = CGCG 293-030e MCG +10-18-071 12 32 54.48 +59 19 23.4 = VII Zw 473 MCG +10-18-072 12 33 04.01 +59 13 29.4 = N4549: There is also a faint star very close to JH's differential position from the brightest of these five galaxies. It's my guess that this is the object he mistook for the second of the two nebulae. Looking at the descriptions that WH gave the objects, it seems likely to me that the preceding of his two is identical with the brightest object in the area, namely MCG +10-18-069. If so, then WH's relative and absolute positions for the second object point exactly at MCG +10-18-072, making it N4549. The galaxy is faint enough, however, that it ought to be checked at the eyepiece. While I am reasonably sure about its identity as the second of the Herschels' nebulae here, I've still flagged it with a colon. ===== NGC 4548 is almost surely M 91, though M 58 = NGC 4579 (which see) has also been suggested as M 91. Curiously, M 58 plays a role either way. The story -- as far as I've traced it -- was first presented by William C. Williams of Fort Worth, Texas in a letter to Sky and Telescope (December 1969 issue, page 12). Briefly, he suggests that Messier used M 89 = NGC 4552 as a reference object to find offsets to M 91 -- but then mistakenly applied those offsets to M 58 to come up with the position for M 91 that he lists. Going through this exercise, Williams shows that Messier's position for M 91 can be retrieved in just this way. Further, he suggests that applying the offset to the correct comparison object (M 89) leads us to the correct object. In other words, Messier misidentified his comparison object (if you've read more of these notes, you'll know that he was not the last to do so!) Let's repeat Williams's calculation with positions at the epoch of Messier's observation. I'm using the facsimile of Messier's paper from the Connaissance de temps for 1784 reproduced in "The Messier Album" by Mallas and Kreimer (Sky Publishing, 1978); this gives the date of observation as 18 March 1781. With the positions of the three relevant galaxies in hand for that equinox (precessed from my selected positions for the objects), here is what we have: Galaxy RA (B1781.21) Dec Notes M 91 12 26 28 +14 57.1 From Messier's table NGC 4548 12 24 24.6 +15 42 15 Precessed from J2000 NGC 4552 12 24 36.6 +13 45 51 Ditto; M 89 NGC 4579 12 26 40.4 +13 01 28 Ditto; M 58 The offsets of M 91 from NGC 4579 -- -12.4 seconds and +1d 55m 38s -- applied to NGC 4552 yeilds 12 24 24.2, +15 41 29 which is very close to the position for NGC 4548. The total V magnitude of NGC 4548, 10.2, is within range of whatever telescope Messier was using that night (a similar galaxy M 98 = NGC 4192 has V_T = 10.1; Messier measured its position less than a month later on 13 April 1781). So, this is at least a plausible scenario, and is probably the correct explanation for M 91 even though it requires several assumptions about Messier's observing techniques (see above, and more at NGC 4579). Owen Gingerich (in his introduction to "The Messier Album") suggests M 58 itself for M 91. That is almost certainly not correct; see NGC 4579 for that story. Finally, see NGC 4571 for more on M 91. ===== NGC 4549. See NGC 4547. ===== NGC 4552 = M 89. See NGC 4548 and NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4554 is another of Tempel's lost nebulae. He has only a brief note about it in his fifth paper, calling it a very faint nebula 50 seconds preceding, 2.5 arcmin south of NGC 4567/8. This position is in the middle of an extraordinarily empty field with nothing brighter than 19th magnitude for 2-3 arcmin in all directions. Checking the signs of Tempel's offsets turned up nothing that matched in any of the other three possible positions. There is a double star (noted in the position table) that might be his object. It has a faint double galaxy about an arcmin to the northwest, and an even fainter double star a bit further away to the southeast -- these may have enhanced a nebulous appearance a bit. However, adopting the brighter double as Tempel's object would require not only changing the sign of the declination offset, but its size and the size of the RA offset as well. So, I doubt very much that the double is Tempel's intended object. Until Tempel's original observing records can be examined for possible errors, this object will have to remain "lost." ===== NGC 4555 = IC 3545. Here is another case where Wolf made a mistake in identifying an NGC object on one of his plates. He put the NGC number on a faint object (this one about 2 arcmin south of the brighter galaxy) that could not have been seen by the Herschels, and recorded the correct brighter object as a new nebula. This led Dreyer to give it the IC number, apparently without checking the descriptions too closely. Wolf's error could have been a simple blunder, but I suspect that he simply put too much faith in the NGC position without thinking too much about the relative visibility of the objects. This has left his object number 210 without either an NGC or IC number. For lack of a better alternative, I've labeled it "NGC 4555A". ===== NGC 4556. See NGC 4563 and IC 3556. ===== NGC 4557 is a triple star. Bigourdan did not provide a precise micrometric offset for this object, but his approximate offset with respect to NGC 4558 (-3 seconds of time, +2.8 arcmin), combined with his description ("Trace of nebulosity which may be accompanied by a star...") clearly identifies the triple as the object which he saw. The MCG and PGC identifications are wrong. Wolf's identification in the Konigstuhl Nebel-List No. 4 is correct, where he calls it stellar and places it between two stars (he obviously resolved the triple while Bigourdan did not). The GSC includes 2 of the three stars, one being the central one measured by Wolf. The position that I adopted some time ago for N4557 is for this central star. Now (April 2015) with positions for all three stars in hand, I've adopted my usual mean value. ===== NGC 4558. Discovered by John Herschel north-following NGC 4556 (found by his father), and given a position 6 seconds following and two arcmin south of the true position, its identification is nonetheless clear as Dreyer gave d'Arrest's micrometrically measured position more weight than Herschel's. The NGC position is only 2 seconds and 0.8 arcmin from the true position. This has not prevented its misidentification in MCG and PGC. MCG gives the name NGC 4557 (which see) to it; PGC follows suit, and tries to save the number 4558 by applying it to IC 3556. Both catalogues are wrong. Wolf's identification in the Konigstuhl Nebel-List No. 4 is correct. ===== NGC 4559. IC 3550, 51, 52, 55, and 63 are HII regions in the arms of this galaxy, found on a Heidelberg plate by Max Wolf. IC 3554 and 3564 are stars superposed on the galaxy. See the IC numbers for a bit more information. ===== NGC 4560 is probably NGC 4526 with a 2 minute error in the RA. Discovered by WH, it was also observed by JH who gave a similar description. JH marked the RA uncertain, however -- I wondered if he simply adopted the RA measured by his father. So, I checked the sweep. The RA was apparently measured normally, but no wire number is given. Instead, an illegible note appears in the column usually devoted to the wire number. This same note appears in many other of JH's observations. And in his "fair copy" of sweeps 1 to 107, the letter M occurs often, apparently meaning the middle of the field. In that case, the RA will indeed be approximate; and it does indeed appear in brackets on the page in the sweep showing the final reduced place. The declination reading is in also brackets, usually a sign that the measurement is uncertain, or is taken from JH's "working list", prepared from WH's observations. The reduced declination, however, is not marked as unusual in any way, so the brackets in the observation column are (currently) mysterious, at least to me. In any event, the declinations of N4526 and N4560 are the same, and the 2.0 minute RA difference is exact to within the errors. Whatever happened, there is nothing in the Herschel's position for N4560. The description agrees with the appearance of NGC 4526 with one exception -- N4526 is quite extended, while N4560 is described by both Herschel's as "round." This is the main problem with the notion of the identity, but I find the exact RA difference, combined with identical declinations, arguing pretty compellingly for the identity. ===== NGC 4561 = IC 3569. Found by WH on 27 April 1785, observed again by JH in two sweeps, and rediscovered by Frost on a Harvard plate, there are no other galaxies in the area as bright or as large as this. It is a peculiar Magellanic irregular with two bright knots; one of these is a superimposed star. These would have led to JH's seeing the object as mottled, and Frost's description of two stars involved also fits. Curiously, JH's mean position from his two observations is within a few arcsec of the modern position from GSC, while Frost's photographic -- and presumeably more accurate -- place is further off. It may be this that led both Frost and Dreyer to include the galaxy in the second IC. ===== NGC 4563. This was found by d'Arrest whose two micrometrically measured positions are very good; the average is used in the NGC. CGCG still applied the number to the wrong galaxy (IC 3556). Nilson copied this identification into the UGC notes for NGC 4556 (= UGC 7765), but transposed two numbers so that his identification is doubly incorrect: "N4536"! Wolf's identification in the Konigstuhl Nebel-List No. 4 is correct. The galaxy itself has two stars superposed on the west side. I had earlier noted one of these as a possible companion when I looked at this on the DSS, but on the more recent sky surveys, it is clearly a star. ===== NGC 4567. See NGC 4554. ===== NGC 4568. See NGC 4554. ===== NGC 4569 = M 90. See NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4571 = IC 3588. Found by WH, and reobserved by JH and d'A, the galaxy's NGC position is pretty well determined. Nevertheless, Schwassmann measured the 14th magnitude star superposed about an arcmin west of the nucleus and called it N4571 in his 1902 survey of the Virgo Cluster. He also picked up the galaxy itself at its correct position, and included it in his list as a new nebula. Thus, the equality of the numbers. This galaxy (also = GC 3113) has also occasionally been mentioned as a possible candidate for M 91, first by Dreyer himself in the NGC. See his note there where he equates NGC 4571 with GC 3120 = h1367 (more below) and actually favors the idea the M 91 was a comet. He must have realized that NGC 4571 is too faint (it has V_T = 11.3 in RC3) to have been seen by Messier. M 91 is almost certainly NGC 4548; see that and NGC 4579 = M 58 for more. JH was curious about M 91, too. He gave it a place in his 1833 catalogue (it is h1367) using Messier's position and saying A bright * 9m, and 2 or 3 smaller; close by the B star and sp it, is a small well defined [sic] body which may be a close double star, and np it is also a F neb. The place set down is that of Messier's 91st neb, but I do not think this can be that object, whose existence even seems questionable. In the GC (it is GC 3120), he is even more definite: "np this place is a F neb; *not* [JH's italics] M. 91, whose existence ?." The idea of M 91 as a comet was eventually taken up by Flammarion in his lists of Messier's objects (Bull. Soc. astr. France, 31-35, 1917-21), and by Shapley and Davis (PASP 29, 177, 1917; they refer back to NGC 4571). See also Glyn Jones, "The Search for the Nebulae", Alpha Academic, 1975; and his "Messier's Nebulae and Star Clusters", Cambridge, 1991 for more on M 91. ==== NGC 4572 = CGCG 352-037 is a galaxy northwest of NGC 4589. It was seen by both WH and JH, but Bigourdan's observation under "NGC 4572" actually refers to a star a few arcmin southeast of the galaxy. The galaxy has also been taken by some to be identical to IC 802 (which see). But Bigourdan found that (also a star) the same night as his observation of "NGC 4572", and his precise measurements of both show that they cannot be the same. ===== NGC 4577 is possibly WH's first observation of NGC 4591. He saw H III 13 (N4577) only once, and has this to say about it, "A minute before [the transit of 24 Vir], I suspected a S. neb., but while I took out another piece to examine it, I lost it again." Dreyer added the comment about the transit of 24 Virginis, and also noted, "P.D. not taken, clouds. Not seen with certainty by Bigourdan." N4591 is not the only galaxy in the area that WH might have seen, but given his position, and the uncertainty in it, it is perhaps the most likely. There are some other problems with the observation that deserve mention, though. First, the star name, 24 Virginis, is no longer used in the catalogues, and I asked Brent Archinal to dig out the current identification. The star is actually a duplicate entry for 5 Boo (apparently due to a reduction error on Flamsteed's part), so does not exist in Virgo at all. That being the case, there seem to me to be three explanations for Dreyer's comment about the star: 1) the number is a typo; 2) Dreyer misread WH's observation; or 3) WH misidentified the star. I think that a typo is unlikely -- the only stars likely to be seen about the time that WH made the observations are R Vir or 31 Vir. Getting a typo out of either of those would be difficult. I also think that an error on Dreyer's part is unlikely -- his work on the NGC and ICs is clear proof that he rarely made transcription errors. This leaves the most likely explanation of an identification error by WH. In any event, the comment about "24 Vir" does not help us much in pinning down NGC 4577. Other relevant thoughts and comments: WH's sweep covered a 2 degree wide strip roughly between +5 deg and +7 deg (1950). The value of the polar distance in the NGC comes from the GC, but JH does not indicate how he arrived at it (or the description, "vF, vS"). If we take the polar distance to be the same as WH's comparison star (11 Vir) for the RA, then the declination would be 15 arcmin south of the GC and NGC value. Unfortunately, WH has only one other nebula found the same night, II 26 (which is probably = NGC 4430 and is discussed under NGC 4453). That is plagued by similar problems, so offers little help in resolving the case of NGC 4577. There are no galaxies in any of the places that come from WH's observations, from GC/NGC, or from attempting to correct WH's RAs using the idea that H II 26 = NGC 4453 (which see) is actually NGC 4430. However, the approximate RA that we do have, along with the constraints on the declination, point to either NGC 4580 or NGC 4591 as probably being the object that WH saw. Since N4580 is H I 124, and N4591 is III 504, the sparce description of N4577 strongly suggests that it is N4591. Pending a different identification of "24 Vir," I'm going to take N4591 as the second nebula that WH found on the night of 28 Jan 1784, though with considerable doubt still attached. ----- Checking CH's fair copy of the sweep in September 2016 turned up no additional information. So, the NGC 4591 identity remains the most likely. ===== NGC 4579 = M 58. This may also be M 91 according to Owen Gingerich in the introduction to "The Messier Album" by Mallas and Kreimer (Sky Publishing, 1978, taken nearly word for word from his Sky and Telescope article in the October 1960 issue, page 196). His reasoning goes like this: Messier picked up all the really bright galaxies in the Virgo Cluster -- there are, according to Gingerich, 13 that Messier saw (not including M 91). He goes on to say, "Inspection of the Palomar Sky Survey photographs shows that Messier was astonishingly successful in locating all the bright galaxies in this area, while he invariably missed the fainter ones. There is simply no bright nebula omitted by Messier that could conceivably be identified with M 91." Well, not quite. First, I count 17 "bright" galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. Here is a list with total visual magnitudes from RC3: Messier NGC V_T Messier NGC V_T Messier NGC V_T 49 4472 8.4 84 4374 9.1 89 4552 9.8 58 4579 9.7 85 4382 9.1 90 4569 9.5 59 4621 9.6 86 4406 8.9 98 4192 10.1 60 4649 8.8 87 4486 8.6 99 4254 9.9 61 4303 9.7 88 4501 9.6 100 4321 9.4 -- 4526 9.8 91: 4548 10.2 Messier not only found 16 galaxies here, but he actually missed a 17th, NGC 4526 that he could have "easily" picked up just over a degree southeast of M 49. I'm not going to suggest that NGC 4526 is the missing object -- it is too far south to have figured in Messier's sweeping on the night of 18 March 1781. This assumes, of course, that Messier actually did sweep in the same way that the Herschel's did, using his telescope essentially as a transit instrument. Even Gingerich who examined Messier's extant records in Paris is not sure exactly how Messier observed on this night, but also assumes sweeping. Let's also assume, following Gingerich's reasoning, that Messier does indeed sweep along a north-south line, picking up stars and nebulae as they appear to move westward across the sky. If this is the case, then the eight Virgo galaxies found on 18 March (M 84 to M 91), listed in RA order in the Connaissance des temps (reproduced in the Messier Album) were measured in that order. M 91 is 40 seconds of time east and 34 arcminutes north of M 90 in the list; there is, of course, nothing there. Gingerich suggests that M 58 is the next bright galaxy in RA order in the Virgo Cluster within the zone swept up by Messier that night. It's position differs from M 90's by 53 seconds east and 1 degree 21 arcminutes south. Gingerich noticed that the difference in declination between M 58 and Messier's position is about 2 degrees -- the actual difference is 1 degree 55 arcminutes -- and suggested a simple digit error of +2 degrees in Messier's published declination. We can test this by asking how good are Messier's positions for the other seven galaxies he measured that night. Here is the table, first for the seven galaxies with the mean differences in RA and Dec shown with the standard deviation and the mean error; next, with modern data for M 58 = NGC 4579 and for NGC 4548 to show the differences with Messier's position for M 91: Galaxy Messier's Position Modern Position Me - Mo M NGC RA (B1781.21) Dec RA (B1781.21) Dec DelRA DelDec s ' 84 4374 12 14 01 +14 07.0 12 13 58 +14 06.1 +3 +0.9 85 4382 12 14 21 +19 24.4 12 14 21 +19 24.3 0 +0.1 86 4406 12 15 05 +14 09.9 12 15 06 +14 09.6 -1 +0.3 87 4486 12 19 48 +13 38.0 12 19 45 +13 36.1 +3 +1.9 88 4501 12 21 03 +15 37.9 12 20 56 +15 37.8 +7 +0.1 89 4552 12 24 38 +13 46.8 12 24 37 +13 45.9 +1 +0.9 90 4569 12 25 48 +14 22.8 12 25 47 +14 22.2 +1 +0.6 ----------- Mean Del +2.0 +0.69 Sigma1 +-2.5 +-0.59 SigmaN +-0.9 +-0.22 Galaxy Messier's Position Modern Position Me - Mo Notes M NGC RA (B1781.21) Dec RA (B1781.21) Dec DelRA DelDec s o ' -- 4579 -- -- 12 26 40 +13 01.5 (-12 +1 55.6) Actual pos. 91 (4579) 12 26 28 +14 57.1 (12 26 40 +15 01.5 -12 -4.4) N4579 + 2d (91) 4548 (12 24 24 +15 41.5) 12 24 25 +15 42.3 -1 +0.8 M pos corr. after WCW The mean differences are +2s and +0.7 arcminutes, both significant at the 2-sigma level (compare to SigmaN). [Incidentally, for a single observation on this night, this means that Messier's positions are good to within 0.6 arcminutes in both coordinates, considerably better than either of the Herschels managed, though that comparison is hardly fair. We'll need to find Messier's standard deviation -- equivalent to Sigma1 in the first table above -- using ALL of his positions, not just those from one night in a restricted area of the sky.] This also means that if Gingerich is correct, the offsets for M 91 -- shown in parentheses in the first two lines of the second table above -- are completely at odds with Messier's measurements for the other galaxies. The 2-degree error Gingerich suggests still leaves large negative differences in RA and Dec for M 58, while the mean differences are positive by much smaller amounts. So, I do not think that M 58 is M 91. The hypothesis put forward by William C. Williams that it might be NGC 4548 (which see) strikes me as much more plausible, given that the position for M 91 derived from his idea -- shown in parentheses in the third line of the second table above -- is well within the statistical errors of Messier's positions for the other seven galaxies measured that night. In addition, NGC 4548 is very nearly identical in brightness to M 98, so Messier could have seen it with whatever telescope he was using then. I do agree with Gingerich, however, that Dreyer's ideas that M 91 might be NGC 4571 (which see) or a comet are almost certainly not correct. ===== NGC 4580. See NGC 4577. ===== NGC 4582 is a star found by Sidney Coolidge with the Harvard 15-inch refractor. He has a micrometrically measured position that agrees well with the modern positions. In common with many of the other "nebulae" discovered in the 1850s and 1860s with this telescope, there is no nebulosity associated with the star. ===== NGC 4589. See NGC 4572. ===== NGC 4591 may also be NGC 4577, which see. ===== NGC 4593. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4600 is probably not also NGC 4624, which see. ===== NGC 4602 may also be NGC 4604, which see. Also see NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4604. SEGC is the source of this identification. However, since I have not seen Peters's Copernicus articles, I cannot be sure that this is the correct object. Since the NGC position is just 10 arcmin out (another digit error), however, this identification is a good guess for the time being. Let the RC3 stand as is for now. ----- I was a bit chagrined to see that AH has a note, "Identified as a galaxy by H. Corwin ... who indicates the NGC declination is in error by 10 degrees." This of course, is wrong -- the NGC position is just 10 arcminutes out. There is no trace of this in either of Peters's Copernicus papers, so this may be a private communication to Dreyer. As Dreyer was co-editing Copernicus with Copeland, Peters was already in contact with him, so this is a reasonable assumption. It may not be right, but it is reasonable ... In any case, the NGC position quoted in the big table is indeed just 10 arcminutes too far north. I still favor a digit error in this case. ----- Courtney Seligman however, favors an even simpler hypothesis first mentioned by Steve Gottlieb: NGC 4604 is a duplicate observation of NGC 4602. Peters's position is about 2 arcminutes east-south-east of NGC 4604. Everyone, including me, missed this until Steve and Courtney independently noted it. I do have to wonder why Dreyer did not make a note in the NGC about the near- coincidence of the two nebulae. Did he perhaps put a high value on Peters's observations? Or did he perhaps have a low opinion of them? Either way, I would have expected some kind of brief note alerting the NGC user. Another possibility is that Peters picked up NGC 4602 *and* NGC 4604, so of course the latter object must be a "nova". But a glance at his papers in "Copernicus" puts that idea to rest -- there is no trace of 4602 (= GC 3140) in either paper. In other words, there is no evidence that Peters observed NGC 4602 at all, at least under the numbers by which it was known at the time. Peters's lack of a decscription (as Dreyer gives it in the NGC) is not helpful, either. So, NGC 4604 being just a reobservation of NGC 4602 is a strong possibility, and I've put appropriate colons and question marks on the identifications. I am grateful that Courtney mentioned this to me in an email in March 2020. ===== NGC 4610 = NGC 4470. Dreyer, in his notes in the Scientific Papers, shows convincingly that H II 19 = N4610 is the same galaxy as NGC 4470, and that WH himself was at least aware that he had made a mistake in identifying one of Messier's nebulae in the Virgo Cluster. Dreyer reproduces one of WH's sketches of the I 7 and II 19 field -- it matches the appearance of M 49, an accompanying star, and NGC 4470 perfectly. ===== NGC 4611 = IC 805, which see. ===== NGC 4618 = IC 3667, which see. I've included the southeastern arm because Vorontsov-Velyaminov has it as one of the components of his "interacting galaxy pair" VV 073. It is not a separate galaxy, of course, but on the POSS1 prints, could perhaps be mistaken for one. ===== NGC 4621 = M 59. See NGC 4579. ===== NGC 4624 = NGC 4665 = NGC 4664 (which also see). JH notes that the "RA [is] ill-observed," but did not mark it uncertain. During the same sweep, he made a one-degree error in the polar distance for NGC 4636, an error that he himself suggested, and that Dreyer finally rectified for the NGC. Thus, NGC 4624 cannot be NGC 4636 as suggested by Reinmuth and adopted by RNGC. Instead, it is most likely NGC 4665 which JH described as "B, pL" in two other sweeps. This, and the appearance of the bright bar of the galaxy, matches his terse description for N4624, "B, E." In addition, his declination is correct for all three observations. There is a faint possibility that N4624 is N4600, but JH's two observations of that make it "F, S" in contrast to his note on N4624. In addition, the declination of N4600 is off JH's measured dec for N4624. ===== NGC 4625 = IC 3675, which see. ===== NGC 4629. Courtney Seligman has reminded me that this object, discovered by d'A on 19 Feb 1863 with the 11-inch Merz refractor in Copenhagen, is about 27 arcminutes north of d'A's position. D'A's RA is correct, as is his original description in AN 1500 where this is included in his list of new objects as No. 156: "pF, pL, E, 2^d^ class, lbM." His complete description in Latin is in his big 1867 monograph: "Grandiuseula, forma olivae; secundae classis. Non adeo multum lucidior in medio. Annon bicentralis? Propediem indaganda euratius." Courtney translates this to read "Pretty large, [olive-shaped], second class. Not much brighter in middle. Perhaps binuclear? (I) intend to study (more) soon." Apparently, d'A never got back to this, more's the pity. JH included the AN 1500 list in the GC where this object is No. 3163. He unfortunately changed d'A's "pF" to "pB", which Dreyer copied into the NGC, and which led Courtney to suggest that the object is simply nonexistent. Courtney also suggested that d'A's single observation was perhaps the result of an internal reflection in the Merz refractor. While I think this is unlikely, it is obviously still a possibility -- stranger things have happened to others exploring the sky! While I had run across the declination problem decades ago, and made a penciled notation in my copy of the NGC, I missed this object when I went back through the catalogue in the early 2000's, so it had no note in these files. More particularly, I missed JH's change of the description. Courtney rightly questioned me on this -- hence this note. In the end, though, d'A's description fits the galaxy pretty well as it might have appeared in his telescope, so I am going to accept the identification as I have in the past -- though with colons appended to acknowledge the problem with the declination. ===== NGC 4633 = IC 3688, which see. Also see NGC 4740. ===== NGC 4634. See IC 3688 = NGC 4633. ===== NGC 4636 is not NGC 4624, which see. ===== NGC 4637 and NGC 4638. The brighter of the two galaxies now carrying these numbers was found by WH (he actually found it twice, so it has two entries in his catalogue). The fainter, a much smaller spiral of fairly low surface brightness with a faint star superposed west of the nucleus, was seen only once in 1854 by Lord Rosse (or his observer), who noted only a "Double nebula; faint nebulosity connects them." Given this sparce description, Dreyer assigned an approximate position to the fainter and called it NGC 4637, giving NGC 4638 to WH's brighter object. He also added a note in the NGC suggesting that Lord Rosse had actually seen M 60 (NGC 4649) and NGC 4647, which are just 12 arcmin northeast. This would explain why no other observers (aside from LdR and Herman Schultz) recorded the object as a double nebula. Schultz's observation is an interesting one. He has an extensive note in which he claims that the nebula is clearly double (in spite of relatively poor seeing on the night of observation), nearly on the parallel, and with a star of 10th magnitude north-preceding (which there indeed is; there is no such star north-preceding N4647 and M 60). Like LdR, he says nothing about the relative brightness of the objects, but records his surprise that neither of the Herschel's noticed that the object was double and extended. Curiously, he gives measurements (on two different nights) of only one of the nebulae, though he specifically mentions that the micrometer wire, aligned with the equator, nearly bisected both objects. His reduced position is that of NGC 4638, the brighter object. In his Virgo Cluster survey, Schwassmann listed only one object here and assigned it the first NGC number of the pair. His description fits the brighter object, however, and he noted that the identity was uncertain and that the object could be NGC 4638 instead. His position is peculiar, too: the RA is that of the fainter eastern galaxy, while the declination is that of the brighter western object. Remembering that Schwassmann's plate was taken with a 6-inch lens, I suspect that the plate recorded only the brighter object and that Schwassmann made a measurement or reduction error in his RA. Dreyer, however, had only Schwassmann's entry to go on, not a modern sky survey. So, he could not know about the potential problems in the Heidelberg observation. Thus, he adopted Schwassmann's observation as applying to the fainter object, and put a note in IC2 to that effect. My own guess, without Schultz's confirmation of the duplicity of the object, would have been that Dreyer was correct in his supposition about LdR having misidentified the objects he observed in 1854. If this is the case, then NGC 4637 is a reobservation of NGC 4647 (found by JH) rather than the very faint companion to NGC 4638. However, Schultz's observation seems to clearly point not to M 60 and its companion, but to N4638 and its companion. Still, LdR and Schultz could have seen the fainter object -- both have others just as faint in their lists -- especially since it is enhanced by the superposed star, so the "classic" numbering for this pair of galaxies is still a possibility. I should note, too, that there has been some confusion in the modern catalogues as to which number applies to which object. Dreyer unfortunately confused the issue a bit with his IC2 note, and also with his original numbering: JH had the fainter companion coming second in the GC. Nevertheless, Dreyer clearly meant NGC 4638 to apply to WH's object, so that is the identification I've adopted, leaving NGC 4637 as probably applying to the faint companion -- or possibly to NGC 4647. ===== NGC 4638 is probably also NGC 4667, which see. Also see NGC 4637. ===== NGC 4644. This and five other galaxies (NGC 4646, NGC 4669, NGC 4675, NGC 4686, and NGC 4695) were found by WH on the nights of 14 April 1789 and 2 April 1791. Due to an error in copying the position of the comparison star (eta UMa), CH's reduced declinations of the galaxies found in 1791 are about 10-12 arcminutes too far north. This resulted in WH believing that he found only five galaxies in the area rather than six, as the incorrect position for one object falls nearly on the correct position (from the 1789 observation) another object. It was left to JH, d'A, and Dreyer to sort out the problems, but they managed it eventually. Details are given in Notes to the NGC, Dreyer's notes in the Scientific Papers, and in his short paper of NGC corrections in MNRAS 73, 37, 1912. In the end, the NGC has all the galaxies in nearly the correct positions, but it was not until 1912 that Dreyer was able to attach the correct WH numbers to the appropriate galaxies. This galaxy also has a faint companion which we now call "NGC 4644B" seen by Dreyer in 1878 with LdR's 72-inch telescope. The story is in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 4646. WH found this galaxy on 2 April 1791, but due to an error (perhaps by CH? If so, it is one of the very few errors that she made in reducing her brother's observations of nebulae) in the position of the comparison star used on 14 April 1789, he incorrectly assumed it to be identical to another object that he found on that earlier night. JH discovered the problem, and d'A and Dreyer himself helped to clean it up. See NGC 4644 for a bit more. As with NGC 4644, Dreyer also found a companion (we now call it UGC 7905) to this galaxy. That story is also in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 4647. Is NGC 4637 (which see) possibly an observation of this object? ===== NGC 4648. See NGC 4972 = NGC 4954. ===== NGC 4649 = M 60. See NGC 4579 and NGC 4637. ===== NGC 4650A and NGC 4650B = NGC 4661, which see. ===== NGC 4652. There is no doubt about the identity of the galaxy that JH found; his position and description "Not vF, pL, gbM. It is almost 6' dist np two B sts 8 and 10m" are accurate. The NGC comment "2 B sts 6' np" comes from LdR via Dreyer. Lord Rosse has the position angles of the two stars 180 deg out. He also comments at the beginning of the observation "Front view." This may have inverted the field of the 72-inch from its normal orientation, leading LdR to the wrong PAs. ===== NGC 4661 has often been referred to in the literature as "NGC 4650B". At first glance, we might think this alternate designation comes from deV's "Stromlo 13" monograph on the southern Shapley-Ames galaxies. But there is no trace of it there. "NGC 4650B" does appear, however, in RC2. Tracing it back from there leads to a paper in Astrophysics and Space Science (volume 19, page 387, 1972) by J. L. Sersic and E. L. Aguero -- who refer to it only as "G7" in a southern chain of galaxies. So, the awkward notation does indeed originate in RC2 (sigh). My guess is that Antoinette noticed that it and "G5" are near NGC 4650 and, following Gerard's example, put "NGC 4650A" on "G5" and "NGC 4650B" on "G7". So how did everyone miss the original NGC number? The NGC declination is 17 arcmin in error, but is not marked as uncertain, nor is it truncated as many of the NGC positions are. The only indication in GC that something is amiss is the number of observations used: "1::". Otherwise, that, too, is given to the usual full precision that JH adopted. Going on back to the CGH observations, though, we find that JH has only one observation of the galaxy in June of 1834, just a few months after his arrival at the Cape. And the position there is given only to a full minute of time in RA, and an arcminute in NPD. Both are marked with plus-minus signs, and JH has no notes of explanation. Given that, and the fact that "NGC 4650B" is the only galaxy around that JH could have reasonably seen -- his object nearly identifies itself in spite of the crude position. ===== NGC 4663 = IC 811, which see. ===== NGC 4664 = NGC 4665 = NGC 4624 (which see; that's another story). This is another of WH's early discoveries with a large error in the position. There is nothing at WH's given position. However, in this case, it is a simple digit error in WH's recording or reduction. Dreyer correctly convinced himself that it explains the missing NGC 4664 as a prediscovery observation of NGC 4665 (= H I 142). The star 4.8 seconds preceding (mentioned in both of WH's observations) is the clincher here, even if the exact 10 arcmin error in Dec was not in itself enough. ===== NGC 4665 = NGC 4624 = NGC 4664, both of which see. ===== NGC 4667 is probably = NGC 4638 with a 2 minute 30 second error in RA. The Dec's and descriptions are accordant, and there is nothing else in the area that JH might have described as "B, S, R, psbM; 15 arcsec." So, while the identity is a guess on my part, I think it is reasonable one. ----- JH must have a mistake in his reduction as this object occurs in the sweep (number 61 in Sweep 242) 4 minutes 31 seconds of time preceding NGC 4689. Yet his reduced positions differ by only 2 minutes 32 seconds of time. As it happens, NGC 4638 is almost exactly 5 minutes of time preceding NGC 4689, much closer to JH's observed difference. Given the additional 30 second error, I'm still not totally convinced that N4667 is another observation of N4638, but it seems more likely than any other explanation. ----- I've re-reduced JH position using 41 Virginis -- also in Sweep 242 as number 63 -- and find for 1830 12 34 14.7, +12 22 22 or for J2000 12 42 48.4, +11 26 26. This is just the position of NGC 4638, so JH did indeed make a mistake in his reduction. NGC 4667 is indeed identical to NGC 4638. ===== NGC 4669 was actually discovered by WH on 14 April 1789, though only d'A is credited in the NGC. See NGC 4644 for more on the tangle that JH, d'A, and Dreyer unknotted. This galaxy also figures in the lack of an NGC entry for UGC 7905. See that story in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 4675. See NGC 4644. ===== NGC 4676 = IC 819 and IC 820. WH has his object "much extended [in the] meridian", while JH says "query if not bicentral". Both are correct. When Rudolf Spitaler found the pair again in 1892, he saw and measured both galaxies, so they have two IC numbers rather than just one as the NGC does. Unfortunately, Spitaler has the pair only a minute-plus of time preceding his comparison star -- the actual offsets are 2 minutes-plus. The identity, however, is obvious. It was first suggested by Reinmuth, then was picked up for RC1 and MCG. ===== NGC 4678 = IC 824, which see. ===== NGC 4686 is in the field of IC 3791 = NGC 4695. See the story under the IC number for more. Also see NGC 4644 where it figures obliquely in what may be one of CH's very rare errors in reducing her brother's observations. ===== NGC 4689. See NGC 4752. ===== NGC 4692 = NGC 4702, which see. Also see IC 823 for a different confusion. ===== NGC 4695 = IC 3791, which see. Also see NGC 4644 where, like NGC 4686, it plays a role in WH's mistaking two separate galaxies as a single object. ===== NGC 4697. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4702 = NGC 4692. D'Arrest has just one observation of NGC 4702 on 4 March 1867, calling it "Doubtless a very small, very much compressed cluster." There is nothing at all in his place. Exactly a minute of time preceding, though, is NGC 4692 which d'A has on two other nights, 16 March 1864 and 3 March 1867. Given the three or four nearby field stars around the galaxy, it is possible that d'A could have believed that he had found a small cluster. While the identity is not certain, I'm confident enough of it to have included it in the position table without colons or question marks. My thanks to Wolfgang who asked about this object. ===== NGC 4705. See IC 825. ===== NGC 4707 = DDO 150 has a superposed star near the center. From WH's terse description, "S, stellar," it's obvious that he saw the star and just a bit of the galaxy. So, I've assigned the position of the star to WH's "NGC 4707", and provided another entry for "NGC 4707 gal" to represent the low surface brightness dwarf galaxy that we now see behind the star. ===== NGC 4711 = IC 3804, which see. ===== NGC 4714. See NGC 4722 and 4723, and NGC 4802, below. ===== NGC 4718 may be IC 825 (which see), but is probably not. ===== NGC 4722 and 4723. These are two nebulae found by Tempel, described in his fifth paper simply as "Following [GC] 3244 [NGC 4714] are two more small class III nebulae which I have sketched, but have still not been able to measure" (my translation of his note in German). Dreyer adopted the north polar distance of N4714 and added a bit to its RA (with a plus-minus sign to indicate the uncertainty) to arrive at an approximate position for Tempel's two nebulae. Bigourdan was the next to look for them, but his two measurements of "NGC 4722" fall in a blank region of the sky east of NGC 4714. His table is pretty well scrambled at this point, with the declination of his comparison star given only as "+27" and the footnote "Position deduced from that of the nebula, given in the NGC." He has no errata, so just what his comparison object actually was is still a mystery. He's a bit better for N4723 (N4714 is the comparison object), but he only estimates the offset. The nearest object to his estimated position for that is a faint star. In the end, he's no help here. (One other curiosity: he claims, in the "Other Observer's" column that N4722 was seen at Leander McCormick. But the object is not listed in any of the LM papers on nebulae.) He also found his 302nd new object, which became IC 3833, in the area. He gave no indication, though, that it might be one of the NGC objects (see the IC number for a bit more information about this). That was left to Herbert Howe, who independently discovered and measured the same galaxy that Bigourdan picked up. Howe suggested, in a roundabout way, that it might be one of NGC 4722 or 4723. Howe's comment made it into the IC2 Notes, but Dreyer did not notice that Howe's position was identical to that from Bigourdan for IC 3833. It was probably for this reason that MCG adopted the identity "N4722 = I3833", a reasonable choice under the circumstances. Finally, working on SEGC, I also adopted the MGC's identifications, though without much thought. I did translate Tempel's note at that time, but of course found it to be little help. It's clear, though, that we do not (yet) know which nebulae Tempel found. There are actually four galaxies following NGC 4714 that he might have seen. The two brightest are IC 3833 and NGC 4748, the two closest to NGC 4714 are MCG -02-33-024 and -026. It is tempting to simply put the NGC numbers on the two closest and be done with it. But ... We need to find out if Tempel's sketches still exist. These would clear up questions about not just these two, but several other of his discoveries, too. That was where things stood in the early 2000s when I last looked at these objects. During my 2014-15 sweep for accurate positions, it finally occured to me that Tempel described these as WH "class III" objects. This is the same as NGC 4714, so we would not expect the two to be much fainter. This leads me to suggest that Tempel's objects are indeed IC 3833 and NGC 4748, the brightest of the objects "Following [NGC 4714]." We still need to see Tempel's sketches, of course, but I have added entries in the position table to reflect my latest thinking on this. ===== NGC 4723. See NGC 4722. ===== NGC 4724 is the fainter of a double galaxy seen by both Herschels. It figures in the identification of NGC 4726, NGC 4740 = NGC 4727, and IC 3834, all of which see. ===== NGC 4726. There has been confusion over this number ever since Howe's first note appeared in Volume 58 of the Monthly Notices for 1898 (page 515): The NGC place of this nebula of Tempel's seems to be considerably out, both in R.A. and declination. The correct position is 12h46m18s, -13d40.6m. This precesses to 12 48 55, -13 56.9 for B1950.0, and refers to IC 3834 (which see). The confusion is understandable as Tempel's original note reads simply, "Near the fine double nebula [GC] 3250-51 [NGC 4724-27], 4 arcmin further north, is a fainter companion." Dreyer just took the average of the positions for NGC 4724 and 4727, adopted the RA and subtracted 4 arcmin for the north polar distance. This makes the declination very close to correct, but the RA is off by about 9 seconds. Tempel's nebula is a spindle galaxy; this is probably why Howe missed it. In any case, he took the only other galaxy he could find in the area, the one we now call IC 3834 (which is probably not NGC 4740, by the way; see the other numbers for notes). ===== NGC 4727 is almost certainly identical to NGC 4740. This is the brightest of a group of galaxies, and the brighter of a close pair (NGC 4724 is the fainter of the pair). It was seen by both Herschels, as well as by Tempel, Swift, Bigourdan, and Howe. Considerable confusion in the NGC and IC numbers has resulted. See NGC 4740 for the story, and also see NGC 4726 for one of Tempel's nebulae that almost got away. ===== NGC 4729 and NGC 4730. This problem arose because John Herschel's original observations of 8 June 1834 yielded only very rough estimates of the positions of the two galaxies (see his Results of Observations...at the Cape of Good Hope... of 1847 for more information.) Inasmuch as the two galaxies were not observed again until 1920, Dreyer had no choice but to use Herschel's rough places when the NGC was prepared for publication in 1888. Ron Buta came across this same problem some years ago during his classification of galaxies on the Whiteoak PSS extension. In a letter of 3 Aug 1977, he suggested that the galaxies at 12 49 00.2 -40 51 33 (= ESO 323-G16, 1950 positions) and 12 49 14.0 -40 52 32 (= EU 323-G17) are N4729 and N4730, respectively. Andris Lauberts came to the same conclusion at about the same time when he was preparing ESO/Upps List VI. I entirely agree with their suggestions as these are the two brightest and most easily seen objects south-preceding NGC 4744 where Herschel noticed them. The two galaxies are Vidal and Wickramasinghe's B and C, respectively. (By the way, VW's D = N4744 and E = N4743). Jack Sulentic's incorrect RNGC identifications refer to VW's "N3" and "N4", and Dawe et al are also wrong: in their list (1970 positions), 12 50 24 -40 59 54 = N4729 and 12 50 38, -41 00 46 = N4730. More confusion: under the designation HB 288 (more on that in a moment), Sandage (Ap. J. 202, 563, 1975) gives the position of N4729, but the velocity of N4730 (compare VW and Dawe et al). Unfortunately, the de Vaucouleurs and I directly copied this mismatch into the Second Reference Catalogue (where the data are under the single listing for "A1248-40") and Sandage simply repeated his data in his redshift list in A.J. 83, 904, 1978. Finally, the "HB" designations come from a series of papers by Knox-Shaw, Gregory, and Madwar in the Helwan (formerly Khedivial) Observatory Bulletins Nos. 9, 15, 21, 22, 30, and 38. N4729 - 30 were noted by Gregory in Bulletin No. 22 as "Not found". However, among the (mostly!) new nebulae noted on the Helwan plates, Gregory suggested that Helwan Bulletin nebulae Nos. 281, 282, or 283 might be N4729 or N4730. De Vaucouleurs (in Commonwealth Obs. Memoirs No. 13, his southern Shapley-Ames revision) concurs, but adds No. 288 as a possibility. (He also confuses the nomenclature problem even further by using "HB" for Harvard Bulletin! What a mess.) Actually, N4729 = Helwan Bulletin 288 and N4730 = HB 289. ===== NGC 4730. See NGC 4729. ===== NGC 4732. See IC 3791 = NGC 4695 where this number figures in one of Swift's many mistaken identities. ===== NGC 4736 = M 94. Wolf includes a good position for this in his fifth list, but cites neither the Messier nor NGC numbers. He does have a footnote, though, identifying the object as "A.G. Bonn 8688." The galaxy's nucleus is indeed bright enough and small enough that it could be measured precisely and included in the star catalogue. ===== NGC 4740 = NGC 4727. Swift found this during his fourth year (1887 April 27) of chasing down faint, "new" nebulae. He gives a position that is about 50 seconds of time west but only half an arcmin south of that for NGC 4727, the brightest galaxy in the area. His description "pF, pS, R, mbM" fits N4727 better than any of the other three galaxies here, including IC 3834, taken by nearly everyone (including me during my sweeping for SEGC) as NGC 4740. Howe suggested that NGC 4740 is actually NGC 4726. He also published a short note from Swift in one of his 1899 Monthly Notices in which Swift seems to agree. But Tempel's observation of N4726 (which see) clearly rules this out -- he places N4726 just four arcmin north of N4724 and N4727, a close pair found by the Herschel's. With IC 3834 being another 45 seconds of time east, it's extremely unlikely to be Tempel's galaxy. Bigourdan did not find NGC 4740 at its NGC place, of course. I checked the other nebulae found by Swift that night -- there were none, at least found by LEWIS Swift. His son Edward, then a teenager, actually found four new nebulae on the 27th: NGC 4544, 4633, 4969, and 5309. With the exception of NGC 5309 (which see), these all follow the nominal positions by about 18 seconds of time, and are south by about 30 arcsec (NGC 5309, assuming we have the correct galaxy, follows by 29 seconds, but has a 10 arcmin digit error putting it south by 9 arcmin 10 arcsec). NGC 4727 precedes the nominal position by 50 seconds, so does not agree with the mean RA offset of Edward's nebulae. However, it is indeed 30 arcsec south of Swift's position. (Did Lewis or Edward determine the positions for Edward's discoveries? Lewis does not say in his papers, but because these positions are no improvement over his father's, I would guess that Lewis did them, or at least coached his son.) I don't think we can make much of this comparison with the mean offsets, though, because NGC 5309 also breaks the pattern, and because N4740 was the only galaxy which Lewis Swift himself found that night. However, of the four galaxies in the area, NGC 4727 -- by far -- comes closest to fitting Swift's description. Thus, in spite of a few misgivings, I am pretty well convinced that NGC 4740 is just another observation of N4727. ===== NGC 4743. See NGC 4729. ===== NGC 4744. See NGC 4729. ===== NGC 4747 is the distorted companion of NGC 4725, one of the largest ringed galaxies in the northern sky. The center of NGC 4747 is dominated by a bright, bar-like structure defined by a row of several knots. I've taken the position of the galaxy to be that of the brightest of these knots as seen on the DSS2 infrared image. However, the SDSS position is centered on a compact red knot (perhaps a superposed star?) that the 2MASS PSC also picked up in addition to the brighter knot to the southwest. Perhaps coincidentally, the 2MASS XSC also uses this knot to define the position of the galaxy. This red knot may be the nucleus of the galaxy, so I have given it a separate entry "N4747 nuc?" in the position table. Unfortunately, I could not find a spectrum of this particular object, so do not yet know if it is indeed the nucleus, a superposed star, or just another knot in the galaxy's bar. ===== NGC 4748 may also be NGC 4723, which see. Also see NGC 4722 and 4802. ----- In November 2017, Courtney Seligman pointed out that there is virtually nothing visible in the PanSTARRS image for the object Brian Skiff has measured west of the two main components of the galaxy pair. On DSS2 red, blue, and infrared plates, there appears to be a very faint loop of material roughly in Skiff's position. There is also a faint star just a few arcseconds to the northeast that may have been the "nucleus" of the image on the Lowell Pluto Camera plate that Skiff measured. However, these are all very faint features, so I suspect that the loop is actually reinforced by a defect. I'll ask Brian to check the old plate. ===== NGC 4752 = III 82 may be CGCG 071-058. WH's description "vF, S, E, r" fits well -- but his position is -38 seconds off in RA, and +15 arcmin off in Dec. Dreyer notes that Bigourdan did not find the galaxy, and gives an additional offset from II 128 = N4689. That leads to a position that is within WH's observational error of the one in his table, so there is apparently no large error in his data collecting and reduction. The fact that his description fits the CGCG galaxy pretty well, however, suggests that there might be an error somewhere in WH's position. But it is not apparent from the information we have on the object, so I've put a question mark on the identity. ----- Courtney Seligman suggested in an email late in December 2020 that CGCG 071-071 might actually be WH's galaxy. While the position is further off WH's (+2.6 minutes and -15 arcminutes), the galaxy is about a magnitude brighter than CGCG 071-058 and still fits WH's description. This led me to look at the sweep to see if there were any additional clues or mistakes there. Briefly, I found none. Here are some additional details: In WH's first Catalogue, in addition to NGC 4752, two other objects, NGC 4880 and NGC 5020, were referred to 41 Virginis, his nominal comparison star (though in CH's fair copy, N5020 is referred to 70 Vir). WH's reduced positions for these two fall within his usual statistical errors of the galaxies we generally associate with the NGC numbers, and there is no obvious systematic offset. Consequently, either of the galaxies, CGCG 071-058 or 071-071 -- or neither! -- may be the object WH saw. I think we can dismiss Reinmuth's idea of WH having seen a star; the description is not that that WH would have recorded for a star, no matter how blurred by bad seeing. Reinmuth's star, by the way, is at 12 52 28.85, +13 29 51.1 and has V = 14.2, B-V = 0.65, U-B = 0.14, and V-R = 0.35 (transformed from SDSS measurements). I still have to check to see if this might be an observation of a known comet. JPL's nominal comet/asteroid tracker goes back only to 1800, so I'll have to dig out another one. Perhaps Brian Skiff can help. In the meantime, I'm not convinced that either of the candidate galaxies actually corresponds to WH's observation, so both have queries attached. ===== NGC 4759. See NGC 4776. ===== NGC 4761. See NGC 4776. ===== NGC 4764. This is another of the nebulae found by Tempel that has no position given in his discovery paper in AN 2439. Either he or Dreyer concocted the NGC position from what information he did give. See NGC 4776 for the sorting out of this field for RC3 in the late 1980s. ===== NGC 4768 and NGC 4769 are a star and a close double star, respectively. They were found by Tempel while he was examining the field around NGC 4770, and his only description of them is copied correctly into the NGC. He gives no accurate positions, but the stars are a striking triplet just where he claims to have seen them "preceding III 525 (N4770) on the parallel." There are no galaxies or other stars that might fit, so the identities are pretty sure. During an earlier sweep through the IC, I had misidentified the "northwestern" star as a component of NGC 4769. This is wrong; NGC 4769 is the very close double star (separation 3.3 arcsec at J2000, based on the Gaia positions) just southeast of the single star to the northwest, which is, of course, NGC 4768. ----- Courtney Seligman has noticed that the proper motions of the two stars of NGC 4769 are quite large. He wrote "that ... you can actually see its change of position when comparing the DSS image of the region to the PanSTARRS one." Courtney's web pages (http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc47a.htm#4769) have the two images which clearly show the motion of NGC 4769, the double star, with respect to the background stars, one of which is NGC 4768, just 20.75 arcseconds north-northwest (J2000). ===== NGC 4769. See NGC 4768. ===== NGC 4770. See NGC 4768. ===== NGC 4772. See NGC 4910. ===== NGC 4774 is one of the rare "ring galaxies", apparently a simple annular disk of blue stars with no obvious nucleus. There is almost always a fairly normal S0 galaxy nearby, however, and the suggestion is that it is either the stripped nucleus of the original spiral galaxy, or the object which collided with the spiral, completely disturpting it. Others of this type include NGC 7828/29, IC 298, and IC 3862, all of which see. ===== NGC 4776 = NGC 4759nw. This is one of a double galaxy that also has two companions. However, there are three NGC numbers for the double: N4759, N4776, and N4778, the latter two from J. Herschel, the former due to WH, d'A, and Tempel. The descriptions make the identifications clear, however: N4759 is noted "double", so N4759nw = N4776, and N4759se = N4778 with a 1 minute RA error for N4776 and 78. The companion 1.0' east-northeast N4778 is almost certainly N4761, and -- with somewhat more doubt as Tempel's positions are often coarse -- the companion 4' south of N4776 is N4764. All this means that RC3 needs to be corrected as follows: PGC 43757 = NGC 4778 = NGC 4759se, PGC 43760 = NGC 4764, and PGC 43768 = NGC 4761. PGC 43754 = NGC 4776 = NGC 4759nw is OK. ===== NGC 4778 = NGC 4759se. See NGC 4776. ===== NGC 4782 and NGC 4783 are together 3C 278. Thus, they have attracted considerable attention over the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, as a close pair with the NGC positions implying a different relative orientation than the objects themselves, there have been several blunders in the various catalogues. The GC and NGC themselves say that NGC 4782 is the "p of D neb", with N4783 obviously being the "f of D neb". The positions are slightly mysterious as WH has only one listed for the pair in his published catalogue. Yet JH has them clearly separated in GC, and Dreyer follows right along in the NGC. In both catalogues, N4782 is one second of time preceding and an arcminute north of N4783. Perhaps WH has separate positions in his second observation, or perhaps JH simply took his father's comment "Dist[ance] 1' near[ly in the] mer[idian]" literally and placed the two objects straddling the single measured position. Whatever happened has led to much confusion about the names of the galaxies. JH, by the way, did not sweep them up, nor did anyone else observe them before he assembled the GC, so he must have relied on his father's observations. Among the post-NGC observers, Bigourdan and Reinmuth put N4782 on the south- southwestern galaxy, and N4783 on the north-northeastern. The three Reference Catalogues, PGC, and NED, also number the galaxies in RA order. Other papers have not been as careful, sometimes giving the earlier number to the later galaxy. This has led to the Reference Catalogues, PGC, and NED (until June 2006) all switching the redshifts for the galaxies. The lower redshift actually applies to the north-northeastern galaxy, NGC 4783. There may well be similar problems in the diameters and photometry, but I've not investigated those thoroughly yet. All this simply points to the importance of using positions as well as names when publishing data. Also see NGC 4802 where these figure in the identification of that and NGC 4804. ===== NGC 4783 forms a close pair with NGC 4782, which see. ===== NGC 4787. This figures in the correct identification of Bigourdan 058, a star. See the discussion under CGCG 097-087 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 4789. This figures in the correct identification of Bigourdan 058, a star. See the discussion under CGCG 097-087 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 4794. See NGC 4802. ===== NGC 4795. See NGC 4796. ===== NGC 4796. In an earlier list, I called this a star. It is not. It is a compact galaxy superposed on, and interacting with, the eastern arm of NGC 4795. There is no doubt about the identification (Marth places it close following NGC 4795), and though the object looks pretty stellar on the blue POSS1, it is clearly elongated on the red plate (hence on the DSS), as well as on the DSS2 images. My apologies for the confusion. ===== NGC 4797 is almost certainly NGC 4798. D'Arrest saw the two nebulae on different nights. His positions are also close enough (same RA, 5 arcmin difference in Dec) that the two would make a striking pair that surely would have merited a comment from him -- he does not mention other nebulae near the ones he saw. So, the identity seems pretty clear. ===== NGC 4798 = NGC 4797, which see. ===== NGC 4802 is most likely also NGC 4804. But that is not absolutely certain. Here is the story. N4802 is just where Tempel placed it in his observation of 20 April 1882. Herbert Howe, however, says "This was searched for in vain one night. Its description is so similar to that of 4804 that they may be identical, if the declination of 4802 is just 1 degree in error." Dreyer adds to this in an IC2 Note, "Tempel says it is 8 seconds following Lamont 1234 (10 mag), but this identification may be wrong." I have not yet been able to find the Lamont list, but Tempel's observation, as I said, is exactly right: the galaxy is just where he measured it to be, and his description is apt, so I have no reason to doubt his identification of the star. So, I wonder if Howe somehow confused N4802 with N4804 -- the latter galaxy is NOT in its nominal position. It was found by WH on 27 Mar 1786 in Sweep 548. His published list has it 30m 45s preceding and 18 arcmin south of 68 Virginis. Checking the Herschel Archives, however, shows that these offsets were calculated later from times and north polar distances recorded during the sweep. If WH's recorded north polar distance was 100 deg 56 min rather than 101 deg 56 min as in CH's copy of the sweeps, then the calculated offset would become 42 arcmin north of 68 Virginis, and the object is certainly the same one Tempel saw. However, WH's description reads, "Suspected a pB star, with a seeming brush to the np may be a small nebula close to it, but there was no time to verify it." Just about an arcminute north of WH's position is a double star whose orientation is northwest-southeast, and whose components have virtually identical magnitudes (13.85 in GSC; probably around 13.3 or 13.4 in V, depending on the stars' colors). It is just possible that WH saw the double star and in his hurry, mistook it for a star and a nebula. Also arguing for taking WH's 101 degrees at face value is the fact that none of the other nebulae that he found during the sweep have serious errors in their positions (these are NGC 4714, 4748, 4782/83, 4794, 4825, and 5094). I think it's more likely, though, that he simply made a 1-degree error in his north polar distance. This would, of course, explain Bigourdan's not finding the object at the NGC position; Dreyer mentioned this negative observation in his Notes in the Scientific Papers. So, in the end, the most likely explanation is that WH saw the same object that Tempel did nearly a century later. But given the double star, I've kept the colons, just in case. ===== NGC 4804 is almost certainly identical to NGC 4802, which see. ===== NGC 4805 is a star positively identified by Bigourdan's two observations. In spite of the accuracy of his measurements, he comments that "... near it is a star 13.4-13.5, but it's impossible to tell which direction it is from the nebula's center." This must be the object itself as there is nothing else in the area that he could have seen. Bigourdan also comments, "This whole region is rich in vF nebulae." Since the Coma Cluster is near, it isn't surprising that he saw many nebulae here. ===== NGC 4808. See NGC 5242. ===== NGC 4809 and NGC 4810 are an interacting pair of late-type irregulars. While the NGC entry does not tell us which is which -- there is a single position for both, and it is wrong by a minute of time and 6-7 arcminutes -- by convention NGC 4809 is the larger northern object. Neither galaxy has an apparent nucleus, so the positions I've chosen from the SDSS are simply approximations of the centers of the bars for each. Better positions might be pulled in from surface photometry as the centers of the isophotes for the galaxies. ===== NGC 4810. See NGC 4809. ===== NGC 4813 may also be IC 833 (which see). ===== NGC 4817. The NGC position, and that in the Comptes Rendus list, are wrong; while the offsets in Bigourdan's big table, and the position reduced from them, are correct. I have not found a correction in any of Bigourdan's errata lists, so I assume that he did not catch the error, or chose to not mention it. In any case, the reduced position falls exactly on a faint galaxy. Bigourdan's note about the star northeast is correct, so the identification is not in doubt. ===== NGC 4820. See NGC 4823. ===== NGC 4823 is one of three galaxies discovered by Wilhelm Tempel south of N4825. His paper in AN 2439 announcing the discovery (of these and many others) is not very helpful. It says only "Quite close to the south [of N4825] are three more faint nebulae." The NGC positions must have been among those that he sent privately to Dreyer (cf. Dreyer's comment on page 11 of the NGC) -- and they seem to be only approximate (N4823's NGC position is actually quite close to N4825). Here are the data (all for 1950): NGC Skiff NGC RA Dec Object RA Dec 4820 12 54 23 -13 27.3 1 12 54 22.9 -13 26 57 4823 12 54 29 -13 24.3 3 12 54 48.0 -13 25 44 4825 12 54 33 -13 23.9 --- 12 54 34.6 -13 23 42 4829 12 54 45 -13 28.3 2 12 54 46.8 -13 28 04 So, we have three galaxies and three NGC numbers that obviously refer to the galaxies (there are no others nearby). Matching things up by position alone -- Tempel's descriptions are the same for all the galaxies -- leads to the identifications that I suggest in the table. These are different from my initial identifications for SEGC. They require only that the RA of N4823 be out by 20 seconds, whereas my first guesses demand declination changes for both N4823 and N4829. I've adopted these for the final version of SEGC. ===== NGC 4824 = Big. 61, found by Bigourdan while he was measuring positions in the Coma Cluster area, is a star. Bigourdan's measured offsets from his then unnamed comparison star (GSC 01995-01009) are exact, and refer unambigously to another star (GSC 01995-01329). The GSC position is identical, within the errors, to Bigourdan's. ===== NGC 4825. See NGC 4802 and NGC 4823. ===== NGC 4829. See NGC 4823. ===== NGC 4832. Steve Gottlieb and Courtney Seligman point out that the NPD for this galaxy is 1 degree too large in GC and NGC. The CGH NPD is correct, so the wrong number is a simple transcription error. While I made a note about this in SGC (page 232), and the declination is correct there, this never made it into my current working files until Courtney Seligman point it out in February 2021. Thanks, Courtney! An aside: The original entry for NGC 4832 on page 26 in the SGC workbook is in Antoinette de Vaucouleurs's hand. Since we worked together on the SGC (me scanning the plates, she writing my positions, types, diameters, notes, etc.) only during the summer of 1976 when the de Vaucouleurs were visiting Edinburgh, this is one SGC "observation" that I am able to date to within a couple of months. The de Vaucouleurs returned to Austin in September of that year, and I carried on with SGC by myself. ===== NGC 4833. See NGC 6634. ===== NGC 4837 was found by John Herschel who described it only as "A rather doubtful object; haze." There is nothing at the position he gives (12 54 30, +49 04.4), but exactly 30' south is a peculiar double system that he could have seen (m_B = 14.4) during his sweep. The CGCG gives this object the NGC number, and I see no reason not to do likewise. The MCG gives it two numbers, MCG +08-24-011 (the brighter south-preceding object), and +08-24-012, but did not label either one N4837. UGC only gives one number to the pair, and also did not adopt the NGC number. ===== NGC 4838. See NGC 4844. ===== NGC 4844 is probably the star listed in the position list, fingered by both Wolfgang and myself. Tempel gives no position for it, merely saying "... on the parallel with the nebula [NGC 4838], another faint, small one follows..." If the NGC position -- presumeably one that he sent to Dreyer -- is good, then the listed star is the likely candidate. Another possibility is one that I noted in SEGC: the star superposed southeast of the nucleus of NGC 4838. I think now that this is less likely as Tempel probably would have mentioned the proximity to N4838. Other possible stars in the area that he could have seen are at 12 58 14.9, -13 05 21 and 12 58 10.6, -13 03 40 (J2000). There is a very faint galaxy near his position, too, but he could not have seen it with his 11-inch refractor. ===== NGC 4845 may also possibly be NGC 4910, which see. ===== NGC 4847 is a galaxy with a brighter star superposed. Tempel does not give a position, or even much of a description, but simply says, "... on the parallel of the comparison star [for NGC 4838] [is] a small nebulous star." At least he names the comparison star (Lamont 1243), so Dreyer was able to give the north polar distance. ===== NGC 4849 = IC 3935, which see. Briefly, d'Arrest's position is about four arcminutes out, so the galaxy was also "discovered" by Spitaler and Javelle. Also see IC 838, first noticed by Spitaler, and later frequently called "NGC 4849A". ===== NGC 4851 is not = IC 839 (which see) which is about 2 arcmin south-preceding. Bigourdan observed both on the same night, and his accurate positions fall within a few arcsec of each object. NGC 4851 does have a faint companion just north-following. d'A may have glimpsed this as his description says "resolved". Bigourdan must have had the same impression as his description mentions that N4851 may be "a very small [star] cluster." ===== NGC 4861 = IC 3961. Both of these numbers certainly apply to the galaxy itself and not, as supposed by CGCG, the first to the bright HII region, and the second to the galaxy. William Herschel's and Lord Rosse's (on three nights) descriptions leave no doubt that they saw the galaxy clearly. Not only are Wolf's position and description very accurate, he has also marked the correct object on his plate (though one of the "stars" which he notes as flanking it is actually the HII region). However, the NGC position (from Sir William's observation) is a bit off, and this may have misled both Wolf and Dreyer into believing that Wolf's object was new. I had the pleasure of seeing the galaxy at the 1992 Texas Star Party through Tom Polakis's superb 13", and it exactly matched the descriptions left by the earlier observers. The HII region was quite stellar until I viewed it with a nebular filter: it took on a bit of fuzz then, and the foreground star at the other end of the galaxy faded quite a bit (the galaxy itself faded not quite as much; it must have diffuse oxygen and hydrogen emission spread through it). Modern visual observers do have some advantages over Lord Rosse -- though none of us can yet beat him for sheer aperture! ===== NGC 4862 (which is probably also IC 3999) and NGC 4863 were found by Frank Leavenworth at Leander McCormick in 1886. Both galaxies are off their nominal RA's and are just faint enough that Bigourdan could not find them. He also searched in the wrong direction from his comparison star on one night. I think it was this confusion that led him to rediscover NGC 4862 (see IC 3999 for that story). Both objects are positively identified by the sketches that Leavenworth made of them. Herbert Howe did locate NGC 4862 and gave a corrected position for it, copied into the IC Notes. He states that "Another was suspected perhaps 5 arcmin south of this one." That is about the correct distance north to NGC 4863. Did Howe get his directions reversed, just as Bigourdan did when he was looking for NGC 4862 in this field? ===== NGC 4863. See NGC 4862. ===== NGC 4864. WH found three nebulae -- II 388, 389, and 391 -- in the core of the Coma Cluster on the night of 11 April 1785, but only had time to take two positions. The first of these applies to "Two. The time taken between them." He has them 7m 46s preceding, 22 arcmin north of 46 Comae. This position falls northwest of NGC 4874 in a blank spot in the cluster, just as WH's description suggests. One of the pair is almost certainly NGC 4874 itself. At V_T = 11.7 it, along with NGC 4889 at V_T = 11.5 (which is WH's third nebula, by the way), is two magnitudes brighter than any other galaxy in Coma's core (there are other galaxies nearly as bright in the outskirts, of course). So, we can be virtually certain that it was the eastern of WH's pair. But which is the western? There are several candidates, the brightest of which are NGC 4864 (V_T = 13.6) and NGC 4869 (V_T = 13.8). But N4869 is five arcminutes south of WH's position. So it seems reasonable to suppose that N4864 is WH's second galaxy. This has some other things going for it, too. There is a star superposed on the southeast side, and NGC 4867 is less than an arcminute on further to the southeast. This may have enhanced the view of N4864 itself, or perhaps WH saw all three of the objects blended into a single image. Among the other candidates are the three galaxies around the western side of NGC 4874: NGC 4871,72,73. But at V_T = 14.1, 14.5, and 14.4, these are all fainter than NGC 4864. Even in the relatively high-contrast POSS1/DSS field, they are not as eyecatching as the brighter galaxy. So, I'm going to suggest NGC 4864 (perhaps with NGC 4867) as the western of WH's pair. Dreyer certainly has two WH numbers assigned incorrectly to NGC 4869 and 4872; they should go on NGC 4864 and 4874, respectively. And here is another story, this one about JH. He swept over the Coma core three times. We might expect him to pick up several galaxies here, and he indeed has: "... 5 south of a * 7m." These five appeared during his last sweep on 13 April 1831. He was apparently rushed as none of the positions are secure. However, those in the first two sweeps (26 and 30 March 1827) are good enough to clearly identify NGC 4874, 4889, and 4898 as the first three galaxies he saw. The situation is not quite as clear for the five seen in 1831. While it is likely that his five objects are NGC 4864, 4869, 4874, 4889, and 4898 -- these are the brightest five in the core -- JH's positions are only a modest match for the modern positions, leaving the identifications for them uncertain, at least from the positions alone. Four of those positions are noted "by configuration" (three) in his 1833 catalogue and "by diag[ram]" (all four) in the sweep. Nor are they given to the same precision (only a minute of time and one arcminute in the sweep, though to a second of time in the published catalogue). JH's diagram looks something like this, with south at the top and east to the left: # b # c e # # d # a $ * 7m where the pound signs (#) represent his nebulae, the dollar sign his 7th magnitude star (which is HD 112887 with V = 7.2), and the letters are his labels in the sweep of the five galaxies (I have put the labels in the same positions relative to the nebula symbols as JH has them in his diagram). His pencil smudges representing nebulae "c" and "d" are larger than the other three, so it is pretty clear that these represent the brighter NGC 4874 and NGC 4889. Given those two identifications, "e" is clearly NGC 4898, with "a" perhaps NGC 4864 and "b" probably NGC 4869. However, with the sketched positions of "a" and "b" somewhat distorted from the sky, the identifications are still a bit uncertain. JH identifies "d" as H III 391 in his sweep, and this is indeed NGC 4889. And so things stood when JH put together the GC. Here are the five entries from the GC for the two Herschel's observations as sorted out by JH: GC h H RA (2000) Dec GC Description JH diag. 3343 1500 --- 12 59 27 +27 57.9 1st of 5; *7 n a 3344 1501 II 388 12 59 35 +27 56.7 eF, S, R; *7 n; 2nd of 5 b 3347 1502 II 389 12 59 46 +27 57.9 3rd of 5 c 3351 1507 II 391 13 00 10 +27 59.3 pB, pmE, bM; *7 n; 4th of 5 d 3354 1510 III 363 13 00 15 +27 57.4 pF, S, R; *7 n; 5th of 5 e Things were pretty simple then. These five correspond, following my comments above, to NGC 4864, NGC 4869, NGC 4874, NGC 4889, and NGC 4898. Note, though, that III 363 is almost certainly NGC 4908 (which see), and not NGC 4898. The modern positions are not at great odds with these identifications, so I think that we have the Herschels' observations in Coma clear. Since most of the positions for the NGC galaxies in Coma come from d'Arrest and Bigourdan, we need to look at those, too. I'll discuss them as they come up, but particularly see NGC 4872, 4874, 4882, and 4884 for special consideration of d'A's observations; and NGC 4871, 4872, 4875, 4896, and 4898 for similar, though perhaps less detailed, discussions of Bigourdan's observations. ===== NGC 4865. Seen by d'A; see NGC 4872. ===== NGC 4867. Both this and NGC 4864 (which see) may have been one of a pair of galaxies seen in the core of the Coma Cluster by WH (the other is certainly NGC 4874, which also see). It's much more likely, though, that WH's object is simply NGC 4864. NGC 4867 was certainly seen by Bigourdan (it is his "nova" number 62), so it seems reasonable to credit the discovery to him. Note, however, that the signs of his offsets printed in his big table of observations in both RA and Dec are incorrect -- he has NGC 4867 northwest of NGC 4864 (his comparison object with a position from Kobold) rather than southeast. The size of his offsets, however, is exactly right -- 2.25 seconds and 23.7 arcseconds from NGC 4864 -- only the signs are wrong. ===== NGC 4868. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4869. Probably seen by JH and d'A; see NGC 4864 and NGC 4872. This was certainly seen by Bigourdan, though there is a curiosity with his comparison star. That star, called "Anon. c" by Bigourdan, is Tyc 1995-1839-1 and has a relatively large proper motion: -99.4 milliarcseconds/year in RA and +46.7 mas/yr in Dec. If these are taken into account, Bigourdan's positions fall a full second of time off the galaxy nuclei. If they are NOT taken into account, Bigourdan's positions are very close to the nuclei. I suspect a bug in my offset program. Working on it. ===== NGC 4870. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4871. Seen by d'A, but probably not measured; see NGC 4872. Bigourdan is certainly the first to measure the position of this galaxy -- it is his "nova" number 63, one of about a hundred new objects that he sent to Dreyer before the NGC was published. Bigourdan actually published these before the NGC appeared, but I suspect that Dreyer's catalogue was in press when Bigourdan's lists appeared in "Comptes rendus" in November and December of 1887. See also NGC 4864. ===== NGC 4872. As seen above (NGC 4864), d'A's position for NGC 4872 is not much different from that for NGC 4874. However, it may be one of three nebulae that he noted around NGC 4874 on 5 May 1864, the only one of those three that he attempted to measure. His comment about it is "Not difficult to see; one of three similar. I compared previous measures of the nebulae with this where I could; this is undoubtedly new." The description suggests that this is one of N4874's satellites not seen by the Herschels, yet Dreyer apparently not only adopted its position as that for the brighter galaxy, but he also put all the Hershel numbers on it as well. Unfortunately, d'A's position for this galaxy FOLLOWS NGC 4874 by four seconds of time -- where there is nothing on the sky -- while the NGC position for 4872 PRECEDES NGC 4874 by the same amount. Dreyer, trying to reconcile all the observations in the core of the cluster, put all the information about the second-brightest galaxy in the core on the number 4872. Also, the position he assigned to 4872 falls far enough west of the bright galaxy itself that the number has been attached to one of the small "satellites" of the big elliptical. While d'A's description tells us that he apparently measured one of the three brighter satellite objects around NGC 4874, it does not tell us which of the galaxies it is (it could well be NGC 4871 or NGC 4873), so Dreyer's assignment was a partially-informed guess -- just as ours today must be. Let's step back for a moment and look at all of d'A's observations in the core of the Coma Cluster. His positions precessed to J2000 for the Coma core galaxies are on the first line (followed by the number of nights he observed the galaxy and the WH and JH numbers that d'A assigned, if any; and any applicable notes), the precessed NGC positions are on the second line, my preferred modern positions are on the third line, followed by the differences with d'A's positions, in the sense "modern minus d'A": NGC RA Dec N d'A's idents Notes H h DelRA DelDec seconds arcsec 4864 12 59 11.3 +27 58 50 3 --- 1500? 12 59 13 +27 58.6 12 59 13.26 +27 58 35.2 +2.0 -15 4865 12 59 14.9 +28 05 08 1 --- --- 12 59 15 +28 05.1 12 59 19.88 +28 05 03.4 +5.0 -5 4869 12 59 23.0 +27 54 49 6 II 388? 1501? 12 59 23 +27 54.8 12 59 23.37 +27 54 41.6 +0.4 -7 4872? 12 59 38.9 +27 57 33 1 --- --- Perhaps NGC 4871 or 4873? 12 59 35 +27 57.6 d'A's position is well east 12 59 34.11 +27 56 48.5 -4.8 -45 of NGC 4874, though. 4874 12 59 33.6 +27 57 30 7 II 389? 1502? 12 59 39 +27 57.5 12 59 35.70 +27 57 33.2 +2.1 +3 4881 12 59 56.0 +28 14 46 3 --- --- 12 59 56 +28 14.7 12 59 57.75 +28 14 47.9 +1.8 +2 4882 12 59 57.7 +27 58 40 1 --- --- = NGC 4886 12 59 58 +27 58.6 13 00 04.46 +27 59 15.3 +6.8 +35 4884 13 00 00.7 +27 58 22 1 --- --- = NGC 4889 13 00 01 +27 58.4 13 00 08.11 +27 58 36.9 +7.4 +15 4886 13 00 03.7 +27 58 46 2 --- --- 13 00 04 +27 58.8 13 00 04.46 +27 59 15.3 +0.8 +29 4889 13 00 08.7 +27 58 38 7 II 391 1507 13 00 08 +27 58.7 13 00 08.11 +27 58 36.9 -0.6 -1 4895 13 00 15.6 +28 12 09 3 --- --- 13 00 15 +28 12.2 13 00 17.92 +28 12 08.4 +2.3 -1 4898 13 00 18.6 +27 57 29 3 --- 1510? 13 00 18 +27 56.7 13 00 17.89 +27 57 21.2 -0.7 -8 Mean +2.48 +4.2 "NGC 4872?" not included. Std Dev +-2.64 +-15.0 Notice that Dreyer has swapped d'A's RAs for "NGC 4872?" and 4874, but has (except for NGC 4864 and 4898) adopted d'A's positions for these objects. It's also worth mentioning again that "NGC 4872?" is outstanding in this list with its RA being well EAST of the modern position, while all but two of the other objects have their RAs WEST of the modern positions. Here's another table, one containing just the data for the galaxies that d'A measured on 5 May 1864. NGC RA (J2000) Dec DelRA DelDec Notes (modern - d'A) seconds arcmin 4869 12 59 24 +27 54.5 -0.6 +0.2 4872? 12 59 39 +27 57.6 -4.9 -0.8 Pos is east of N4874 4874 12 59 35 +27 57.5 +0.7 +0.1 4886 13 00 4 +27 58.7 +0.5 +0.6 4889 13 00 9 +27 58.8 -0.9 -0.2 One of these two observations must 4889 13 00 10 +27 58.6 -1.9 0 be from another night. 4895 13 00 16 +28 12.4 +1.9 -0.3 4898 13 00 19 +27 58.0 -1.1 -0.6 Mean -0.20 -0.03 N4872? not included in mean Std Dev +-1.20 +-0.36 It's easy to see here, too, that the observation that led to the NGC number "4872" is anomalous. Looking at the data, it's clear that we can't easily determine which of the three galaxies around NGC 4874 d'A was looking at from either his position or his description. As I noted above, it could as well be NGC 4871 or NGC 4873 -- or some other object -- as NGC 4872. Bigourdan was also initially confused by the nomenclature in the NGC. In his observations of NGC 4874, he comments "On avait cru mesurer 4872 N.G.C." (roughly translated, "I thought I was measuring NGC 4872."). Similarly, under his single observation of NGC 4872, he notes "On avait cru mesurer 4874 N.G.C." However, sometime before he published his big table with the 12-13 hour data, he corrected most of the numbers to agree with those being generally used today. One he missed was in the description to an unpublished "nova" that he found on the night of 17 May 1885. There, he notes "The nebula GC 3347 (NGC 4872) is at p(osition angle) = 10 [deg], d[istance] = 0' 42 [arcsec]." We know now, of course, that GC 3347 is NGC 4874, not 4872, and that Bigourdan's "nova" is NGC 4872 itself. Dreyer, however, did not have these observations available when he was putting together the NGC. He did what he could with data from the Herschels and d'A, but that was not quite enough to accurately represent the core of the Coma Cluster. So, to avoid confusion with the current astronomical literature, I'm simply going to keep the number "4872" on the galaxy "traditionally" known as NGC 4872 -- but now with a question mark. See NGC 4864 for more about the core of the Coma Cluster, particularly the Herschels' observations there. ===== NGC 4873. Seen by d'A; see NGC 4872. As with NGC 4871 (which see), this was first measured by Bigourdan. Also see NGC 4864. ===== NGC 4874, the second-brightest galaxy in the core of the Coma Cluster, is one of three that WH found there on 11 April 1785. The other surely-identified Herschel discovery is NGC 4889 (which see). The third is probably NGC 4864 (though NGC 4869 is a remote possibility). See NGC 4864 for that story. Wolfgang has suggested that we switch the identifications of this galaxy with NGC 4872 which carries (in the NGC) the GC, WH, and JH numbers that clearly belong on the second-brightest galaxy in the core of the cluster. This, however, not only flies in the face of the traditional 20th century nomenclature -- it would be a disaster to try to implement! -- but it is likely that the number "NGC 4872" really does refer one of the satellite galaxies around NGC 4874. It certainly does in Bigourdan's list -- but Dreyer did not have that at hand when he compiled the NGC. See the discussion under NGC 4872 number for the full story. Considering everything, I am going to simply keep the current NGC numbering system, and move the GC, WH, and JH numbers, as well as the other observers' notes, as necessary. There will be a question mark on NGC 4872, of course -- as I said, see that for more. Summarizing, my interpretation of the historical data for the Coma Cluster shows how it is possible to retain the 20th century identifications without stressing the historical mandate of the NGC itself. The data are ambiguous enough that other interpretations are possible, of course, but keeping modern astrophysicists happy suggests preserving the numbers as they are! ===== NGC 4875 is one of three galaxies (NGC 4876 and NGC 4898 are the others) in the core of the Coma Cluster for which Bigourdan used a 12th magnitude comparison star. He labeled it simply "b"; we now call it Tyc 1995-1988-1. Not having a good position for the star, he took the unusual (for him) step of measuring its position with respect to HD 112887. Unfortunately, he made some mistake in reducing its position, so the resulting positions for the three galaxies (in his Tables 1 and 2 of "new nebulae" in the introduction to his observations) are wrong. They are, of course, much more nearly correct when the correct position for the comparison star is used. Curiously, he used the correct position for the same star to measure NGC 4886 and NGC 4889, so the reduced positions for those two galaxies are OK. ===== NGC 4876. See NGC 4875. ===== NGC 4878, NGC 4879, and NGC 4888. Alister Ling pointed out that my original "short story" on N4878, N4879, and N4888 is confusing. Indeed it was. It is also obviously one of the cases that needs more attention. So, here is a revision. All three NGC objects were found by WH on 23 March 1789, and all are referred to 26 Virginis. Here are his observations: N4878,9 III 758,9 20m 55s f, 1d 53m n Two nebulae, both vF, vS. N4888 II 778 21m 12s f, 1d 54m n F, S, sf a double star. JH recorded only II 778 (h1505): 12 51 46.9, -05 09 16 pF, vS, E, psbM (1830 position) D'Arrest has, like WH, one position for N4878,9, and another for N4888. As always, I'm stuck on his Latin descriptions, but I can make out that there is an 11th magnitude star 5.5s preceding, 1.5m north of his observed place (12 53 09, -05 21.3; 1861) for N4878,9. He also mentions WH's double star near N4888; his 1861 position for that is 12 53 26, -05 19.6. Note that his difference in positions between the objects is close to WH's: 17s in RA and 1.7m in Dec. That is it for the pre-NGC observations. Post-NGC, I've found the following. 1) Bigourdan has eight observations each for N4878 and N4888, but could not identify N4879 with certainty. 2) Ormond Stone also lists N4878 and N4888 as nebulae in the 1893 Leander McCormick list (the novae here are in IC1), but has nothing about N4879. 3) Reinmuth has N4878 as an eF, eS stellar object or star (his object is a star) 1.7' south-preceding N4879, the galaxy. 4) MCG has -01-33-064 as N4878, -064a as "4879?" (but this is a defect on the blue POSS1), and -066 as 4888. 5) the first "edition" of SEGC put N4878 at 12 57.8 -05 50 (1950.0), and N4879 = N4888 at 12 58.0 -05 48. When Brian Skiff measured the SEGC positions, he followed my SEGC identifications; the second is clearly wrong since (as I now know; ahem) WH claimed to have seen all three on the same night. So, it is clear that there are only two bright galaxies here. GSC has only one (which I'll call "NGC 4878:"; note the colon), and also misses the bright double star (which WH mentioned) just preceding N4888. There is a star in GSC about 1.5 arcmin southeast of N4878 that I suspect is WH's second "nebula." It is a bit closer to the galaxy than is Reinmuth's star. Here are some positions, either from GSC, or measured by me on POSS1: Object RA (2000.0) Dec Source Adopted identifications (source) Star 13 00 14.4 -06 07 08 HC NGC 4878? (Reinmuth) Galaxy 20.12 06 14.1 GSC NGC 4878: (Big, Stone, MCG, HC) Star 25.61 06 40.4 GSC NGC 4879: (HC) Galaxy 36.2 04 31 HC NGC 4888 (All) The adopted identifications are based on the assumption that Herschel recorded one of the stars south of the preceding galaxy, thinking it was a second nebula. If he saw the preceding star, then it should be N4878, and N4879 is clearly the galaxy. If he saw the following star -- as I believe he did (it is brighter and nearer the galaxy than the preceding star) -- then the numbers should be reversed: N4878 becomes the galaxy, and N4879 is the star. There is no question about NGC 4888. ===== NGC 4879. See NGC 4878. ===== NGC 4880. See NGC 4752. ===== NGC 4881. Seen by d'A and Bigourdan; see NGC 4872. ===== NGC 4882 = NGC 4886. These two NGC numbers are both credited to d'A, so at first glance, it seems a bit strange to equate them. But looking into his big monograph, we see that he has just a single observation for N4882 on a different night (22 April 1865) than the two nights (6 April and 5 May 1864) on which he observed N4886. Furthermore, the RA offset (seven seconds of time west) is the same as for another discovery of his on the same troubled night, NGC 4884, which is identical to NGC 4889. Here are the observations that yeilded these two numbers: NGC RA (J2000) Dec DelRA DelDec Notes (modern - d'A) seconds arcmin 4864 12 59 11 +27 58.8 +2.3 -0.2 4865 12 59 15 +28 05.1 +4.9 0 4869 12 59 22 +27 54.7 +1.4 0 4874 12 59 33 +27 58.0 +2.7 -0.4 4881 12 59 57 +28 15.0 +0.8 -0.2 4882 12 59 58 +27 58.7 +6.5 +0.6 = N4886 4884 13 00 01 +27 58.4 +7.1 +0.2 = N4889 4895 13 00 14 +28 12.0 +3.9 +0.1 Mean +3.70 +0.01 Std Dev +-2.17 +-0.28 Mean +2.70 -0.12 "4882" and "4884" omitted Std Dev +-1.40 +-0.17 It's easy to see, even on this night with a relatively large systematic RA offset in d'A's observations in Coma, that the measurements leading to NGC 4882 and NGC 4884 are well east and south, not just of the modern positions, but of the other measurements. Others may wish to look into the reasons for this, but for now, it is enough to simply show that the two observations are anomalous. Other than the RA offset, d'A's observation would appear to fit NGC 4886 very well. He says, freely translated from his Latin, "Very faint, very small. Others, too many to count, near." (For a thoroughly idiosyncratic translation from Google Translate, try typing in d'A's original Latin: "Pertenuis et minuta. Numerosus nebularum exercitus sub adspectum venit: singulas omnes enumerare impossibile.") Sitting in the middle of the Coma Cluster, this is an accurate assessment. See NGC 4872 for a general discussion of d'A's observations in the Coma Cluster core. ===== NGC 4884 = NGC 4889. As with NGC 4882 = NGC 4886 (which see), the only problem with d'A's observation is the RA offset on one night. Otherwise, his observation is appropriate: "Brightest of a multiple nebula ..." In this case, he has seven other observations which he attributes to this galaxy. Among these are two made on the two nights previous to his NGC 4884 observation, 20 and 21 April 1865. So, I'm surprised that he did not immediately recognize the field that he had swept over twice on the previous nights -- this is a strikingly rich field, and his observations of the galaxies in the Coma Cluster are liberally sprinkled with comments to that effect. I would have expected his visual memory to kick into overdrive, but if it did, he chose to ignore it. So, for whatever reason, he entered the observations as if for separate objects, so they ended up in the NGC as numbers 4882 and 4884. See NGC 4872 for a general discussion of d'A's observations in the Coma Cluster core. ===== NGC 4886 = NGC 4882, which see. ===== NGC 4888. See NGC 4878. ===== NGC 4889 = NGC 4884 (which see, also). This is the brightest galaxy in the Coma Cluster, and was discovered by WH in April of 1785. He found two other objects nearby, one of which is certainly NGC 4874, the second brightest galaxy in the cluster. The other one is probably NGC 4864; see it for more. Incidentally, d'A lists this galaxy has having been measured twice on the night of 5 May 1864. I think this is unlikely, and suggest instead that one of the observations credited to that night actually comes from 6 May 1864. This makes one of the night number entries in d'A's table the victim of a simple typo or transcription error. A couple of other nights are possible, of course, but those would require more than a single digit change. ===== NGC 4891 (a star) and NGC 4897 (a galaxy) are two different objects. This is an error that goes back to Shapley-Ames: they called the galaxy NGC 4891 when it is in fact NGC 4897. Consequently, just about everybody has used the wrong number since. RC3, however, is correct, and so is DSFG, Megastar, and HyperSky. Both objects were found by Wilhelm Tempel on 21 April 1882, and are described in the same observation, so cannot be identical. Tempel has a micrometrically measured position for the big galaxy which precesses to 13 00 51.5, -13 27 07 (J2000). Considering the relatively low surface brightness of the galaxy, this is not too far off a good modern position (I measured 13 00 52.9, -13 26 59 on the DSS). This is the object to which Dreyer assigned the number NGC 4897. NGC 4891 is mentioned only in Tempel's description of 4897: "2-3' nordlich geht ein feiner Nebelstern voran." A free translation would be, "There is a faint nebulous star 2-3 arcmin north-preceding." The star is in fact not nebulous, and the 17th magnitude galaxy about 30 arcsec north of it cannot be Tempel's object since he was observing with an 11-inch refractor. Many other of his faint "nebulae" have turned out to be nothing more than stars or asterisms, so the identification of N4891 as the star is certain. ===== NGC 4893 = IC 4015 and IC 4016, an interacting system. Neither d'A nor LdR saw both objects here, though Dreyer himself described the object as "F, irr R, E ns, rr" with LdR's 72-inch telescope -- he must have suspected that more was going on here than just a single galaxy. Both Dreyer and d'A mentioned the two nearby stars. Curiously, Dreyer adopted d'A's estimates of the stars magnitudes in preference to his own: Dreyer called them 11-12 and 14, while d'A has 17 and 20. The fainter galaxy is often called "NGC 4893A" while the simple NGC number is assigned to the brighter northen galaxy. It's not clear from the original observations that this was the intent, so I've called the two galaxies components of the NGC object. The NGC position (from d'A's single observation) is far enough off the galaxies that Wolf, in his fifth list, assigned the NGC number to a plate defect. Dreyer's observation came as an adjunct to his second observation of NGC 4914 (see NGC 4912 for more on that). ===== NGC 4894 = NGC 4898. JH almost certainly saw the considerably brighter N4898 rather than its fainter companion 0.7 arcmin to the northwest. Dreyer himself in a note in the Scientific Papers pulls WH's designation (III 363) off the number NGC 4894 and puts it on IC 4051; that, however, is probably wrong. WH's position (13 00 58, +28 00.2; J2000) is closer to the brighter NGC 4908, so that is almost certainly III 363. See NGC 4908, NGC 4864, and IC 4051 for more on the Coma Cluster field. d'A comments on a companion galaxy (or on one night perhaps "galaxies"; I haven't yet been able to accurately translate his Latin) in his descriptions of NGC 4898. But one of these is certainly NGC 4889 ("1 [arcmin] north, 10s preceding"), so it is unlikely that he actually saw CGCG 160-247, the fainter object usually taken for NGC 4894. Bigourdan's observations under the number "NGC 4894" actually point directly at NGC 4898, which is, of course, considerably brighter. Wolfgang, in an email from September 2014, seems to favor simply noting NGC 4894 as non-existent. That is certainly an option, but -- while the situation is not absolutely clear -- I'm nevertheless going to assign the number NGC 4894 to NGC 4898, based on JH's observation. This has the advantage of giving the number a referent which it would otherwise not have, and removes the temptation to assign it to CGCG 160-247. ===== NGC 4895. Seen by d'A and Bigourdan; see NGC 4872. Also see NGC 4896 where Bigourdan has made some mistake with this galaxy that led him to believe that he had discovered a "nova"; it is actually another observation of NGC 4895. ===== NGC 4896 = NGC 4895. Bigourdan's measurement, when reduced with respect to his nominal comparison star (HD 112886), falls within 2.5 arcsec of NGC 4895. However, the galaxy we usually take for this NGC number is a different one about nine arcminutes to the northeast, CGCG 160-087. Curiously, Bigourdan gives a position in the Comptes rendus list that is 6.5 arcmin away from the galaxy; this is the position that appears in the NGC. I have not been able to recover the source of this position, but it must be due to the use of an incorrect position for his comparison star (or he simply misidentified that star). Whatever happened, NGC 4896 is identical to NGC 4895. ===== NGC 4897 is the big Sc galaxy incorrectly called "NGC 4891" in Shapley-Ames, RC1, RC2, RNGC, and RSA. See NGC 4891 for more. ===== NGC 4898 = NGC 4894 is a double galaxy in the Coma Cluster, first seen by JH; it was also seen by d'A and by Bigourdan (who calls it "NGC 4894"). See NGC 4864 and NGC 4872 for more on the observations in the Coma Cluster that led to the NGC numbers that we use today. Also see NGC 4894 for more on the identity of that object to this one. Bigourdan also reports an observation for "NGC 4898", measured with respect to his comparison star "b" (see NGC 4875 for the story about this). That observation, however, points at a blank area "... roughly on the line joining GC 3354 and 3351 [this galaxy and 4889, respectively], and follows these nebulae." This is an appropriate description of the position that we reduce from his measurements, but there is nothing at all in that position. This must have been another of his "fausses images". ===== NGC 4903 and NGC 4905. Both found in JH's Sweep 564 on 30 March 1835, these are the two fainter of a triplet (there is another galaxy to the northwest just over five arcminutes away, ESO 443- G028 that JH might have seen under excellent conditions). The brightest galaxy is ESO 443- G034 and is in the same five-arcminute field with the two that JH found. How does it happen that he got the fainter two, but not the brightest? There are no clues in the sweep, except that the NPD for the galaxy that became NGC 4903 is marked "+-". Both objects were taken on wire 2 on the "following" side of JH's field, so it may be possible that the brighter galaxy was just out to the east as the telescope slewed past it across the sky. There is a bright star (HD 113129, V = 7.4) about five arcminutes northeast of the triplet, but JH does not mention that. Nor does he mention the double star about 1.5 arcminutes to the southwest of the bright star (which is itself double, but the secondary is at V = 11.5). So, why the bright galaxy is missing from the NGC, and JH's catalogues before, remains a mystery. ===== NGC 4908. Malcolm has pointed out that this number and IC 4051 may have been switched by most observers and in most cataloguers. Only Bigourdan and Vorontsov-Velyaminov in MCG put the NGC number on the brighter, larger, south-southeastern object. d'Arrest's position, copied correctly into the NGC, actually falls a bit closer to the smaller, fainter north-northwestern galaxy of the pair. And the IC position, adopted from Kobold's micrometric observation, lands almost exactly on the brighter object because he was apparently the first observer to put the NGC identification on the fainter object. Bigourdan did the opposite, but Dreyer apparently went with Kobold's position simply because, as published, it is has more precision. Bigourdan is still credited as a co-discoverer of the IC galaxy, though. I suspect that Dreyer did not make much of a fuss about the discrepancy between Kobold and Bigourdan because he was distracted by an identification problem involving H III 363 -- JH incorrectly put this number on h 1510 = NGC 4894 (which see). Again, Malcolm and I think that WH, like d'Arrest, must have seen NGC 4908, the brighter of the two galaxies. So, Dreyer's identification of WH's object as IC 4051 is as misleading as the NGC and IC positions. In any event, because of Kobold's assumption that the NGC position is for the fainter galaxy, just about everyone has the identifications reversed. This probably includes Milton Humason who found a supernova near "IC 4051" in 1950. Unfortunately, Humason does not give a position or a finding chart for the SN and galaxy in his PASP note, but I am pretty sure that it is the brighter, southern object. All this stands on d'Arrest's having actually seen the brighter galaxy. If he actually saw the fainter -- and it is only a few tenths of a magnitude fainter -- then the NGC and IC have exactly the correct identifications. And so does everyone except Bigourdan and MCG. But it is much more likely that d'A saw the brighter object. ===== NGC 4910 may possibly be NGC 4845. There is nothing in WH's place, and Dreyer quotes WH's note in the Scientific Papers: "The place of this neb. is not determined with accuracy." Dreyer adds, "No modern observations known." WH referred two other nebulae -- NGC 4420 and NGC 4772 -- to the same comparison star (75 Leo). For N4772, Dreyer notes, "RA 40 seconds too great." This suggests that WH's RA for N4910 might also be too large. In that case, NGC 4845 would be a candidate for WH's object. It is a large galaxy at about the right declination. However, WH describes his nebula as "eF, vL, er, R. 7 or 8 arcmin d[iameter]." N4845 is not quite that large, nor is it round. It is, however, the only reasonable candidate, so I've adopted the identity, though with a query. ===== NGC 4912, 4913, 4914, and 4916. Of these, only NGC 4914 appears on the sky in the place that the Herschel's found it. The other three, seen only by LdR, are not in the field around NGC 4914. The missing three were seen by LdR on 24 April 1865. He sketched a field, nominally around NGC 4914 = GC 3365 = h 1514 = H II 645, with three additional galaxies, but that sketch does not match what we now see on the sky near the Herschel's galaxy. Courtney Seligman points out that Dreyer must have had a suspicion that LdR's identification was incorrect as he (Dreyer) made two more observations of GC 3365, one on 5 April 1877, and a third on 1 April 1878. This third observation yeilded three other nebulae in the area of NGC 4914 (NGC 4868, 4870, and 4893), but none matched LdR's sketch of April 1865. I want to break here for a short biographical note. I've called the observer above "LdR", but he was in fact, Lawrence Parsons, Lord Oxmantown, the eldest son of the the third Earl of Rosse (he was soon to be the fourth earl as his father died in 1867). At the time of the observation in 1865, Lawrence was 25 years old and perhaps a relatively inexperienced observer with the 72-inch. (More knowledge of his life is clearly going to be needed here to clear up my speculation in that previous sentence! Here's some more speculation: the third earl may have given up observing by the time his son went to the eyepiece.) Back to the galaxies. The only other observations of the "nebulae" here were claimed by Max Wolf in his fifth list of new nebulae. Wolf measured objects he called NGC 4912 and NGC 4916. However, the object he took as N4912 is a star, and his N4916 is a defect (which he did not mark) on the plate. There is nothing in its position on POSS1. At this point, the field was still a mystery to me, so that is where I left it in the early 2000s. However, in November 2008, Sue French, Ron Buta, and I all bought originals of Lord Rosse's lists of nebulae from the 7th earl (our thanks to Andy Stephens for his kind assistance as Lord Rosse's agent). A correspondence with Sue followed in which I pointed out the usefulness of the lists in tracking down lost nebulae. I brought up the case of NGC 4914 and its missing companions as an example, and it was not long before Sue suggested that the quartet of galaxies formed by NGC 4922, IC 4088, CGCG 160-107, and the galaxy then called IC 843 -- roughly eight degrees south of the nominal positions -- might be the correct objects. Her original suggestion had IC 4088, the third brightest of the four, being mistaken for NGC 4914 by Lawrence Parsons. There is, in fact, a pretty good match between the diagram and the field south of NGC 4922. The four galaxies are shown in their correct relative positions, and LdR's description of their situation is accurate: "4 neb, 3 nearly in a line n s and one f. Suspected neby round the * [alpha]. A line through the 3 p nebulae is a little concave on the p side. [beta] brightest and lE np sf, [gamma] and [delta] next and [epsilon] vF." Two of the nearby field stars are also shown in their correct places and in the correct orientation between two of the galaxies. A third "star" ([alpha] in the diagram), however, around which LdR suspected nebulosity, is west of its sketched position. I can't put too much emphasis on this, however, as many of the sketches in LdR's 1880 monograph are pretty free representations of what's actually on the sky. Sue suggests that this "star" is the compact galaxy 2MASX J13002111+2920135. This matches the description, but the object is quite faint compared to field stars not diagrammed and closer to the galaxies. I suspect that LdR included this "star" only because he suspected it to be nebulous. There are also a couple of other galaxies in the field which LdR might have been able to see, including IC 842 (which has no identification problems), that are not in his sketch. LdR's relative brightnesses for the galaxies are also jumbled. He says "[beta] brightest and lE np sf, [gamma] and [delta] next and [epsilon] vF". If the field is indeed the one he saw, NGC 4922 is [delta], [gamma] is the nominal IC 843, [epsilon] is CGCG 160-107, and [beta] is IC 4088. This last galaxy is actually quite extended, but directly east-west, so I wonder if he hasn't confused [beta] and [gamma]. This galaxy is indeed extended northwest to southeast. The brightest of the group, NGC 4922, is a close double interacting system, with the two objects oriented southwest-northeast, just opposite LdR's note for the brightest object that he picked up. This reinforces my notion that this set of descriptions is rather confused, not corresponding to the galaxies we see today. In May/June 2021, Courtney Seligman took a look at this field and came to a somewhat different conclusion about LdR's diagram. He suggests that the future LdR got the north/south directions in the sketch flipped. This would have led him (LdR) to have believed that NGC 4922 was GC 3365 = h 1514, and that the three "novae" in the field were north of JH's object, not south as they appear on the sky. This would explain Dreyer's positions given in the NGC where all three are north of "GC 3365" rather than south. Courtney again notes Dreyer's uncertainty about these three by calling attention to the queries in the NGC descriptions. So, Courtney suggests the following identifications (J2000 positions): [delta] = NGC 4922 at 13 01 24.9, +29 18 40 [gamma] = NGC 4912 at 13 01 33.6, +29 07 50 [beta] = NGC 4913 = IC 4088 = IC 843 at 13 01 43.4, +29 02 41 [epsilon] = NGC 4916 = CGCG 160-107 at 13 02 04.2, +29 15 12 = PGC 44973 [alpha] = 2MASX J13002111+2920135 at 13 00 21.1, +29 20 14 These have the benefit of preserving the relative orientations of the galaxies in the sketch, as well as preserving Sue's suggestion that the compact 2MASS galaxy is the nebulous star [alpha] noted by LdR. Note, however, that -- based on work by Courtney -- I now think IC 843 to be identical with IC 4088, both of which see for further discussion. After some email correspondence with Courtney, it now seems to me to be entirely likely that this north-south flip is a second mistake that LdR made in his April 1865 observation, the first of course being the 8-degree error in his reading the setting the telescope. This does give us a hypothesis that matches much of the information in the observation, if not the relative brightnesses. This has led me to be pretty liberal with colons on these suggested identifications, but I think this is about the best we can do with this field. My thanks to Sue and Courtney for their diligence in helping to sort it all out. ===== NGC 4913. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4914. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4916. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4920 = IC 4134, which see. ===== NGC 4922. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4933. This has two components, the brighter one to the northeast. Bigourdan misidentified his comparison star one of the two nights he observed this, so the two components have IC numbers, I4173 and I4176, as well. The misidentified star led Bigourdan to believe that he had found a third "nova" in the field, too. See IC 4134 = NGC 4920 for the details. ===== NGC 4937 may be a compact asterism of 6 or 7 faint stars about 2 arcmin northwest of NGC 4940. Both were found by JH on 3 March 1837; he describes NGC 4937 as "eeF, S, R; the preceding of 2; a * 7m, just at northern edge of the field." NGC 4940 is "F, S, R, 15[arcsec]. The following of 2." While the identification of NGC 4940 is not in doubt, there is nothing but a single faint star at JH's position for NGC 4937. RNGC has this as "nonexistent", but notes a "close ** s"; this may be the two stars at 13 04 42.6, -47 13 44 (the two are not actually particularly "close" on DSS2 at eleven arcseconds separation). This leaves the asterism, just 20 arcseconds across, as the most likely candidate for JH's object. But I've flagged it with colons just in case he may have mistaken the star (with a question mark) for a small nebula during a moment of bad seeing. ===== NGC 4940. See NGC 4937. ===== NGC 4941. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4942 may also be IC 4136, which see. ===== NGC 4947 = IC 3974, which see. ===== NGC 4948 may also be IC 4156. See IC 4136 for the story. ===== NGC 4952 = NGC 4962, which see. ===== NGC 4954 = NGC 4972, which see. ===== NGC 4960 is probably NGC 4961 with a 11 arcmin error in the declination. D'A saw N4960 only once, on a night when he did not record N4961 (he observed that on four other nights). The descriptions and RA's match, too. D'A also leaves us a brief note: "Nebula indubie visa, etiamsi locus confirmatione adhuc indigebit". Roughly translated, this reads, "The nebula was undoubtedly seen, but its place remains to be confirmed." Since there is nothing else obvious nearby that might be N4960, I'm going with N4961 for the time being. ===== NGC 4961. See NGC 4960. ===== NGC 4962 = NGC 4952. Dreyer was skeptical about NGC 4962, the first of two nebulae that WH found southeast of 13 CVn (= 37 Com). The second is NGC 4966 which WH noted as "Just nf a * 8 or 9 m." This comment allowed both JH in GC and Dreyer in NGC to correctly assign N4966 = h1531 to WH's observation of III 304. But JH has no observation of the preceding nebula, III 303, and Max Wolf could not find it on a Heidelberg plate -- hence Dreyer's note in the Scientific Papers. (Dreyer also notes here some of Max Wolf's speculation on the identity of N4962, but dismisses two of Wolf's suggested identifications on the basis of WH's relative positions, and a third by noting that a 1 degree error in declination would have put the object beyond the limits of WH's sweep.) Given that WH's RA for N4966 is about half a minute off, and that his Dec is also off (but only by two minutes, within WH's standard deviation), can such an offset be used to identify an object that might be N4962? The answer is "Yes," if we are willing to accept that WH's position for it has yet another 30 seconds of RA error. The total RA error of 1 minute, combined with the 2 arcmin Dec offset, point right at NGC 4952. WH's similar descriptions are consistent with the similar magnitudes and sizes for the galaxies, and though he also found N4952, it was during a sweep nearly a month later. ===== NGC 4966. See NGC 4962 = NGC 4952. ===== NGC 4967, NGC 4973 = IC 847, and NGC 4974. Discovered by William Herschel on the night of 14 April 1789, these are presumably the brightest in the group of six or seven galaxies in the area. Herschel's positions, though, are roughly a minute of time too large, and he gives only one position for N4973 and N4974. Dreyer recognized the problem with the positions in this sweep (921) and another (1001) which, unfortunately, did not cover these objects. In a note to WH's second catalogue, Dreyer gives "modern" positions from JH (N4967), Rumker (N4973 and 4974), and Howe (N4973). If we accept these positions (and I'm inclined to as they refer to the brightest three galaxies in the group, and do not disagree with WH's relative positions of N4967 and N4973/4), then WH's description of the relative positions of N4973 and N4974 needs to be changed. He claims that his "place is that of the 2nd, the other is 3' or 4' south-preceding." This should read "... 3' or 4' north- preceding." CGCG, MCG, and RNGC all have the identifications of N4973 and N4974 garbled. (MCG, in addition, gets the identification of IC 847 wrong; it is actually the same galaxy as N4973 if we trust Swift's position.) Here are the correct identifications: N4973 = I847 = CGCG 1303.4+5357 = CGCG 270-049 = CGCG 271-005 = = MCG +09-22-006 and N4974 = CGCG 1303.8+5356 = CGCG 270-051 = CGCG 271-007 = MCG +09-22-009 ===== NGC 4969 is a double galaxy found by Edward Swift. It is not mentioned as a double in the description that Lewis Swift gives in his sixth list, so it is likely that Edward saw it simply as a faint nebula. The western component is slightly brighter, but the Swifts' position is bad, so we really can't say which object to put the NGC on. Since the two are overlapping, I've assumed that both contributed to the visual appearance, and have adopted the mean position as that for the NGC object. See NGC 4740 for more about other nebulae that Edward Swift found on the night of 27 April 1887, and how this one fits in. ===== NGC 4970 = IC 4196, which see. ===== NGC 4972 = NGC 4954. WH has only one observation of this, and Dreyer has this to say in the Scientific Papers: "In the sweep (1064), the observation of I. 274 [= NGC 4648, to which WH refers N4972 in his table] seems to be inaccurate, but III. 937 [= N4972] is between two well-determined stars (Kasan 2331 and 2388)." Dreyer goes on to work out the position of N4972, and it turns out to be the same -- within the errors -- as that for N4954 (observed by JH). Neither WH nor JH saw more than one nebula in the area. This verified JH's speculation in GC (copied verbatim into NGC) that N4954 and N4972 could be the same object, and Dreyer commented in the 1912 Monthly Notices list, "4972 to be struck out (= 4954)." ===== NGC 4973 = IC 847, which see. Also see NGC 4967. ===== NGC 4974. See NGC 4967. ===== NGC 4979 = IC 4198, which see. ===== NGC 4982 is probably the asterism of four stars just southwest of the NGC position. Tempel says of it (in a free translation by me using Google Translate), "I have often seen over the years a small nebula shown on Chacornac's chart, but I could not measure it with the ring micrometer; it's position on the chart is 13h 01m 08s -9d 47m." Assuming that Chacornac's chart has an equinox of 1850, this precesses to 13h 01m 39s, 99d 50m (1860 NPD), seven seconds of time off the NGC position. Ignoring the small RA error, the only "nebulous" object in the vicinity is the asterism. I've taken that as the NGC object, lacking any other reasonable candidate. ===== NGC 4987. Steve Gottlieb has found a curious thing about this galaxy. Though JH combined the numbers "H II 815" and "h 1542" in the GC, he had his own observation in the 1833 monograph listed as a "Nova". He has no note in GC explaining why he decided to combine the two observations. Furthermore, he adopted his own position for GC, but his father's position is nearly 40 seconds of time on east and 3.6 arcminutes on north. And there are galaxies near each position that both could have seen. WH called his "F, vS, stellar," JH "pF, S, R, 8...10 [arcsec]". By the time he got around to the GC, JH had changed the description to "vF, vS, stellar". I am pretty sure that the "vF" is a mistake for "pF". So, JH's galaxy (modern numbers are UGC 8216 = CGCG 271-013 = MCG +09-22-015) got the NGC number, position, and part of the description (if mistaken). This, as Steve found, has left WH's galaxy (modern numbers are CGCG 271-017 = MCG +09-22-020) with no NGC number, so I've included it in the short list of objects known before the NGC was compiled that have no NGC number. Steve has pointed out that for historical rigor and rectitude, we might want to move the NGC number to WH's object. I see two arguments against this. First, JH clearly wanted his own position to carry the GC number, and Dreyer followed along with the NGC. Second, changing the number will cause problems with subsequent work on these objects. While we've changed numbers with other objects (see e.g. NGC 6055 in the Hercules Cluster), there has been greater justification in those cases than there is here (only a single observer involved, systematic offsets seen, and so forth). In the end, I've decided to keep the NGC number on the UGC galaxy. Finally, how can it happen that, with two nearly equally bright galaxies on the sky near one another, WH picked up one, while JH found the other? Wolfgang Steinicke points out that the previous galaxy in WH's sweep (H III 819 = NGC 4998) has an RA nearly the same as H II 815. With two galaxies keeping him busy, WH missed the third. Perhaps JH was similarly distracted. ===== NGC 4989. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4993 = NGC 4994. I do not know where JH's incorrect declination for this observation of N4994 came from, but it is 50 arcmin too far north (his father got the right position for the galaxy). Whatever happened, JH's observation fits exactly in RA and in its description of the galaxy, so I am confident of the identity. There is nothing at JH's position. LEDA has picked up a galaxy too faint and small for JH to have seen, and it is well off his position by non-digit amounts (21 seconds of time and 4.3 arcmin). ===== NGC 4995. See IC 4136. ===== NGC 5003 is CGCG 217-013. The NGC position is 2 minutes of time and 2 degrees off. The RA error comes from WH who commented (copied into the Scientific Papers by Dreyer), "[Minute of time] forgot, but is 5, 6, or 7." Dreyer assumed "5," but the actual offset is closer to "7." There is a systematic offset in the other RAs that night of about -20s; corrected for that, the RA is close to the CGCG galaxy. The Dec error originates in GC, or perhaps in CH's reduction of WH's data. Auwers has the correct declination, but JH either did not catch the difference, or made a transcription error. Another systematic error in Dec of +3' in WH's positions that night leads us closer to the correct Dec. Personal note: This is a particularly important object for me as it was one of the first NGC puzzles that I solved by reference to an "original" publication, in this case, WH's Scientific Papers. I had been aware of the problem presented by this number since I ran across it in RC1 in the mid-60s. The RC1 solution -- adopted from earlier astronomers at Lick and Mt. Wilson -- "pick the nearest galaxy and give it the number," did not appeal to my aesthetic sense: Which galaxy had Herschel actually seen? The clue came when I found a copy of the Scientific Papers in the early or mid 1970s in the Astronomy Department's Peridier Library at the University of Texas at Austin. I found the entry for NGC 5003, and by re-reducing WH's observation and following up on his comment about the forgotten minute of time, I found the right galaxy. That experience convinced me of the value of the historical literature in this work, so I became an amateur historian as well as a professional galaxy cataloguer. ===== NGC 5008 = IC 4381. D'A's RA is one hour too small, and his note that the neighboring 10th magnitude star is north is wrong -- the star is actually south, but very nearly at his offsets, 1.1 seconds preceding, 95 arcsec south. The actual offsets are 1.3 seconds and 86 arcsec. The galaxy (and a companion) was rediscovered by Javelle nearly half a century later. His position is correct. ===== NGC 5020. See NGC 4752. ===== NGC 5029. Dreyer has an observation of two galaxies, one of which he thought was indeed NGC 5029, including several other objects in the area. See the entry for UGC 8269 in the "notngc" files for a first attempt at finding what Dreyer was seeing with LdR's 72-inch. ===== NGC 5033. R.J. Mitchell saw a knot in one of the arms of this galaxy in May 1858. See the entry in the "notngc" files for the story. ===== NGC 5036 is clearly identified by Leavenworth's sketch. His position is also pretty good for a change. See also NGC 5039, a neighboring galaxy shown in the same sketch. ===== NGC 5039. Here is one case where Leavenworth's position is actually pretty good (well, statistics suggests that he might get one close once in a while). It is not only just a second of time off in RA and 30 arcsec in Dec, but his sketch clearly shows it in relation to NGC 5036 and several field stars. Thus, the identification is secure, and LEDA's choice of a much fainter double galaxy a few arcmin southwest is clearly wrong. ===== NGC 5043. JH's RA is apparently 30 seconds too large as a cluster matching his description ("Cluster VIII, oblong; 10' x 7', of loose sc sts 11 m") is centered that far west of his position. Though I make the cluster a bit larger (14 arcmin by 8 arcmin), I have no doubt that this is JH's object. ===== NGC 5045 may be NGC 5155, but is more likely the cloud of stars, 20 arcmin by 11 arcmin, centered just west of his position. JH describes this as "A great cluster, or a surprisingly rich portion of the milky way. It contains 34 stars 11m, and perhaps 150 or 200 more of less magnitudes in the field." Earlier, I had written, "There is nothing at his position matching this description, but 10 minutes of time following is NGC 5155, a large Milky Way star cloud, nearly a degree across, that could well have been seen by JH. [However,] he picked this up in the same sweep as NGC 5155 (which see), so I'm not convinced that he in fact made a 10 minute error." Looking again at the original DSS V image, and the DSS2 R image, the cloud of stars near JH's position for NGC 5045 is backed up by a rich star field that obscures the brighter stars to some extent. Counting those brighter stars gives close to the same number that JH has in his note, so I am going to take this as his object. ===== NGC 5060. See IC 872. ===== NGC 5066 = NGC 5069, which see. ===== NGC 5067 is a double star just 30 arcsec north of Marth's position. He found this and NGC 5066 on the same night in 1864. His position difference between the two (6 arcmin) is close to what we see on the sky today (5.3 arcmin), and the two stars match his description -- "vF, vS" -- very well. ===== NGC 5069 = NGC 5066. N5069 is another of Ormond Stone's discoveries with the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor. His position, like those of many of the other nebulae found there, is too far east in RA, but approximately correct in Dec. This, and his appropriate description, gives me considerable confidence in the identity with N5066. ===== NGC 5070 is almost certainly NGC 5072. This is in a relatively scattered group of at least six galaxies. The problem object, N5070, was discovered by Swift in June of 1886. Swift's position is, not unusually, rather poor and points to nothing at all well southwest of NGC 5072. His description is telling, however: "eeF; eS; vF * v close; looks like a D * at first; another nr; 6 in field, [N5072, N5076, N5077, N5079, N5088]." The only galaxy in the area that matches this is N5072 (it has a star superposed on the faint corona near the overexposed nucleus), so it looks like Steve Gottlieb's suggestion is correct: Swift and d'Arrest saw the same object. Given this, the RC3 (and RNGC) number should read "N5072 = N5070." Swift also claimed to have found at least two other nebulae in this area. See IC 884 for that story. ----- After some correspondence with Gary Kronk about NGC 5070, I've put colons on the identification with NGC 5072. While the description of the object itself is compelling, Swift does mention seeing six nebulae in the field. Could he have picked up MCG -02-34-031? This is very near a much brighter star, BD -11 3492, that Swift surely would have mentioned in his description. So, his sixth nebula, and NGC 5070, remains a bit of a mystery. ===== NGC 5072 = NGC 5070, which see. ===== NGC 5076. See NGC 5077 and NGC 5070 = NGC 5072. ===== NGC 5077 area. The Herschels observed the triplet, N5076-77-79 whose identities are not in doubt. Lord Rosse found N5072 and N5088, as did d'Arrest. There is some confusion in their observations concerning stars near N5072: both Howe and Swift comment that the object at first looks like a double star, with the nebula about 15 arcsec nf the star. But there is also another star about 1.7 arcmin nf the nebula; this was seen by Howe and Bigourdan (who, oddly, did not mention the star sp). It is possible that Lord Rosse's observers saw both, but on different nights, and that d'Arrest missed the sp star, just as Bigourdan did. Swift notes 6 nebulae in the area. He probably also saw the one labeled RNGC 5070 (it's possible that he saw the otherwise unnoticed object np N5088; this is brighter than RN5070), but it is clear that his description is for N5072. So, the obvious conclusion for these two is that N5072 = N5070 (not = RN5070) which is the galaxy 15 arcsec north-following the star seen by Howe and Swift. There is a bit more discussion under NGC 5070. ===== NGC 5079. See NGC 5077 and NGC 5070 = NGC 5072. ===== NGC 5082. See NGC 5086. ===== NGC 5086 is almost surely the double star 15 arcsec north of JH's position. There is a possibility that may be the single star with a very faint companion closer to his position, but this is unlikely. ESO chose a very faint galaxy (ESO 270-G001) to be NGC 5086, but at 17th magnitude, it is well beyond JH's limit. JH saw the other three bright objects in the group (N5082, N5090, and N5091) on two nights, but only recorded this one once in Sweep 788 on 7 April 1837. His description ("eF, R, 15 arcsec. The 2nd of a group of 4") makes it the faintest and smallest of the group. Since there are no galaxies exactly at his position, I earlier picked out two asterisms that he may have seen. Having the Herschel Archive in hand, I've finally (June 2015) been able to check the sweep itself. There are no reduction errors; in particular, if JH had made a mistake in recording the wire number, the object would be well east of the group. There are, however, small systematic offsets in both RA and Dec for the other three objects from JH's positions. His RA is too large by 1.1 seconds of time, and his Dec is too far south by 0.7 arcminutes. Correcting his position for NGC 5086 by these amounts moves it north and west to within about twenty arcseconds of a double star. It seems likely that this is the object that he intended as the fourth of the group. ===== NGC 5088. See NGC 5077 and NGC 5070 = NGC 5072. ===== NGC 5090. See NGC 5086. ===== NGC 5091. See NGC 5086. ===== NGC 5094. See NGC 4802. ===== NGC 5096. See NGC 5098. ===== NGC 5098. There are two galaxies here, less than an arcminute apart, of virtually identical brightness. Which one did John Herschel see? His position falls just between the two objects, and he describes his object as "Faint, small, between two stars, the north-following of two" (the south-preceding is NGC 5096, actually a triple object, about 3.5 arcmin away). Noting the object as "between two stars" seems to point to the preceding of the pair, as the nearby stars apparently bracket this object rather better than the following one. But, the stars are far enough away that JH's comment could apply to either object. Later observations don't help much. For example, when Bigourdan measured N5098 in the 1890's, he picked up the following galaxy, noting the preceding as a neighboring "star." So, the question remains: which object is NGC 5098? For the time being, unable to provide a definitive answer, I list both objects. ----- I've provided a mean position in February 2018 to cover the possibility that "both" is the correct answer. ===== NGC 5100 is possibly also NGC 5106, which see. ===== NGC 5106 is possibly NGC 5100. There are some problems remaining. Here is the story: WH saw the nebula on just one night, and recorded only the right ascension, not the north polar distance. The GC and NGC note the polar distance as "v doubtful." The NGC carries a brief note: "Not found by Tempel (A.N. 2522); at least there was no 2nd class nebula near the place." Dreyer has a longer note in his edition of WH's complete papers: "Sw[eep] 108. 'A vS and F neb sp 59 Virginis [= SAO 119847]. Its A.R. is about 13h 06 1/4m. While I looked into the finder to determine its situation, I lost it, but shall endeavour to find it another night.' The transit is given as 13h 10m, that of 31 Bootis (Sweep 111) as 14h 30 1/4m. It is probably = Marth 255 (NGC 5100), 35s p, 30' n of the assumed place of II.22; no neb in H's place." In his NGC corrections based on the WH edition, Dreyer simply says, "II.22 must be = 5100." There is no problem with NGC 5100. Marth's position is very close to Bigourdan's which is, in turn, very close to the GSC's. It has a small companion which is mentioned in the CGCG, MCG, and UGC, though was apparently not seen by Marth or Bigourdan. And N5100 is indeed 35s p, and 30' n of the NGC position. All this supports Dreyer's contention of the equality of the two NGC numbers. However, JH makes no mention of how he determined the polar distance which he used in GC for N5106 (Dreyer simply copied the NPD into NGC). If we assume that JH used the NPD of 31 Bootis for II 22, then the GC/NGC PD is more than 30 arcmin in error -- it should read 81 18.1 rather than the 80 46.5 it does. Also, regardless of the NPD, WH's RA places II 22 south-following 59 Virginis, not south-preceding as he states. So, questions linger around this object. Unless WH's or JH's unpublished notes can shed some light on this, we have to regard the identity of N5106 with N5100 as provisional. ----- In CH's fair copy of the sweep in the Herschel Archives, I found this: A nebula so small that I lost it again while I looked into the finder. 31 Bootis p 1h 20' 15" - - - - RA 13h 11' 34" PD betw. 80d 28', 81d 54'. CH has shortened her brother's comments a bit, but the time of the observation (the transit) is still given to a full minute only. This makes the RA also uncertain. Finally, the mean of the 1800 polar distances (probably the limits of the sweep) is 81d 11m. For J2000, the position then becomes 13 21 36, +07 45.9, with a range in RA of 30 seconds, and a range in Dec of 43 arcminutes. This is 1.2 degrees away from NGC 5100; even JH's GC position is half a degree from the galaxy. Thus my concern. For now, I'm willing to follow Dreyer's lead, but I am going to change the colon that I had put on the number to a question mark, and my "probably" in the first sentence of this note to "possibly." ===== NGC 5109 = NGC 5113. Both objects were found by William Herschel, N5109 = H II 826 on 17 March 1790, and N5113 = H III 808 eleven months earlier on 24 April 1789. His descriptions are very nearly the same: "F, S, E" and "cF, S, E." John Herschel lists only one galaxy here (h1588) which he identifies as H II 826 (= N5109), in spite of the fact that his father's position for N5109 is a full minute of time and nearly two arcmin off, while that for N5113 is only 10 seconds of time and just over one arcmin off. Sir John's description "vF, pmE, 30sec" is also closer to his father's "cF" for N5113 than it is to the "F" for N5109. Dreyer followed Sir John's lead here, but added a note to the NGC description: "perhaps = N5109." He reinforced this in his 1912 MN paper and collection of Sir William's papers, and suggested that the number N5113 be discarded. Reinmuth agreed, and accepted the equality of the two numbers. CGCG, however, located a small galaxy six arcmin north of the NGC position for N5113, and assigned the number to that galaxy. UGC followed along. Given the data above, and the fact that this galaxy is 1.6 magnitudes fainter than the brighter one, this identification is certainly incorrect. So, I have followed Dreyer (1912) in equating the two NGC numbers. The galaxy itself is a peculiar spiral, with a knotty bar-like structure in the middle. The SDSS image shows that the bulge and nucleus are offset into the northern end of the object, while this knotty structure toward the middle is actually a group of bright HII regions. So, I have taken the nucleus to be located eccentrically in the northern end. Note that many of the published positions, as well as those that I measured earlier, apply to the more centrally-located knots; I've labeled them as such in the table. ===== NGC 5110 = NGC 5111. The NGC position for N5111 (from the Herschels) is excellent, while that for N5110 from Swift's third list is a little off. But the identity is clinched by Swift's note that the object is "in line with 2 pB stars". The confusion has come from LEDA which incorrectly adopted a much fainter galaxy as N5111. Though this galaxy has stars nearby, they form a line to the north, with the galaxy being well off the line. It is also enough fainter that Swift probably would not have swept it up given the proximity of the brighter object 19 seconds east and six arcmin north. The identity, by the way, was first suggested by Reinmuth in "Die Nebel Herschel." ===== NGC 5111 = NGC 5110, which see. ===== NGC 5113 = NGC 5109, which see. ===== NGC 5118 = IC 4236, which see. ===== NGC 5119. See IC 884. ===== NGC 5122 has faint plumes perpendicular to the major axis of the galaxy and aligned with the nucleus. On the IIIa-J plate for DSS2, the plumes extend to about three times the length of the major axis, roughly 3.5 arcmin from end to end (the major axis is about 1.1 arcmin). A popular interpretation of this is as a "polar-ring galaxy" where an outer ring is generally perpendicular to the disk of the galaxy. See Whitmore et al, AJ 100, 1489, 1990 for more on these peculiar objects. Also see IC 884. ===== NGC 5124 = IC 4233, which see. ===== NGC 5126. See IC 4233. ===== NGC 5136 = IC 888, which see. ===== NGC 5142 has a star superposed just 3.4 arcseconds south of the nucleus. It is clearly seen only in the SDSS image, but there is just barely a suggestion of it in the combined 2MASS color image in NED. Unlike IC 3993 (which see), this star is not particularly blue, so is probably not a supernova. It certainly does not appear in the IAU supernova list. ===== NGC 5144. This is sometimes interpreted as a double galaxy, but appears to me to be simply a late-type spiral with a superassociation. In my previous releases, I had the main galaxy listed as "NGC 5144A" and the superassociation as "NGC 5144B". I've changed these now to "NGC 5144" and "NGC 5144 knot" for consistency with my usual naming conventions. ===== NGC 5155 is a Milky Way star cloud about 1 degree across, with dust lanes and patches splashed over it. I put it a little southwest of JH's position, but his description ("A portion of the Milky Way broken up into clustering masses of astonishing richness. There must be at least 200 or 300 stars in the field, none greater than 10 m.") idenitfies it securely. This same star cloud may also be NGC 5045 (which see), but that was found in the same sweep (number 596 on 16 June 1835). That makes the identity unlikely, but I suggest it as a remote possibility. ===== NGC 5160 is a double star very near d'Arrest's position. It was seen as a double star by Tempel (though he described it as nebulous on two nights) as well as by Bigourdan, who measured its position. His measurement agrees with mine for both stars, and also -- implicitly -- with the GSC position for the northern. Bigourdan also gave good estimates of the relative magnitudes of the stars, as well as their distance (10 arcsec) and position angle (0 degrees; though on the POSS1, the PA is about 7-8 degrees). Furthermore, d'Arrest notes the 12th magnitude star 28.3 seconds following, 1 arcmin north, of his object. That star is just where he says it is. ===== NGC 5162 = NGC 5174. Swift's RA is 1 minute of time too small. Once that is corrected, his detailed description, "vF, pL, eE [not lE as in the NGC]; an eeF * at each focus of ellipse; B * in field sp; F * nr nf" is very close to being an exact match to NGC 5174 (which see) and the surrounding star field. The bright star (WH's comparison star for NGC 5174), the star northeast, and the faint star involved to the south were also noted by JH and (the northeast star) by Dreyer with LdR's 72-inch. ===== NGC 5168. JH's position is for a double star near the northeastern side of this compact little cluster. The position I've adopted is for the approximate center of the cluster. ===== NGC 5171 is the brightest galaxy in a curious group. "Curious" because, of the five NGC objects (N5171, N5176, N5177, N5178, and N5179) in it, only four were seen by any one observer. However, since at least two of the three observers were looking for Comet d'Arrest, they clearly picked up the nebulae as afterthoughts. First to go through the group was Hough, then directory of Dearborn Observatory in Chicago, and Burnham, apparently observing with Hough the night of 5 May 1883 on the 18.5-inch refractor. Though the positions are not particularly good, Burnham's offsets to the 8th magnitude star 21 seconds preceding and 58 arcsec south, pins down the nebula he saw as NGC 5171. Dreyer creditted Burnham with the co-discovery of NGC 5179, apparently because of the uncertain position. Hough is credited with NGC 5171, but he describes his object as "Double. Nebula, round, condensed." This could apply to NGC 5171 and its superposed compact companion or star, but it could also apply to NGC 5176 and NGC 5177 which are 2-3 arcmin north-northeast of NGC 5171. Hough's position is not good enough to tell. It also seems odd that he would record the same nebula as new as Burnham, especially given that they were observing on the same night with the same telescope. On 11 May of the same year, Tempel saw NGC 5171, N5178, and N5179 with the 10.5-inch Amici I refractor at Arcetri. He has micrometric positions for the first two, but the third was apparently too far from his comparison star to be measured. Nevertheless, his estimated position for it is good enough to positively identify the galaxy. Finally, on 29 June 1883, Ernst Hartwig, using the 18-inch refractor at Strassburg found and measured four nebulae in the group: N5171, N5176, N5177, and N5179. His positions are very good. So, the observers using the larger telescopes failed to find the faintest of the nebulae, N5178. But it is the southern-most of the five, and has a lower average surface brightness, so may not draw attention to itself as readily as the northern four. ===== NGC 5174 = NGC 5162 (which see) and NGC 5175 are a pair of objects discovered by WH: "Two, mistaken for one; but 240 shewed (sic) them both. cL, vF." JH observed these twice; his description from his first observation (Sweep 120) is correct: "eF, E; involves a star at the south end, and has a star 6 mag 15 arcmin south and a few seconds preceding." His second observation in (Sweep 242) is somewhat more in accord with his father's: "vF; two close together, or one E nearly in the meridian. A star 11 mag north." Using LdR's 72-inch, Dreyer also "Found only one neb, vF, vS, stellar, no other neb found. A * 12m about 4 arcmin nf. The ground appeared milky round about." He goes on to comment, "h seems also to have seen but one neb, viz, 1612, his '* 11m n' may be my * 12 m ..." Yet CGCG called this a "double" galaxy, and has managed to confuse a lot of modern observers. There is, of course, only one galaxy here, with two stars superposed on the arms north and south of the nucleus. It is possible, I suppose, that WH split the galaxy as happened with e.g. NGC 2442 and NGC 2443, and NGC 2903 and NGC 2905. This gives us two possibilities: The second nebula might be the part of the galaxy north-northwest of the nucleus more or less centered on the faint star there (in my previous note on this galaxy, I had mistakenly called this star an HII region. It is clearly a star in the SDSS image). This northern star was apparently seen only by Swift (see his description under the note for NGC 5162). The second possibility is the considerably brighter southern superposed star with the surrounding arm(s). I think that this is the more likely candidate for NGC 5175. I give the positions for both stars in the big table. ===== NGC 5175 is most likely involved with one of the stars superposed on NGC 5174 (which see for the evidence), probably the brighter southern star. ===== NGC 5176. This may perhaps have been seen by Hough as well as by Hartwig. See NGC 5171 for more. ===== NGC 5177. This may perhaps have been seen by Hough as well as by Hartwig. See NGC 5171 for more. ===== NGC 5178. This was not seen by Hartwig, nor by the Dearborn observers -- but was picked up by Tempel with a smaller telescope. See NGC 5171 for more. ===== NGC 5179. See NGC 5171. Dreyer incorrectly credits Burnham with this galaxy -- Burnham's description makes it clear that he saw NGC 5171. This was seen, however, by Tempel and Hartwig. ===== NGC 5189 = IC 4274, which see. ===== NGC 5194 is the Whirlpool Galaxy, one of the nearest and most spectacular of the giant spirals. It has the distinction of being one of the first to be recognized as a spiral by Lord Rosse with his 72-inch reflector. It is also the first of two galaxies comprising Messier 51; the second is NGC 5195. Unlike M 76 (= NGC 650/651), Messier noticed that this object was in fact a pair. The two galaxies are interacting -- with interesting results for both. N5194's "grand-design" spiral pattern probably owes its existence to N5195, while N5195 itself has dust lanes from the outer arm of N5194 superposed on its generally amorphous structure. Plumes and an irregular corona around N5195 are also the result of the interaction. Finally, the two galaxies may be in the process of merging. Some billions of years hence, observers may well see only a single, giant elliptical galaxy where we currently have a pair of the most magnificent extragalactic objects in the sky. ===== NGC 5195 is the amorphous irregular companion to NGC 5194 (which see), and the second component of Messier 51. ===== NGC 5200 is a double star. Like many other of the "nebulae" found at Harvard in the 1850s (see e.g. NGC 2515, NGC 4582, and NGC 5404), the identity is assured by Coolidge's micrometric measurement. ===== NGC 5204. The nucleus is probably one of the stellar objects near the center of the galaxy. The 2MASS PSC and SDSS image centroiding algorithms disagree on which is the nucleus, but the DSS2 infrared image suggests that 2MASS is correct. Lira et al (MNRAS 382, 1552, 2007) have a spectrum that tentatively confirms this, so I have adopted the 2MASS PSC position for the galaxy. ===== NGC 5207. In May of 1856, R.J. Mitchell found a companion galaxy, CGCG 073-021. See that in the "notngc" files for more information. ===== NGC 5208. See NGC 5212. ===== NGC 5209. See NGC 5212. ===== NGC 5212. Seen by John Herschel on only one night, and described simply as "extremely faint," the only thing close to his position is a wide double star (separation about 20 arcsec). Wolfgang Steinicke chose this double as N5212. JH has other doubles mistaken as nebulae in his lists -- though they usually have smaller separations than this. Because his position is within his nominal errors of the double, this is at least a candidate for his object. But there are other possibilities. Sue French sent a note early in May 2005 asking about CGCG 045-008 (NGC2000 and Glen Deen also picked this galaxy as their candidate for N5212). This is close to two other galaxies (found by WH), NGC 5208 and NGC 5209, that JH saw the same night as he did his "nova". However, his "eF" nebula follows the other two by 50 seconds of time, while CGCG 045-008 is between the two brighter galaxies in RA. There is no easy digit error that would shift JH's RA to match that of CGCG 045-008, though the declinations are identical. The faint galaxy is also close southeast of NGC 5208, so I think that had he seen it, JH would have commented on its proximity to the brighter object (and his position for NGC 5208 is excellent, too). Steve Gottlieb and Malcolm Thomson have suggested three other galaxies that might be Sir John's object. One is CGCG 045-021, 10 arcmin south but 13 seconds of time east of JH's position. CGCG 045-012 is 30 seconds of time west but 6 arcmin north. Finally, my own choice is the one that Malcolm and Steve also favor in the end: CGCG 045-014, 27 seconds of time straight west of JH's position. This is the second brightest of the three, and has the highest surface brightness. Those factors, along with the offset (close enough to 30 seconds, a common error), make this galaxy, too, a candidate for JH's object. Is there a possibility of systematic errors in the positions in this sweep? For NGC 5208 and 5209, his positions are very good. In addition, his position for 60 Virginis, the nearest bright star in the sweep, is within 5 arcseconds of the modern position. So, we do not have any systematic offsets here to help us. In the past, I favored the double star simply because it is the closest object to JH's position. However, since I wrote all of that, I have checked the Herschel Archive for JH's sweep 253 of 24 April 1830, where NGC 5212 is number 33. The first thing to note is that he misidentifies the nebula as H III 10 (which is NGC 5209) and calls the real III 10 a "nova" -- he obviously caught this error before he published his observations in 1833. Second, there are no errors in the reduction; re-reducing his observation using his position of 60 (sigma) Virginis as a reference recovers his published position to within a few arcseconds in both coordinates. I wondered about a wire error (see NGC 468 for more about these). The sweep log notes that NGC 5212 was taken as it was exiting the field. However, if the wire was recorded incorrectly, the RA would be further east by either 28 seconds of time (wire 2) or 59 seconds (wire 1). Both of the candidate galaxies are west, and there is nothing at all that might have caught JH's eye -- not even wide double stars -- at the suggested positions. Given all this, my own guess is that JH's clock was somehow misread by 50 seconds, and that his object is CGCG 045-008 (this is about half a magnitude brighter in V than is CGCG 045-014) taken as it was leaving the field. Perhaps distracted by the two brighter galaxies, JH had to hurry his observation of the faint "nova" and mis-recorded the time (well, it's a possibility, I suppose ...). I've adjusted the colons and question marks in the position table accordingly. ----- I should add that my selected position for the galaxy is from 2MASS PSC. In the Pan-STARRS1 image, I see at least two patches, perhaps more, in the center of the galaxy. The other automated surveys -- Gaia EDR3, SDSS, PS1, etc -- put the center up to 1.25 arcseconds southeast of the 2MSP position. So, in choosing the 2MASS position, I am suggesting that this more closely represents the nucleus of the galaxy than the optical positions. However, I will not argue with you if you make a different choice. For an optical position, I would select that from Gaia EDR3. ===== NGC 5215. JH's intended object is the somewhat brighter eastern galaxy of this interacting pair. He has one observation on 3 June 1836, and writes, "eF and S; has 2 sts less than 1 diam of neb distant, one (by diagram) s and one p." If the western galaxy is his "preceding" star, then what we see on the sky matches this description exactly. ===== NGC 5216 and NGC 5218. The MCG identifications are reversed from those by all other observers. There is no apparent reason for this in the NGC itself, and I doubt that Vorontsov or his colleagues consulted JH's 1833 catalogue where there is an identification error. For the record, Sir John makes his h 1635 a "nova" while he incorrectly labels h 1636 as H II 841. Sir William's original observation was of two objects which became H II 841 and H II 842. Sir John got the identifications sorted out for the GC, and the NGC has them exactly correct, too. So, the MCG is the only catalogue which reverses the identifications. All the other modern catalogues are correct in placing N5216 south-preceding N5218. ===== NGC 5217. See IC 897 for a curious footnote to the observations of this galaxy. ===== NGC 5218. See NGC 5216. ===== NGC 5219 = NGC 5244. John Herschel's original position for N5219 is quite uncertain, being given only to a full minute of time in RA and marked +- in Dec. The description exactly matches that for NGC 5244. Furthermore, the two objects were seen in different sweeps. The identity is therefore almost certain. ===== NGC 5236 = M 83. The center of this galaxy is dominated by a complex of star-forming regions with several forming an apparent arc (see Diaz et al, ApJ 652, 1122, 2006). The optical/IR center is a bright, red object well seen in Figure 1 (from HST images) of the Diaz paper. The position of this object is well-represented by the 2MASS PSC entry for the brightest IR knot in the 2MASS J-band image. Diaz et al also note that the center of rotation for the inner part of the galaxy is offset by 8 arcsec from this optical/IR object. However, it is within about 3 arcsec of the position of the presumed nuclear radio source as given in the position table from three 6-cm observations. It's clear that the position of M 83 is wavelength dependent. I've chosen to represent the galaxy by a mean value of five of the 2MASS point sources in the center. But many other positions are listed in the table, so feel free to pick the one that appeals to you. Also see NGC 6634 where M 83 figures in the identification of La Caille's object now bearing that NGC number. ===== NGC 5237. This is probably a late-type irregular galaxy, though there is a hint of a nucleus on the DSS2IR image. There is a low-surface-brightness knot or companion on the northwest side of the galaxy with no entries in the automated lists. ===== NGC 5238, similar to NGC 5237, is in the M 101 group. It is either a double interacting system, or a late-type irregular, well-resolved in the SDSS image. The position for the northern component is for an eccentric blue stellar knot. Spectra show this to be a star-forming region in the galaxy rather than a superposed Galactic star. The position of the southern component is similarly characterized by a blue knot. This one, however, is more diffuse and obviously a part of the galaxy. Curiously, it has no entry in the automated catalogs, though SDSS has picked up three of the fainter knots around it. I've adopted a mean of those three positions. ===== NGC 5240 may be IC 895 (which see for the story), but is probably not. ===== NGC 5242 probably never existed. JH saw it only once, and seemed unsure about its reality. His description reads, "eF, vL; fills the whole field. Strongly suspected; yet a doubt remains." His declination is followed by a double colon which further suggests a problem with the observation. However, under his entry for NGC 4808, seen during the same sweep, he says, "Sky perfectly clear." Also, his measured declination, though marked uncertain, is appropriate for the sweep. Since there are no galaxies in the area matching JH's description (all are too small), nor are there any one hour preceding or following, or within two+- degrees of the nominal declination, this may well be a visual illusion of some sort, perhaps caused by scattered light in his telescope. ===== NGC 5244. See NGC 5219. ===== NGC 5256. There is no indication that either WH or JH saw this as a double nebula. So, I've adopted the mean position of the two galaxies as that for the NGC object. The northeastern object, perhaps a bit brighter, is Markarian 0266 and a Seyfert galaxy with broad and strong emission lines. ===== NGC 5264. See NGC 5298. ===== NGC 5268 is a star at the catalogued position. Included in the Markree Catalogue as a nebula, there is only a hint on the DSS of a very faint galaxy just south of the much brighter star. I do not think that it could be seen in the 12.4-inch refractor at Markree, and suspect that the southern declination -- thus, a relatively low altitude in Ireland -- might have played a role in the classification. ===== NGC 5273 = IC 895, which see. ===== NGC 5276. See IC 895. ===== NGC 5284. This cluster is nearly lost against the rich background of the Milky Way, so is difficult to identify. JH describes is as a "Cl class VIII. L, v rich, loosely sc; sts 7.8 ... 16 m; it is an outlier of the milky way, but very rich and much insulated." His position corresponds to that of the brightest star in the area, HD 119744; at V = 9.35, it is somewhat fainter than JH's estimate. If this is indeed the cluster that JH saw, its center is about 20 seconds of time east and 4.5 arcminutes north of the star. I think this is the most likely candidate for JH's object, but we really do need a visual observation (Steve Gottlieb hasn't yet gotten to this southern object; July 2015). There is also a Milky Way star cloud, about 30 arcmin by 20 arcmin, centered about 45 seconds of time following, and four arcminutes north, of JH's position. It also more or less matches his description, and could be his object. Finally, Archinal has this as "... the Milky Way patch, centered on the star HD 119837 (V = 10.6)." This is a part of the star cloud noted in the previous paragraph. ===== NGC 5292. See NGC 5298. ===== NGC 5298. Steve Gottlieb has suggested that the traditional identification of N5298 with ESO 445- G039 may be wrong. Is it possible, he asks, that ESO 445- G035 is the galaxy that JH saw? His reasoning is that, relative to JH's observation of N5302, N5298's position is closer to G035 than it is to G039. This is probably also the source of the RC1, GHD2, and RNGC identifications: they, too, choose G035. It looks to me like the most likely explanation is a simple +30 second error in JH's RA for N5302 due to a mistake in recording the eyepiece wire, and that his position for N5298 is good. Here are my thoughts. JH found 34 nebulae during Sweep 564 on 30 March 1835. Comparing his data for that night with those for the same objects from other nights, he seems to have had about his usual problem rate (5-10 percent) -- missed nebulae that he could have picked up, nebulae referred to nearby objects rather than being directly measured, etc. Seven of the objects from sweep 564 are in what became ESO/SRC field 445, so I looked at the offsets from the modern positions (from ESO-B) in that field. I found, as Steve did, that NGC 5302 is off the modern position by +31.3 seconds of time, and that JH's position for N5298 is +26.0 seconds off if he saw G035 rather than G039. Looking at the offsets for the other nearby objects, though, I don't see any other large offsets: NGC Delta RA Delta Dec 5264 +0.5s -16" 5292 -0.1s +1'08" 5328 -1.7s +17" 5357 -0.6s +15" 5393 -0.4s +19" 5298 +1.0s -40" if = G039 5298 +26.0s +44" if = G035 5302 +31.3s +1'24" If we assume that JH saw G035 and made the same 30 second error in the position of N5298 that he did for N5302, then the offset would be 5298 -5.3s +44" That much larger negative error suggests to me that the "standard" identification is more likely to be correct since there are no other large RA errors in the positions for the five nearby galaxies. On the other hand, N5298 and N5302 are close enough that JH could have seen both in the same field, and could have made the same mistake for each. Steve then says, "I've observed both ESO 445-35 and ESO 445-39 and they appear similar in the eyepiece with perhaps ESO 445-39 a bit brighter. I don't understand, though, how he [JH] would picked up one of these galaxies and not the other." WH clearly had problems in this field. He missed the brightest galaxy here (IC 4329), and there are several other galaxies in the cluster that he could have picked up, but didn't. I also did not see anything unusual in his notes about the field, simply descriptions of the nebulae. In contrast, earlier in the same night, he made several comments about the NGC 3308/09/11/etc group in Abell 1060, noting double objects, other objects in the group, and so forth. For the N5298 area, these comments are missing. I'm guessing here, but suspect that JH was growing tired, having been at the eyepiece for more than five hours by the time this group came into view. I checked the sweep log and found that there were problems with a couple of objects earlier in the sweep -- JH suspected that the wrong wire was noted. If so, there could be similar problems with NGC 5298 and NGC 5302. Both were referred to wire 2 in the log, but if wire 1 was the reference instead, then each galaxy would have an RA about 36 seconds less than the recorded values. This would solve the problem for NGC 5302, but would put the nominal position for NGC 5298 about 10 seconds away from G035. If reduced with respect to wire 2, JH's position is only a second of time away from G039. Looking at the data, we find that the magnitudes of G035 and G039 are virtually identical (B = 14.0), and the diameters are not too different, either. So, the data for the galaxies cannot help us decide which one JH saw. An additional note: There are several moderately bright stars around G035 that form an eyecatching pattern with the galaxy. I suspect that if JH had seen this galaxy, he would have commented on the stars as well. This is only a suspicion, of course, but the configuration is striking on the DSS images. In the end, I'm going to adopt G039 as NGC 5298, but leave G035 in the table as a remote possibility. ===== NGC 5299. There is a +30 arcmin error in the GC and NGC declination, but JH's original CGH observation is correct. Once we look in the right spot, we find a large (roughly 25 arcmin across) Milky Way star cloud that matches JH's description ("Cl VII. class; much more than fills field; a very L and rich milky way cl, quite insulated on the prec, n, and foll sides, and nearly so to the S; forming a kind of peninsular projection, but much richer than the main body of the milky way."). I've adopted this identification. ===== NGC 5302. There is a 31 second error in JH's RA, probably the result of noting the wrong eyepiece wire. See NGC 5298 for more. ===== NGC 5303 has a companion that we now call "NGC 5303B" that was seen in 1851 by Bindon Stoney with LdR's "Leviathan". See its story in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5307, a planetary nebula, was described by JH as double. This is really quite a remarkable observation because the object is very small and must have been difficult to resolve. JH calls the night on which he found the nebula "superb", but it still would have taken quite a careful observer to pick it up, let alone resolve it. The DSS2 IR image shows how the object might have looked double to JH, while the Hubble Space Telescope images (just search for "NGC 5307" on the web) give us a modern, high-resolution, view. Purely out of curiosity, I've found positions for the central star and the two main lobes of the nebula. The central star is the one to take for the entire NGC object, of course. ===== NGC 5309. This was found the night of 27 April 1887 by Edward Swift, Lewis's teenaged son. He calls it "vF, pS, R, between a star and a coarse double star following." There is nothing in the position given in Swift's list, and I do not find reasonable candidates at big digit errors (1 hour in RA, 1 degree in Dec, etc), but there is a possible 10 arcmin digit error (more below). Wolfgang's candidate may be too faint for either Swift (father or son) to have seen, and the flanking stars are faint, too (the double star is much more south than east of this galaxy). My own candidate, while somewhat brighter, is further from Swift's position, though the declination offset (-9 arcmin 10 arcsec) suggests a digit error. The RA offset (+18 sec) is also in line with the other RA offsets of galaxies found that same night by Edward (see NGC 4740 for more on this), so the position at least is suggestive. However, the "coarse double star following" is as much south as east, and is also quite faint. So, I've put question marks on both objects in the position table. ===== NGC 5310 is a star, as are several other NGC objects found early in the career of the "Great Refractor" at Harvard (see e.g. NGC 4582, NGC 5200, and NGC 5404 for others; but see NGC 5632 for another recovery for three of the early Harvard objects). This one was found by Sidney Coolidge in 1859 (tragically, he was killed during the American Civil War). There is a much fainter star just 17 arcseconds to the southeast; perhaps this added some appearance of nebulosity at the eyepiece. Coolidge's position is very good and allows no mistaking the object he measured. ===== NGC 5312. Steve Gottlieb has suggested that WH never saw this galaxy, and that his observation (H III 422) applies to NGC 5321 instead. Here is his email note from July 2014 in full. Take a look at H's observation of internal numbers 1074 and 1075 on 2 May 1785 (sweep 406), which became III-422 and III-423 and eventually NGC 5312 and NGC 5318. He recorded "Two, eF, stellar, the time and number taken between them. The northern one is the faintest; distance about 4 or 5' not far from the meridian." His position is 5' south of NGC 5318 = UGC 8751, the brightest galaxy in the group, and 2' southwest of NGC 5321 = CGCG 190-065. The separation of these two galaxies is 4.6' with a position angle of 160°, an excellent match with H's description, except the northern galaxy (NGC 5318) is brighter. This strongly suggest III-422 = NGC 5318 and III-423 = NGC 5321. JH observed all three of the brightest galaxies here -- NGC 5312, 5318 and 5321. He assumed his father's III-422 applied to NGC 5312 = h1676 and declared NGC 5321 = h1680 a "Nova". As a result, JH is credited with the discovery of NGC 5321 in the GC and NGC and WH is credited with NGC 5312. But NGC 5312 is over 10' separation from NGC 5318 (double H's estimate) and furthermore the orientation (PA 240°) doesn't match his description ("not far from the meridian"). So, I'm suggesting WH never observed NGC 5312 and the catalogue equivalences should be III-422 = GC 3670 = NGC 5321 [and] h1676 = GC 3664 = NGC 5212. This strikes me as a reasonable suggestion, and involves only moving III 422 off NGC 5312 and on to NGC 5321. However, in response, Wolfgang suggested putting WH's numbers on the two galaxies in RA order. This would give us III 422 = NGC 5318 and III 423 = NGC 5321. I must admit that, on reflection, I favor this assignment, too. No other identification changes are needed, and the NGC positions are pretty good, so the NGC identifications are not affected. Also see NGC 5318 and NGC 5319 for more on the group. ===== NGC 5314. Swift's position is nearly a minute of time off, but the galaxy is clearly identified by the double star 4 arcmin to the south. Swift comments, "... the 2 components of a D* point to it." The "double" star is actually triple, but the third star is faint enough that it would probably be missed by Swift. Swift also mentions "An eF * v close; ...," but I do not see any star "very close" that he could have seen. In particular, the * 27 arcsec south of the galaxy is too faint for Swift's telescope. This, however, is the only unresolved puzzle about the object. ===== NGC 5317 = NGC 5364 with a 5 minute correction to its RA. JH's descriptions of the objects are identical, and he did not record N5364 in the sweep in which he found N5317. Nor did he record N5317 more than once. The identity is therefore almost certain. ===== NGC 5318. Steve Gottlieb notes an observation in WH's Sweep 407 on 3 May 1785 that reads "Suspected, vF, i, and vS, but 240 made it appear more like a small patch." WH's position (13 50 42, +33 42.6; J2000, re-reduced from his offsets from AW CVn = HD 120933) lands just a few seconds east of NGC 5318, the brightest galaxy in the group, so his position likely refers to this galaxy. However, he did not make -- or chose to ignore -- the connection between the two observations, so this later one was apparently deliberately skipped during the assembly of his catalogue. Steve also notes that Mitchell found two companions ("patches"!) near this galaxy. See the entry in the "notngc" files for that story. See NGC 5312 and 5319 for more on this group. ===== NGC 5319. Lord Rosse's sketch and description are exact. They unambiguously point to the faint galaxy north following NGC 5318 as the nova; this is "C" in the sketch. "B" -- NGC 5318 -- is shown as three separate nebulae, all of which exist just where Lord Rosse places them. So, I've given the two fainter galaxies directional suffixes, though it was just the brightest that WH saw on two nights. The RNGC is incorrect in equating NGC 5319 with "NGC 5318 comp n". Note, too, that Holmberg recorded only one of the companions from the Heidelberg plates that he used for his 1937 double galaxy study. Lord Rosse's sketch also shows NGC 5312 ("A"), but curiously, not NGC 5321 which is actually closer to N5318 than is N5312. This might suggest that there is a problem with N5321's identification, too, but John Herschel's position and description closely match the galaxy. And, as Steve Gottlieb notes (see NGC 5312), WH also saw this galaxy. See NGC 5312 and 5318 for more on this group. ===== NGC 5321. See NGC 5319. ===== NGC 5324 may also be IC 4407, which see. ===== NGC 5328. See NGC 5298. ===== NGC 5331. While there is no doubting the identification with an interacting pair of galaxies oriented north-south -- both WH's and JH's positions are good -- JH's description on 13 April 1828 is a bit strange: "A very insignificant cluster of vS scattered stars; or a S resolved neb." In the very next sweep on the following night, he was not even that sure about the object: "The faintest thing imaginable; sky turbid. Not found till too late for the transit, and seen with difficulty." Given that, he adopted his father's description, "vF, S, E mer[idian]", for the GC adding only "rr" to suggest the resolvability he suspected in his first observation. I'm curious about the phrase "scattered stars"; did he mean to include some of the field stars around the galaxy pair? I don't really see anything beyond the usual high Galactic latitude field stars here, so will stick with the pair for the NGC object. That is certainly the object that WH found, so is clearly the object Dreyer meant for the NGC. But JH's note still seems curious to me ... ===== NGC 5334 = IC 4338, which see. ===== NGC 5344. The NGC RA -- but not Swift's original RA -- is a minute of time too small. Nevertheless, the galaxy is far enough north that none of the cataloguers have had any trouble assigning the number to the right object. ===== NGC 5357. See NGC 5298 and IC 953. ===== NGC 5359. Found by JH, this may be nothing more than a random scattering of Milky Way stars. However, it does look like a large scattered cluster, just as JH has it. He picked it up twice. The first time (17 May 1835), he noted it as a "Cl VIII class; vL, loose, straggling, stars L and S; fills field. The star taken is a double one." The second time was just a month later on 18 June 1835; this time he called it a "Cl VIII class; irreg fig, 8' diam; consists of about a dozen stars 11 m, and a great many 12, 13, 14 m." I see two groups of stars here, one somewhat richer and larger to the southwest (taken by Andris Lauberts in ESO-B as the cluster), and a second smaller and poorer to the northeast. JH's first observation seems to encompass both groups, though his position is for a double star on the western edge. His second observation is more appropriate for the southwestern group. So what should we take as the NGC object? The position that JH lists in the GC, and that Dreyer carried on unchanged into the NGC, is a mean value of JH's two observations. It doesn't help us much as it doesn't represent very well what's on the sky. I have a slight preference for the southwestern group: this is the most noticeable and JH's two positions fall within it, so it is the one that I'm going to take. However, I've listed positions and approximate diameters for all these groups of stars, and I won't be annoyed if your choice is different from mine. ===== NGC 5360 is probably IC 958, which see. ===== NGC 5364 = NGC 5317, which see. Also see IC 958. ===== NGC 5367 = IC 4347, which see. ===== NGC 5371 probably also carries the designation NGC 5390, which see. ===== NGC 5375 = NGC 5396, which see. ===== NGC 5385 is an asterism of about a dozen stars scattered over an area about seven by three arcmin. Villanova et al (A&A 428, 67, 2004) have found that it is not a real cluster -- the UCAC proper motions support that conclusion -- but the group is eyecatching, nonetheless. JH's position and description, "A cluster of 11 stars 11m, and 2 of 15m," is accurate for the apparent group. ===== NGC 5388 is lost. Found by Frank Muller on 4 May 1886, he made a clean copy of his sketch the next day; that has survived in the group of about 180 sketches still extant at the University of Virginia. Muller (or another of the Leander McCormick observers; the handwriting is different) made a note above the typically rough position, "Not corrected for instrument." This probably explains my inability to find a galaxy in the area that matches his description and sketch. He describes it as "Mag = 12.0, S, R, vgbM" and observed it only the one night. Until we can get a copy of the sketch online, here is a description of it: The galaxy is in the center with two stars just to its right. These point to another star near the top of the field about 3/4 of the way from the galaxy to the field's edge. Near the left edge of the field are three brighter stars in a small, flattened triangle. The brightest star is nearest the galaxy with the second brightest at PA ~30 degrees from the brightest. The faintest is at PA ~90 degrees from the brightest, and 2.5 times as far from the brightest as the second brightest. Most of the sketches have south at the top and east to the right, but some are oriented differently. Only a few have the orientation noted by the original observer; this one does not. I searched at reasonable offsets suggested by digit errors in Muller's nominal position, but found nothing. Perhaps others might have more luck. ===== NGC 5390 is probably a reobservation of NGC 5371. JH saw the objects in different sweeps, and marked both the RA and Dec of N5390 uncertain (single colons published in the 1833 list, double colons in the sweep itself). His north polar distances are the same, but the RA is two minutes too large for N5390, probably the result of a differential clock reading for the object as it was leaving the field. His description for N5390, "F, L, vgbM; has a * 9m, nf, 4 arcmin dist," would match N5371 but for one detail: the star is only 2 arcmin distant, and there is another star, nearly as bright, 5 arcmin north-northeast. Unfortunately, he did not attach a description to his correct position for N5371, so the identity is not absolutely sure. But it is a suggestion from Reinmuth, carried over by Carlson, so has been in the literature for some time. I suspect that the two minute error is the result of a hurried observation, and that the two entries actually do refer to just the one galaxy. ===== NGC 5391 is probably not MCG +08-25-054 though taken as such by RNGC and Wolfgang Steinicke. While it is somewhat brighter (B = 16.4, V = 15.4, and R = 14.8) than my first choice, its position is off Swift's by 32 seconds in RA and 3.6 arcminutes in Dec. Furthermore, there is no star "very close" to the galaxy as Swift notes in his description. Instead, the object he saw may be 2MASX J13574275+4628099 8.7 arcminutes north of Swift's position. That galaxy does have a star "very close". Given that a simple 10 arcminute correction to Swift's original position also puts the galaxy well within Swift's nominal errors (2-3 arcminutes, exclusive of blunders) of his position, and the fit to at least part of the description, this is at least a reasonable candidate to consider. I do have some lingering doubt. Swift's full description from his first paper reads, "F, vS; to nu. * v close." While I presume that "to nu." means something like, "brighter in the middle to a nucleus" -- which would indeed be appropriate for the galaxy -- Swift's brightness estimate is several steps brighter than I would expect for this galaxy. The SDSS magnitudes convert to B = 16.8, V = 15.7, and R = 14.9. Swift would normally describe a galaxy this faint as "eeF" or even "eeeF", if he could see it at all. In addition, there are several brighter galaxies in the area including UGC 8876 and CGCG 246-029, as well as MCG +08-25-054 that Swift did not find. Furthermore, he ran across NGC 5425 on the same night and called it "vvF"; its SDSS magnitudes convert to B = 14.5, V = 13.7, and R = 13.2. All of this leads me to put colons on the identification with the 2MASS object. It is very faint for Swift to have found. ===== NGC 5393. See NGC 5298. ===== NGC 5396 = NGC 5375. JH searched for his father's nebula (III 125) at WH's position, but could find only NGC 5375 (h 1771) in the area. Dreyer notes "In the sweep, there is before III 125 a * 8 mag 2deg 49min more north than III 125, no transit ..." The star is there, about 30 seconds preceding. So, we can be pretty confident about the identity. Curiously, JH equated the two nebulae in his 1833 catalogue, but separated them for GC. This is probably just caution on his part, given his comment in the 1833 list, "If this be III 125, my Father's place is much out in RA." ===== NGC 5400. See IC 968. ===== NGC 5404. We used to believe that this is a double star with the two components separated by 23 arcseconds. However, it was found by Sidney Coolidge, one of the early Harvard observers, with the Merz 15-inch refractor. A telescope that large was capable of easily resolving a 23-arcsecond double star on even nights with the most dreadful seeing. Coolidge was making routine observations for the Harvard Zone Catalogue, measuring accurate positions for the stars. His position, listed both in the paper collecting nebulae discovered at Harvard (in AN 1453) and in the Harvard Zones (HA 6, 30-31, 1872, where it is No. 172 in the sequence) has an internal mean error of 2-3 arcseconds. That position pinpoints the object that Coolidge called a "nebulous star" as the northern of the two stars. For historical honesty, I've retained the positions that Wolfgang and I gave earlier for the double. But this is clearly not Coolidge's object; he measured only the northern of the two stars. ===== NGC 5408 is a late type irregular galaxy seen through considerable Galactic obscuration; there are several superposed stars. Toward the southwestern end of the galaxy is an HII region (perhaps catalogued as Henize 3-0959 at 14 03.3, -41 22 [J2000], an emission-line star in 1976ApJS...30..491H), that has been mistakenly called a planetary nebula in some papers. In others (and in SIMBAD as of August 2015), the Henize number has been applied to NGC 5408 itself -- this, too, is incorrect. The structure of the galaxy is not clear on the DSS images, but appears to be similar to a slightly "later" version of the LMC. For SGC, I called it an IB(s)m, but did not assign a luminosity class. In any case, the center of the galaxy is uncertain. The position I've listed here is based on the DSS2R image. Surface photometry is clearly needed. ===== NGC 5413. Dreyer, in the NGC, has this as h1733, a "nova" from Sweep 411 on 2 April 1832. He also notes that Swift's VI-63, found 18 May 1887, is 1m 10s preceding h1733, and assumes the two nebulae are identical because their descriptions -- including a 7.2m star in the field "37s preceding" -- are similar. JH has it "pF, pS, R, pslbM, 20[arcsec]; has a * 7.8 m [delta] RA = 37s, [delta] PD = 60[arcsec] +-", while Swift says "vF, pS, iR; D * sp". In his 8th list, Swift has a correction: "for: D * sp; read: B * sp; = 5413." In an email in July 2020, Courtney Seligman notes a discrepancy in the data for the observations. If the relative position of the bright star (HD 122251) is correct -- that is, southwest of the galaxy -- this would require NGC 5413 to be about 1 minute of time further east (matching JH's RA), and would equate the NGC object to a much fainter galaxy at 13 58 49.6, +64 55 35 (J2000). However, I see that JH's offset to the star is simply given as "37s" in RA, not "-37s" as it would if the star were west of the galaxy. The actual offset of the star is 35.3 seconds, close to JH's 37 seconds, so this is obviously the star to which he was refering. Given that, Dreyer simply misread the direction of the offset, equating it to Swift's mistaken direction "sp" rather than the correct "sf". So, there are two mistakes here: first, JH's RA is +1m of time in error, and Swift's relative position of the star given as southwest rather than the correct southeast. With those two errors corrected, NGC 5413 is clearly the brighter galaxy. Finally, I checked the Herschel Archives for this object: it is No. 33 in Sweep 411. Unfortunately, JH's RA measurement is illegible in the scanned copy, though he has copied his reduced position for 1830 correctly into his 1833 published catalogue. I also note that he has a separate measurement -- also illegible in RA -- for the star. It's reduced RA is 37 seconds further east than the galaxy, just the amount that JH has in the description. ===== NGC 5415. Swift's position is between two faint galaxies, but he notes that his nebula forms a triangle with two faint stars nearby. This makes his object the preceding and brighter of the two. ===== NGC 5426. See NGC 5428. ===== NGC 5427. See NGC 5428. ===== NGC 5428, NGC 5429, NGC 5432, and NGC 5435 are multiple stars (N5432 is a triple, the others are double) north and east of the interacting pair NGC 5426 and NGC 5427. As with many other of the "nebulae" which were found by Tempel near brighter nebulae, these can be identified by his published descriptions, or by the positions that he later sent to Dreyer. In this case, the identities of N5432 and N5435 are clear from the descriptions and positions, N5428 is pretty clear from the description ("... in line with N5426 and N5427"), and N5429 merely probable from its similarity to the others. ===== NGC 5429 is a double star. See NGC 5428. ===== NGC 5432 is a triple star. See NGC 5428. ===== NGC 5435 is a double star. See NGC 5428. ===== NGC 5436 is one of a line of three nebulae found by Temple (N5437 = I4365 and 5438 = N5446 are the others). It's likely that WH saw at least one of these objects, the northern-most and brightest of the group, N5438; see N5446 for more on this. Except for N5438, Bigourdan mangled the names here; he mistook a nearby star as a nebula as well. So, N5437 has ended up with "IC 4365" (which see) on it in addition to the NGC number. ===== NGC 5437 = IC 4365, which see. ===== NGC 5438 = NGC 5446, which see. Also see NGC 5436. ===== NGC 5439. See NGC 5391. ===== NGC 5440 is probably also NGC 5441, which see. ===== NGC 5441 is probably a second observation of NGC 5440 -- in spite of what JH has to say. "Taken for II.416, which it cannot be if the last obs be correct. vF, S. [Sweep] 131." The position he gives is telling, too: "13 56+-, 54 31 57" (RA and NPD for 1830.0). The date of the sweep is 11 March 1828. The "last obs" he refers to is that of NGC 5440 (= H II 416) itself, seen during sweep 72 on 27 April 1827. For this, JH has "13 55 39.5, 54 24 48. F, S, R, bM; has a * 11m sp 1[arcmin] dist." The object entered the catalogues as h1740 and GC 3755, and finally as NGC 5441 where it languished until Vorontsov-Velyaminov applied it to a faint galaxy southeast of NGC 5440. Though this galaxy is approximately at JH's position (11 seconds and 2.3 arcmin off), it is less than 30 arcsec in diameter, and has a total B magnitude of 15.8. Even more telling, there are other, brighter galaxies in the area that JH did not record, including another close to N5440 itself (UGC 8955 about 6 arcmin to the northwest). Since JH did not see N5440 in sweep 131, nor N5441 in sweep 72, and since his position for N5441 is only approximate, I am going to suggest that h1740 is actually a second observation of h1739 = N5440. The situation was not helped by JH when he compiled the GC. The position there is given to his normal full precision of 0.1 seconds of time, though the accuracy in his 1833 list is only 1 minute of time. Furthermore, he has the "Total No. of times Obs. by h. and H." in the GC as "3", yet there is only the single entry in his 1833 list. While this is not overwhelming evidence, I am still pretty sure that JH saw only the brighter galaxy here, so have revised the main table accordingly. ----- In early July 2016, Steve Gottlieb sent an email reporting an observation of VV's faint galaxy (MCG +06-31-053). Here is what he had to say: A few days ago I made an observation of MCG +06-31-053 = PGC 50057, the galaxy all modern sources identify as NGC 5441. Even from a dark site (in the northeast corner of California) this was a fairly tough object using my 24-inch. Although not noticed initially at 200x, it was just visible at 375x as a 15[arcsecond] roundish glow with a very low even surface brightness. It required averted vision, but once noticed I could almost hold it continuously with concentration. I'm pretty confident this galaxy (the B magnitude is perhaps 16.0 or a bit fainter) is too faint to have been noticed by JH. I probably would not have noticed it initially without specifically looking for it. This strongly suggests NGC 5441 is a duplicate observation of NGC 5440. I'm taking this as further evidence that NGC 5441 is indeed a second observation of NGC 5440, so have removed the colon on the identification in the big table. My thanks to Steve for this visual confirmation of my earlier suspicion of the identity. ===== NGC 5446 is probably identical to NGC 5438. This is another of WH's earlier discoveries (19 March 1784). Many of the nebulae found in the spring of 1784 have larger position errors than later observations. In this case, the difference in RA is 30 seconds, and the Dec's are close. The descriptions are similar enough to make the identity almost certain. ===== NGC 5447, 5449, 5450, 5451, 5453, 5455, 5458, 5461, 5462, and NGC 5471 are HII regions and/or star clouds in NGC 5457 = M 101. Most were discovered by LdR, though WH found three of the brightest, and d'Arrest noticed the outlier, N5471. Unfortunately, only the identifications of WH's and d'A's objects are unambiguous from the original positions. The positions of the others turn out to have been determined by JH for GC. He used the sketch of M 101 that appeared in LdR's 1861 paper to estimate offsets from stars with known positions. This must have been a hurried chore, since his resulting positions for the knots are not very good. Without additional observations, Dreyer simply adopted JH's GC positions. There has thus been some confusion over the identifications of the objects found by LdR. Only in two cases, N5461 and N5462 (both found by WH), did LdR provide offsets from a nearby star. D'A's object, N5471, not only has a good position, but is isolated enough from the main body of the galaxy that its identification is also certain. To identify the other objects, I have gone back to the published 1861 sketch where they are clearly shown. Identifying the knots which JH saw in the same sketch is easy. With those identifications in hand, I remeasured the positions, and have also been able to sort out most of the identifications used in earlier papers on M 101. The correct identifications and new positions are in the main Table. Note that most of the knots are irregularly shaped, and may have more than just one "nucleus" involved. This is true of NGC 5447, 5449, 5450, 5451, 5453, 5461, 5462, and 5471. Where multiple positions have been found by the automated surveys, I've attempted to sort them out and combine them into a single position that represents the objects. Note, too, that there are other faint objects involved with these that I have not provided positions for. An example is NGC 5450; there are five relatively bright knots involved in this object with at least three other fainter ones very close. Some of these may actually be supergiant stars or clusters rather than HII regions. ===== NGC 5449. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5450. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5451. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5453. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5455. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5457 = Messier 101, and is perhaps also Messier 102. The identification with M 102 has been controversial, however, and rests on a letter that Mechain (who discovered M 101) wrote to Bernoulli, then the editor of the Berliner Jahrbuch, claiming that the object is nothing more than a mistaken copy of M 101's position. This letter was republished in 1947 by Helen Sawyer Hogg, and is usually taken as proof of the identity. Here is the relevant paragraph extracted from Mechain's letter, first in the original German as published in the Jahrbuch, then in Hogg's English translation: "Seite 267 der Connoissance des tems f. 1784 zeigt Herr Messier unter No. 102 einen Nebelfleck an, den ich zwischen [omicron] Bootes und [iota] Drachen entdeckt habe; dies is aber ein Fehler. Diest Nebel fleck ist mit dem vorhergehenden No. 101 ein und derselbe. Herr Messier hat durch einen Fehler in den Himmelscharten veranlasst, denselben nach dem ihm mitgeheilten Verseichnisse meiner Nebelsterne verwechselt." "On page 267 of the Connaissance des temps for 1784 M. Messier lists under No. 102 a nebula which I have discovered between [omicron] Bootes and [iota] Draconis; this is, however, an error. This nebula is one and the same as the preceding No. 101. M. Messier confused the same as the result of an error in the sky chart, in the list of my nebulous stars communicated to him." (I am grateful to Ashraf Shaker -- at the time he sent it in the mid-1980's -- a student at the Helwan Institute in Egypt, for sending a copy of Hogg's paper "Catalogues of Nebulous Objects in the Eighteenth Century" published in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 41, pp. 265-273, 1947; and reprinted in the Communications from the David Dunlop Observatory, Vol. 1, No. 14. The paper is now -- June 2006 -- available at ADS; the URL is "http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?1947JRASC..41..265S".) Mechain's letter was pointed to as early as 1877 by Edward Holden in his "Index Catalogue of Books and Memoirs Relating to Nebulae and Clusters." Bigourdan (writing around 1912) also discusses this in the Introduction to his extensive Observations of nebulae and clusters. Steve O'Meara's "Eye on the Sky" column in the March 2005 issue of "Sky and Telescope" has a more complete version of the story that I've abstracted here. There Steve gives his own translation of Mechain's letter, and suggests that Messier mistakenly plotted M 102 east of theta Bootis instead of west, leading to the erroneous description published in the 1781 list. If so, this is far from the only case of an observer confusing directions from a comparison star. Some observers still make a case that M 102 is actually NGC 5866 (which see). The evidence, most recently collected by Michael Covington ("Sky and Telescope", September 2015), is circumstantial -- but hardly less so than asking if Mechain might also have been somehow confused when he claims that M 102 is just a copying error of M 101. What we're missing is any reference to Mechain's original observation as recorded in his log book. Does this still exist? If so, we need to dig it out and look at the observation. Until we have that, Occam's Razor suggests that we take Mechain's letter at face value. So, I am still of the opinion that M 102 is probably identical to M 101. But until definitive evidence can be found, there is clearly no way to be sure just which galaxy it really is. ===== NGC 5458. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5460. JH saw this large cluster in three different sweeps; the positions -- all a double star near the center of the cluster -- agree in two of these (464 on 2 July 1834 and 695 on 20 April 1836). The other, however, is approximately 30 seconds of time off (in Sweep 463 on 1 July 1834). JH comments on this in a parenthetical note in Sweep 695: "N.B. The two double stars taken in this and the foregoing observation [Sweep 463] are not the same." The "two" double stars are in fact the same, and the RA is about 30 seconds of time too small in the first sweep. Concerning the cluster itself, JH's descriptions are pretty accordant. He makes it in Sweep 463 "A region of L, B sts 8,9 ... &c. m; a very coarse cluster. Place that of a brilliant group, one of which is a double star class III"; in Sweep 464 "Place of a double star (the same as that of Sweep 695) in a semi-elliptic group forming part of it, but insulated in a large scattered cluster or tract of bright stars"; and in Sweep 695 "A region of L stars very loosely distributed, but which yet decidedly form a cluster. Place that of a double star (4") in the middle of a group of 8. The cluster is 30' diameter, and is divided into distinct groups." The cluster's edges are difficult to define, but I would make it very roughly 26 arcmin by 23 arcmin, close enough to JH's estimate. I put the center about five arcminutes southwest of his double star, but that, too, is very rough. JH's "semi-elliptic group" is clearly seen near the center at 14 07 27, -48 19.3 (J2000). He mentions this group in each of his descriptions of the double star in the list of doubles in CGH -- it is indeed a striking group. There is also a pretty low surface brightness galaxy seen through the cluster at 14 07 35.18, -48 23 40.2 (J2000). This is ESO 221- G025 = PGC 050388, an SB(s)d III, too small to be included in SGC. The double star, by the way, is h4646 = h4647. JH's position for 4646 is listed as "13 56 6+- 137 31+-" (1830) in the CGH double star list, in keeping with his note "Place that of a brilliant group, one of which is a double star class III". He gives the position angle as 125+- degrees ("Pos by estimation of diagram"); there is no separation or magnitude listed. The PA for 4647 is 294.5 in Sweep 464 and 295.9 in Sweep 695, a 170 degree difference from the PA of Sweep 463, clearly the same on the sky given the +- attached in the earlier sweep. Separations are 5 and 4 arcseconds, and magnitudes are "9'=9'" and "10=10", respectively. JH's positions given in the later two sweeps are the same as given for the cluster. Finally, the "class III" refers to WH's double star classes, explained in his first paper "On the Parallax of the Fixed Stars" in PT 72, 82, 1782; this is reprinted in the Scientific Papers in Vol. 1, page 39. The classes are based on the distances between the stars, class III having separations of between 5 and 15 arcseconds. Classes I and II are closer without having their separations exactly specified, while classes IV, V, and VI "... contain double stars that are from 15 to 30[arcsec], from 30[arcsec] to 1[arcmin], and from 1[arcmin] to 2[arcmin] or more asunder." ===== NGC 5461. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5462. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5463. Though there is no problem with the identity of this object, the NGC position, adopted from two micrometric observation by Tempel (published in his 8th list) is 16 seconds west and 3.2 arcmin south of the true position. I've not been able to find why Tempel's reduced position is wrong (even if he used the BD position for his comparison star, his position would only be 1-2 seconds of time off), but re-reducing his offsets using the TRC position and proper motions for his comparison star (BD +10 2619) leads to a position much closer to the modern position. However, Tempel's position is still 1 second of time and 12 arcseconds off, further than I would have expected. While the comparison star has a large proper motion, the reduction accounts for that. So, Tempel's measurements are somewhat in error. Other micrometric positions of his that I've re-reduced have had larger-than-expected offsets from modern positions, so I suspect that his measurements simply have larger standard deviations than would be normal for state-of-the-art work in the mid-1880s. ===== NGC 5465 and NGC 5467 = IC 973 are both stars southwest of NGC 5468. Tempel does not give positions for either in his fifth list, so the NGC positions are probably from private communications to Dreyer. While looking at the field, Bigourdan found and measured stars near the NGC positions. It is those stars that I've taken to be Tempel's "nebulae" -- both share a common offset of +30 arcsec from Tempel's positions, so seem likely to be the objects that Tempel saw. Not able to easily see Tempel's nebulae in the field, Bigourdan nevertheless turned up two new "nebulae" (IC 973 and IC 974, which see) but later realized that one of them (IC 973) was identical to the object he had taken for NGC 5467. By that time, however, the first IC had been published, and included Bigourdan's "novae" from his first Comptes Rendus list of discoveries. So, the star has an IC number as well as an NGC number. ===== NGC 5467 = IC 973 is a star. See NGC 5465. ===== NGC 5468. See NGC 5465 and IC 974. ===== NGC 5469 may be UGC 9084,N1 = CGCG 074-136. [There has been considerable confusion about this object, so I've deleted my original note and started over.] Tempel does not list this object in his table of novae in his 8th list, but instead describes it in the text. Here is the full account, kindly translated by Wolfgang Steinicke: "III 59 [= NGC 5482] is 9s preceeding, 2 1/2' south of a faint star 11m; the nebula is small and has in its center a faint star with very little nebular matter. Following the star 11m, there is at 15s, parallel to it [the star or N5482?] a nice round nebula, III, without a faint star [in the center]. This nebula is also new." Tempel's text seems to suggest that his new nebula follows the 11th magnitude star by 15 seconds, but Wolfgang questions this, suggesting that it may be NGC 5482 which is on the parallel. There is, in any case, no group of two galaxies and a star in the area of NGC 5482 that could possibly match Tempel's description. He has certainly misidentified NGC 5482. Nor is there anything at the NGC position for N5469 (the position probably comes from one of Tempel's letters to Dreyer). Furthermore, NGC 5482 (which is CGCG 074-115; WH's position is too close to that galaxy for any doubt) is another 2.5 minutes of time on east, and half a degree south of the NGC position for NGC 5469. So, it cannot be the nebula that Tempel observed: the NGC position is at odds with Tempel's text. Given Tempel's confusion in this area (see e.g. NGC 5562, also well off the nominal position), I suspect that he mistook UGC 9084 = CGCG 074-134 as NGC 5482. It has a star of about the right magnitude, 7.7 seconds following and 3.6 arcmin north, not unreasonably far off Tempel's estimates of 9 sec and 2.5 arcmin. CGCG 074-136 is 17.1 sec east of UGC 9084 (and appears in the UGC note for the larger galaxy) and 50 arcsec south, again not unreasonably off Tempel's description of the nova being 15 seconds following and on the parallel -- assuming, of course, that he is indeed writing of the galaxy and not the star to the north. I'm not wholly convinced that this is the correct solution, but there is nothing else in the area that comes as close to matching. So, for now, I'm putting NGC 5469 on CGCG 074-136 with a question mark. (The star with the double query is the only object near the position given in the NGC that Tempel could have reasonably seen.) Looking again at the field in August 2015, I've changed the question mark to a colon. Tempel's narrative matches too closely what we see on the sky with the two UGC/CGCG objects. This would also mean that UGC 9084 was seen before the NGC was published, so I've put it into the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5470. The nucleus is hidden in this galaxy seen almost exactly edgewise to our line of sight. The position is therefore more uncertain than usual. ===== NGC 5471. See NGC 5447. ===== NGC 5472 is a galaxy just where LdR's and Tempel's observations puts it. However, it was not seen by Bigourdan which may have contributed to his confusion about the field around NGC 5468 (see NGC 5465 and IC 974 for more). ===== NGC 5474 is a well-known companion of M 101 (NGC 5457). The interaction with M 101 has apparently led to the eccentric nucleus and inner arms. The peculiar nature of the galaxy was even commented on by WH who found it on 1 May 1788. His published description reads, "cB, cL, n[orth] ends abruptly, s[outh] vg[radually]." In the sweep itself, he says, "cB, terminating abruptly to the north, and diffused to the south, cS." Samuel Hunter, using LdR's Leviathan on the 12th and 14th of May 1861, wrote, "Very like a comet or an annular neb with Nucl on edge" and "vL and probably of interest. The Nucl is on n edge and appears to have a dark lane around it; the F neby spreads out from it like a fan with the edges rather brighter than the center." It might be of some interest (cf. Hunter!) to dig out other visual observations of the galaxy. The nucleus itself is extremely faint and small, just barely visible in the SDSS image. I've measured the position from that image as the SDSS itself has the galaxy masked out so provides no astrometry or photometry. The other optical and infrared surveys do not resolve the nucleus. ===== NGC 5482. See NGC 5469, as well as UGC 9084 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5488 = IC 4375. JH's position in the CGH Observations is crude (14 01+-, 122 50+- for 1830.0), yet he gave it in GC to his usual precision of 0.1 seconds and 0.1 arcseconds. He did list the number of observations as "1::", but this did not make it to the NGC. Dreyer did his usual rounding, too, so the NGC position is apparently nomally accurate to one or two arcminutes. The only reason we can be fairly sure about the identification is JH's note "near and to the north of a * 8 m." The star is there, and Stewart also comments on it: "cB,[sic] * sp" (I think the comma is a typo). In any event, there is nothing at JH's position, and the identity with the IC object is sure. ===== NGC 5494 appears in Swift's big 11th AN list of new nebulae. Dreyer caught this, so Swift's rediscovery was not given an IC number. See IC 2595 for more about the nebulae that Swift found on the night of 22 February 1898. ===== NGC 5496. The galaxy is a late-type spiral seen nearly edgewise. A bar-like structure, brighter at either end, is well seen in the galaxy, but there is no obvious nucleus. The position I've selected corresponds to the center of this bar. This is an adequate representation for the position of the galaxy, but may not correspond to the nucleus. ===== NGC 5502 = NGC 5503. These were found by Edward and Lewis Swift, son and father, on 9 and 11 May 1885, respectively. Their descriptions of the galaxy are nearly the same, and the identity is clinched because both father and son carefully describe the surrounding star field (for NGC 5502, the description is "between two stars, one a wide double," while for N5503, it reads "forms with two stars a right triangle"). Neither position is very good, but that for N5503 is closer to the true position. I suspect that the difference in position and description of the stars was enough to convince both of the Swifts -- and Dreyer, too -- that the observations referred to different nebulae. ===== NGC 5503. See NGC 5502. ===== NGC 5504. See IC 4383. ===== NGC 5506, a peculiar edgewise spiral with a strong dust lane and a "thick" disc, is a well-known radio and x-ray source (see e.g. NED for details). It's companion, NGC 5507, is a smooth, apparently unperturbed S0^0, radio-quiet and, while it has also been detected in x-ray surveys, is a much fainter x-ray source. Since both are at the same distance, and probably at least mildly interacting, the contrast of their physical properties is striking. ===== NGC 5507. See NGC 5506. ===== NGC 5509 = CGCG 133-010. Bigourdan's declination, as published in his first list of new nebulae in Comptes Rendus, is 16.3 arcmin off the position derived from his micrometric offsets. This may be a simple mistake, or it could be the result of confusion over his comparison star. He lists it twice (once for each of the nights he observed N5509), but at different magnitudes (8.5 and 11.5) and declination offsets from BD +21 2625 (-19 arcmin and -17.2 arcmin). GSC has m = 11.6 from two measurements with the offset being -18 arcmin. Whatever the cause of the error, the correct identity is clear when the reductions are redone using the modern position for the comparison star. ===== NGC 5510. This late-type spiral is dominated in the optical images by blue knots scattered across its face. One bright one in particular is very close to the apparent center of the galaxy -- the SDSS position has been influenced by it. In the end, I've chosen the 2MASS PSC position as the best representation for the galaxy. ===== NGC 5511 is probably CGCG 074-141 -- but might possibly be CGCG 074-142. The southeastern galaxy is a low surface brightness late-type spiral, while the western object is an S0 of normal surface brightness. The S0, though fainter in total magnitude, is more likely to be seen in a long-focus 18.5-inch refractor (Hough's telescope at Dearborn Observatory, the same Clark refractor used by Safford nearly two decades earlier). However, Hough's published description reads, "Small, very faint. * 10m, * 10m [sic] preceding." This is a typographical error of some sort. There is no star of 10th magnitude preceding the galaxy (I also checked the possibility that a star might be 10 minutes of time or 10 arcmin preceding, but none are in either place). The only fairly bright star in the area is an 11th magnitude double star following CGCG 074-141 by 14.2 seconds. This casts doubt on the identity with either CGCG galaxy, but Hough's position precesses to within 2 arcmin of the galaxies. Thus, I'm going to give the confused description fairly low weight. Tempel certainly did not see CGCG 074-142. His description of Hough's nebula reads (in a translation by Wolfgang Steinicke): "I also searched for the last of Hough's nebulae at 14h 07.5m +9d 10.0' and found at this place a faint star of 12m with very little nebular matter." I think this is a description of the double star following the galaxies. The fainter star is merged with the image of the brighter, and is southwest. It probably lent just a trace of the appearance of nebulosity to the brighter star as Tempel observed it. ===== NGC 5519 is probably also NGC 5570, which see. Dreyer, in the IC2 Notes, reports a correction from Bigourdan to the declination of this object, but there is nothing in the place quoted by Dreyer. Reducing Bigourdan's observation -- from four measurements on 13 May 1896 -- gives exactly the correct declination, so his "correction" must have been due to a mistake on his part. ===== NGC 5521. Curious about the brighter star superposed just 10 arcseconds north of the nucleus -- why didn't JH mention the star? -- I pulled up the DSS2B image. There is another stellar image 12.2 arcseconds west-southwest of the nucleus that does not appear on any other image I've looked at. It could be a defect or it could be a supernova. It does not appear in the supernova lists, though, so no one else has apparently picked it up (was NGC 5521 even on anyone's SN search list in 1990 when the plate was taken?). The plate's date is 15 May 1990. The star that JH did not mention is apparently a close double; at least it appears that way in the SDSS image. The image on the DSS2IR plate is somewhat elongated in the correct position angle (about 315 degrees), but seeing that image alone, I would not suspect that the star is double. For another possible supernova, see IC 3993. ===== NGC 5523. There is a bit of a mystery concerning the RA. Several lists have the RA at 14 14 51.5+-, while several others have 14 14 52.4+-. I have no explanation of the one second discrepancy. If it were just one source, I could suggest a simple digit error, or another blunder of some sort. As is, it's a mystery. I've adopted the 2MASS PSC position as the 2MASS XSC, SDSS, and my own measurements on DSS2 images agree with that. Also see the "notngc" files where the story is told how NGC 5548 was confused with this galaxy at the eyepiece of LdR's big telescope. ===== NGC 5524 is probably the star at the position noted in the Table. See NGC 5527 for the discussion. Also see CGCG 191-071 in the "notngc" files which I found when I was working on this object. ===== NGC 5527 is probably the object called "NGC 5524" by virtually everybody. Found R.J. Mitchell, LdR's observer on 19 April 1855, it has just one observation recorded under the entry for NGC 5529. That observation reads, "h. 1764 [NGC 5529], long narrow ray with a S, R, vF neb sf; another vF about 15' np 1764; and another eeF about 6' p and 1' n of this last." Dreyer adds the note, "The positions given in the G.C. for 2 R. novae, [GC] 3819 [= N5524] and [GC] 3821 [= N5527], are not in accordance with this." In the observation, it's clear that Mitchell found four nebulae in the field. One of these, the "S, R, vF neb sf" is neither in GC nor NGC (it is CGCG 191-071, one of several nebulae known to Dreyer that he did not include in NGC; see "notngc" files for more on this object). The other three nebulae, N5524, N5527, and N5529 are arranged along a curve according to Mitchell's description. It is also clear that the new objects can have only approximate positions as Mitchell did not measure micrometric positions for them at Birr Castle. An additional problem concerns the adopted positions and descriptions. The positions are by JH for GC and, as Dreyer noted, do not correspond with the description given by Mitchell. Dreyer switched the positions for NGC, but still got Mitchell's descriptions of brightness reversed -- the faintest object is clearly the western-most of the objects, i.e. NGC 5524. Given all this, it is reasonable to suppose that the brightest object northwest of NGC 5529 is NGC 5527, and that a still fainter object is west- northwest of it. This makes N5527 = CGCG 191-067 (it is 17.2 arcmin from N5529), but leaves the position for NGC 5524 vacant (there is a star nearby that I now -- November 2014 -- take to be NGC 5524; more below). The object was taken to be a star by Carlson, and was noted in MCG as "Not found." But both Carlson and VV put their "identifications" on NGC 5527, and based their comments on the NGC positions. As I noted above, these positions have problems that make them essentially unuseable. Other possibilities for NGC 5524 include a very faint galaxy in the right direction from N5527 that Mitchell might have seen, but it is almost 13 arcminutes away, not 6+ arcminutes as in the observation. There is also a somewhat brighter triple star on to the northwest of N5527 (14 11 42.2, +36 43 48; B1950.0, mean of the three DSS positions), but it is 9.5 arcmin from the galaxy, and is probably too bright to be called "eeF." The stars are also pretty well separated: the northern star is 30 arcsec away from the southern. Another possibility, the one I previously adopted, is the double star 7.9 arcmin west-southwest of N5527. This is a reasonable choice if Mitchell's description were changed to read "... another eeF about 6' p and 1' s ..." The second star of this pair is much fainter than the brighter, but may have added just a hint of nebulosity to the object. While this identity may be a (reasonable) guess, it suggests that Mitchell's description is wrong by assuming that he confused south for north. ----- Looking at this again in November 2014, I'm unhappy about that, and have instead opted for the faint star now given in the table with a single colon. This has the advantage of being just 5.5 arcmin from NGC 5527, and north of it by just under an arcminute, consistent with Mitchell's estimate, if not his direction. Finally, note that the object called "NGC 5524" by Bigourdan is actually NGC 5527 (he notes "NGC 5527" as "Non vue" on two nights). Dreyer included Bigourdan's RA in the IC2 notes as a correction to the position of NGC 5524, though the "correction" applies to the wrong galaxy. ===== NGC 5529. See NGC 5527. ===== NGC 5536. See UGC 9077 and IC 990 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5541. See UGC 9077 and IC 990 in the "notngc" files, and IC 4394. ===== NGC 5547. See IC 4404. ===== NGC 5548 is one of the original "Seyfert" galaxies with an active stellar nucleus. It is also one of the galaxies involved in the story of Johnstone Binney at the eyepiece of LdR's 72-inch reflector on the 13th of April 1850. That story is told in the "notngc" files; see that under UGC 9165. ===== NGC 5552 = NGC 5558, which see. ===== NGC 5554 = NGC 5564. See NGC 5558. ===== NGC 5558 = NGC 5552, and NGC 5564 = NGC 5554. Swift has an accurate description of the star field near these two galaxies. For the first, he notes "2 F st. point to it," and for the second "sf of 2; a * midway between them." His positions, though, are a minute of time too far east, putting both of these near NGC 5563. This led Dreyer to suggest that the two are both equal to N5563, found by Marth, as were N5552 and N5554. In this case, Marth's positions are quite good enough for positive identification, as are Swift's descriptions (but see NGC 5565). ===== NGC 5559. Like NGC 5523 and NGC 5548, this figures in J. Binney's discovery of three "nebulae" on the night of 13 April 1850 with LdR's Leviathan. ===== NGC 5560. See CGCG 047-019 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5561. LEDA took UGC 9151 as Swift's object despite the fact that it is further off his position, is fainter with a much lower surface brightness, and has no "F * nr west" as Swift notes. Swift's object is a high surface brightness compact galaxy, perhaps one of the blue irregulars. In any event, he got it pinned down very well, while LEDA -- misled by the big splashy dwarf spiral 3.5 arcmin southwest -- got it wrong. ===== NGC 5562 is CGCG 075-011, even though it is nearly 20 arcmin north of Tempel's nominal position. Here is his description (translated by Wolfgang Steinicke): "Two degrees north of it [NGC 5511], I found on June 28th a new nebula and have seen it several times. At this time I can specify its position only from Argelander's atlas [the BD]: 14h 13m Os +10d 39'. It is small, III; 3' south-preceding the nebula is a star 11m, and 3s following is a very faint star." Both stars are just where Tempel puts them, and the description of the nebula as small and very faint (WH's class III) is correct. The actual distance north of NGC 5511 (which see) is closer to 1.5 degrees rather than 2 as Tempel states. ===== NGC 5563. See NGC 5558 = NGC 5552, and NGC 5565. ===== NGC 5564 = NGC 5554. See NGC 5558 = NGC 5552, and NGC 5565. ===== NGC 5565 -- is this a star? Swift claims this is just 30 arcsec south of NGC 5564, but there is nothing there. Just a bit further on to the southeast, though, is a star at V = 15.5. Swift could just possibly have seen this, and he may have thought it a third nebula since there are two others near (see NGC 5558). However, he claims to have found all three objects on the same night. So, I find it curious that he describes the star field around the other two carefully, and mentions in their descriptions "np of 2" and "sf of 2" with only a casual reference to this object "two others nr" in his description of NGC 5558 = NGC 5552. This leaves open the possibility that N5565 is the same as N5563, about a minute of time following. The declinations of N5565 and N5563, however, are four arcmin different, while the declinations of the other two nebulae that Swift found on this night are very good. The most likely hypothesis remains that Swift saw a star, but we cannot now be sure. ===== NGC 5566. See CGCG 047-019 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5567. See NGC 5579. ===== NGC 5568. See NGC 5579. ===== NGC 5569. See CGCG 047-019 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5570 is probably NGC 5519, found at its correct position by d'A in April 1865. WH's description of his first observation of the object reads, "vF, forming an arch with 3 sts." NGC 5519 indeed forms an arch with two stars west and southwest, and a third is superposed on the galaxy. WH's observation puts N5570 21m 15s p, 0d 34' s of 31 Bootis. This is 6 minutes of time off the position of N5519. I think that the "21m" is a transcription error and should read "27m." In that case, the RA as well as the Dec and the description would match N5519. Steve Gottlieb has found that WH has a second observation of this on 12 May 1793. That one puts it 1m 53s preceding and 1 deg 24 arcmin north of HD 124929, considerably closer to NGC 5519. WH's description reads, "2 vS stars with nebulosity suspected between them." He apparently did not include this in his list of nebulae because he "suspected" the nebulosity. Curiously, WH has another very similar observation of NGC 5575 = NGC 5578 in the same sweep. See those numbers for the second short story. ===== NGC 5571 is a group of 4 stars. Bigourdan's second observation of it describes it exactly, though his first -- in the NGC -- attributes some nebulosity to it that is not there. RNGC incorrectly equates it to NGC 5579. ===== NGC 5575 = NGC 5578. N5578 was found by Marth, and his position is close enough to clearly identify the galaxy. Swift's position, though, is about 14 seconds on to the east. There is nothing there that he could have mistaken for a nebula, though, and his declination and description fits NGC 5575. The identity is almost certain. Steve Gottlieb has noticed in WH's sweep 1042 on 12 May 1793 the following observation: "2 vS stars with suspected nebulosity, but 300 shewed them free of it." WH did not include this in his list of nebulae, though he could have as his position agrees to within an arcminute with that for the galaxy. ===== NGC 5578. See NGC 5575. ===== NGC 5579 and NGC 5580. N5579 was first seen by WH who described it as simply "eF, pL." JH saw it twice, first in April 1827, and again in March 1831. N5580 was picked up by him only on the first occasion. Here are his data: NGC H h/Sweep RA (1950) Dec Desc 5579 III.415 1784/72 14 18 21.1 +35 25 08 F, pL, the preceding of 2 " " " /331 18.4 47 eF, L, 30 or 40''. 5580 --- 1785/72 14 18 33.5 +35 26 13 Not vF; 20''; the following of 2 There five other NGC objects in the area, all but one seen or discovered by WH and/or JH. The Herschels' data (all precessed to 1950.0) 5567 --- 1780/337 14 17 09.6 +35 21 03 pF, R 5588 --- 1789/28 14 19 18.8 +35 21 11 eF 5589 III.416 1788/71 14 19 18.9 +35 30 13 vF, S, R " " " /337 14 19 18.2 +35 29 37 The np of 2. Pos with other = 330.0 deg by micrometer. 5590 III.417 1791/28 14 19 31.5 +35 26 12 vF, a stellar nucleus " " " /71 14 19 32.0 +35 25 54 pF, R, 20'' " " " /337 14 19 29.8 +35 25 31 pB, R, psbM; 15''; the sf of 2. Moon above horizon. The other object was found by Bigourdan: 5568 = Big. 72 14 17 14.2 +35 19 18 vF, S, v dif There is little question about the identities of NGC 5567, 5568, 5579, 5589, and 5590. The GSC positions (B1950.0) are 5567 14 17 10.63 +35 22 01.7 5568 14 17 14.27 +35 19 16.9 5579 14 18 19.82 +35 25 00.2 5589 14 19 18.63 +35 29 54.1 5590 14 19 31.84 +35 25 56.5 However, as Glen Deen points out -- that's it. Nothing else in the area except stars and very faint galaxies that the visual observers would not have seen. The only other observations in the area before the NGC were by Lord Rosse; he and/or his observer looked twice for N5588, 5589, and 5590, and saw only two nebulae in the area both times. In spite of JH's rather emphatic statement in the GC notes, there are indeed only those two near JH's three positions. Looking at all of this, I noticed some peculiarities in the positions, descriptions, and sweeps. 1) First, N5580 was seen only during one sweep, and exactly precedes N5590 by one minute of time (the declinations are the same to within JH's usual standard deviation -- 2 arcmin give or take). 2) The description for N5580 is consistent with its being N5590. It also follows N5579 by the same amount that N5590 follows N5589, and is noted as the following of two. 3) Neither N5589 or N5590 were seen on the two sweeps when N5579 and N5580 were seen -- nor were N5579/80 seen on any of the sweeps when the others were seen. N5590 is also the brightest of the five objects, and is therefore the most likely to be seen during a sweep. So, I'm going to suggest that N5580 is actually N5590. This is not certain, of course, because N5579 is noted as the preceding of two in the same sweep in which N5580 was noted as the following of two. This would suggest that N5579 and N5589 are also identical -- but the positions and descriptions of those two fit very well with what we know is in the sky. Nevertheless, the idea that N5580 = N5590 is a plausible one, so I'll throw it out for discussion, with colons, of course. ===== NGC 5580 may be = NGC 5590. See NGC 5579. ===== NGC 5583. See NGC 5586. ===== NGC 5586 may be = NGC 5587, but Swift's description ("eF, vS, R; nearly bet 2 B sts") doesn't match -- the galaxy is very elongated and there is only one bright star near to the southeast -- and his nominal declination is 44 arcmin off. Another possibility is CGCG 075-022, but that is too faint, and has no flanking bright stars. The other two candidate galaxies in the area, NGC 5583 and NGC 5591, were both found by Swift on the same night as N5586, so are not likely to be the missing galaxy (unless he recorded the wrong date for one of these). There is no significant systematic offset in their positions, either. I searched at reasonable digit errors (+- 1 deg and +- 1 minute) with no luck, so the best we can do with this object for the time being is "Not found." ===== NGC 5587 may also be NGC 5586, which see. ===== NGC 5588 = NGC 5589. This was seen during a sweep with N5590 -- but N5589 was not picked up on that sweep. JH put it just about as far south of N5590 as N5589 is north, the RA's are identical (to within the errors, of course), and the descriptions are consistent (notice that JH called N5590 "vF" that night). It looks to me like N5588 is the same as N5589. ===== NGC 5589 = NGC 5588, which see. Also see NGC 5579 for more on the field. ===== NGC 5590 may also be NGC 5580. See NGC 5579. ===== NGC 5591 is a double interacting system with distorted arms and plumes. Swift does not mention any irregularity in his description (copied exactly into the NGC), so he presumably saw only the brighter object. In the past, I've labeled the galaxies the eastern and western components of NGC 5591, but I've changed these labels so that the fainter eastern galaxy is a companion of the brighter western galaxy. Also see NGC 5586 where this figures in that object's identification. ===== NGC 5594 = IC 4412. Dreyer has noted that CH and JH have introduced an 11 arcmin error in WH's north polar distance offset from his comparison star. Even when the offset is corrected, the galaxy is still several arcmin from WH's position. But as there is no other bright galaxy near, this is the most likely candidate. Because of the error in the NGC position, Bigourdan did not find the galaxy, and Javelle rediscovered it in 1895. It made its way into the second IC from his third list. Javelle's position is good, though I find it odd that neither he nor WH mentioned the brighter star just to the southeast of the galaxy. Reinmuth was apparently the first to suggest the identity of the two numbers. ===== NGC 5598. See UGC 9216 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5601. See UGC 9216 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5602. Copeland's sketch of the field around this galaxy may have a "new" nebula not listed in the NGC. See CGCG 273-003 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5603 has a companion, UGC 9216 = NGC 5603B, that was seen by R.S. Ball in March 1867. See the story in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5607 = IC 1005 (which see), and is probably NGC 5620 (which see) as well. ===== NGC 5608 is a low surface brightness late-type spiral. In the SDSS image, it's face is covered with HII regions and just-resolved supergiant stars. Two HII regions are close west and southwest of a very faint nucleus; most of the automated positions are centered either on these knots or on the center of the outer isophotes. I have estimated the position of the nucleus on the SDSS, and -- somewhat reluctantly -- adopted that. ===== NGC 5609, NGC 5613, and NGC 5615 are all companions of NGC 5614 found by LdR. In spite of the good positions in NGC, there has been some confusion over the identifications. Even if the positions were not reliable, LdR's sketch of the field, and micrometric measurements of two of the novae, would be enough to clearly identify them. NGC 5614 and NGC 5615 have attracted recent attention as an interacting pair of galaxies. N5615 has a tidal plume streaming away from it and N5614, the clear result of the gravitational interaction. ===== NGC 5613. See NGC 5609. ===== NGC 5614. See NGC 5609. ===== NGC 5615. See NGC 5609. ===== NGC 5619B = IC 1016 (which see) = IC 4424. The NGC designation is from RNGC which pulled the galaxy out of Holmberg's 1937 thesis on double and multiple galaxies (this is Holmberg 645b). Holmberg apparently did not check the IC identifications as there are none given in his thesis. ===== NGC 5620 is most likely = NGC 5607 (= IC 1005, which see for another story). Steve Gottlieb brought this to my attention in early August 2007, questioning the "standard" identification with CGCG 337-010. That ID is almost surely wrong, the galaxy being 33 sec following and 2 degrees south of WH's place. That would take it out of the range of WH's sweep, which -- given the evidence of the galaxies he found that night -- was located about a degree north of 27 Ursae Majoris. WH found his object the night of 3 April 1785 placing it 32min, 2sec preceding and 2deg 26arcmin south of beta UMi, the only object referred to this star on that night. His brief description is "eF, not verified." Reducing his offsets leads directly to the NGC position -- there is nothing there (see the NGC Note copied from the GC for a source of some confusion not carried over into the NGC). However, there is a faint galaxy (CGCG 337-009) 11 arcmin north, and NGC 5607 (= CGCG 337-007) is 2min 30sec preceding (both are otherwise within WH's usual errors). The faint galaxy is flanked by considerably brighter stars to the southwest and northeast; Steve suggests that WH would have mentioned these if he had seen this galaxy. I tend to agree. In addition to being more isolated, NGC 5607 is more than 1.5 magnitudes brighter, so is more likely to have stood out from the field and been picked up in a sweep. WH indeed found it two weeks earlier on 16 March 1785 in another sweep; he got the position correct that time, and it became NGC 5607. But the magnitude difference is the only reason I can see for prefering the brighter NGC object to the fainter CGCG. Both offsets from WH's position seem to me to be equally likely (if anything, the implied single-digit error in declination more so), and he has many other galaxies as faint as the CGCG in his catalogues. Nevertheless, the brighter, isolated galaxy is compelling enough that I've chosen to list it as the most probable of the two candidates. ===== NGC 5621 is two 16th magnitude stars with a 19th magnitude star just to the north. There is nothing in WH's position, but JH's position -- used in the GC and NGC -- is within his usual errors of the triple star. ===== NGC 5632, NGC 5651, and NGC 5658 are nebulae found by Harvard College Observatory's G.P. Bond. He found all three of these on the night of 9 May 1853, and his positions are close enough to stars that both Arthur Auwers and I took the stars to be Bond's objects. Auwers, however, still described them as nebulae. For NGC 5632, Auwers also noted an 11th magnitude star following the nebula on the parallel by 2 minutes 30 seconds of time. That star is GSC 4984-0094 at 14 31 49.66, -00 26 03.3 (n = 2, J2000.0), and is actually included in the NGC description. The three stars are at SDSS Bond (J2000) (J2000) "NGC 5632" 14 29 19.55 -00 26 53.4 14 29 20 -00 26.3 "NGC 5651" 14 31 12.70 -00 19 22.7 14 31 10 -00 19.2 "NGC 5658" 14 31 55.29 -00 22 02.3 14 31 55 -00 22.0 It's easy to see why we were misled into thinking these were nothing more than three stars. In March of 2015, Yann Pothier raised an interesting possibility that Bond actually observed three galaxies, NGC 5691, 5713, and 5719. Indeed, Bond's descriptions of the last two of these, while scanty (NGC 5713 is called "A round nebula", and NGC 5719 "An elongated nebula, fainter than the above"; NGC 5691 is simply "A nebula"), are still appropriate, especially the shape and brightness of NGC 5719. Yann also suggested that the positions are off by a simple offset in RA. I looked into this, and assembled the following table of J2000 positions and differences: N5632 14 29 20.0 -00 26 23 Bond's position N5632 14 29 19.55 -00 26 53.4 SDSS position for star delta pos, *-Bond -0.45 +00 30.4 N5691 14 37 53.34 -00 23 56.0 SDSS position for galaxy delta pos, G-Bond +08 33.34 +02 27 - - - N5651 14 31 10.8 -00 19 09 Bond's position N5651 14 31 12.70 -00 19 22.7 SDSS position for star delta pos, *-Bond +1.90 -00 13.7 N5713 14 40 11.51 -00 17 20.3 SDSS position for galaxy delta pos, G-Bond +09 00.71 +01 49 - - - N5658 14 31 55.9 -00 22 03 Bond's position N5658 14 31 55.29 -00 22 02.3 SDSS position for star delta pos, *-Bond -0.61 -00 00.7 N5719 14 40 56.36 -00 19 05.5 SDSS position for galaxy delta pos, G-Bond +09 00.46 +02 58 While I found it interesting that Bond's positions have much smaller internal scatter assuming he measured the stars rather than the galaxies, this turned out to be a simple coincidence. It was no coincidence, however, that he notes all three objects "In Harvard Zones". This implies that he was doing astrometric work that night, as indeed he was. Wolfgang dug out the original publication of the nebulae in the Harvard Annals, Volume 1, Part 2. They are mentioned on page 283 where they are linked to star number 118 with the following note: A round nebula precedes No. 118 39s, 7' North of it. A fainter elongated nebula follows No. 118 6s, and is 4' North of it. Another nebula precedes No. 118 2m 30s, and is in the same declination with star No. 118. Wolfgang also found that if we substitute star 129 for 118, then the positions of Bond's nebulae become (reduced using the 1853 position given by Bond for star 129, then precessed to J2000): NGC 5632 14 38 21 -00 24.0 NGC 5651 14 40 12 -00 16.8 NGC 5658 14 40 57 -00 19.7 These are close to the galaxies NGC 5691, 5713, and 5719; and Bond's scanty descriptions noted above fit them well enough, especially the elongation of NGC 5719 and its brightness relative to NGC 5713. There is no doubt that these are the galaxies that Bond observed; he simply attached them to the wrong star. ===== NGC 5634. See NGC 5897. ===== NGC 5640. Dreyer has a note in the Scientific Papers that WH's offsets from another comparison star in the sweep, Kasan 2528, are probably to be preferred to those from 4 UMi which were used to reduce the NGC position of the galaxy. Neither position, in fact, is very good. The NGC places the object over a minute of time too far west, while Dreyer's new position places it too far east by about a minute. Both positions are about 3 arcmin too far south. All this assumes that CGCG 353-035 is indeed the object that WH found. In particular, his description "little extended near parallel" (i.e. extended in RA) is much more apt for the brighter component of CGCG 353-034. However, this object is yet another minute of time further to the west from the NGC position. So, I've preferred to stay with the "traditional" identification, though CGCG did not put the number on either galaxy. RNGC, however, got the correct object. ===== NGC 5648 = NGC 5649. There are only two "bright" galaxies in this area. The southeastern (not the northwestern as JH and Dreyer have it, and as I previously had it in these notes) of the two was found by WH, the northwestern by JH who also remeasured his father's nebula (though as Steve Gottlieb points out, WH's positions are considerably better than JH's). During his first set of observations of the area in 1887, Bigourdan mistook NGC 5649 for a new nebula and published it in his first list of "novae." The correct position measured by Bigourdan is about 2 arcmin from JH's (used in GC and NGC), so Dreyer also assumed it was a new object and assigned it its own number in the NGC, 5648. Bigourdan remeasured the object in 1894 (his later position is within 2 arcsec of the earlier), and realized his mistake. He says, "This, which was mistaken for a new nebula [in 1887], is evidently III 645 [= NGC 5649]; the position is slightly erroneous in GC and NGC." Unfortunately, the modern catalogues have been confused by the extra number and by JH's positions (which are off 2-3 arcmin to the southeast), assigning NGC 5648 to the northwestern object, and using NGC 5649 for the southeastern. This second object of the pair is actually NGC 5655 (which see for its own problems in the modern catalogues). ===== NGC 5649 = NGC 5648, which see. ===== NGC 5650 = NGC 5652. Swift's description and position match NGC 5652, found a century earlier by William Herschel. Also observed by JH, the NGC position is pretty good -- as is Swift's. The mystery here is why neither Swift nor Dreyer caught the match. The RA's are only 8 seconds of time different, and the declinations even closer at 0.5 arcmin. Well, there are many other matching objects with even closer coordinates that Dreyer did not catch, either. Perhaps he was giving the benefit of doubt to the observers. ===== NGC 5651 = N5713. Bond's object (NGC 5651) is not a star as we have supposed for years. See NGC 5632 for the story. ===== NGC 5652 = NGC 5650, which see. ===== NGC 5653 = IC 1026, which see. ===== NGC 5655 is not the very faint little smudge of a galaxy to which RNGC assigns the number. Rather, it is the southeastern of a pair seen by John Herschel, and was actually first seen by his father. Unfortunately, JH's positions for both are off by about 2-3 arcmin to the southeast of the true positions. This has led the modern catalogues to give the NGC number 5648 to the preceding of the pair, and 5649 to the following. Left with NGC 5655 unattached to any object, RNGC arbitrarily put it on the faint object that JH could not have seen. See NGC 5648 = NGC 5649, for more. Why didn't WH also record NGC 5649, the northwestern of the pair? Wolfgang Steinicke suggests that because WH had to verify NGC 5655 with his 300X eyepiece, this left the equally faint NGC 5649 at the edge of the 8 arcmin 300X field where it escaped his notice. ===== NGC 5658 = NGC 5719. Discovered in 1853 by the then director of Harvard Observatory, George P. Bond, we took this for many years as the faint star near this position. Briefly, Bond misidentified his comparison star. See NGC 5632 for more. ===== NGC 5664 = IC 4455. Here is one which neither the NGC nor the IC got right (see the brief discussion under the IC number for that problem). The NGC observation comes from the first Leander McCormick list of nebulae: the RA is given to a whole minute of time only, and is 42 seconds off; the declination is off by more than 2 arcmin as well. But we do have a sketch showing the galaxy with four nearby field stars. These, along with a moderately useful description ("pF, S, E, gbM") positively identify the object. Since the position is fairly close (for a Leander McCormick position, anyway), Howe was able to find the right galaxy and give a corrected position in one of his MNRAS articles. Dreyer quotes this in the IC2 Notes, but also repeats the IC1 Note giving a corrected RA from Ormond Stone's 1893 paper "Southern Nebulae". This paper has three micrometric measurements of the object made on two different nights by Muller (one measurement) and Leavenworth (two measurements from about 10 months earlier). They used three different stars, so we are able to intercompare the resulting positions: they all agree with the value given in the IC Notes, and that RA is a minute of time larger than Howe's. Yet Howe is correct. The approximate positions for two of the Leander McCormick comparison stars are exactly one minute of time too large, while the RA offset (derived from 6 settings!) is one minute of time too small for the other star (for which an accurate and precise position is given). There are too many problems here to be simple typos or transcription errors, and I suspect that the numbers were "adjusted" to agree among themselves. In any event, the identity is secure. ===== NGC 5672 = IC 1030, which see. ===== NGC 5673 and IC 1029. It's clear that -- in spite of Dreyer's note (in his 1912 edition of William Herschel's papers) to the contrary (he was misled by John Herschel's position for the north-preceding galaxy) -- WH saw the south- following object of the pair. His position is very good, and his description "pB, S, E" leaves no doubt that it was the brighter of the two galaxies that he picked up in his sweep. It is also clear that John Herschel saw the north- preceding object. Again, his position is good, and his description "vF, pmE, sf a * 15m" is spot-on for the object. Faced with the problem of whether to use William or John's position for N5673, Dreyer simply followed the GC. For this, Sir John adopted his own position, believing (correctly) that it is statistically more reliable than his father's. Also believing that there was only one nebula in the field, Sir John (and Dreyer after him) did exactly what I would have done in the same situation: place the GC number (to be followed by the NGC number), on the fainter of the two galaxies. Bigourdan saw and measured both, though there is a typo in his 8 June 1899 description for NGC 5673: his comparison star is -1 min 48 sec -- not -1 min 58 sec -- away from BD +50 2091. Once this is corrected, his positions (re-reduced with respect to the Guide Star Catalogue positions for his comparison stars) agree very well with modern values from Dressel and Condon (used in RC3), and from the GSC. It's interesting to read his first description of IC 1029: "... the star near [N5673] mentioned in the GC description was not seen" (a very free translation by yrs trly). I think that he must have believed when he observed it that this object, quite the brighter of the two, was the GC (and NGC) galaxy. His estimates of the magnitude (12 and 12.8) of the star in his descriptions of N5673, by the way, are much more in line with today's magnitude scale than is Sir John's single estimate of 15. But we know that the scale was considerably stretched in Sir John's day, and was not rationalized until Pogson did his work in the mid-1800's. In any event, we end up with the number NGC 5673 = h1838 on the fainter galaxy, and the brighter galaxy is IC 1029 = H II 696 = B 185. As I said, I believe that we should leave things this way. We have, after all, the authority of the GC, the NGC, and the IC behind the numbering. And I see no reason to introduce confusion if we don't have to (though I have done it in other cases). In addition, if we adopt the other point of view and give Sir William historical precedence, then the north-preceding galaxy looses its GC and NGC numbers (though not its number in Sir John's 1833 list) altogether, and the south-following nebula becomes N5673 = I1029. There is no justification at all for transfering the number I1029 to the north-preceding object; this number was given to the south-following nebula by Dreyer, and there is no confusion of position or nomenclature for it in Bigourdan's observations, or in the IC. ===== NGC 5679 is the brightest of a triple system. WH called it merely faint and small, while JH noted the double star nearby to the west-northwest. Neither apparently noticed the fainter galaxies; these may have simply added a bit to the nebulous appearance of the brightest galaxy. ===== NGC 5691 is also NGC 5632; see that for the story. ===== NGC 5696. See NGC 5697. ===== NGC 5697 = IC 4471, which see. There are two numbers on this galaxy because the Herschel's positions differ by 43 seconds of time (WH is closer, but keep reading), and their declinations are five arcmin off the real declinations. So, Bigourdan was understandably confused by the field. IC 4471 has that part of the story. However, an NGC note reflects another confusion between NGC 5696 and N5697 that arises when comparing the Herschels' positions. WH's relative positions place the galaxies southwest-northeast (this is correct), while JH's put them northwest-southeast. JH's RA's are at fault, and he marks both of them with plus-minus signs. His declination for N5697 is also so marked, while that for N5696 is flagged with a colon. He also notes that the "RA [for N5696] is by working list", but there is some error in the reduction (CH's?) for that list as that RA is 20 seconds smaller than WH's, and 28 seconds smaller than the GC's and NGC's. Where did this RA come from? Whatever the answer, WH's reduced positions (from his discovery observations) are closer in both cases, but are still five arcmin off in declination. In the Scientific Papers, Dreyer notes that WH saw both objects in Sweep 725 on 9 April 1787. Here, WH has N5696 (II 648) 36 seconds preceding, 10 arcmin south of N5697 (II 675). This is reasonably close to the real offsets (in 1787) of 26.3 seconds and 8 arcmin 27 arcsec. JH made the best of the situation he could, and Dreyer faithfully copied it into the NGC. Fortunately, the positions are not too far off the real values, and there are no other galaxies nearby to further confuse the issue. So, the identities in the NGC can be adopted pretty much as they are. The 1860 NGC positions should read 14 31 32, 47 33.7 for N5696, and 14 31 06, 47 42.3 for N5697. ===== NGC 5699 = NGC 5706 and NGC 5703 = NGC 5709. Dreyer notes that a mistake in CH's reduction of her brother's observations placed III 127 and III 128 one degree too far south. JH did not catch the mistake for the GC, nor did Dreyer while preparing the NGC -- but he did notice it while working on his 1912 edition of WH's complete papers. Since he notes that Auwers has the correctly reduced positions, I suspect the discrepancy came to light when Dreyer was comparing CH's list to Auwers's. Once the correction is made, WH's positions are very close to two nebulae found by Stephan, NGC 5706 and NGC 5709. Stephan's micrometrically measured positions are excellent. ===== NGC 5703 = NGC 5709. See NGC 5699. ===== NGC 5704 is almost certainly NGC 5708. There is no doubt that WH's object (II 649) is NGC 5708; his description matches, and his position is just about 1.6 arcmin north-northeast of the galaxy. JH, however, has the number on the one observation of his in the area that does not apply to the galaxy. That one night, JH's position ends up almost exactly on the preceding star of a wide double (the position angle is about 100 degrees) -- is it possible that he mistook it for a nebula? His description, "F, S, R," barely supports this notion, with the shape being at variance with his father's "F, S, E nearly mer., r." Note, in particular, that WH has the galaxy extended north-south (as it actually is), not nearly east-west as the orientation of the double star would have it. His final comment ("r" = mottled) is probably due to the star superposed on the south- east edge of the galaxy, as well as the rather patchy nature of the object itself. On that same night, JH has another observation of what he calls a "nova" which is nevertheless clearly the same galaxy that WH saw. The position agrees with his father's, and his description "F, pL, E nearly in merid.; gbM" does, too. JH has one other observation that he credits to the first of these two objects, but he comments that the position is bad. He apparently did not notice that that "bad" position is identical to his two positions for NGC 5708 (the mean of his three positions is only 15 arcsec off the galaxy). So, the only puzzle is the position of the object found by JH which received the NGC number 5704. This is the position given in GC and NGC, and as I noted above, is close to the western component of a double star. However, since there is only one galaxy here, and since it is clear that both Herschel's saw it, I am going to put both NGC numbers on the object. But we do have to keep in mind that JH claimed to have seen two nebulae here on one night, so it is still possible that we could claim NGC 5704 as the star. ----- JH's sweeps give us no clues. None of the observations there are marked uncertain; that only happens in JH's 1833 PT catalogue. Given that JH's "nova" is clearly identical with his father's II 649, I've finally set the two NGC numbers to apply to the single galaxy here. I have, however, left the one discrepant position in the list with the number "NGC 5704?" just to indicate the final unresolved uncertainty about the second object JH claims to have seen in the area. ===== NGC 5706 = NGC 5699, which see. ===== NGC 5708 is probably also = NGC 5704, which see. ===== NGC 5709 = NGC 5703. See NGC 5699. ===== NGC 5712. See IC 4470 in the "icnotes.all" file, as well as its entry in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5713 is also NGC 5651. See NGC 5632 for the story. ===== NGC 5719 is also NGC 5658. See NGC 5632 for the story. ===== NGC 5721, 5722, 5723, and 5724. The brightest three of this small group of six galaxies were found by William and John Herschel, the other three by Lord Rosse and his observer at the time, Johnstone Birney. Fortunately, the Birr Castle observers provide a diagram, so the galaxies can be positively identified, even though Dreyer's estimated NGC postions are not quite correct. MCG got all the numbers right, but the double nebula, CGCG 248-016, is incorrectly labeled as NGC 5721 + NGC 5723; it should be NGC 5721 + NGC 5722. NGC 5724 is a star (though is entered as a galaxy in MCG), and may be the faintest positively identified NGC object. USNO-B1.0 has it at B = 17.4 (unwieghted mean from the two POSS blue plates), and SDSS (converted to UBVR) has U = 18.7, B = 17.7, V = 16.4, and R = 15.8. There may be other such faint objects lurking among Lord Rosse's observations. It would be of some interest to find what the faintest of his discoveries actually is. It would almost certainly be the faintest NGC object as well. ===== NGC 5722. See NGC 5721. ===== NGC 5723. See NGC 5721. ===== NGC 5724. See NGC 5721. ===== NGC 5730 and NGC 5731. Here is another pair found by WH to which he gave only one position. John Herschel states explicitly that he estimated the position of the preceding of the two with respect to the following object. His position for N5731 = H III 658 = h 1868 is good, but that for N5730 = H III 657 = h 1867 is off in declination: his offset places it north-preceding N5731, not south-preceding as it really is. This has led to confusion only in CGCG which has the identifications reversed. All other major catalogues have this pair named correctly, though UGC placed colons on the names, indicating some uncertainty on Nilson's part about the identifications. There is a small mystery, though: where did the position angle notation in GC and NGC come from? It is correct (90 deg, which helps pin down the identification), but neither of the Herschel's published catalogues give a measurement. It is probably buried in Sir John's unpublished papers, as are the details for other of his observations (see e.g. NGC 980 and NGC 982). ----- May 2015: Steve Gottlieb has solved the mystery. He has found in WH's Sweep 725 of 9 April 1787 this note on the galaxies, "Two, both vF, vS, E, but in different directions. The preceding [NGC 5730] is the brightest; about 2 or 3' distance, nearly in the parallel [E-W]. Each situated south of a small star." ===== NGC 5731; is it also IC 1045, as I suggested many years ago? Almost certainly not; see IC 1045 for that discussion. Also See NGC 5730 for a CGCG confusion. ===== NGC 5732. WH's observation of this figures in the identification of UGC 9473; he saw them both in the same sweep. ===== NGC 5736. This is one of Swift's sixth list objects which he communicated to Dreyer before publication. In this case, the NGC position is virtually spot on the modern position -- but Swift's published position is over 4 arcmin away. Still, the identification is certain as this is the brightest of the three galaxies in the area (the largest is UGC 9490, an edgewise spiral with a rather low surface brightness). This tinkering by Swift with his positions was almost a hallmark in his lists. In another case (NGC 6039 = NGC 6042, NGC 6040, and NGC 6041 in the Hercules Cluster; see these for more), Swift's revised positions are very good and agree well with Stephan's (who found them independently). Yet in the rest of the cluster, Swift's positions are as poor as ever. Is it possible that he fudged his data a bit to make them look better than they really were? Possibly, possibly ... ===== NGC 5739 = IC 1028, which see. ===== NGC 5744. There are two candidates for this, each roughly the same distance from the nominal position. Since the Leander McCormick RAs are usually too far east, my inclination is to take the SBc galaxy to the west (ESO 580-G014) as the one that Ormond Stone saw. This also has the slight additional advantage of being at exactly the declination as that recorded by Stone. However, the galaxy to the east (ESO 580-G023) has a higher surface brightness (it is a compact and slightly distorted S0), and seems that it would be more likely to be seen during a sweep. It is, however, further off in both RA and Dec, so I am less inclined, on purely positional grounds, to take it as Stone's object. So, given the skimpiness of Stone's description (m = 15.5, D = 0.2 arcmin, and the note "neb?") along with the usual poor RA, I'm simply listing both objects and letting you choose whichever one you think is correct. If you could drop me a line letting me know which one you can see most easily, I'd appreciate it. This clearly needs some visual work. Steve Gottlieb has answered the call! His observation of the eastern galaxy matches Stone's description very well. The western galaxy is not only fainter, but the lower surface brightness makes it more difficult to see. It seems likely then, that Stone picked up ESO 580-G023, so that is the one that I've put colons on, leaving the question marks for ESO-G014. ===== NGC 5747 = IC 4493. WH's single discovery observation is about 50 seconds of time too far east. Bigourdan looked for NGC 5747 at WH's position and of course saw nothing. He did find the object, however, and measured it twice. He included it in his 4th list of new nebulae, so it received a number in the second IC. Herschel's note on the object, quoted by Dreyer in the 1912 reprinting of Herschel's papers, reads, "An extremely faint nebula, it is small and required some time to look at before it could be well seen." This helps to explain the position error, but errors of this size are not uncommon in others of WH's observations. The object itself is a double interacting system. The two galaxies are so closely connected that I've adopted a mean position for the NGC/IC numbers. ===== NGC 5758 is the brighter of two nearly equal galaxies with a fainter compact galaxy between them. The correct galaxy can be identified by Swift's note, "B * f 22 seconds". There is indeed a star about that far from the galaxy (actually about 19 seconds; the distance is only 12 seconds for the second-brightest galaxy). CGCG picked the correct galaxy, but Wolfgang did not, at least for his first edition. I suspect he will correct that for later editions of his catalogue. ===== NGC 5761 carries in the NGC another of the notoriously poor early Leander McCormick positions. Nevertheless, I am almost certain that this is one or the other of ESO 580-G039 or ESO 580-G040. Since the LM positions are more likely to be off in RA than in Dec, and since the nominal declination is close to that of -G040, this suggests that the RC3 identification with G39 is incorrect. However, -G039 is nearly a magnitude brighter than -G040 in ESO-LV, it is larger, and it is also more face-on -- all factors that suggest that it, and not -G040, is N5761. Unfortunately, there is no discovery sketch, so we can only guess at this point. Forced to a decision, I would say that the RC3 identification is perhaps correct -- but I certainly wouldn't bet any of my cats on it! ===== NGC 5765. This is a double galaxy, found by JH on 24 April 1830. Though he saw both, he provided only a single position for the pair, and -- before the NGC was compiled -- it was seen only at Birr Castle. So, given that Dreyer had only JH's position to go on, he may have simply followed Herschel's lead in GC in listing the two objects under a single number. There are several similar cases in the NGC; Wolfgang Steinicke notes that NGC 523, 2187, 3500, 4496, and 5307 are listed as double objects in the NGC descriptions. This is another case, too, where the "A" and "B" suffixes are confusing. RNGC assigned them in order of brightness, so "A" is the southeastern object. UGC, however, assigned the suffixes in RA order, so that "a" (lower case in UGC), is the northwestern galaxy. Also see the note for IC 1066 and IC 1067 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5775. See the note for IC 1066 and IC 1067 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5778 may also be NGC 5825, which see. ===== NGC 5781. There are two infrared hotspots, of virtually identical brightness, in the bar of this peculiar galaxy. Without a higher resolution image, I just just can't say which is the nucleus. So, the position I've adopted is a mean of the two hotspots. This is clearly a galaxy in want of a detailed study. By the way, it has a faint blue outer ring as well. That has attracted some attention; see the NED entry for more on that. ===== NGC 5782 was described by Swift as "eF, vS, E, * nr sf." His position is poor and lands on an empty patch of sky. 35 seconds preceding his position, though, there is a faint spindle that CGCG (076-094), MCG (+02-38-021), and RNGC all chose as the galaxy Swift saw. It fits his description, down to the star south-following -- except that there are two brighter stars closer to the galaxy north-preceding. Why didn't Swift mention them as well? There is, in fact, a better candidate for N5782. Steve Gottlieb points out that UGC 9602 and its fainter companion match exactly the revised position that Bigourdan provided in 1894 (and confirmed in 1899). Dreyer reported this position in the IC2 notes, and there is every reason to adopt U9602 as N5782. There is a star -- brighter than any of the three around the other galaxy -- within an arcminute of the nucleus of U9602. Also, the galaxy is significantly brighter, and has a higher surface brightness, than CGCG 076-094. The companion is nearly in contact with U9602, and would probably appear as part of it in a smaller telescope, making it appear "extended," just as Swift described it. ===== NGC 5783 = NGC 5785. Both objects are nominally from Swift's 6th list, but we need to note that he sent that 6th list bit by bit to Dreyer in several letters during 1886 and 1887 before he later published it. NGC 5785 appeared in the published version of the list, but NGC 5783 did not. The position for N5783 is closer to the true position of the galaxy, but the description for N5785 is mostly appropriate, and the RA is just 30 seconds out. The part of the description that is not accurate is Swift's note "np of 2." The galaxy is actually the north-following of the pair (the other is NGC 5788, which see). ===== NGC 5785 = NGC 5783, which see. ===== NGC 5788 is actually the south-preceding of a pair of galaxies, not the south- following (the other, brighter galaxy is NGC 5783 = NGC 5785, which see). At least this is the obvious solution to the mess in Swift's 6th list and the NGC. It requires Swift to have confused his positions and orientations, something that happened more than once in his observations of nebulae. ===== NGC 5794 is UGC 9610; the NGC position is good. RNGC, however, struck again, getting the wrong position for this as well as for NGC 5797, 5804, and 5805 (all of which see). ===== NGC 5795. Once again, Swift's description in his original paper provides the correct identification: "vF; pS; eE; spindle; pB * close to p end; [N5794, N5797, N5804, N5805] in field." This pinpoints the galaxy 1 deg, 10' north of Swift's position. The description is correct in every respect except that the star is superposed on the following end. The position of the galaxy, (which is MCG +08-27-035 = UGC 9617 = CGCG 248-029) is 14 54 39.5 +49 35 58 (measured with respect to SAO 045288). ===== NGC 5797 is UGC 9619. RNGC has got the wrong position for this as well as for NGC 5794, 5804, and 5805 -- in spite of good positions in NGC. See NGC 5805 for more. ===== NGC 5804 is UGC 9627. In spite of a good position in the NGC, RNGC has managed to mangle the identifications of not just this, but also N5794, N5797, and N5805 (which see), also in the area. N5804 has a bright Seyfert nucleus, easily visible on the Sky Survey prints as well as visually. The object 0.2 arcminutes to the east of the nucleus is a superposed star. ===== NGC 5805. Bob Erdmann points out that this is MCG +08-27-039 (with its declination corrected), a faint double galaxy also mentioned in the UGC Note for N5804, though not called N5805 there. Nor is it noted as a double object in either catalogue, though all the surveys clearly show the fainter companion just to the southeast. This was discovered by Lord Rosse east-southeast of N5804. His sketch shows N5805 as well as N5794, N5797, and N5804 clearly in relation to the 6th mag star mentioned in JH's descriptions for the three brighter galaxies. In spite of the good NGC positions for all four objects, RNGC has unfortunately put the numbers on the wrong galaxies in this field. ===== NGC 5808 = NGC 5819. In spite of what Dreyer says in his notes to WH's Papers, the galaxy is very nearly between two stars about 6 arcmin apart, just as WH claims. D'Arrest's description ("Forms a triangle with two stars") is also correct -- the triangle is quite flat. D'A's position is pretty good, WH's less so: it is out by a minute of time in RA, and 6.5 arcmin in Dec. But there is no doubt concerning the identity; the stars nail it down. ===== NGC 5816 and NGC 5817 are two more of the nebulae found at Leander McCormick in the mid-1880s for which only approximate RAs were given. There are no sketches to help with the identifications. Herbert Howe searched for at least one of the nebulae from Chamberlain Observatory at Denver, but has only this to say about N5817, "The position is 14 54 07, -15 46.9." (The equinox is 1900.0.) This position falls on one of two galaxies 2.5 minutes west of Stone's RA, an offset common among many other of the Leander McCormick nebulae. Howe says nothing at all about N5816. Howe's declination falls between Stone's two, so I'm not convinced that the object Howe observed should actually be called NGC 5817. It is, in fact, the brighter of the pair. That would suggest it is really NGC 5816, which Stone puts at m = 11.0, compared to N5817 which he has at m = 14.0. However, Stone also puts the brighter object to the north, while the real brightest galaxy is the southern of the pair. Given this confusion, I'm going to keep Howe's identity for the brighter object as NGC 5817. The galaxy already appears in several catalogues under that number, and Dreyer included the corrected RA in the notes to IC2 under the same number. ===== NGC 5817. See NGC 5816. ===== NGC 5819 = NGC 5808, which see. ===== NGC 5820. Hunter found a double galaxy near this in April 1861. See the entry under SBS 1457+540 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5824 = NGC 5834. Here is an interesting case in which Dreyer reveals his bias for his senior colleague from Great Britian, and against a younger one from Tennessee. But the younger persisted, and proved himself correct. JH's position (from his Slough sweep number 353 on 9 May 1831; curiously, there is no trace of this in his Cape Observations) is out by 2.4 minutes of time, and 3.5 arcmin; the position is not marked uncertain in any way. His description is also unusual in that it says only, "A very strongly suspected nebula; but I cannot be quite sure (from the low situation) it is not a star." He translated this to "eeF(?)" for the GC, and Dreyer went right along with that in the NGC, too. Barnard first observed this object in 1882, and had four micrometric measurements for it by 1886 when he published a note about it in AN 2756 (he has another earlier note in Sidereal Messenger 3, 189, 1884 correcting the description, but quoting JH's incorrect position). The resulting position agrees with the modern positions to within a few arcseconds. Barnard also noted the brief, incorrect description in the GC, saying that "The nebula is small and very bright with a decided nucleus." Dreyer rejected Barnard's identification of the object as GC 4036, listing both it and JH's observation, giving both objects NGC numbers. Another oddity is Dreyer's parenthetical inclusion of Marth's brief note that JH's object is "B, stellar" (I've not yet traced Marth's note). Unfortunately, Dreyer has no other note in the NGC about the two entries, so Barnard's object stands there as a "new" one, while JH's continues on with the wrong coordinates. Barnard was evidently annoyed by this, and published a second note in AN 2995 (1890) with yet more micrometric measurements, this time from Lick Observatory where he had just taken a job as one of the resident astronomers. This second position is accordant with his first to within a few arcsec, but Barnard gives more details here, noting that the object is probably a globular cluster of 10th magnitude about 3/4 to 1 arcmin in diameter. He also notes that the object must have been quite bright if JH was to have swept it up in the southern sky just six degrees above his horizon at Slough. This time, Dreyer got the point. So, in the IC1 Notes, he asks that NGC 5834 "be struck out" as it is identical to NGC 5824. Since there is nothing at JH's position, and nothing else in the area that he might have seen, the identity is assured. Finally, Glen Cozens has suggested that the cluster may have been seen by James Dunlop, too. If Dunlop's RA for his number 611 is corrected by 1.8 minutes of time (21 arcmin) it would match that for the cluster. ===== NGC 5825 may be identical to NGC 5778. The descriptions fit -- especially the "pB star close following" -- and the declinations are close. However, the RA's are 7 min 40 sec apart, and Swift found both objects on the same night. There are no other galaxies in the area that might be NGC 5825, though, so I'm going to keep the possibility of the identity in the table. ===== NGC 5826 is almost certainly identical to NGC 5870, in spite of the large difference in RA (7.0 minutes of time). In addition to the NGC description, Swift's original description in his first list adds these comments: "Star near; [GC] 4058 [= NGC 5866] in field." These additional notes make it pretty certain that Swift was looking at NGC 5870 (which he rediscovered two nights later). In particular, NGC 5866 is too far from his nominal position for N5826 to be in even his 33 arcmin field. N5870 is close enough, though, and it has the star nearby. ===== NGC 5834 = NGC 5824, which see. ===== NGC 5840. Unless this is IC 4533 1 deg 43 arcmin south of Swift's nominal position, the object is probably lost. There is nothing else nearby that Swift could have seen, and he leaves us nothing to go on in the way of clues in his description, which reads only "eeeF, pS, lE, ee diff[icult]." IC 4533 is also unlikely to be the object Swift saw because there is a brighter star just a couple of arcminutes northeast of the galaxy; Swift would probably have mentioned the star in his description, as Javelle in fact did. ===== NGC 5841 = NGC 5848. There is nothing at Marth's published position, but just a minute of time east is NGC 5848, discovered by d'A. Marth's description matches the galaxy, so the identity is all but certain. ===== NGC 5845 is a member of the NGC 5846 group, and was seen in the observations of NGC 5846 and NGC 5846A. The story is in the entry for NGC 5846A in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5846. See NGC 5846A in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5846A is the well-known compact companion in the corona of NGC 5846. Though seen by several observers -- including Dreyer himself -- before the NGC was prepared, it did not receive an NGC number. See the discussion in the "notngc" files for the stories. ===== NGC 5848 = NGC 5841, which see. ===== NGC 5850. See NGC 5846A in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 5856 = ADS 9505 = WDS 15073+1827 = SAO 101379 is a double star with a separation of 0.1 arcsecond (I presume it is a spectroscopic binary; see the WDS for more). WH described the object this way: "A star 7.6m enveloped in extensive milky nebulosity. Another star 7m is perfectly free from such appearance." JH on the other hand, noted "A star of fully 6m, with a supposed nebulous appearance about it, but of whose reality I cannot satisfy myself, as it `blinks' with the star behind the wire." D'Arrest made three observations of the star, but only suspected the nebulosity twice. Finally, Bigourdan saw no nebulosity around the star on two different nights. It is hard to reconcile WH's observation with a close double star -- his description reads as if he saw a large diffused nebulosity. But there is certainly no nebulosity around the star now. The spectrum of the brighter component is that of a normal A2 V star with no emission noted. So, N5856 goes into the table as just a close double star. ===== NGC 5860 = Markarian 0480 is a double interacting system. JH presumeably saw only the brighter, southern component as his accordant descriptions (from successive sweeps in early May 1828) read, "F, R, gbM, 20[arcsec]" and "Not vF, S, R, psbM, 15[arcsec]." Markarian's finding chart marks both objects. In my earlier position lists, I had two entries for the object, the second as "N5860A". A closer look at this showed that only one of the "N5860A" positions was actually for the companion -- my apologies for the confusion. This time around, I've labeled the components with directional designations. ===== NGC 5861. While preparing images for the NGC/IC Project's web pages, Bob Erdmann ran across a splendid edgewise galaxy in the DSS image of NGC 5861 just west-northwest of the bright spiral. Wondering what it was, Bob tried to find it in NED -- no luck, though it of course appears in the DSS images of N5861 there. He had better luck with HyperLeda where the object carries the number LEDA 3098144. So why wasn't this in NED? It is a big object, with a major axis diameter nearly that of N5861 itself -- it should be there. Digging further, I found that not only was it not in NED, I had not included it in SEGC, and I had not even made a note about it under the entry for the NGC galaxy! "Was I blind?!" I facetiously asked Bob in an email. Well, it's clearly time to try another plate: the object does not appear on the DSS2 red plate, nor is it on the NEAT/SkyMorph plate. It also does not appear on the POSS1 red or blue prints, nor in any of the 2MASS scans. It only appears on the DSS2 blue images, so is an artifact of some sort. So, the spindle "galaxy" is a defect on the IIIa-J plate. Just to be accurate about this, the equatorial position is 15 09 07.06, -11 18 41.4 (J2000.0) or 15 06 23.60, -11 07 17.1 (B1950.0). Others have probably already stumbled across this -- or if they haven't, they certainly will. One last note: it has a LEDA number because the LEDA group has included over a million non-stellar objects from GSC in HyperLeda. Most are galaxies, but the HyperLeda group has not been able to check them all. So, there are undoubtedly many more "galaxies" like this in HyperLeda. This demonstrates a larger problem with all of the automated galaxy catalogues and surveys. All are "polluted" to a greater or lesser extent with non-galaxies. There are no sure methods for cleaning out the interlopers. Their percentage in any given catalogue is nevertheless small, ranging from about 10% in the APM galaxy catalogue, to less than 1% in the SDSS list with redshifts. Nevertheless, they are there, so we need to approach these big catalogues with some caution and considerable preparation. ===== NGC 5865 = NGC 5868. Here, RC3 followed Dreyer (1912) who writes that NGC 5865 should be deleted since NGC 5868 is = H II 684 (WH's position is enough off that JH thought N5868 a "nova"). Dreyer is right -- there are only two bright galaxies in the area, not three (or four as Tempel claims; see NGC 5871 for more on this). So, I will let RC3 stand as is. However, since both NGC numbers clearly refer to the same object, there can be no confusion if N5865 is adopted. ===== NGC 5866 is perhaps Messier 102. That is one of the objects found by Mechain (in 1781 in this case), and included by Messier in his 1781 list that appeared in the 1784 Connaissance des temps. For M 102, however, Messier did not have time to visually verify the object, so his "work" on it is limited to its appearance in his list, and to a penciled-in position in his own copy of his published list. That position is "14.40" and "56", i.e. 14h 40m, +56d. There is no equinox given, but -- given the precision -- we can assume it to be 1780 without too much error. For comparison, the accurate position for N5866 precesses back to 15 00.5, +56 37 for 1780. For M 101 (= NGC 5457, which see), my own currently hesitant choice for the actual M 102, the precessed accurate position is 13 55.4, +55 25. It's clear that neither galaxy fits the written-in position in Messier's list very well. But given the precision of Messier's penciled note, this obviously cannot be a strong argument one way or another. However, other evidence in favor of NGC 5866 has been presented. Some of this has been collected in a Web document by Hartmut Frommert on the SEDS site: http://www.messier.seds.org/messier/m/m102d.html To summarize Hartmut's case (as of 2006) for NGC 5866: Messier's working maps were laid out in grids of five degrees in both RA and Dec. This makes it possible that the written-in position was hastily read off his map with a 20 minute and 1 degree error for "15.00" and "57"; this would make the object NGC 5866. My main objection to this is that errors in both coordinates is unlikely. Not impossible, obviously, just unlikely. More recently (see the September 2015 "Sky and Telescope"), Michael Covington makes a somewhat stronger case (my opinion) for NGC 5866 being M 102. I refer you to that article for the details (all of which I have repeated here, though not as gracefully, I'm afraid). I've also come across a note credited to Solon I Bailey about M 102 in Shapley and Davis's Messier list in PASP 29, 177, 1917. Bailey's note makes one of the arguments for NGC 5866 being M 102. He gives Messier's description of the field -- taken, I believe, from Mechain -- in the original French (this is word-for-word the same as the description that appears for M 102 in the Connaissance des Temps for 1784). Here is a translation by me: Nebula between the stars [omicron] Bootis and [iota] Draconis; it is very faint; near it is a star of the sixth magnitude. Bailey goes on: By a star chart, or the sky, you will see that, taken as it stands, no object could well be selected for M 102, since [omicron] Bootis is too far from [iota] Draconis. If, however, [omicron] is a misprint for [theta], it becomes intelligible, and M 102 is perhaps N.G.C. 5866, altho [sic] in Norton's Atlas it is apparently identified as N.G.C. 5879. On our photographs, however, N.G.C. 5866 appears to be the brightest object in this region. Finally, Shapley and Davis comment The visual observations of these neighboring nebulae by the Herschels show NGC 5866 much the brighter, and its identity with M 102 can be accepted as quite probable. (For the record, with V_T = 9.9, NGC 5866 is well within the range of the other Messier objects, so could have been picked up by Mechain.) Arguing against the NGC 5866 hypothesis is Steve O'Meara in his "Eye on the Sky" column for the March 2005 issue of "Sky and Telescope". He shows that Messier's incorrect position is about as far east of theta Bootis as M 101 is west. It is possible then that Messier made a simple plotting mistake, flipped the offset from theta Bootis, and therefore wrote down the incorrect position for Mechain's object. I think it is worth pointing out here that the same kind of mistake may possibly account for Messier's poor position for M 47 (= NGC 2478, which see), though I remain skeptical about that for other reasons. The case for M 102 being M 101 is simply made in a letter that Mechain wrote in 1783 to the editor of the Berliner Jahrbuch. I've copied it into the note for M 101 (= NGC 5457, which see). That argument assumes other errors and mistakes, so skepticism is in order for that, too. However, in the end, I think we need to attach higher weight to Mechain's own words. He, after all, discovered the galaxy, whichever one it may be. So, I am still of the opinion that M 102 is probably identical to M 101, though note that an almost equally strong case for its being NGC 5866 can be made. Whatever happened, we really do need to see Mechain's original observation from his log book and/or other observing records -- if these still exist. If not, we will never know for sure just which of the two galaxies Messier 102 really is. On a different puzzle, see NGC 5826 where Swift has confused NGC 5866 with another galaxy, and NGC 5867 where N5866 helps in the identity of that object. ----- In October 2020, I received an email from John Ponting on the question of the identity of M102. Here is that email: I submit a snippet that may (or may not!) add to the 'what is M102?' question, based on something Mechain was involved in producing. I recently came across an article on the internet suggesting that M109 is not NGC 3992, but NGC 3953 [which see; also] (see [Henk Bril's note at] http://www.astrobril.nl/FortinOther.html#M109). This argument is based on the position of a "nebula" in Fortin's 1795 Atlas Celeste, edited by (amongst others) Pierre Mechain. Looking at plate 2 from this atlas (https://pbase.com/henkbril/image/51019956) it would appear he was not. This assessment, however, is not without its own anomaly. Looking at the line between iota draconis and g(24) bootis, there is a single 6m star on the draconis side and a pair of 6m stars on the bootis side. Looking at the attached screenprint of the area from CdC, showing stars down to m7, there are a pair of stars that form a rough line with kappa and theta bootis (HD128941 m7 & HD131040 m6.5), which would fit with the pair of stars, and the most likely candidate for the single star would seem to be HD 134190 (m5.2). The problem, however, is the absence from the atlas of a star matching the position of HD 128998, which (at m5.8) is brighter than either of the pair of stars recorded. My point is that there is clearly no nebula marked in the position of NGC 5866 and, were Mechain aware of this galaxy, he might be expected to have included it in his atlas, which he hasn't. However, I suppose it is equally reasonable that, had he simply believed his observation to have been an error, he would have ignored it. So this is clearly only circumstancial and I am not sure this brings us any further towards a conclusion. But I suggest that it is another piece of Mechain-based evidence to add to the pot. I have to agree that this is simply circumstantial evidence of Mechain's ignorance of NGC 5866, but it does perhaps make it more likely that his Berliner Jahrbuch letter represents the "truth" of this situation. ===== NGC 5867 is a compact galaxy just a few arcminutes south-southwest of NGC 5866. It was seen twice by LdR, and the sketch on which he shows it is an accurate depiction of the field around NGC 5866. Also, the position that Dreyer gives in the NGC is quite good (though he notes in LdR's monograph that the GC position is somewhat off). I suspect that the near-stellar appearance of the galaxy has led other modern cataloguers to mistake it for a star. ===== NGC 5868 = NGC 5865, which see. ===== NGC 5869. See NGC 5871. ===== NGC 5870 is almost certainly also equal to NGC 5826, which see. ===== NGC 5871 is a star. Tempel claims to have seen four nebulae here, the other three being N5865, N5868, and N5869, all included in the GC. He has them in the form of a trapezium, and made a sketch, though he unfortunately did not publish it. There are, in fact, only two nebulae in the area (see N5865 = N5868 for more on the identity). So, two of Tempel's objects are almost certainly stars (he has many other stars among his novae). Given the trapezium layout, and the NGC position (probably sent to Dreyer directly as it does not appear in Tempel's fifth paper), the star I've measured on the DSS is probably the correct one for NGC 5871. But there are other stars in the area that Tempel could have seen, so I don't want to insist that this is certainly his object. After all, I chose a different star while working on SEGC (my earlier position for that star, offset from NGC 5868, is well off the mark; I've since rejected it). Perhaps we can find Tempel's sketches some day and definitively locate some of his new "nebulae." ===== NGC 5876 = IC 1111, which see. ===== NGC 5877 is a double star with a third star close to the north. The two southern stars are a bit fainter than the northern one, and are a bit closer together than they are to the northern. These facts apparently made all the difference in Schmidt's observation -- he saw them as a faint, small nebula with a 12th magnitude star attached to the north. Interestingly, his observation is not in any of the published papers of his that I have (including the two referenced in the NGC), nor does Dreyer give the reference in his GC Supplement. This is one case where I have not seen the original publication. Fortunately, Schmidt's position is very good and points right at the asterism. ===== NGC 5879. See NGC 5866. ===== NGC 5881 = IC 1100. Dreyer (1912) notes that the minute of the 1860 RA should be 4, not 6. This still leaves the NGC position about a minute of time too large for IC 1100, but there is no other reasonable match. The IC position is pretty good in spite of its source (Swift again), but the galaxy is a high-surface-brightness spiral, and the identification is reasonably secure. RC3 and RNGC are incorrect. ===== NGC 5882 = IC 1108, which see. ===== NGC 5884 is a double star. This is one of the "nebulae" found by J. G. Lohse, communicated directly to Dreyer. Like several others in the list, it turns out to be only a double star. Lohse's position and description is good, however, and clearly identifies the object. ===== NGC 5886. See NGC 5889. ===== NGC 5888. See NGC 5889. ===== NGC 5889. Lord Rosse's description suggests that NGC 5889 is as far north- following N5888 as N5888 is north-following N5886. The identity is thus clear and RC3 is just as clearly wrong (the RC3 listing is probably a duplicate of NGC 5888). ===== NGC 5892 was first seen by Ormond Stone with the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor in the mid-1880s. His position is off in declination as well as in RA, so none of the early lists where the galaxy appears (Edward Fath in AJ 28, 75, 1914; the Shapley-Ames catalogue; MCG; RC1/2) caught the NGC number. As far as I can determine, Jack Sulentic in RNGC was the first to assign the number to the galaxy. Stone's brief description (m = 16.0, D = 2.5 arcmin, gbM) fits the galaxy. Unfortunately, he did not leave us a sketch, so the identification is not as solid as I'd like. But given that his RA is 2.5 minutes to the west of the galaxy -- a common Leander McCormick error -- and that his declination is close to 30 arcminutes too far north, I'm fairly confident that Jack chose the correct object. ===== NGC 5897 is H VI 8 as well as H VI 19. JH noted the identification problem with the stars observed in WH's Sweep 209 on 25 April 1784 (see CGH, p. 109), and Auwers and Dreyer have notes about the field [Dreyer's are in the NGC, p. 223; IC1, p. 284 (combined NGC/IC edition of 1962); WH's Scientific Papers, Volume 1, p. 302; and MNRAS 73, 37, 1912]. (Marth apparently also published a note on VI 8 in 1864, but I have not seen that.) None of these folks positively identified VI 8, the only non-stellar object seen in the sweep, though Dreyer mentioned the possibility of N5897 and was leaning toward N5634 in 1912. The confusion arose simply because 25 April was a poor night; WH noted "flying clouds and hazy" at the beginning of the sweep. Nevertheless he, hoping to see more of the great "stratum" of nebulae that he'd found the previous months, swept for just over half an hour until he was completely clouded out. The entire sweep consists of four stars and one cluster. Dreyer reproduces the sweep in the Scientific Papers: 13h 57m .. .. flying clouds and hazy 14 01} } 62 1d19' 7.8m -0.5} 10.7 89 1 45 7m 12.5 0 19 cluster ... 25.2 59 1 16 star 25.4 -16 4 6.7m 31 .. .. cloudy The first column is the clock reading. Dreyer notes that WH reset the clock after the previous sweep, and that there is an uncertainty of 11 or 12 minutes in the readings. The second column is not explained, but is apparently a raw reading, approximately in arcminutes, of the relative north polar distance. The third column is reduced to relative north polar distance in degrees and arcminutes, and the fourth gives notes and object descriptions. So, the sweep consists of relative positions of four stars and one cluster. WH's full description of the cluster clearly makes it a globular: "A very close, compressed cluster of stars, 8 or 9' in diameter, extremely rich, of an irregular round figure, a little extended. The stars are so small as hardly to be visible, and so accumulated in the middle as to look nebulous." There are only three globular clusters in the right RA (14h to 16h) and Dec (+5d to -25d) ranges: NGC 5634, NGC 5897, and NGC 5904 (M 5). None of the historical sources mention NGC 5904, probably assuming it is too large and bright to have been WH's mystery object. As I've noted, Dreyer seemed to favor N5634 over N5897. However, N5634 is only half the size noted by WH, and has a bright star near to the southeast, and another even brighter star fairly close to the south-southwest. WH would have noted these in any description that he made of the object (as he, in fact, did; see the GC and NGC descriptions for N5634). This leaves NGC 5897 as the most likely candidate. That it is indeed the correct object can be shown by reducing the relative clock times and polar distances for the stars to absolute values, using the equinox 1784.32 position of the cluster as the origin. That gives the following positions for equinoxes 1784.32 and (precessed to) J2000: RA (1784.32) Dec RA (J2000) Dec RA (Ty2) Dec V BD 14 53.6 -21 12 15 06.0 -22 03 15 06 27.14 -22 01 54.6 6.14 -21 4030 15 03.2 -21 38 15 15.7 -22 27 15 16 23.01 -22 23 57.9 5.52 -21 4065 15 17.7 -21 09 15 30.2 -21 54 15 30 42.81 -21 52 42.8 7.80 -21 4128 15 17.9 -19 57 15 30.3 -20 42 15 30 36.25 -20 43 42.8 6.21 -20 4246 I've added the Tycho-2 positions, the V magnitudes, and the BD identifications to the table. It's easy to see that WH's positions are systematically too small in RA and too far south in Dec. But if the systematic differences are removed, the stars match the modern positions to within WH's usual errors (3-4 arcmin). It's also easy to see the effect of the clouds on WH's magnitude estimates, too. Going through the exercise using NGC 5634 and M 5 as the origins shows that they could not have been WH's cluster -- there are no stars near them matching the relative positions and magnitudes noted in the sweep. Dreyer could have performed this same exercise with the BD (I used SAO and the version of Tycho-2 online at CDS), but for some reason did not. Since it is an obvious check, and could easily have been done using the BD data, I wonder if anyone else has thought to do this over the years. In any event, there is no doubt that NGC 5897 is the mystery object H VI 8. ===== NGC 5900. See NGC 5901. ===== NGC 5901 is a star about an arcminute north of NGC 5900. LdR found both objects on 23 May 1854 after an unsuccessful search the night before for N5900 (= h1915). He claims to have "Found 2 neb close ns. I believe the s one, which is vF, vlEns, lbM to be h's. The neb n of it is not vS, but eF." There is nothing "close" north of N5900 but a star. Further on to the northwest is a low surface brightness object that even LdR could not have seen -- because it has turned out to be a defect on the POSS1 103aE plate. I had it listed as a "comp"anion to NGC 5901 for some time. My apologies. ===== NGC 5904 = M 5. See NGC 5897 and IC 4540. ===== NGC 5906 is nothing more than the west-southwest side of NGC 5907 just to the west of the dust lane. LdR has a sketch showing that part of the galaxy extended parallel to the brighter eastern side. I've chosen a knot near the center of the galaxy to represent NGC 5906. There is a faint star just to the southwest of the knot. ===== NGC 5907. See NGC 5906. ===== NGC 5919. Swift found two objects in this area. One, NGC 5920, can be clearly identified as the brightest galaxy in a poor cluster (MKW 3s). N5919, however, could be any of four or five other objects in the core of the cluster north preceding N5920. It is probably the brightest of these, CGCG 049-142e, but neither is Swift's position good enough, nor his description detailed enough, to be completely sure. Nevertheless, I have taken this object as N5919. ===== NGC 5920. See NGC 5919. ===== NGC 5922 is almost certainly NGC 5923. I had this as a double star for many years following the NGC position which comes from WH. This position is about an arcminute southwest of the wide double, and WH says only "eF, S" on 9 April 1787, where it was the last object in a very productive sweep (No. 725). However, I have just noticed (October 2015) that NGC 5923 does not have a WH number in the NGC. JH is credited as the discoverer -- he recorded it in four different sweeps -- and calls it "vF, R, vgbM, 40[arcsec]", "eF, L, R, 60[arcsec]", and "F, pL, lE, vgbM", with "No description" on the fourth night. Though he makes the size larger, his brightness estimates are not wildly inconsistent with his father's. The galaxy has relatively low-surface- brightness arms, so it is possible that WH saw just the inner region. This might account for the "S" size that he recorded. WH's observations let us derive three different positions, one by simply precessing CH's reduced position (using the 1800 position for HD 128902 which WH calls "244 (B) Bootis of Bode's Cat."), the second by reducing the offsets given in the sweep (43min 31sec following and 2deg 9arcmin south of the star), and a third by reducing the offsets that WH published in his second list of nebulae (these are given relative to the star 20 CVn). All are accordant within WH's usual errors of 2-3 arcminutes, with a mean position about five arcminutes south of the galaxy. JH claims to have seen it, too (also on just a single night, 6 May 1828), but has even less data: "No descr. RA by working list; PD rough." In the sweep, "III 661" is No. 41 and the wire column has a notation that I haven't deciphered yet. The clock reading is "15 18 40" with the chronometer beat at "-9" and the NPD index is "2 43 00"; there is no description. JH's reduced position is "[15 15 43]", "47 44 48::", obviously uncertain. There is nothing at all in that position. The nearest star in JH's sweep is beta Boo at "14 56 40", "-15", wire 2, "3 54 55". Assuming the same wire was used for "III 661", then the position becomes 15 23 25, +41 35.5 (J2000). If wire 1, then the RA is 15 22 42; if the edge of the field, then the RA becomes 15 24 03. There is nothing at any of these positions that JH might have glimpsed, so his "sighting" must have been based on his expectation of seeing something in his father's place and not much else. What about NGC 5923? It is No. 40 in the sweep, and is noted at "15 16 15", "-14", wire 2, "2 38 20", about 2.5 minutes preceding No. 41, and nearly five arcminutes north. JH's reduced position is "15 15 10.3", "47 40 08"; this precesses to 15 21 17, +41 43.0 for J2000, which is within an arcminute of the modern position. Taking the difference and assuming the same wire for the "III 661" data, the offset leads us to a faint double star at 15 23 42.3 +41 38 40 (J2000). Is this the object that JH took for H III 661? (Assuming either wire 1 or the edge of the field leads to empty fields.) The fact that JH put so little effort into the object suggests that he had little confidence in his observation. On the other hand, he put the object in both of his catalogues (his 1833 list, and the GC of 31 years later), so Dreyer followed suit for the NGC. In short, it is difficult to understand how WH might have mistaken a faint, wide double star as a nebula while passing over a much brighter galaxy just a few arcminutes to the north. And JH's observation of an object somewhere near his father's position has almost certainly no basis beyond his desire to find a faint nebula there. So, while the equality of NGC 5922 with NGC 5923 is not assured by the data, I am nevertheless certain enough about it to list it with colons in the big table. ===== NGC 5923 is probably also NGC 5922, which see. ===== NGC 5925. JH saw this in three sweeps and used the word "remarkable" to describe it in two of those; in the third, he wrote "A most numerous and beautiful milky way group or cluster ..." In all three sweeps, he had it more than filling his 15-arcminute field. His three positions are, as you might expect for such a large object, not very accordant (here precessed to J2000): Sweep 468 on 8 July 1834 15 27 42 -54 31.9 Sweep 469 on 9 July 1834 15 27 29 -54 32.4 Sweep 599 on 19 June 1835 15 28 07 -54 30.0 GC and NGC 15 27 46 -54 31.4 He adopted a mean value for the GC and Dreyer of course used that for the NGC. When I look at the DSS, I see a rough hour-glass figure, approximately 22 arcmin by 16 arcmin with the long axis in position angle 60 degrees. I put the center right at JH's position on 9 July 1834. While there are enough other similarly bright stars scattered around the field to account for JH's other two observations, the accordance with what I see on the sky with his second observation has led me to essentially adopt that position for the cluster. ===== NGC 5931 is not IC 1122 as is sometimes assumed from the NGC and IC data and descriptions. N5931 was found by Swift whose position for it is quite good. This is the brightest galaxy in the area, one of the so-called "cD" galaxies in a cluster. These objects average one to two magnitudes brighter than the second brightest galaxy in the clusters, so they are often quite outstanding from their several faint companions. This is certainly the case here since N5931 is at least a magnitude brighter than I1122, the second brightest in the cluster. Barnard, who was following an asteroid, ran across the brighter galaxy a few years after Swift. Barnard made a micrometric measurement of it and published it as a new object in AN 3004. His paper gives the position of his reference star as well as the offsets to the galaxy. The star's position is good, but the Dec offset is in error by 47 arcsec. This must reflect some sort of reduction error in Barnard's calculations as it appears to be a random number, not a clean digit error as we often see in the NGC and ICs. Fortunately, Barnard's description of the object mentions an 11th magnitude star 1 arcmin preceding. If we take the distance and magnitude of this star to be estimates (the actual separation is 2 arcmin and the magnitude is 13), then the object which Barnard saw is Swift's galaxy. Finally, Bigourdan found a "nova" while measuring NGC 5931 (which he had no trouble identifying; his position is within an arcsecond of the GSC position). While Bigourdan's position for the new object is off by about 15 arcsec, he comments that because the nebula is so faint, it was difficult to measure. Even so, it is clearly a different object than NGC 5931, and so is not the same "new" object that Barnard saw. Dreyer, however, faced with a micrometric measurement from Barnard, and an estimated position from Bigourdan (whose comparison star was not measured until GSC), agreeing to within about two arcmin, did the logical thing and adopted the micrometric measurement. So, the first IC includes the wrong position for IC 1122, credits its discovery to Barnard as well as to Bigourdan, and also includes Barnard's comment about the preceding star in the description. In actuality, IC 1122 is a separate galaxy found by Bigourdan and given a pretty good position and description by him. I've adopted his object here. ===== NGC 5934. See NGC 5935. ===== NGC 5935 is misidentified in the UGC Notes (for N5934 = UGC 9862) as "NGC 5934." Aside from that, the identifications in the various catalogues are correct. ===== NGC 5940. See NGC 5941. ===== NGC 5941, 5942, and 5944. These are three of a group of four nebulae found by Lewis Swift on 19 April 1887 (the brightest of the four is NGC 5940, about which there is no identity question). Bigourdan observed these two years later, but found that N5941 was north-following N5942, rather than north- preceding as Swift's positions would suggest. Confusingly, CGCG and MCG call Bigourdan's N5942 "N5941," and point to yet another galaxy as "N5942." RNGC and Hickson followed CGCG in their NGC identifications, but Steve Gottlieb also questions their choice of N5941. The problems have arisen because of Swift's poor positions which are systematically north-preceding the true positions of the galaxies. In addition, the galaxies are in the core of the rich cluster Abell 2085. Hickson catalogued them -- and several fainter ones in the area -- as his compact group number 76. Among these are four that Swift could conceiveably have seen. Steve's observations suggest that Hickson 076b (the brightest) is NGC 5941, 076d (the second brightest) is N5942, and 076a is N5944. Bigourdan used the same identifications except for N5942; he put this number on Hickson 076c. Since this object is half a magnitude brighter than d, this seems a more plausible choice. Swift's descriptions provide little help except that he notes N5941 as "ee dif(ficult)" and N5942 as "eee dif." This would suggest that N5941 is the brighter of the two (as noted by Bigourdan) -- but that would make it the 3rd of 4, rather than the 2nd as Swift notes. I'm inclined to follow Bigourdan's suggestion, however, even if it places the objects out of Swift's order. The first brightest is enough brighter than the others that both Steve and I would be very surprised if it were not among the galaxies that Swift observed here. So, with some uncertainty, I am going to call NGC 5941 = Hickson 76b, NGC 5942 = Hickson 76c, and NGC 5944 = Hickson 76a. This leaves Hickson 76d without an NGC number; while it is not the faintest of the four, it does have a lower surface brightness which -- combined with its relatively faint magnitude -- would make it the least visible of the four objects in question. ===== NGC 5942. See NGC 5941. ===== NGC 5944. See NGC 5941. ===== NGC 5946 (= IC 4550, which see) may have been first seen by James Dunlop. Glen Cozens, examining a copy of Dunlop's original observing log and reductions, has found about a dozen objects that did not make it into Dunlop's published list. The bright globular N5946 is probably one of them. Glen hasn't yet found a reason for Dunlop to exclude the objects from publication, though he (Glen) is pretty sure about the identification in this case. ===== NGC 5948 is a close double star. Stephan's micrometrically measured position is very close to the modern one and, with nothing else close that matches his description, the identity is certain. ===== NGC 5952 is not IC 1126 (which is a star; see its note for more). Bigourdan observed both objects the same night (12 April 1886) and measured both with respect to the same star. Though his position (from a single measurement) for NGC 5952 is about 20 arcsec south of the galaxy, the object is so faint that I'm surprised he saw it. After all, Marth, using a 48-inch reflector when he found the galaxy, described it as "eF, vS, alm stell." Bigourdan, trying to dig it out with a 12-inch was doing well to even detect it, let alone measure it. It is vaguely possible that this galaxy is also IC 4552 (which see), but that is very unlikely. ===== NGC 5955, like NGC 5952 (which see) is not at all likely to also be IC 4552 (also which see). ===== NGC 5964 = IC 4551, which see. There is nothing wrong with d'A's observation of this large, nearby galaxy. But Swift's position, from over a third of a century later, is well off. His description, though, is as appropriate as d'A's. ===== NGC 5998 is probably not a cluster, but it is close to WH's position, and matches his description. It is so clearly seen on the IIIa-J film that I'm a bit surprised that both RNGC and ESO list it as not found. Still, the relevant information is not in NGC; WH's published description reads, in full, "A cluster of very small stars, pretty rich, 6 arcmin long, 4 arcmin broad; in the form of a parallelogram." The parallelogram, which I make just a bit larger than WH's estimate, encloses about two dozen stars, half of which are in GSC. The center of the figure is about 2 arcmin northeast of WH's place, but that is well within his usual error for clusters. ===== NGC 6001. See NGC 6002. ===== NGC 6002 may be a star 1.9 arcmin south of NGC 6001. It was found by Ralph Copeland while he was examining NGC 6001 = H III 371 with Lord Rosse's 72-inch reflector. Copeland has no description, saying only "Nova" and giving a micrometric offset from WH's galaxy (PA = 197.3 deg, distance = 97.6 arcsec) -- there is nothing in his place. Nor is there anything in any of the other three quadrants around the galaxy if Copeland had made an error in his position angle measurement. A faint spindle galaxy, MCG +05-37-026, is about an arcmin northwest of Copeland's position, but it is faint enough that I wonder if he could have seen it, even with the Parsonstown Leviathan. And had he seen it, his measurement would have been PA = 217.0 deg, distance = 65.1 arcsec. I don't see any easy way to reconcile this with the numbers that Copeland has given us. The star is closer to the measured position, but it, too, is quite faint. So, this remains a bit of a mystery. Wolfgang originally chose as MCG +05-37-026 as N6002 and apparently made a 1-arcminute error in its position; coincidentally, there is a star near this place (he gives 15 47 42.0, +28 36 46, while SDSS has 15 47 41.89, +28 36 38.9, both for J2000.0). In his latest list, however, Wolfgang has the star that I suggested. I would still put my money on this star and some kind of error in Copeland's measurement, but there is no easy explanation for a measurement error. So, there are question marks on the candidate objects. ===== NGC 6014 = IC 4586, which see. ===== NGC 6018 may also be IC 1150, which see. ===== NGC 6020 = IC 1148, which see. ===== NGC 6027 is the brightest galaxy in Seyfert's Sextet. There has been some confusion about the designations for the six objects in the modern catalogues. While they are fairly easy to sort out, I have retained the original letter designations assigned by Carl Seyfert in his 1951 PASP paper, in spite of my "rule" mandating positional notation in multiplets. Here is a case of historical precedent overriding reason and common sense. I also find it curious that Stephan saw only one of the galaxies here. As well as NGC 6027 itself, Seyfert's "a" and "b" are probably bright enough to be seen visually, especially in the 70-cm reflector that Stephan was using. Note also that Hickson and a few others consider "e" to be simply a tidal extension of N6027. This it may be, but I've retained the separate listing. ===== NGC 6028 = NGC 6046, which see. ===== NGC 6039 = NGC 6042. The description in Swift's list 4 reads "sp of 3," though it should be "sf of 3." Swift's positions in the Hercules Cluster area are not very good, and a few of his objects -- including this one -- are not identified with certainty. In defense of his positions, Swift claims that they agree well enough with Stephan's for the objects in common. This is true. It is also true that Swift's other positions for Hercules Cluster objects are much further off the mark. Did he perhaps fudge the numbers a bit for the three objects common to both lists? The others are NGC 6040 and NGC 6041, both pairs of galaxies. Also see NGC 5736 for another of Swift's nebulae which have different positions in different of his lists. ===== NGC 6040. See NGC 5736, as well as NGC 6039 = NGC 6042 where I suggest that Swift might have fudged his position for this to make it agree better with Stephan's micrometrically-measured place. ----- Stephan's measurement, reduced with respect to the modern data for his comparison star, HD 144149, lands very close to the brighter northern component of this well-known double system. So, this is the object that I have taken as NGC 6040. It is likely that Stephan glimpsed the southern of the pair. His description (my translation from Esmiol's monograph) reads, "Very small, extremely faint, very diffuse, close to another small [one]. It is a very small star which produces this appearance." His accurate position, of course, and his comment "very diffuse", clinch the identification with the northern galaxy. ===== NGC 6041. Like NGC 6040 (which see), Stephan's position -- reduced with respect to HD 144149, lands close to the brighter northern component of this well-known double galaxy in the Hercules Cluster. I have adopted that galaxy as NGC 6041. Also see NGC 6039 = NGC 6042. ===== NGC 6042 = NGC 6039, which see. ===== NGC 6044 = IC 1172, which see. ===== NGC 6046 = NGC 6028. WH's RA is 3 minutes 20 seconds of time too large. Re-reducing his observation reduces the error to 3 minutes of time. Since the NGC position is copied correctly from the GC, the 20-second error is probably a reduction error of some sort. The larger 3-minute error could be a clock- reading or transcription error. Fortunately, Dreyer gives WH's complete description in a note in the Scientific Papers: "A neb suspected by 157 and the suspicion strengthened by 240, but the latter power does not remove all doubt. It follows 3 pB stars making an arch [concave towards np or nnp direction by a diagram]{Dreyer's comment}, south of which arch there is a still brighter star." Dreyer probably gave the whole description since Bigourdan twice searched unsuccessfully for WH's nebula. The arch is there, but is concave toward the northeast. The "still brighter star" to the south is SAO 101676. The configuration is so striking that there is no doubt about the identification. ===== NGC 6049 = HD 144426 = SAO 121361. JH's description reads, "A * 7m which I am strongly incline [sic] to think has a nebulous atmosphere about 2 arcmin in diameter." There is no trace of nebulosity on modern photographs, and the star has a normal A2 spectrum. It is a spectroscopic binary, but that would not have been a factor in JH's observation. ===== NGC 6050 = IC 1179, which see. ===== NGC 6052 = NGC 6064, which see. ===== NGC 6053 = NGC 6057, which see. ===== NGC 6054 = IC 1183. Swift notes that the neighboring star is south preceding, not south following. This points at IC 1183 as the galaxy that received the number 6054 in the NGC. In support of this, IC 1183 is considerably brighter and has a higher surface brightness than the spiral that is usually taken as NGC 6054. Bigourdan did not see the spiral, either, so the identity is virtually certain. ===== NGC 6055. See NGC 6057. ===== NGC 6056 = IC 1176, which see. ===== NGC 6057 = NGC 6053. My previous note on these Hercules Cluster galaxies read Swift found the brightest of the two objects near this place (the other is NGC 6055) on 6 June 1886. Two nights later, he found both objects, but apparently thought both were new discoveries. It is also possible that he saw CGCG 108-127 and made a 10 arcmin error in his declination. However, this would place his position somewhat northeast of the true place of the CGCG galaxy, whereas his positions for the other objects he discovered on 6 June are generally southwest of the true places. Steve Gottlieb points out, however, that the brighter preceding galaxy, UGC 10191, is the object most likely to have been picked up by Swift when he saw just one object here that first night. Steve also notes that during Swift's next observations of the galaxies on 8 June, he found the two objects separated in RA by five seconds of time. The actual separation is almost exactly seven seconds, close to Swift's estimate. This would of course suggest that NGC 6057 is indeed identical to NGC 6053, the preceding of the pair. I'm comfortable with Steve's suggestion, so have switched the identifications of the galaxies. NGC 6053 = NGC 6057 is the brighter western galaxy, while NGC 6055 is the fainter eastern object of the pair. ===== NGC 6059. Earlier, when I looked for this object, I had this to say about it: This object is probably lost for good. I could not find it for SEGC, and there are no galaxies at reasonable offsets from the nominal position that Swift might have seen. His complete description was copied intact into NGC, and his position was correctly precessed, so the original paper was no help in this case. The IC1 note is another curiosity about the field: there is nothing at Bigourdan's "revised" position, either (16 07 23.8, -06 27 08; J2000). There are a few faint stars and even fainter galaxies in the area, but nothing that Bigourdan could have seen. He comments under his observation of IC 4589 (which see), "I do not see another object which can be taken for NGC 6059, which, all in all, does not appear to be seen." Finally, there are no systematic offsets in Swift's positions for the night of 6 May 1886 that might lead us to a galaxy. Another (N4280, which see) of those objects, though, is also probably lost. In July of 2009, Jeffrey Corder, based on visual observations with his 17.5- inch reflector, suggested two candidates for Swift's object. One, a triple star at 16 07 42.5 -06 29 19 (2000), has several brighter stars nearby -- one in particular about 2.5 arcmin to the southeast -- that Swift almost surely would have mentioned in his description. This makes the second of Jeff's possibilities, a double star at 16 06 48.1 -06 23 37 (2000), a more attractive candidate. It is nearly in the center of a field with no other objects as bright as it within at least five arcminutes in any direction. It is also closer to Swift's position, being about 25 seconds off in RA, and just an arcminute in Dec. These kinds of position differences are not unusual in Swift's list, so I am adopting this double star as a strong candidate for NGC 6059. ===== NGC 6061. See IC 1190. ===== NGC 6064 = NGC 6052. Dreyer's note in the Scientific Papers includes the following comment: "H did not observe the nebula in the centre of the field, but applied a correction of -0.7 minutes of time, which appears to have been too small." In the 1912 Monthly Notices list of corrections, he adds, "The identity with 6052 is certain." WH's declination is the same as Marth's, whose RA is very good, too. ===== NGC 6065 and NGC 6066. When Swift finally got around to publishing these two (in his 9th list), he interchanged the declinations. Dreyer noticed this and commented on it in the notes to the first IC. Howe noticed the note, and reobserved the galaxies, showing that Swift's original positions (sent in a private communication to Dreyer) are correct. So, too, are Swift's descriptions, expanded somewhat for the 9th list. ===== NGC 6066. See NGC 6065. ===== NGC 6071 and NGC 6079 = IC 1200 are two of the brighter galaxies in a group or scattered cluster. Both were found by WH on 6 May 1791, and positions for both were referred to 13 UMi = SAO 008220. Neither place has a galaxy in it, but preceding each place by about 1 minute of time are two objects that fit Herschel's descriptions and declinations. Dreyer mentions this in his 1912 edition of WH's complete papers, and corrects the position of NGC 6079 in the IC2 notes, curiously leaving NGC 6071 unannotated. Dreyer also notes in his edition of WH's complete papers that if another star in the sweep (G.2091 = SAO 016305) is used instead of 13 UMi as the comparison, then the positions agree "well" with Bigourdan. Well .... Bigourdan's places are excellent, but Herschel's positions are still five arcmin away, and the large RA error in the NGC is traded for a large error in declination. (There is, by the way, a 10 second error in Bigourdan's listed RA for his comparison star for NGC 6071, perhaps a typo.) In any event, Herschel's relative position between the two galaxies is accurate as are his descriptions, so there is no uncertainty about the identifications once the systematic errors are removed. However, the poor NGC position for NGC 6079 led Swift to believe that it was a previously unknown nebula when he ran across it in August of 1888. He did in fact find a "new" object nearby, IC 1201, but incorrectly refers to it as the "north-following of 2" when it is actually south, as his surprisingly good position makes clear. The "south-preceding of 2" (which is actually north; again, his position is good), NGC 6079 = IC 1200 is otherwise well-described by him, including a "star 12th mag pretty close south." (His description of IC 1201 is similarly unambiguous: "double star near points to it." All three stars are in GSC.) Finally, Dreyer suggests that IC 1200 might be the same object as Bigourdan 207. This, however, is IC 1204 (which see), a galaxy north-preceding NGC 6091 by a few arcmin. Bigourdan's positions for both of these are also spot on. ===== NGC 6075 = IC 4594, which see. ===== NGC 6079 = IC 1200, which see. Also see NGC 6071. ===== NGC 6081 = IC 1202, which see. ===== NGC 6082 may be IC 4597. If so, JH's position is 2 minutes of time too small, and 8 arcmin too far north. In SGC, I made the object identical with five faint stars. Now, 20 years later, I do not see any obvious asterism of five stars near JH's place unless it is the asterism at 16 15 27.6, -34 13 57 (2000). Wolfgang chose a double star 4 seconds of time on east. JH's description is copied accurately into NGC (in CGH, he says "25 arcsec" rather than "S") and the declination is appropriate for the sweep. He records the clock time with the object leaving the field -- if the object was in fact measured with wire 2, then the RA would be 36.4 seconds less, and if wire 2, then 1 minute 8.6 seconds less. There is nothing matching JH's description at either of these positions. Finally, re-reducing his position with one of the known stars in the field, k Sco, the position is close to the one that JH himself reduced. So, no apparent errors exist in his observation. All in all, this one is a bit of a mystery. I've listed the IC identity, along with the five stars and Wolfgang's double, in the position file for lack of anything better. ===== NGC 6091. See IC 1204. ===== NGC 6092 is a double star at Bigourdan's place. He has six observations (three partial observations are missing either an angle or a distance; the other three are complete) on two different nights, calling it a "Nebula with an indeterminant form, with a stellar nucleus of magnitude 13.4" on 11 May 1885; and "Star of magnitude 13.4, perhaps surrounded by a trace of nebulosity which was not well-seen, the sky background being somewhat brightened" on 27 September 1894. The stars are separated by 10 arcseconds, and their magnitudes are V = 15.9 (southwestern star) and V = 15.0 (northeastern star). These are among the fainter of Bigourdan's objects. ===== NGC 6111 is not IC 1210. In a note in IC1, Dreyer says, "In Swift's list IX, the declination for 1890 is given as +63 32.6. It was 62 deg in the MS. communication sent me in 1887." That the more northerly declination is correct is confirmed by the note in Swift's published paper (but not carried over into the NGC) "Double star near south points to it." Unfortunately, the incorrect declination in Swift's letter to Dreyer has led to two incorrect identifications for the number. The first came from Bigourdan -- his "corrected" position quoted in the IC2 notes is for a star. The second came from the modern catalogues which equated the number with a galaxy that Swift also coincidentally discovered, IC 1210 (it was independently found by Bigourdan, presumeably while searching for N6111). In any case, the two numbers apply to two separate objects. ===== NGC 6115. JH says of this, "A part of the milky way, so immensely rich as to be one vast cluster of clusters." The position that he gives appears to be for a clump on the eastern edge of the "cluster" (it's probably more appropriate to call this a "star cloud"). Andris Lauberts has the same position in ESO-B. I've put the center of the apparent star cloud somewhat to the northwest, and I suspect that my apparent dimensions (17 x 14 arcminutes) are considerably smaller than JH would have made his "vast cluster of clusters." Nevertheless, this represents what we now see on the DSS pretty well. Perhaps a wider field than 1 x 1 degree would give us something approaching JH's view. ===== NGC 6122. Bigourdan's description -- "vF, R, no N" -- for this galaxy is hardly appropriate. The object may be very faint, but it is nearly edge-on, and has a very bright nucleus. His position -- with the minutes of declination corrected in the IC2 Notes -- falls within 5 arcsec of the object. There can be no doubt about the identity. ===== NGC 6125 = NGC 6127 = NGC 6128. There are only two galaxies in this area (the other is NGC 6130), but four NGC numbers. NGC 6125 = H II 810 is the brighter of the two by 1.5 magnitudes (V = 12.2 vs V = 13.7 for NGC 6130), so is almost certainly the galaxy that WH saw, though he must have made an error of 20 arcminutes in reading the NPD (see Dreyer's note in the Herschel Papers, 1912; I've given this note below in the update). Herschel's original NPD is coincidentally close to that of NGC 6130; this has led Reinmuth to suggest that NGC 6125 = NGC 6130. But the RA's are 51 seconds different, and Dreyer does not mention any problem with the RA's in Herschel's sweep (but see below!). Dreyer's conclusion that the minutes of NPD recorded by Herschel (59) should be 39 is the most reasonable explanation. Swift has two objects near the correct place for the brighter galaxy, both from his 4th list, but found about a week apart on 28 June and 6 July in 1886. The descriptions of these two are similar ("pF, vS, R" and "pF, pS, R, BM"), and also agree with Herschel's description ("pF, pS, lE"). Therefore, I am almost certain that the three observations all refer to the same galaxy. A third object found by Swift, also on 28 June 1886, is preceded by a bright star (SAO 29889) that he noted in his description; this verifies the identification as NGC 6130. The star is not mentioned by Herschel, further suggestive evidence that he saw the brighter northern galaxy and not the fainter southern one. Finally, see NGC 6191 where NGC 6127 (found the same night as N6191) figures in the story of that missing nebula. ----- Courtney Seligman looked at this field again early in 2018 and noted that in 2016, Wolfgang Steinicke had moved H II 810 to NGC 6130. Wolfgang's change is possible given WH's misread polar distance, so I looked into the sweep, number 928 on 24 April 1789. Here is what CH recorded in the fair copy, as shown in the Herschel Archive: 16 18 50 31 59 pF, pS, lE. 36 (k) Quadrantis Muralis of B[ode]'s Cat -46 f 21' 55" n 2d 45' RA 16h 14' 58" PD 31d 56'. (2143) The star is CL Draconis = HD 143466 in the modern catalogues, a delta Scuti variable. Reducing WH's uncorrected observation gives the J2000 position as 16 18 46, +57 35.4. CH's reduced 1800.0 position precesses to 16 18 50, +57 34.9, in agreement with the newly reduced position. Reducing WH's observation corrected by the assumed 20 arcminute error gives 16 18 41, +54 55.4 for J2000, closer to, but still off the brighter galaxy. Correcting CH's position by +20 arcminutes and precessing it gives 16 18 45, +57 54.9, again in agreement with the corrected newly reduced position. Here is a curious thing. In WH's published table, this object is listed as being 46m 31s west and 3d 23' north of 21 ([mu]) Draconis = HD 154906. This is a different comparison star than CH used in her later reduction. I see no reason for the change, but this explains the comment in Dreyer's note (given just below). Taking this star, WH's uncorrected position reduces to 16 18 31, +57 37.5; the corrected position is 16 18 26, +57 57.4 (both for J2000). This is closer to the correct position in Dec, but further off in RA. Dreyer's note, aluded to in the previous paragraph, is interesting: II 810. Not found four times by Bigourdan. In the sweep (928) it comes between III 812 [NGC 6088] and II 811 [NGC 6143], both of which are nearly correct [in PD]. It is no doubt = NGC 6127 (Swift IV) with an error of 20' in PD, that read off being 31d 59' instead of 31d 39', the true [Delta] PD being 3d 43'. This is not quite accurate. WH's RAs of NGC 6088 and NGC 6143 are both off -- by -37 seconds and +23 seconds, respectively. Assuming that II 810 is indeed identical to NGC 6127, WH's RA is either -40 or -45 seconds off (depending on the comparison star), close to the difference for NGC 6088. The PD comes to within 2 arcminutes of that for NGC 6127 using 21 Draconis, within the usual statistical error for WH's positions. In any event, I am quite confident that Dreyer's explanation is correct, and that II 810 = NGC 6125 is indeed identical with Swift's galaxy, NGC 6127 = NGC 6128. ===== NGC 6127 = NGC 6128 = NGC 6125, which see. ===== NGC 6128 = NGC 6127 = NGC 6125, which see. ===== NGC 6130 is the fainter of a pair of galaxies. The brighter is NGC 6125 = NGC 6127 = NGC 6128, which see. ===== NGC 6132 = IC 4602, which see. ===== NGC 6133 may be the triple star listed in the table; this is near Swift's place, and it may be close enough together to have been mistaken for a nebula by him. It may also be CGCG 276-012, but this is mere guesswork. An even fainter galaxy, 2MASX J16175770+5638221, has the advantage of having a declination within 1.2 arcminutes of Swift's, and fairly closely matching his description, but the RA is 2m 15s off. Similarly, NGC 6130 might match Swift's description, but has a pretty bright star to the southwest that Swift comments on in his description of NGC 6130 (see NGC 6125 for a bit more on this). It is also only roughly a degree north (57 arcminutes), and 28 seconds of time west of the nominal position for NGC 6133. Swift has not left us much to go on -- his full description reads "eeeF, S, cE, ee diff". Of the three other galaxies found the same night by Swift, NGC 6262 (which see) is also missing. NGC 6206 and NGC 6279 are close to their nominal positions, with no significant systematic offset. So, while there are candidates for this object, none are convincing. Thus, many question marks in the table. ===== NGC 6135 may be CGCG 320-015. The bright central part of the galaxy fits Swift's description, and there are two stars near it. However, the position is 4.4 minutes of time and 5 arcmin off, so I am not convinced that this is the correct object. There are no galaxies at reasonable digit errors (one degree, ten minutes, and one hour of time). The double star that Wolfgang chose is probably too faint to be Swift's object. Since I don't see anything else in the area that might be Swift's nebula, I've put the CGCG object in the Table with a question mark. ===== NGC 6136. See NGC 6191. ===== NGC 6138 = NGC 6363. I had earlier thought that N6138 might be one of the galaxies in the western part of Abell 2197 near NGC 6145 and NGC 6146. Stephan has clearly misidentified his comparison star: he calls it "Arg. Z. +41 deg 2821" which I take to be BD +41 deg 2821. But that is one hour on east from the position Stephan gives for his comparison star, and there is no star near his position. However, in his introduction to his re-reduction of all of Stephan's observations, published in 1916, Esmiol mentions that NGC 6138 is the same nebula as NGC 6263. Because the other case that he mentions in the same sentence (NGC 983 = NGC 1002) is clearly true, I had thought that we could also accept this one as given. However, Steve Gottlieb and Albert Highe followed up on this and found that Stephan's implied offsets don't match any nearby star for NGC 6263 while they do for NGC 6363. So, Esmiol's note, N6138 = N6263, is a misprint and should read N6138 = N6363. I'm grateful to Steve and Albert for pointing this out. I also thank Jim Caplan at Marseilles Observatory for sending Esmiol's introduction and several pages of his tables; these have helped with various of Stephan's observations. Jim later arranged for Esmiol's entire monograph to appear online; it has proved very helpful in digging into several puzzling cases in Stephan's observations. ===== NGC 6139 is a bright, small, compact globular cluster discovered by James Dunlop in the 1820s. JH recovered it June of 1834 with observations in three successive sweeps over four days. His mean position is just 0.6 arcminutes north of the center of the cluster, so there is no problem with the identification. However, the positions from the 2MASS lists and UCAC fall 0.3 seconds of time west of that given by GSC-A and by examination of the DSS images. SIMBAD adopts the 2MASS XSC position, but that is clearly off the middle of the image they display, whether from DSS or 2MASS. The mean difference for several nearby stars for sources HCsv, GSCA, and GSC3; compared with 2MSP, UCAC, and UB10 is 0.00 seconds in RA and 0.0 arcseconds in Dec -- in other words, the problem occurs only for the globular cluster. There is no apparent clump of stars to the west that might cause the problem, so the difference remains a mystery. Until it is solved, I'm going to trust my eyes, and adopt the GSC-A position. Hopefully, some of the dynamicists will get around to this cluster soon to use a more rigorous algorithm to find the cluster's central position. ===== NGC 6141 is a faint galaxy at Bigourdan's measured offset. The NGC position, correctly copied from the Comptes Rendus article, is 3 arcmin to the south. It may result from an inaccurate estimated position for the comparison star. This might also be IC 4606 (which see), but its position is well off that of the object that Finlay saw. ===== NGC 6144 may also be IC 4606, which see for the story. ===== NGC 6145. See NGC 6138 and NGC 6147. ===== NGC 6146. See NGC 6138 and NGC 6147. ===== NGC 6147 is the middle (and faintest) of a line of three galaxies including N6145 and N6146 (the brightest). LdR's diagram shows all three, as well as another fainter galaxy that he mistook as a star. ===== NGC 6151 is an asterism of 8-10 faint stars at JH's position, though he calls it simply "vF and S". It is positively identified by his comment that it "... is pointed to by 2 small stars 9m and 14m; the *9m is the only one of that magnitude within 6 arcmin" (his 9th magnitude star is actually a double). ESO mistakenly chose a very faint galaxy well east of JH's position, which is not only very good, but was copied correctly into the NGC. ===== NGC 6152. JH has only a descriptive note on this cluster: "A large and coarse milky way cluster, tolerably insulated, composed of large stars." While I see such a cluster in the area, it is five arcminutes north of JH's position. These kinds of errors are not uncommon in his positions for the clusters he found, but he usually gives a reason for them (e.g. "Place of the chief star 8m ..."). Here, there is nothing like that, just a scattering of about 30 stars 10th to 12th magnitudes with none outstanding, especially at JH's position. Nevertheless, the declination is appropriate for the sweep, and the RA is correct, so I am going to take the object as JH's cluster with a correction of -5 arcmin in the declination. ===== NGC 6160 has two companions seen by J. Stoney in April 1849. The story is in the "notngc" files under the heading "NGC 6160 companion south and KUG 1625+410". ===== NGC 6164 and NGC 6165 are the two brightest lobes of the bipolar nebula associated with HD 148937, a hot, young, active star. These nebulae used to be called "planetaries", but we now know them to be the result of energetic winds from young, massive stars, rather than the dying gasps of dwarf stars like the Sun. These two fairly bright patches of ionized gas neatly flank the HD star. Deep exposures show more, though fainter, nebulosity closer to the star. JH picked these up in South Africa, and noted the star as a double. If it is, it is a close double, not resolved on the short-exposure V plate scanned for the DSS. JH's descriptions read "Neb violently suspected immediately preceding a double star" (the definition of "violently" has undergone a bit of a transformation since 1 July 1834!) and "F, S, lE, vglbM, 35[arcsec]; certain; follows a D *". Note, too, that JH puts plus-minus signs on the RA and NPD for NGC 6164. ===== NGC 6165. See NGC 6164. ===== NGC 6166 has been a thorn in the side for cataloguers since Holmberg included it in his multiple galaxy list in 1937. There is no problem with the identification of N6166 itself. It is the brightest in Abell 2199 (and a prototypical "cD" galaxy), but is also composed of several interacting galaxies. That is part of the problem. Briefly, the companion's in Holmberg's list are not part of the galaxy itself, but are separate galaxies in the cluster surrounding N6166; all are 2-3 arcmin away, and all have magnitudes around B = 15.5 to 16. None of them are in RC3. On the other hand, Minkowski found in the late 50's that N6166 is itself made up of several components (see his classic paper on the system in AJ 66, 558, 1961). The three brightest are easily visible on the POSS1 prints, while the fourth is almost lost in the overexposed blur of the second. These are all within 5 or 10 arcsec of the "center" of N6166. The first three had separate entries in RC1, and the fourth is mentioned in the notes (the RC1 notes are wrong when they say that these are the Holmberg companions), but since they are clearly parts of the main galaxy itself, we dropped them from RC2 and RC3. Their positions are (measured by me with respect to 2 nearby GSC objects, one a galaxy, the other a star): Component RA (1950) Dec A 16 26 55.3 +39 39 37 B 16 26 56.2 +39 39 42 C 16 26 56.0 +39 39 35 D 16 26 56.4 +39 39 39 (Also see the position table where I've entered other, better, more recent positions for the knots.) For the entire N6166 complex, GSC has: A - D 16 26 55.57 +39 39 37.9 which is just about what a magnitude weighted mean of my individual measures would give. Unfortunately, for the companions, RNGC followed RC1, but (of course!) managed to confuse the identifications and did not give the Holmberg letters for the individual objects. I've found in my copy of MCG the identifications that we had adopted before we sorted out the mess then. I've put them in square brackets below because they were never published -- by us, at least! -- and perhaps shouldn't be. But if one were going to assign suffixes based on the Holmberg list, and wanted to make these suffixes similar to the others in use (starting with capital A rather than little b), then these are the suffixes that would be assigned. I think that this is what RNGC was trying to do. Anyhow, here are the correct identifications for the five Holmberg galaxies: Ho 751 BO MCG +7-34- RNGC CGCG [RC2 1st cut] a 1 60 6166 224-039 [N6166] b 24 50 6166D --- [N6166A] c 53 76 6166B 224-045 [N6166B] d 15 48 6166C --- [N6166C] e 12 56 6166A --- [N6166D] The "BO" numbers are from a paper by Harvey Butcher and Gus Oemler in which they give positions, magnitudes, and colors for nearly 200 galaxies in the cluster (ApJS 57, 665, 1985). In addition, there are two Zwicky compact galaxies nearby: I Zw 153 No. 1 = BO 61, and I Zw 153 No. 2 = BO 95. Finally, NED has the Holmberg, Butcher-Oemler, MCG, CGCG, and many other names explicitly linked for the companions. It has also (as of December 2007; I'm still thinking about this ...) adopted the "RC2 1st cut" identifications for the companions, and has added -- except for the brightest -- its "NED0n" designation to the condensations in NGC 6166 itself. Not ideal, in my opinion, but at least the names and positions for the condensations and the five companions are clear and unambiguous. ===== NGC 6168 is probably CGCG 109-028 with a 1m 30s error in Swift's RA (the Dec is close). He has a faint star at the preceding end of the galaxy, but the star is actually at the following end. Because of these two problems, I'm not completely convinced that this identity is the correct one, but there are no other galaxies in the area that come as close to matching Swift's description (copied exactly into the NGC). This is, by the way, the only nebula that Swift found on the night of 21 May 1884, so we have no idea of any systematic offset for the night. ===== NGC 6170 = NGC 6176. Swift's RA for NGC 6170 is 40 seconds of time off, but his description of the star field is accurate: "... in vacancy; many pB sts south." The declination is accurate, too, so there is little doubt about the identity, first suggested in RNGC. ===== NGC 6172 = IC 1213. Stephan's position is 10 minutes of time too large due to a misprint in his paper in AN 2661. The position for his comparison star is correctly given, however, and identifies it as SAO 141069. Once the correction is made, it's clear that N6172 is IC 1213. RC3 is correct for a change. See UGC 3840 in the "notngc" file for more on Stephan's observations. ===== NGC 6173. See NGC 6174, as well as "NGC 6173 companion ..." in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 6174 is one of three nebulae found by Johnstone Stoney in 1849 while he was observing NGC 6173 (h 1962 = H III 640), and is the only one of the three included in the GC and NGC. JH took the observation from LdR's 1861 paper which lists only the three nebulae in the area found by JH, plus a terse comment "Another nearby." LdR's 1880 monograph has a fuller description of the observations, as well as a sketch of three of the nebulae. While the sketch is not labeled, it is clear from the descriptions that the one shown in the upper left is NGC 6173. A double nebula is directly north at a distance, estimated in the sketch, of 6 arcmin; while the third is an estimated 8 arcmin "east" of the second. The direction "east" is in quotes since the diagram does not fit the sky unless Stoney (or Dreyer, who prepared the monograph) got the direction wrong. Normally, the arrows in the diagrams point to the east; in this case, it must be west. Bindon Stoney made another observation and sketch in 1851 which confirms the three sketched by his brother in 1849. The 1851 sketch is not reproduced in the 1880 monograph, presumably because it shows the same three nebulae. The fourth nebula, noted only in J. Stoney's 1849 observation, comes from this comment: "About 15 arcmin following and 3 arcmin north of this [N6173] there is a new neb, vF, gbM." There are no galaxies in that location that might have been seen with even the 72-inch Leviathan -- but there is one 15 arcmin preceding and 3 arcmin north that fits this description. This is another indication that the east/west directions in this 1849 observation have been reversed. Dreyer added a note to the NGC for NGC 6174: "Second of 3, forming a rectangular triangle, the 2 others being assumed to be h1962 [N6173] and h1963 [N6175], but the identity of the group is doubtful." Dreyer's note is incorrect in making two of the nebulae identical to JH's; only one, N6173, is (N6175 is 11 arcmin south; see the next paragraph). The other two in the sketch are "novae." The final 72-inch observation from 18 May 1860 by S. Hunter suggests that he saw N6175 ("... an E neb, with a * close to f end, and either a knot or a * in p end"), and then concludes, "Found no other nebulae near. Twilight troublesome." Perhaps the last two words explain the lack of additional nebulae, since N6175 is in the midst of a cloud of rather faint galaxies in the outskirts of Abell 2197 (not Abell 2199 as I had it earlier; thanks to Owen Brazell for the correction). So, we have a problem: three new nebulae found at Birr, but only one NGC number for them. Several sources have taken the double nebula north of N6173 as N6174. I am a little reluctant to do this as Dreyer called N6174 only "vF" making no mention of the duplicity. On the other hand, this one fits the NGC position best -- assuming the east-west switch -- and was sketched twice. So that leaves two galaxies here seen by the Stoneys with no NGC numbers. See the "notngc" files for a bit more information on these. ===== NGC 6175. See NGC 6174, as well as the "notngc" files under "NGC 6173 companion ..." ===== NGC 6176 = NGC 6170, which see. ===== NGC 6187. There is a faint possibility that this is also NGC 6191. See that for more. ===== NGC 6188 is a large diffuse nebula involving the cluster NGC 6193. The central section of the bright nebulosity surrounds an area of absorption clouds with a sprinkling of stars in the foreground. The entire extent of the complex is about a degree and a half north to south, and about a degree east to west. NGC 6193 is in the eastern edge. JH describes the nebula in much the same way: "The brightest part of a vL, F, diffused, branching nebula, which involves in its nf part the * B5789 [HD 150135/6], and extends into the cl [Dunlop] 413, which it in part surrounds." He gives only an approximate position for the nebula, marking both coordinates with plus-minus signs. I see the brightest strands of nebulosity on the red DSS2 images about 15 arcminutes northeast of his position, and Andris Lauberts makes the center about 10 arcminutes further on to the north. Any of these positions will serve to identify the whole nebular complex, but I have chosen my own to represent the NGC object as JH specifically calls out the brightest part of the object. ===== NGC 6189. This may be NGC 6191. See that for more. ===== NGC 6190. Is this possibly NGC 6191? See that for more. ===== NGC 6191 is not at its nominal place. There are several other bright galaxies in the area, however, that Swift might have picked up. Possibilities include NGC 6187, N6189, or N6190. N6187 has the two stars preceding that Swift noted in his description, but it is the faintest and smallest galaxy of the candidates. In addition, it has a bright star (SAO 29975) 3.5 arcmin north that Swift surely would have noted. N6189 fits Swift's description best -- though the two stars are following rather than preceding as Swift notes them -- but is 50 arcmin north of his position. N6190 is 20 arcmin south, and forms a rather large equilateral triangle with two stars west and northwest. Another possibility is UGC 10271. That is 20 min 30 sec preceding Swift's position, matches his declination and description, and has the two stars preceding. If that is the galaxy Swift saw, he clearly made a transcription error in his RA. Finally, Swift found two other galaxies the same night, 6 July 1886: NGC 6127 and NGC 6136. His positions for both of those are good, so there is no hint of a systematic offset for the night. All in all, several candidates, but no clear winner. ===== NGC 6193. See NGC 6188. ===== NGC 6194 is the brightest of a group of galaxies also including NGC 6196, which see for the story. ===== NGC 6196 = IC 4615, NGC 6197 = IC 4616, and NGC 6199. N6196 is the second brightest of a small group of galaxies headed up by NGC 6194 (discovered by John Herschel). Marth's discovery positions for N6196 and N6197 are 38 seconds of time preceding and 1.3 arcmin north of the true positions. If this same offset applies to NGC 6199, then one of the two stars near the resulting position is likely the object that Marth saw. Though I pointed to the brighter of the two during preparation of RC2 as N6199, it has m = 12.0 in GSC which would almost surely make it unmistakeably a star in Laselle's 48-inch telescope. Thus, I now feel N6199 is more likely to be the fainter (m = 14.8 in GSC), though the position is further off (about 30 arcsec, compared to about 15 arcsec) from Marth's (corrected) position. Where did the IC objects come from? During his survey of the NGC nebulae, Bigourdan of course could not locate either N6196 or N6197 at their catalogued positions -- his estimated positions given under these numbers refer to stars. However, he did find five other nebulae in the area (B209, B324, B325, B425 and B426), and made micrometric observations of the three brightest of these. It is clear, even in Bigourdan's own notes, that B209 (the brightest) is NGC 6194, though he somehow got the position (from Schultz) incorrect (his position and Schultz's original position agree to within 10 arcsec). The other two measured nebulae have, as mentioned above, identical offsets from Marth's positions, so it is also clear that B325 = IC 4615 = NGC 6196, and B426 = IC 4616 = NGC 6197. Bigourdan searched in vain, however, for NGC 6199 at Marth's position. It's a bit surprising that he did not make the connection between the two brighter galaxies and his own, and thus search near the offset for N6199. Two other "nebulae" in Bigourdan's group had only estimated positions by him: B324 = IC 4614, and B425 = IC 4613. IC 4614 is a galaxy, but there is nothing near his position for IC 4613. See that number for further discussion of this group. ===== NGC 6197 = IC 4616. See NGC 6196. ===== NGC 6199 is probably a star. See NGC 6196. ===== NGC 6202 may be the same galaxy as NGC 6226. The description fits, there is a star near following, and the declinations are the same. The problem, of course, is the seven minute RA difference. This would not be the only large RA error in Swift's lists, of course, but it still prevents a positive identification. All in all, 9 July 1886 was not a good night for Lewis Swift. Of the three nebulae he found that night, we can now pretty surely identify only N6170 (which see). N6135 (which also see) and N6202 are far enough from Swift's positions that we will probably never know for sure which nebulae Swift actually saw. ===== NGC 6204. This is a pretty well-defined cluster found by JH in two sweeps, the first on 1 July 1834, the second on 20 April 1836. The RAs on the two nights are significantly different, the second apparently including a knot of four stars to the southeast that JH mentions specifically in the first sweep: "... sf is a brilliant knot of sts, one of which is 8 m, and the others 9 m." Without evidence, I don't believe that the knot is associated with the cluster, so ignored it when I estimated my own position and diameters for the cluster. Proper motions will tell us whether I am right or not. I also note a striking line of ten stars centered at 16 45 44.0, -46 58 23 (J2000) about 5.5 arcminutes northwest of the cluster. The PA of the line is close to 173 degrees. I suspect that this, too, is a random grouping. During his second observation, JH drew a rather fanciful sketch of the cluster and some of the surrounding stars; he reproduces it in CGH as Figure 6 of Plate 5. The figure is drawn so that the cluster appears to be situated in an open-topped box, with the open side being south of the cluster. The line of stars to the northwest apparently forms part of the right edge of the box, while JH's knot of stars is the clump to the upper left in his sketch. This configuration is probably more striking at the eyepiece than it is in the DSS images. ===== NGC 6206 = IC 1227, which see. Also see NGC 6133 and NGC 6262. ===== NGC 6208. As with NGC 6204 (which see), JH found this cluster on two nights, 8 July 1834 and 19 June 1835. And like the other cluster, his positions are significantly different. Here, however, his descriptions are also different: 8 July 1834: A pretty insulated milky way cluster, class VII. of large stars; 8' diam; sts 9....12 m. 19 June 1835: Cluster, class VII.; rich; not m comp M; more than fills field. Stars 11....14 m, but chiefly small. I think that his descriptions can be reconciled if the July 1834 observation refers only to the core of the cluster where most of the brighter stars are found, while the June 1835 observation includes the cluster's fainter peripheral stars. Finally, looking at the field, there is clearly an error of -10 arcminutes in JH's position from the June 1835 sweep, as that position falls south of the southern edge of the cluster. Corrected to be 10 arcminutes north, it lands near the cluster's center. ===== NGC 6209. JH saw this on 28 and 29 June 1835. Here is what he has to say: 28 June: eF, pL, vgvlbM, 2' diam; quite hopeless, except in the clearest and finest night, and with the mirror bright. 29 June: Found in the place and viewed. It is very visible, and the PD is right per index. What a difference a night makes! ===== NGC 6211 and NGC 6213 are the southern-most two of a line of four galaxies stretching southwest to northeast (the other two are CGCG 299-018 and -019, not in NGC). Swift found these in June of 1887 and sent them directly to Dreyer who included them in NGC from Swift's letters. Swift published the discoveries a few years later in his 9th list. His RAs are 15-20 seconds of time too small, but Dreyer included Bigourdan's corrections in the IC2 notes. Bigourdan's published RAs are within two seconds for each object, and his offsets, if re-reduced using a modern position for his reference star, would agree with modern positions. ===== NGC 6213. See NGC 6211. ===== NGC 6216 is not NGC 6222, which see for more. JH has one observation in which he describes "... two appendages of sts, n and s, making together a long cluster." These are easy to see on the DSS, and change only the diameter of the cluster, not its position. Proper motions and photometry will tell us if they are in fact part of the cluster. ===== NGC 6219. Aside from an error of 27 seconds of time in the RA, Marth's position and description fit the galaxy well. He claims to have seen it on more than one night (it is marked "verified" in his table), so I'm a bit surprised that the RA is off so much. ===== NGC 6222 = NGC 6259, and not NGC 6216 as I had supposed earlier. Here is what I had to say when I went over the field in 1999: JH recorded the cluster on four different sweeps. On three of those (which led to NGC 6216), his RA is accurate. However, the fourth sweep (for NGC 6222 on 3 June 1834) has the RA 1 min 20 sec following; the NPD is the same. The description for N6222 fits N6216, and there is only a Milky Way star field at N6222's position. The identification, adopted in RNGC and ESO, is pretty sure. Checking the sweep, I find that JH miscopied the RA into his RA-ordered Register -- the actual RA from Sweep 455 on 3 June 1834 is 16 48 32.1 (1830) rather than the 16 38 32.1 that appeared in CGH. This means that NGC 6222 is actually identical with NGC 6259. JH actually noticed this sometime after he had submitted the CGH manuscript for typesetting. He included the observation for NGC 6259 which became NGC 6222 in his table of "Omitted Observations" with the correct RA, and the correct h number 3660. Unfortunately, he did not include a note to delete the observation under h3650, so that remained in the list and led to the extra entry in the GC (GC 4240) and in the NGC as NGC 6222. ===== NGC 6223 either has a Galactic star superposed just southeast of the nucleus, or it has a double nucleus. Unfortunately, there are no high-resolution survey images available to help settle the question, but the 2MASS and GALEX near-UV images do show the two objects. Both are also barely seen in the DSS2 images. 2MASS, UCAC, URA1, and Gaia DR1 have coordinates for both images, all with various degrees of blending. In the end, I've adopted positions from 2MASS for the galaxy and its companion object without quite knowing what the companion actually is. ===== NGC 6226 may also be NGC 6202, which see. ===== NGC 6227 is described by JH as "A star 5m in a great cluster, or an immensely rich milky way patch." The star is SAO 227313, and it is superposed on a rich part of the Milky Way, just as JH saw it. There is a good scattering of stars between 5th and 10th magnitude within a degree or two following JH's star -- they stand out well on the Southern Sky Survey film. There are two major clumps of stars here: the southern one surrounds NGC 6231, while the northern clump is Collinder 316; Trumpler 24 is apparently a concentration in the northeastern part of Cr 316. IC 4628, a diffuse nebula, is on to the northeast of Tr 24. This whole region may be JH's "great cluster." The area to the west of SAO 227313 is heavily populated with stars of the 9th and 10th magnitude, but does not stand out as much as the areas to the east. Following JH, I've adopted the position of the bright star. The diameters I've estimated are for a center a bit offset toward the northeast from the star. But the star is still close enough to the center of the apparent star cloud that it provides a handy reference point. Brent Archinal alerted me to the information about the clusters in the area. Here is his note: I think there are two possibilities for this object. For one, I looked at a DSS image here (via Skyview) and there's nothing really obvious. However, with histogram equalization of a 30' and also a 90' field, there is a brightening of the Milky Way around the star of about 15-18' in diameter. I think it's most reasonable to assume that this is what JH saw. On the other hand, could it be that JH was refering to the _really big_ 3 degree grouping of stars here, including Cr 316, Tr 24, NGC 6231, and Zeta-1 and -2 Sco? On a particularly transparent night a few years ago (from here in Virginia), I saw this area well for the first time as it crossed the meridian. This is a very spectacular binocular grouping of objects. Offhand, I would think that if he was refering to such a large grouping he'd describe it better or say something clearer about the size, so I think this is an unlikely identification -- but perhaps still possible. One identification I would reject is that this is one of the individual clusters, such as NGC 6231, Tr 24, or Cr 316. The 5th magnitude star in question is on the edge of Cr 316, but this group doesn't stand out well at all, at least in the 90' field. Tr 24 is too far to the NE (part of Cr 316 probably), and NGC 6321 is quite obvious to the SE and doesn't fit the description at all. None of this information corresponds with the observation by Hirsch reported in the Monograph, but he may have just been looking at a scattered group of stars here, if not Cr 316 or Tr 24. The comment by Harrington is probably copied from Hirsch (a number of Harrington's descriptions are similar to Webb Society descriptions, but without credit), and the information from Burnham, SkyAtlas 2000.0, and Houston does not seem useful. Anyway, since JH doesn't describe any resolved stars here other than the 5th magnitude one, and doesn't make any remarks that would indicate the whole 3 degree wide grouping here, the Milky Way brightening seems the best candidate for this object. It would be nice to have some visual confirmation of this particular area to help confirm this, though. Observers, to your eyepieces! ===== NGC 6230 is the brightest galaxy in a small group. There is another somewhat fainter galaxy just an arcminute west. Swift's position is actually closer to the fainter object, but his description reads "eeeF, pS, R; bet. a distant B * f. and a distant F * p; ee diff." The brighter galaxy is very nearly exactly between the two stars, while the fainter one is noticeably closer to the fainter star to the west. Furthermore, the brighter galaxy has a star superposed about 15 arcseconds southeast of the nucleus; this would have enhanced the image in Swift's large-field eyepiece. Given all of this, Swift's object is almost certainly the brighter galaxy, so that is the one I've taken. ===== NGC 6231. See NGC 6227. ===== NGC 6232. See NGC 6237. ===== NGC 6236. See NGC 6237. ===== NGC 6237 and NGC 6245 may be duplicate observations of NGC 6232 and NGC 6236, respectively. Or they may be stars. Or, they may simply be "not found." Whatever the case, these are two of a group of four nebulae that Lewis Swift found on the night of 28 June 1884; the other two are NGC 6232 and NGC 6236. Over a year later, on 11 August 1885, Swift found another nebula, NGC 6248, about half a degree south of his group. There were no other observations before Dreyer compiled the NGC, so he included all five. Looking at the area on the Sky Survey prints, we now see only three galaxies here that are bright enough for Swift to have picked up. These are NGC 6232, 6236, and 6248. Swift's RA's for the three are systematically too small by 14 to 31 seconds of time, but his declinations are very good. Looking at his positions for the missing two objects shows that the declination of NGC 6237 is close to that of NGC 6232, and that for NGC 6245 is similarly close to that for NGC 6236. In addition, his RA's for the two missing objects each have roughly the same offset from the RA's for the same two galaxies (32 seconds in the first case, 48 seconds in the other). So, I wonder if NGC 6237 = NGC 6232 and NGC 6245 = NGC 6236 -- in spite of the fact that Swift found all of the objects on the same night, and explicitly noted "1st of 4," "2nd of 4," etc, in the descriptions of all four objects. Keep in mind his method of finding positions: centering the object in the eyepiece, and reading the setting circles. Did he perhaps bump the telescope or setting circles inadvertantly after reading positions for the first two objects? Still, he used a very large field eyepiece, so it may be that he mistook stars near the galaxies as other nebulae. Or, he may have seen reflections of stars out of the field and mistook them as nebulae. Or, his eyes may have played tricks on him if he was tired. I favor the jarred telescope/setting circle hypothesis, but would not bet even a nickel on its being right. Whatever happened, the two objects -- NGC 6237 and NGC 6245 -- do not exist on the sky, so I've simply entered them as "Not found" in the table. ===== NGC 6240 = IC 4625, which see. There is no problem in the NGC position, but the IC position -- from Barnard -- is a few arcmin off. The identity is clinched nevertheless by Barnard's note of a star near north-following. ===== NGC 6245 is not on the sky in Swift's position. Unless it is an accidental duplicate of NGC 6236, it does not exist. See NGC 6237 for the story. ===== NGC 6247 = IC 1233, which see. ===== NGC 6248. See NGC 6237. ===== NGC 6253. JH described this simply as "A small triangular cl, 2' diam; st = 13 m" in the single sweep that he picked it up. On the DSS2R image, it seems to be considerably larger than 2 arcminutes, but its extremities are defined by fainter stars. JH apparently saw only the core -- his description fits that quite well. I've adopted the ESO position for the core as consideration of the full extent of the cluster pulls the position north by an arcminute or so. ===== NGC 6257. Steve Gottlieb points out that there is no trace of this object near JH's position. However, just 1 minute of time west, and 9 arcminutes north, is the radio galaxy 4C +39.49 = CGCG 225-007 = UGC 10599. Is this JH's object, perhaps with digit errors in the RA and Dec? I dug into this and sent this to Steve. I just looked at the sweep [16 May 1831, in the Herschel Archives] where NGC 6257 = h 1974 is No. 37, and see that JH's reduced position is the same as his published position -- no transcription error. It fits into RA order with the other objects in the sweep, too. [The declination is also consistent with the rest of the sweep.] There are a few problems with other objects in the sweep. No. 34 has no RA recorded, and No. 38 has only an illegible note, with no RA or Dec recorded. There are several other objects earlier in the sweep with either very approximate positions recorded, or with corrected reduced positions. Those kinds of entries seem to be relatively common in the record books, though, so I'm not willing to say that there are unusual errors in this particular sweep. Unfortunately, the unreduced observation of No. 37 on the left page, and all [of JH's] comments there, are almost illegible. From what I can make out, though, there is nothing to suggest a large reduction error. The unreduced observation looks something like "[16] 49 50[?] -14[?]" in the RA column and "2 5 13" in the Dec column. Checking other objects in the sweep, these are consistent with what I can make out from the reduced positions and the observations that are clear enough to read. I'll peer at them some more, but suspect that unless you or Wolfgang can make more of the faint writing than I can, we'll have to go to the RAS to ask if they can read the original with any more certainty. You are quite right that the usual galaxy CGCG 225-012 doesn't match JH's published description at all. So, I looked at the field and found a galaxy, UGC 10599, that has aroused my suspicions. It is just one minute of time west of JH's RA, and 9 arcmin north of his Dec -- digit errors? But from there, it gets murky. As you noted, JH says "It is pointed to by a F double * nf." A faint double star pointing at the galaxy is indeed on the sky, but is *south* following, not north. The possible identification falls apart pretty completely as we read the rest of JH's description: "Doubtful whether a nebula or a vF double star, with perhaps a third star near (of course ill seen)." There is no way that I can make UGC 10599 fit that description. The galaxy is Markarian 501, a UV-excess galaxy; and is also 4C +39.49, one of the radio galaxies that helps define the basic astrometric reference system in use today, the ICRF. I looked at the galaxy in several optical and infrared images, and there is no trace of the duplicity that JH suspected, nor is there a third star near enough that might have caught his attention. The nucleus sits nearly alone on the sky with only some faint stars and much fainter galaxies nearby. It is bright enough that JH could have seen it, but the neighbors on the sky are too faint. So, I don't think this is his object, but I've included it as another possibility. Steve has this to say about CGCG 225-012: RNGC, CGCG and PGC identify CGCG 225-012 as NGC 6257, though this galaxy is 70 seconds of RA east of Herschel's position (and 2' north). I don't see a reasonably bright "faint double star nf" matching his description. In addition, I question whether this galaxy is bright enough to have picked up by JH. Although I was able to see it in my 17.5-inch a number of years ago, it required averted vision and knowing the exact location beforehand to glimpse it. Karl Reinmuth was probably the first to equate CGCG 225-012 with NGC 6257, though his position is 2.5' too far southwest. So, we are left with question marks and no clear identification. ===== NGC 6259 = NGC 6222, which see. ===== NGC 6262 is another of Swift's missing objects. He recorded this one on the night of 23 October 1886 when he found three other nebulae: N6133 (which see), N6206, and N6279. Only the last two are anywhere near Swift's places, and they show no systematic offset that might help us with N6262. His description is also unhelpful: "eeeF, pS, R, eee diff". Two possibilities are in the area: CGCG 299-039 and CGCG 277-010. The first would require a 5 minute and 10 arcmin error in Swift's position, the second a 1.4 minute and 1 degree error. The first is the brighter of the two, and the digit errors make it the more likely candidate. However, he could have seen either object, but without further evidence, I'm not going to do more than note them as possibilities. Finally, I checked for digit errors at +-1, 2, 5, and 10 degrees, and +-1, 2, 5, 10, 30 minutes of time, and +- 1 hour. The only possible additional object that could have been a candidate is NGC 6370 (also found by Swift and included in his first list), but that has a bright star just two arcminutes north which Swift surely would have mentioned had he found it a second time -- he did in fact mention it the first. ===== NGC 6263 is not NGC 6138 (which see) as I had earlier supposed. N6263 is an innocent bystander, the victim of a misprint in M. Esmiol's Introduction to his complete collection of Stephan's observations. The story is under N6138. ===== NGC 6268. JH's position is for a double star in the western part of the cluster. The position that I estimated falls within a void in the middle of the cluster, and does not include a possible extension to the north where there is an additional clump of stars. Proper motions and photometry will be needed to tell us if any of these are actual cluster members. ===== NGC 6270. Here is a case where Stephan's micrometric position falls exactly on the correct galaxy (the NGC position is about 20 arcsec too far north since the position for Stephan's comparison star is similarly off), yet LEDA has chosen a galaxy nearly 20 arcmin south-southwest. There was no justification for this that I can see, and I'm mystified at their decision. Whatever happened, the identity is clear and Stephan's position is within three arcsec of the modern position from DSS. ===== NGC 6274. Steve Gottlieb has pointed out that there is an appropriate galaxy, UGC 10654, just one minute of time east of Marth's position. This contrasts strongly with the object I chose earlier, the double galaxy UGC 10643, which is 15 seconds of time west and 11 arcminutes north of Marth's place. It looks like Reinmuth was the first to suggest the latter object, but aside from RNGC, the major 20th century catalogues (CGCG, MCG, and UGC) simply ignored the NGC number. Steve's suggestion is pretty convincing, so I've changed the identification of the NGC object. It is marked with a colon in the position table, while the double galaxy is now flagged with question marks. ===== NGC 6276 = IC 1239, NGC 6277 (a star), and NGC 6278. William Herschel found one galaxy here. It, NGC 6278, as one might expect, is the brightest of the group. Sixty years later, Albert Marth found two other nebulous objects near Herschel's object. Shortly thereafter, Stephan also discovered two nebulous objects, and also included Herschel's object in his list, correcting Herschel's inaccurate position. However, Stephan did not mention Marth's two objects; I don't know if he was aware of Marth's list or not. Dreyer, faced with this rather confusing array of five positions, asked to see Marth's observing records. These apparently did not reach Dreyer until after the NGC had gone to press, as he added a note "in press" to the NGC that Stephan had seen only one of Marth's objects. The positions are close enough that Dreyer was able to correctly identify the object (NGC 6276) as m328. m327 is north preceding about three arcminutes, and was missed by Stephan. In the NGC note, Dreyer added that the missing object should have been inserted in the NGC immediately following NGC 6275. Dreyer indeed added it later to the first Index Catalogue as IC 1238. But when we turn to the sky, there are only two galaxies here bright enough to have been seen by the visual observers (a third, later catalogued as UGC 10650, has too low a surface brightness to have been picked up). The brightest is obviously NGC 6278, but what is the other? Fortunately, Stephan's micrometric position is pretty good, being off only by the amount that his comparison star's catalogued position is off (about half an arcminute). This correctly identifies the second galaxy as NGC 6276. If we then correct Stephan's position for NGC 6277 for the comparison star's offset, we find that this object is in fact a star. Assuming that Marth's two positions are in good relative agreement, we can pin down IC 1238 as a double star. The confusion crept into Bigourdan's observations, too. He correctly identified NGC 6278, but misidentified a star as NGC 6277, and actually published NGC 6276 as a "nova" in his second list of new nebulae. He later realized his mistake, and correctly equated the NGC object with his "nova" (which had by then received the number IC 1239) in his final published list of observations. His observation of "NGC 6277" is interesting in that there is a faint galaxy just a few arcseconds north-following the star he measured. Did he perhaps glimpse the galaxy, but then measure the brighter star? Sulentic, with three NGC numbers in hand, and with three relatively large galaxies in sight on the Sky Survey, misidentifies UGC 10650 as RNGC 6276, and assigns the number RNGC 6277 to NGC 6276. NGC 6278's correct identification survived even into the RNGC. ===== NGC 6277 is a star. See NGC 6276. ===== NGC 6278 is the brightest galaxy of a group. See NGC 6276. ===== NGC 6279. See NGC 6133, NGC 6262, and IC 4636. N6279 figures in the identification (or not!) of all of these. ===== NGC 6285 is one of half a dozen nebulae found by Lewis Swift that were only published in the NGC -- they appear in none of his dozen lists of nebulae, nor in any of his miscellaneous papers. I have to thank Gary Kronk for his kindness in sending this short list in April 2017 during preparation of his book on Swift. For the record, the other objects appearing only in the NGC are NGC 5783, 6346, 6612, 7759, and 7780. Gary tells me that two others, NGC 1207 and 1360, appeared in papers by Swift, though the reference to NGC 1207 is currently lost. NGC 1360 is mentioned in an article in The Sidereal Messenger, volume 4, page 36 (see page 39), 1885. ===== NGC 6293. See NGC 6294 and NGC 6551. ===== NGC 6294 is a double star northeast of NGC 6293, a bright globular cluster. It is offset +5.5 seconds and +0.5 arcmin from the cluster; JH's positions for the two objects, both seen the same sweep, lead to offsets of +7 seconds and +0.1 arcmin. Howe's measurement of the stars' separation (PA = 315 deg, distance = 8 arcsec) is correct. Both stars have several faint companions -- presumably members of N6293 -- merged into their DSS images. ===== NGC 6297 = NGC 6298. Though Swift claims that N6297 is the "sp of 2" and N6298 is the "nf of 2", there is only one galaxy here. He discovered it on two different nights (8 July 1885, and three weeks later on 1 Aug 1885), and apparently misled into believing he'd found two objects by the difference in his brightness estimates ("pB" and "vF", respectively), added the directional indicators during the publication process. At least, that is my surmise -- he has certainly done that in other cases. An interesting sidelight: Bigourdan failed to find N6298 on three nights, but on those same three nights, measured N6297 16 different times using two different comparison stars. This may well be a record number of observations by Bigourdan for a non-descript 14th magnitude galaxy. I'd be interested in knowing why he did so much work on this -- I can't find a clue in his published data. ===== NGC 6298 = NGC 6297, which see. ===== NGC 6301 = IC 4643, which see. ===== NGC 6302. This beautiful and well-known planetary nebula (made famous by the HST images) has two main lobes -- the eastern lobe is the brighter -- consisting of knots and streamers, apparently blown off the (unseen) central star. Brian and I have attempted to estimate the position of the star by choosing a point between the two bright arcs that nearly intersect in the center of the nebula. Unfortunately, the RA is not well-constrained and differs by about 3 arcseconds depending on which DSS image is used. The DSS1 image from the quick V plate gives the clearest view, so that is the one I have adopted. The positions of the lobes are reasonably well-determined from the automated surveys. ===== NGC 6303 is half a degree north of Swift's position. The galaxy there (CGCG 321-013) matches his description, and his note "... nearly between 2 stars" fits, too. Though I've not checked all the history on this object, I think that CGCG is the first to suggest the identity. Bigourdan's observation, mentioned in the IC2 notes, is for a star 36 seconds east and 1.3 arcmin north of Swift's nominal position. ===== NGC 6306, 6307, and 6310. There are three galaxies here with three NGC numbers attached to them. But there may be a problem. D'A found two of them on his very first numbered night, 27 October 1861. He reobserved them on 20 August 1863 -- his two sets of positions are accordant and accurately pinpoint the two galaxies he saw. His descriptions are also appropriate, so there is no problem with his observations. The third galaxy, just about 1.5 arcminutes southwest of the southern of the two that d'A found, is considerably fainter and escaped his notice. Lewis Swift went over the field on 8 July 1885 and found two "new" galaxies here. His positions and descriptions from his 2nd list read (positions for 1885.0) No. 51 17 06 11 +60 52 05 vF, vS, lE. Close to [GC] 4278. sp of 2. No. 52 17 06 28 +61 07 30 pF, vE; 3 sts in line point to it. nf of 2. For the NGC, Dreyer assumed two of the galaxies were the two found by d'A, and that at least one of those found by Swift must be a "nova". So, he also assigned the first of Swift's objects a "new" number, NGC 6306. He put the second of Swift's on one of d'A's, GC 4277, and gave that the NGC number 6307. That that was the wrong thing to do is shown by the declinations -- d'A and Swift both put their second objects 15 arcminutes north of the first. Finally, Dreyer assigned the second of d'A's numbers to the northern of the three galaxies which he called NGC 6310. The question I have about all this is did Swift see all three galaxies, or just the two novae he published in his 2nd list? I am pretty sure that with his observing records of just two new galaxies in front of him when he was preparing his second list for publication, he assigned the "sp/nf" designations from his records rather than from his actual observing notes. He could well have seen all three. Also, his position for his southwestern object is closer to the fainter of the close pair than to the brighter. But this could be a coincidence as both objects are within the usual errors of his position. Steve Gottlieb has suggested that Swift's mistake was to name GC 4278 (NGC 6310) rather than GC 4277 (NGC 6307) in his description for number 51. If Swift did indeed see the fainter of the two southern galaxies, then this is indeed his mistake. But if he did NOT see that fainter galaxy, but rather the brighter one that d'A picked up, then his note "Close to 4278" would be correct. I'm inclined to think that Steve is correct, that Swift really did mean to list the fainter galaxy, and that Dreyer made a mistake in attributing both NGC 6306 and 6307 to Swift -- Swift's second galaxy is clearly NGC 6310. But Swift's description of the southern of his two galaxies still causes me to question which of the close pair he actually saw. Unless more evidence becomes available (unlikely as Gary Kronk tells me that Swift's observing logs are lost), there are three galaxies here, with three NGC numbers, so ... All this came to light as a result of Gary Kronk's biography of Lewis Swift. I thank Gary for his kindness in sharing his work before publication. ===== NGC 6307. See NGC 6306. ===== NGC 6310. See NGC 6306. ===== NGC 6318. JH gives no RA for this in the sweep, adopting instead an approximate RA for Dunlop 522. He did measure a north polar distance, and that is within his usual statistical error of the modern positions. His description "Cl VII. class. Rich, pL, R, gbM; sts 12...14m; not a [globular]" is appropriate, though. As there are no other similar clusters at the same declination in the general area, the identity is not in doubt. ===== NGC 6331. There is a single observation by WH who says "eF, S. 320 shewed [sic] it better." CH lists two offsets in her fair copy of the sweep, the main one being the one that WH published in his Third Catalogue: 21min 18sec preceding and 1deg 25arcmin south of "4 Cephei of Bode's Cat." which is HD 158996. This star has a high proper motion (+56.6 mas/yr in RA and +207.1 mas/yr); this may have influenced its corrections to WH's observations in the sweep. They are a minute of time and 3 arcminutes off those for the other two stars in the same sweep, so it is not a particularly good reference star. The other star that CH lists is "2 Cephei of Bode's Cat."; this is HD 152303. It is written in an otherwise small space in the sweep in a bit of a cramped hand; I suspect it was added later when CH noticed that "4 Cephei" gave a different correction than the other two stars. In any event, the offsets she gives for the observation are 22 min 55 sec following and 59 arcminutes north of the star. I've reduced WH's observation with respect to both stars, and as you'll see in the position table, his position using HD 152303 is considerably closer to the position provided by Bigourdan, and to the modern positions. There are a couple of unusual aspects of the object that might affect its identification, though the corrected position (and Bigourdan's observation) pretty well pin it down as the brightest object in the cluster Abell 2256. First, the object is a triple system. This might have reduced its visibility a bit, but the blended image seems to have been the only one in the cluster that WH and Bigourdan saw. This is a bit curious as the 2nd and 3rd brightest galaxies are only 0.1 and 0.2 magnitudes fainter, and are just 2 arcminutes to the east. NGC 6331 must have been right at the limit of visibility for both of the keen-eyed observers to miss the companions. In any event, neither of them saw any other galaxies in the cluster. ===== NGC 6335. JH says of this, "The whole lower end of the zone is strongly affected with nebulous patches," and gives only an approximate position for it. Though included in Cederblad's catalogue of bright diffuse nebulae, there is no bright nebulosity in the area. Instead, the Southern Sky Survey films show a patchy field of star clouds, defined by the dust of dark nebulae. It is apparently these star clouds that JH saw in the spring of 1837, giving him the impression of patchy nebulosity all through his field. (Three years earlier, he happened on the same field, giving a position then about 5 minutes east; this has become NGC 6360, which see.) I've adopted the approximate center of the brightest patch of stars nearest JH's position as the position for NGC 6335. This is about a minute west of his place which lands in a relatively poor field -- in other words, in the midst of a dust cloud. Steve Gottlieb offers this recent observation of my estimated position: 24" (7/7/13): at 125x this Milky Way field (roughly 15') includes a mix of faint and moderately bright stars overlaying a bright Milky Way background glow. Includes a 6' string oriented NW to SE of mag 11-12 stars as well as a group of a half-dozen stars mag 9.5-12 stars (brightest is HD 156543) about 9' SW. Only some faint stars are visible between these groups over the glowing background, so it is not eye-catching. South of this group the background glow dims due to dust clouds. Steve's observation matches perfectly the 0.5 degree field I see in the DSSR2 image centered at 17 16 20, -30 06.8 (B1950.0; compare to JH's approximate position of 17 17 36, -30 06.1, and the NGC position 17 17 21, -30 05.9, also marked +-; both precessed to B1950.0). Finally, note, too, that JH claims his position in CGH is four degrees too far south; he corrects this on the first unnumbered errata page at the end of the CGH monograph. The correct position is in GC and NGC. JH's characterization of "The whole lower end of the zone ..." may be relevant here. Why does he call it the "lower end"? My guess is that, given Feldhausen's latitude of 33d 59m south and NGC 6335's declination of -30d 06m, the 4-degree wide sweep would have stretched from the zenith northwards, with its "lower end" toward the northern horizon. This may have contributed to the confusion about the correct north polar distance. Unfortunately, most of the observation, number 21 in the sweep, as reproduced in the Herschel Archive is too faint to read and illegible. A few words can be made out, but most can not. However, the reduced position is clearly entered as "17 09 41 +- 119 58" with the "119 58" being very dark and clearly written over another number that is consistent with "123". These are the numbers in CGH, so "119" is the apparently the correct degrees of NPD. Just to be sure that there is nothing obvious at JH's orginal CGH position, I checked that, too, on the DSSR2 and DSSI2 images -- the dominant objects around that position are dust clouds, and the background light of the Milky Way is much dimmer than at the corrected position. I do not think it is a field that would cause much comment, let alone warrant an entry in JH's observing log. ===== NGC 6338. See IC 1250 and IC 4650. ===== NGC 6344 is a double star at Lohse's position. In appearance, it matches several other of the "nebulae" found by him with the 15.5-inch (e.g. NGC 5884, also a double star, which see), and is very close to his nominal position. There is a faint galaxy -- the SDSS shows it to actually be a "nest" of at least four galaxies -- about an arcminute to the north that has been taken as N6344, but it is certainly too faint for Lohse to have seen. Another coincidence of the field is the presence of Zwicky's cluster ZwCl 1715.5+4229 almost directly behind Lohse's stars; the quadruple system is probably its brightest member. ===== NGC 6346. See NGC 6285. ===== NGC 6347 = IC 1253, which see. ===== NGC 6349. See NGC 6351. ===== NGC 6351 is a double galaxy with two stars superposed. Stephan saw it as just a single nebula, but commented on its surface brightness in a roundabout way: "Very faint, extremely small; fainter than [NGC 6349], but a little less small." There is no hint in this observation that he resolved any of the individual objects, so I have included them all under the NGC number. ===== NGC 6353 is a close group of 5 stars found by J. G. Lohse. Like most other of the "nebulae" found by Lohse, this, on closer examination, turns out to have no nebulosity associated with it. Lohse did see three of the stars involved, and also noted the 10th magnitude star just an arcminute to the northeast. His position is good. Since this is so obviously Lohse's object, I'm a bit puzzled by the RNGC's saying simply "Not found." This must be another consequence of the speed at which RNGC was done. ===== NGC 6354 is a small group of four stars with two fainter stars also involved. Barnard found it in 1884 while he was still in Tennessee, and has "three equatorial pointings" from which he determined the position. His description is appropriate: "It is a small and faint object with 6-inch (sic) telescope. The light seems to be of an even tint." Knox-Shaw, using the 30-inch Reynold's Reflector at Helwan, took at least one plate of the area. He noted in Helwan Bulletin No. 9 (1912), "Four stars near together; not a nebula." ===== NGC 6358 is the brightest part of an extensive HII region. ESO identifies it with the associated cluster, but JH mentions only the nebula: "F, L, E, vglbM, milky nebulosity, 2' l, 1 1/2' br; close to and almost involves a D *." The double star -- actually a pair of doubles -- includes the brightest stars in the cluster. ===== NGC 6360. As with NGC 6335 (which see) there is no nebulosity making up this "object." Instead, JH saw the bright background of the Milky Way broken up into many patches of nebulous light by the dark nebulae lacing the area with dust. The position I've adopted for NGC 6360 is about a minute of time west and 7-8 arcmin north of JH's position (like N6335, in an area pretty well covered by dust). This is the brightest cloud of stars in the area, approximately 12 arcmin across. JH's full description reads, "A portion of the milky way which is decidedly nebulous, and by no means rich in L stars. The nebula is in patches of very great extent." This last comment makes it clear that this particular cloud is not the only one he saw in the area, and that a position with fairly low precision will be good enough to locate it. ===== NGC 6363 is also = NGC 6138, which see. ===== NGC 6365. Swift's RA is 1 minute, 7 seconds too small, and his comment "B * nr sf" should read "B * nr nf". Aside from that, the interacting pair matches his description pretty well. ===== NGC 6370. See NGC 6262. ===== NGC 6374 = NGC 6383. JH has only one observation (in Sweep 794) of NGC 6374, and that is a duplicate of an "Omitted Observation ..." (also in Sweep 794) for NGC 6383 listed at the end of his CGH Observations. (See also NGC 6222 = NGC 6259 where the same thing happened.) He has two other observations of NGC 6383, both on different nights, but with accordant descriptions. In the sweep, where this is Number 24, JH has written over the original RA with the corrected RA shown in the list of Omitted Observations. As with NGC 6222, he added the observation to the Omitted Observations list, but not call out the incorrect observation for omission. So, it showed up in the GC and the NGC. In the single observation leading to the NGC number 6374, JH identifies the bright star in the middle of the cluster as "B[risbane] 6125". I suspect this is the correct identification, but will have to check. If the number is correct, then it is SAO 208977 = HD 159176. In any event, there is no doubt that, due to JH's bookkeeping error, the two NGC numbers refer to the same cluster. ===== NGC 6375. See NGC 6564. ===== NGC 6376 and NGC 6377. Swift notes these faint galaxies as "sf of 2" and "np of 2", respectively. The actual orientation is southwest and northeast, in accord with Swift's positions (which for a wonder are not bad). Dreyer used the positions, but omitted Swift's faulty notes. Swift must have had occasional field orientation problems. Other of his observations (see e.g. NGC 6365) have directions reversed. ===== NGC 6377. See NGC 6376. ===== NGC 6379. See NGC 6564. ===== NGC 6381 may help with the identification of NGC 6393/94, which see. ===== NGC 6383 = NGC 6374, which see. ===== NGC 6390 may help with the identification of NGC 6393/94, which see. ===== NGC 6393 and NGC 6394 are a pair of objects found 7 July 1885 by Lewis Swift. Though he describes the two as equally faint, the southern of the two objects on the sky (more than 6 arcmin south of his position) is much fainter than the northern (3.5 arcmin south of the nominal position). I'm not convinced that Swift could have seen it. In fact, he did not find it again. When he went over the field on 15 June 1890, he recovered only one of the galaxies. This time, his position was virtually identical to the one that he gave for N6393, leading Dreyer to omit it from IC1. The position is also close to the true position for the brighter galaxy. Swift's description also fits the brighter galaxy: "eeF, pS, cE; B * nearly obscures it; bet. it and a F *[,] nearer the latter." So, there is no doubt about the galaxy that this second observation points to. This brighter galaxy has been taken by MCG and CGCG as N6393 based on the position. However, Swift's description does not match the field. Swift says, "vvF, pS, R; 2 B sts nr n; s of 2." The comment about the two bright stars north matches the fainter southern galaxy, but not the brighter northern one. For his northern object, Swift says, "vvF, pS, R; 2 sts point to it, the nearer is D; the other and the neb. are equally distant from the D *; n of 2." This matches what is on the sky pretty well (his double star in the first observation is the "B *" in the second, and the other two stars are there also), so I have taken NGC 6394 as the northern galaxy. I have also tentatively assigned NGC 6393 to the very faint southern object since there is no other candidate object nearby. There are many other galaxies within one or two degrees, but none have the stars near that Swift describes. Whatever he saw, it clearly needs visual confirmation. ----- After reading the note above, Steve Gottlieb took a look at these two galaxies during one of his observing runs in the California Sierras with his 18-inch reflector in July 2008. Here are his notes: You identified the brighter northern galaxy as N6394. I felt this galaxy was brighter than Swift's 1890 description of "eeF" but he correctly logged it as "cE". Here are my notes at 280x: "Faint, fairly small, very elongated 3:1 SSW-NNE, 0.6'x0.2', very weak concentration. An extremely faint star is off the NNE tip. Located 4' SE of mag 8.0 HD 159266 which detracts from viewing." As far as the much fainter southern galaxy (N6393), I was able to pick it up but it wasn't easy and my notes are pretty basic: "Extremely faint, very small, round, 15" diameter, low even surface brightness." With some effort I could just barely hold this galaxy continuously with averted vision at 280x once it was identified BUT it took knowing the exact position to initially pick it up. ... Based on the eyepiece view, I'd say the southern galaxy is faint enough that I doubt Swift would have noticed it without prior knowledge. But although it seems unlikely to me, it's just possible Swift picked it up in the field of the brighter northern galaxy. ... While this seems to confirm my initial thoughts about the field, I can only echo Steve's conclusion: So, I'm afraid we may still be left with an uncertain (or unlikely) identification for N6393 without some other info. I've put colons on NGC 6394 in my main position tables. The question mark on NGC 6393 remains firmly in place. ----- Coming on these two objects again in January 2016, I realized that I had not considered the other galaxies that Swift found on the same night. They are Swift Modern Mod - Sw NGC RA (2000) Dec RA (2000) Dec dRA dDec s amin 6381 17 27 15 +60 00.4 17 27 16.83 +60 00 50.3 + 1.8 +0.5 6390 17 28 17 +60 11.7 17 28 28.08 +60 05 39.2 +11.1 -6.0 6399 17 31 43 +59 36.4 17 31 50.31 +59 36 55.7 + 7.3 +0.5 Swift's RA's are systematically low, and he has one declination that is six arcminutes too large. Assuming that he found the objects in RA order, we can apply the corrections implied by the NGC 6390 differences to Swift's positions for NGC 6393 and 6394. This gives for J2000 NGC 6393: 17 30 29 +59 32.4 NGC 6394: 17 30 28 +59 36.0 These implied positions suggest that the identifications that Steve and I had suggested earlier are in fact correct. But given Steve's uncertainty about Swift's chances of sweeping up the fainter galaxy, I've again left the uncertainty symbols intact. ===== NGC 6394. See NGC 6393. ===== NGC 6396. JH's RA, which he says is for the double star on the northern edge of the cluster, is 27 seconds too small. This may be a wire error. In the sweep, he claims wire 1; if he actually used wire 2, then the RA would be 17 37 48 for J2000, just 10 seconds off. Even if this is not JH's mistake, there is no mistaking the cluster that he saw on the night of 7 June 1837. ===== NGC 6400. Here, coincidentally, is the next open cluster in the NGC after NGC 6396 (which see), and another object where JH may have recorded the wrong wire -- his RA for the cluster is 40 seconds too small. In the sweep, he claims wire 2; if he actually observed the cluster leaving the field, his RA would be 17 40 06 for J2000, just six seconds of time off the actual RA. As with NGC 6396, the cluster is too obvious to misidentify, even if JH's mistake is not due to a wire error. He found this cluster, by the way, on 28 June 1834. ===== NGC 6406 is a double star at Bigourdan's place. He has four micrometric observations of it, so there is no doubt about the identification. He notes a nearby star of magnitude 12.2 at PA = 265 degrees, distance = 1.2 arcmin. The position angle is actually about 95 degrees. I suspect that Bigourdan's value ought to read 85 degrees. ===== NGC 6410 is one of the few double stars from Lewis Swift's list of "nebulae" that we can confidently say that he saw. Though he believed it to be an "eeF, S, R" nebula, his additional notes "nearly between two stars; GC 4320 [NGC 6411] near north-following" make it clear that he was indeed observing the double star. His position is not too bad, but is still far enough off (over two arcminutes) that -- without his additional notes on the field -- we could not otherwise identify his object. ===== NGC 6411, found by d'A, was helpful in pinning down the identification of NGC 6410 (which see). ===== NGC 6413 is a group of four or five stars at Stephan's position. As far as I know, it was first identified as an asterism by Brian Skiff. It seems a bit unusual to me that it should go unidentified until Brian looked at it, and we might want to do a search of the literature. Stephan apparently used alpha Oph as his comparison star. That has a very large proper motion, and may have been difficult to set up on due to its brightness (V = 2.1), so Stephan's position re-reduced from Esmiol's monograph is probably more uncertain than is normal for his observations. In any case, the identity is sure. ===== NGC 6415 is nothing more than a Milky Way field. There is no nebula obviously involved in spite of JH's brief description, "A great nebulous projection of the milky way [sic]." JH gives only an approximate RA and -- tellingly -- did not assign a running number in his catalogues of nebulae and clusters. In the GC and NGC it is called "3701'" as it follows h3701 in CGH. On the IIIa-J film, I make the RA more than a minute later than JH, and the Dec 2-3 arcmin south. See NGC 6421 for more. ===== NGC 6416. This cluster is scattered and rather ill-defined. The brighter stars to the northeast were taken by Andris Lauberts to place the center of the cluster, and indeed JH's mean position seems to agree with that. However, JH's descriptions on two nights make the cluster at least as large as his 15-arcminute field, and -- on the second night -- considerably larger ("More than fills field"). This suggests that JH also included the stars to the southwest in his object. The position I've adopted for the cluster reflects that supposition. Whether it's right or not can be answered by a detailed photometric, spectroscopic, and astrometric study. Also see NGC 6421 where this may play a role in the identification of that star cloud. ===== NGC 6419, 6420, 6422, and 6423. These were found by Lewis Swift on the nights of 1 and 17 August 1883. Because he recorded only two objects each night, I have a suspicion that he saw the same two twice. If so, N6419 = N6423, and N6420 = N6422. His descriptions are similar enough that this is a distinct possibility. Here is what he had to say about his objects: No. NGC Disc. Date RA (1885) Dec Desc 55 6419 1883 Aug 17 17 36 20 +68 13 35 eeF, eS, R, e diff; n of 2 56 6420 " 17 36 20 +68 06 50 eeF, eS, R, ee diff; s of 2 57 6422 1883 Aug 01 17 36 40 +68 07 20 eF, pS, R; nearly bet a F and a B * 58 6423 " 17 37 10 +68 13 20 eeF, vS, R; * nr east; v diff If he did in fact see only the two brightest in the field, then they would be CGCG 321-024 and CGCG 321-026. However, Bigourdan measured the four brightest galaxies in the field (there are at least six others brighter than about B = 16 nearby), and assigned the NGC numbers to them in RA order. This has the advantage of dishing out one number per galaxy, and of closely matching Swift's declinations. Swift's RAs, however, are too small by varying amounts (13 to 24 seconds of time). Also, if Bigourdan's suggested identifications are correct, then Swift's note of a "* near east" of N6423 should read, "* near north." Since Dreyer published Bigourdan's corrected positions (close to the real ones) in the IC2 notes, I'm going to provisionally accept Bigourdan's suggested identities, in spite of my reservations above -- and with colons flagging the uncertainties in this crowded field. ===== NGC 6420. See NGC 6419. ===== NGC 6421 is a brighter patch in the Milky Way that matches JH's description and sketch pretty well. His position is pretty good, too. Note, however, that the NGC description (taken from GC) is wrong. The correct description, from the CGH Observations, should read something like "Cl, vL, r, connected to Milky Way." I suspect that the NGC description was copied by mistake from the CGH entry for h3702 = N6416, because the prime symbol is missing from the 3702 in the JH column in the NGC. Neither this object nor N6415 were numbered in the CGH Observations, and JH does not have a note for either in GC indicating why he entered them there even though he chose to not number them for CGH. Dreyer copied the entries unchanged into NGC, also without notes. ===== NGC 6422. See NGC 6419. ===== NGC 6423. See NGC 6419. ===== NGC 6426. This relatively faint globular has an uneven distribution of stars across its face; it is possible that foreground obscuration has something to do with that. Whatever the cause, this has led to "mean" positions from some of the automated surveys to be skewed to the east by a clump of several bright stars on that side of the cluster's core. The position I've finally chosen, from GSC 2.3, is close to the apparent photometric center of the outer isophotes. This is clearly a cluster which deserves a good photometric study such as those by Goldsbury et al (AJ 140, 1830, 2010) and Noyola and Gebhardt (AJ 132, 447, 2006) to determine its position. ===== NGC 6427 = NGC 6431, which see. ===== NGC 6428 is a star. Bigourdan's position is midway between it and another star of similar magnitude, but his description mentions both objects and makes clear that he was measuring the northern of the pair: "In the neighborhood, I suspect several small stars, one of which is at PA = 195 deg, d = 8-10 arcsec [from his nebulous star]." I've added the phrase in square brackets above following a question from Jeffrey Corder who asked about the sense of the offset: "With a PA of 195 deg, wouldn't the correct star be the southern one?" Whenever Bigourdan makes comments about neighboring objects, he always uses the main, usually measured, object as origin. In this case, the northern star is that origin, and the southern is the one in the notes. This may be even clearer with Bigourdan's full description at hand. Here is my rough and ready translation: 7 Jul 1885: Small stellar nebula, of indiscernable form, which could be a small cluster. In the field, I suspect several small stars, of which one is toward PA = 195 deg, d = 8-10 arcsec. He has a second observation from January of 1892, but makes no mention of neighboring objects. ===== NGC 6430 is CGCG 112-035. The description and declination fit well, and the RA is off by 38 seconds. Reinmuth has this as a chain of four stars, but the galaxy is clearly the object that Marth saw. ===== NGC 6431 = NGC 6427. Stephan misidentified his comparison star. Though he claims to have used BD +25 3330, the star he actually used is BD +25 3327. Applying his offsets to this star lead to a position within an arcsecond of the modern position for the galaxy. ===== NGC 6432 is one of JH's early discoveries (in just his 30th sweep on 1 July 1826), but turns out to be only four stars. JH called it a small cluster, but Howe was the first to see that it was simply an asterism. ===== NGC 6437 is a star cloud in the Milky Way centered about 0.6-0.7 minutes preceding JH's approximate position. There is no nebulosity associated with it; the numerous faint stars in the area gave the impression of nebulosity at the eyepiece during sweeping. Here is JH's description in full: A very decided, tolerably defined semi-nebulous mass in milky way [sic], with abundance of vS sts, forming altogether a telescopic magellanic cloud. It fills about a field, and has branches and sinuses, and is altogether a very remarkable object. The position and size are not well defined on the DSS images, but the cloud appears to be defined by the surrounding and superposed absorption patches. I've tried to take JH's description into account as I look at the field. I suggest caution in adopting any of the positions I give in the table, including JH's own (from a single sweep). ===== NGC 6438. The canonical way of identifying the objects in this fascinating interacting pair is to make "NGC 6438" the northwestern lenticular, while the southeastern distorted spiral is called "NGC 6438A". Given JH's description "pB, R, vgbM", I can see how this view has come about. But the spiral is certainly bright and large enough to have figured in the visibility of JH's object. I'm going to suggest that it, too, is a part of the NGC object, and I have treated it that way in the position table. You, of course, may use whichever identification suits your work. JH's position, by the way, is no help to us. Being as far south as it is, the RA was difficult to determine. JH writes, "RA rudely taken, and may be very erroneous." Curiously, he did not mark it uncertain, and it is listed in his catalogues (and in the NGC) with no uncertainty or notes. In spite of all this, his RA is only out by about 4 arcminutes. ===== NGC 6439. I've used the finding chart in Steve Hynes's book "Planetary Nebulae" to identify this planetary. Some lists have mistakenly pointed at the star about an arcminute to the north-northeast. ===== NGC 6444 is definitely OCl-1023 = Ru 132 as noted in ESO and by Brian Skiff. JH gives only an approximate position for the cluster, but calls it "A vfine L, rich sc cl of sts 12..13..m." The ESO position -- 40 seconds preceding and 2.5 arcmin north of JH's -- is good. ===== NGC 6448. I had written about this: NGC 6448 is lost. It is the 60th entry in Swift's second list. Dreyer copied all of Swift's data exactly and correctly into the NGC. There are no galaxies in the area that might be Swift's object, and I can't find an obvious digit error that would lead to another (though I did not check for large errors, e.g. 10 degrees, 1 hour). Swift found no other nebulae the night of 16 July 1885, so we have no possible systematic offset to work from, either. During preparation of his Visual Atlas of the NGC, Jeffrey Corder suggested the linear asterism -- one brighter star in a line with three fainter -- as Swift's object. The RA is about 30 seconds west of Swift's, and the Decs agree to within half an arcminute. Jeff's own observation with his 17.5-inch reflector agrees closely with Swift's description ("vF, pS, R, lbM"), but Jeff notes it as "a little extended in PA = 90 degrees", while Swift made it simply "round". The main problem with this asterism is the brightest star in the center -- it is much brighter than the other three stars. Unless the night Swift found it was one of poor seeing, I'm doubtful that he would see this as anything but a star. This is, nevertheless, the best candidate in the area, so I have put it into the main table, with the appropriate colons, of course. ===== NGC 6450 (Swift II-61) is another lost object. Dreyer copied the position correctly into NGC, but abbreviated Swift's description of the surrounding star field. Swift's full description is "vF, vS; B * f 8 seconds; bet 2 sts." This is the only galaxy that Swift found on the night of 1 July 1884. There are several galaxies in the area that Swift could have seen, but none matching the field described by him. Howe also could not find the object, though he actually searched for it three nights, not just two as in Dreyer's IC2 note. I looked at positions suggested by digit errors (+- 10 minutes, +- 1 hour, +- 1 degree) with no success. Jeff Corder suggested in early June 2006 that this might be identical to NGC 6452. However, the stars near N6452 are not very bright (12th to 14th mag), nor is there a "B * f 8 seconds". Also, Marth found N6452 with Lassell's huge (for its time) 48-inch reflector, describing it as "eeF, S". Swift's description with his 16-inch refractor is consistent with Marth's size estimate, but not with his brightness -- I'd be surprised if Swift could even see N6452, let alone sweep it up. ===== NGC 6452. See NGC 6450. ===== NGC 6453. See NGC 6551. ===== NGC 6455 may be the random clumping of Milky Way stars around HD 320780 = SAO 209348 (this is about 50 seconds preceding JH's approximate position, and is the fainter of two bright stars. The other is HD 162145.) JH, however, does not mention the bright stars. His published description reads, "A very extensive nebulous clustering mass of the milky way [sic]. The stars [are] of excessive smallness, and infinite in number." The sweep shows us that JH estimated the RA to just a full minute of time, and the NPD to a minute of arc; he recorded no seconds of time or arc. JH does add a bit to the description, saying "Another very extensive nebulous clus[ter] [containing?] stars of exceptional smallness and infinite in number, and all having an alteration of vacuity and [illegible] mass [?] surprising and baffling all description." (The writing in the sweep is hard to make out, so I would not be surprised if some of my decyphering of it is wrong.) JH's approximate position in fact falls in one of the "vacuities". ESO chooses a "concentration of stars" (not obvious to me) near JH's position, and Wolfgang Steinicke takes a small asterism of faint stars at 17 49.0 -35 27. I doubt that either of these could be JH's object. Coming back to this in January 2016, I see a poorly-defined star cloud about 20 arcmin by 13 arcmin across, located a minute west and four arcminutes south of JH's estimated place. Earlier I had chosen the same "object", but placed the center about 7 arcminutes north. I'm unsure about this identification, of course, so have marked it with colons in the table. All this shows just how subtle JH's object is, indeed "baffling all description". This is another case where a visual observation would be useful. ===== NGC 6456, 6463, 6470, 6471, 6472, and 6477. Here is another mess from Lewis Swift's 4th and 5th lists of nebulae. NGC 6463 and NGC 6470 were found on 9 June 1886, the remainder on 25 September 1886. All of Swift's positions fall within a group of (at least) eight galaxies. It's possible that Swift could have seen most of the objects, but only after seeing the DSS image from the POSS-II plate could I assign his numbers with any confidence to the galaxies. I also have to thank Brian Skiff for asking about the field; his questions forced a re-evaluation that I otherwise might not have made. The descriptions don't help much. All the galaxies are "eeeF, eS, R" or a close variation, and all are noted "v dif[ficult]" to "eee dif". Swift does mention that the preceding of the group is "bet[ween] 2 sts" -- but since the Galactic latitude is so low, there are enough stars around for that description to apply to virtually any of the galaxies in the group. Dreyer added the note "* nr" to N6471 and N6477; this is not in Swift's original paper, so it must be from a letter from Swift to Dreyer. In any event, there is not much to go on here that will help us assign the NGC numbers to the correct objects. If we make some reasonable assumptions -- 1) Swift saw the two brightest galaxies on his first sweep through the area, 2) he did in fact see all six 3.5 months later, and 3) his relative positions for the remaining four galaxies seen only the second night are more or less accurate -- then we can make a stab at some identifications. These are not certain by any means, and they do not agree with some previous identifications. However, they do make sense of Swift's data. On the first night, he saw the two brightest objects in the core of the group, N6463 and N6470. N6456 is reasonably isolated to the west of the core, and N6471 and N6472 flank N6470 in declination. They are also the brightest galaxies in the core after N6463 and N6470. It also is reasonable to suppose that both components of UGC 10973 contributed to the visual appearance of N6471, so I've listed both in the main table. I'm least certain about N6477, but Swift's observation places it following N6470/1/2, and between N6472 and N6470 in declination. The galaxy I've chosen matches these constraints -- but its position is still well off Swift's place. For reference, here is a table of B1950.0 positions -- Swift's on the first line and accurate positions on the second -- of my suggested identifications. Object RA (Swift) Dec Discovered Other names and comments (Modern) Pos source V 76 17 42 29 +67 37.7 25 Sept 1886 CGCG 321-034 N6456 17 42 39.60 +67 36 48.6 GSC IV 55 17 43 44 +67 36.5 9 June 1886 CGCG 321-037 = MCG +11-21-022 N6463 17 43 42.27 +67 37 24.2 GSC IV 56 17 44 19 +67 37.8 9 June 1886 CGCG 321-039 = MCG +11-21-025 N6470 17 44 22.98 +67 38 18.3 GSC V 78 17 44 19 +67 36.4 25 Sept 1886 UGC 10973a = CGCG 321-038w = N6471w 17 44 20.89 +67 36 44.0 GSC = MCG +11-21-023 N6471e 17 44 26.06 +67 36 36.6 GSC UGC 10973b = CGCG 321-038e = = MCG +11-21-024 V 79 17 44 19 +67 39.9 25 Sept 1886 N6472 17 44 11.31 +67 38 58.5 NPM1 = NPM1G +67.0154 V 80 17 44 54 +67 39.2 25 Sept 1886 N6477: 17 44 38.38 +67 37 44.3 HCds Other possibilities: 17 43 16.26 +67 33 43.7 GSC Star superposed. 17 43 33.48 +67 40 17.4 GSC Extremely compact w vF arms; star superposed on nucleus? 17 44 51.37 +67 33 33.3 HCds ===== NGC 6461 is CGCG 340-017 (CGCG's guess -- CGCG 340-015 -- is wrong). The identity is clinched by Swift's description, "eF, pS, R; nr terminal * of 5 forming semi-circle." His RA is 12 seconds too large, and his declination 38 arcmin too small. ===== NGC 6463. See NGC 6456. ===== NGC 6465 is an asterism of 4-7 stars. Though well south of the equator, it was actually found by JH from Slough. He describes it only as "Suspected; small; twilight," but his position is very good. The identification was made by Howe who found the four brighter stars here on the second night he searched for the object. He describes the object as "... simply two doubles of mag. 12. In each pair, the distance is 4 arcsec, and the two pairs are 15 arcsec apart." In the DSS image, one of Howe's four stars is double, and there is a sixth star 29 arcsec north that might have added to the appearance of nebulosity in JH's sweep. Finally, checking this again in January 2016, I noticed a seventh star just to the southeast that could play in this story. I've included it in the position list, and have calculated a position for NGC 6465 that includes it as well as Howe's canonical double-double. In addition, the field is rich and there are many faint stars in the background of the asterism that may have also led to the impression of nebulosity here. ===== NGC 6466 is correctly identified in CGCG as CGCG 278-030 in spite of Swift's RA being 27 seconds too small. RC1 and RC2 followed Carlson who has incorrectly equated this to NGC 6478. Swift's full description pins down the correct object: "eF, vS, R; bet 2 sts which with 2 others form a cross like cross in Cygnus. Neb placed as gamma Cygni." The top of Swift's cross is to the west, and the galaxy is placed exactly as he says it is. ===== NGC 6467 and NGC 6468 may be identical -- but maybe not. Though Marth apparently found them on the same night (he gives a discovery date of 1864.42 for both), the positions are different by only one second of time, and the descriptions (vF, vS, lE and vF, S, R) could well be for the same object. His data are correctly copied into NGC -- and that is all the published evidence we have. There is only one galaxy here, and either of Marth's positions could apply to it. There is nothing within one second of it that Marth might have seen. Since NGC 6468 is nominally closer to the galaxy, it usually bears that name in the catalogues. There are two asterisms nearby (I called the triple star 12 seconds following Marth's position NGC 6468 earlier), but neither is within a second of time of the galaxy, so I doubt now that either is Marth's second object. Until more evidence surfaces, I'm tentatively listing the two entries as identical. But I'm also listing the asterisms, too. They are still possibilities, remote though they be. ===== NGC 6468. See NGC 6467. ===== NGC 6469. JH describes this as "A pretty rich insulated milky way cluster; place of a coarse double * in it. The milky way hereabouts is very poor." His errata page has a correction to the NPD of just an arcminute, but it is difficult to tell just which double star he is referring to. There is one about an arcminute north of his uncorrected position, and another a similar distance east. Correcting the position places it further away from both of these stars. In any case, JH's position is near the southwestern "corner" of the cluster. Unfortunately, JH also gives no indication of the size of his object. The only reasonably "insulated" group that I can easily see on either DSS1 or DSS2 stretches on north by nearly 15 arcminutes; this is approaching the size of a typical star cloud that JH picked up. There is, however, a hint of a southern concentration, so I've given positions and sizes for both of these. ===== NGC 6470. See NGC 6456. ===== NGC 6471. See NGC 6456. ===== NGC 6472. See NGC 6456. ===== NGC 6473 and NGC 6474 were both found on 22 July 1886 by Lewis Swift. However, there is only one galaxy close to his position, though he clearly says he found two (there is a typo in the NGC description for N6474: for "n of 3", read "n of 2"). Swift's positions are separated by only two seconds of time in RA and 15 arcsec in declination. His description for N6473 (eeF, S, R, s of 2) is not very helpful, even if it is short enough to have made it into NGC unchanged. However, his full description for N6474 is more interesting: "eF, pS, R; 3 sts in a line near and 3 others in a line point to it; e diff; n of 2." The three stars in a line near the galaxy are southeast of it, and the three stars pointing to it are to the northeast. This pins down NGC 6474 very well. The only thing close south of the galaxy is an 18th magnitude star that Swift could not have seen. However, to the northeast, about 30 arcseconds away, there is a 16th magnitude star that he might have seen. Is this NGC 6473? If so, Swift got his directions confused. He's done that before, so this star is a possibility for N6473. Bigourdan went further south in search of N6473. Four arcmin from Swift's place, Bigourdan found a triple star which he mistook for a nebula. He called it N6473 and measured it on two nights. On a third night, he measured another star which he thought was the same "nebula", but which he found later to be not just different, but uncatalogued as well. It has ended up with the number IC 4668 (which see). In any event, Bigourdan's triple is also a possibility for Swift's nebula. It would mean a 4 arcmin error in Swift's position, not too much of a stretch. A further stretch to over 8 arcmin -- much more west than south, though -- is UGC 10980 = CGCG 300-064. This is just a bit fainter and smaller than N6474, so could be said to match Swift's description. However, it is far enough away from his nominal position, and even from the relative position implied by Swift's published numbers, that I have put it into the position table with question marks. Still, it is the only galaxy "south" of N6474 anywhere in the area that Swift could have seen; it would have been about halfway out toward the edge of his 33-arcmin eyepiece field if N6474 were centered. If he actually moved the telescope to "measure" its position, UGC 10980 could well be the object he saw. And the RA may simply be 1 minute of time in error. Whatever happened, the galaxy certainly deserves a mention here. (My thanks to Jeff Corder for dragging me back to this field in June of 2009.) ===== NGC 6474. Bigourdan switched his comparison star with that for IC 4668, which see. Once that is sorted out, the identity of I4668 becomes clear, and Bigourdan's position for N6474 falls within a few arcsec of the galaxy's nucleus. Also see NGC 6473 for yet another story. ===== NGC 6476 is a star cloud in the Milky Way centered about two arcmin east of JH's approximate position. In the CGH Observations, JH says "Nebula. No description. It is probably only a nebulous portion of the Milky Way." As with other star clouds that JH saw in this same part of the sky, there is no nebulosity associated with N6476, but the dense background of faint stars would have appeared faintly nebulous during a sweep. The cloud is defined as much by the absorption patches around it as by its own light, so the position and dimensions are approximate. Nevertheless, this is a fairly bright patch of the Milky Way, and is reasonably well-defined. ===== NGC 6477. See NGC 6456. ===== NGC 6478 is not NGC 6466 (which see). Carlson incorrectly equates the two numbers, and RC1 and RC2 followed along. ===== NGC 6480 is part of a star cloud in the Milky Way. It closely matches JH's sketch in the CGH Observations. My estimated position for the center of the projection to the east is about 10 seconds of time west of JH's -- his position applies to a 12th magnitude star right on the border of the cloud and the absorption patch that defines its east side. The larger cloud is centered about 30 seconds west, and approximately the same size as other star clouds that JH picked up in his sweeps at the Cape. It, however, does not have the immediate visibility that the smaller eastern patch has thanks to the contrast with the dust cloud. It does show up nicely on the DSS images. Finally, note that the prime notation that JH introduced in GC ("3713'") is missing in the NGC. The object is not h3713; that is NGC 6483. ===== NGC 6481 is a line of four stars clearly identified by Peters's micrometric observation. Though his position is a few arcseconds east of the center of the line, the identity is certain. ===== NGC 6483. See NGC 6480. ===== NGC 6488 = IC 1270, which see. ===== NGC 6491 is probably also NGC 6493. It has seemed "obvious" to all of us for the nearly 130 years since Swift found his 78th and 79th objects that he must have seen the two galaxies, UGC 11008 and UGC 11011 near the positions he gives. This would make U11008 = N6491, and U11011 = N6493. All the recent catalogues (aside from RC1 which adopted Keenan's ApJ 82, 62, 1935 designation "N6493A" for UGC 11008; and RNGC which switched the NGC identifications so that "N6491" = U11011, and "N6493" = U11008) have adopted these IDs. But, as Steve Gottlieb has recently (December 2014) pointed out, there are problems with this simple assumption. First, Swift's position for N6493 is not very good -- it is -17 seconds of time in RA, and -3 arcminutes in Dec off of UGC 11011, the canonical ID. Second, the comment "sf of 2" for U11011 is wrong -- it is in fact northeast of U11008, the canonical N6491. (Similarly, the companion comment "np of 2" for N6491 is wrong.) Steve suggests that this is probably another case (see e.g. N6497 = N6498) where Swift added the comments on the relative positions while he was preparing his list of nebulae for publication. Finally, Steve had some difficulty seeing the northeastern galaxy with his 18-inch reflector; it has a much lower surface brightness than the considerably brighter southwestern object. So, Steve suggests that Swift's two observations are actually of the same object, UGC 11008. The descriptions are similar: Swift 1-78 (13 June 1885): "vvS, pF, vF * in or just in contact with it; np of 2"; and 1-79 (5 June 1885): "F, vvS, R, planetary, F * v nr; sf of 2". Only the star in or near the object might raise a warning flag as there is no such star near the brighter galaxy, and two such stars near U11011, either of which Swift might have seen. Steve suggests instead that Swift might have mistaken the bright nucleus of U11008 for a star. I'm pretty well convinced by Steve's argument, though the problem of the nearby star is a bit bothersome. For that reason alone, I am going to put colons on Steve's suggested identities, and leave UGC 11011 as a possible identification for N6493, though with a prominent question mark. Finally, concerning the visibility of the objects, take a look at the red and blue DSS2 images using SkyView (http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/). I used a default field 500 pixels on a side centered on NGC 6491. The difference in appearance of UGC 11011 between the two images is striking, while the bright core of UGC 11008 remains essentially unchanged. ===== NGC 6493 is probably NGC 6491, which see. ===== NGC 6497 = NGC 6498. Swift found his 80th and 81st nebulae on 16 Sept and 26 Sept 1884, respectively. The positions are only 1 second of time and 32 arcsec apart, and the descriptions are close enough that the only galaxy in the area can match both. In particular, Swift says of N6497, "Close s of middle * of 3 in a line, middle * the fainter;" and of N6498, "B * nr; F * v nr." The middle star in the line is the "faint star very near," and the bright star is the eastern of the three stars. So, I'm almost certain that the two observations refer to the same object, and that Swift added the comments "np of 2" and "sf of 2" as he was preparing his first list for publication, just as he must have done with NGC 6491 and NGC 6493. ===== NGC 6498 = NGC 6497, which see. ===== NGC 6499 is a close double star. Discovered by Marth, he marked it "verified" in his list, so he saw it as nebulous at least twice. When the object was photographed at Heidelberg and Lick, the observers there found only a double star without nebulosity. That is how it appears today on the Palomar Surveys. Another faint star and 2-3 very faint stars just to the west may have enhanced the appearance of nebulosity at the eyepiece. ===== NGC 6505. Is this possibly NGC 6534? See that for more. ===== NGC 6506. The position in the main table applies to an apparent cluster just southwest of JH's place. However, his description is at odds with just this small group of stars: "A very loose but very rich cluster, which fills many fields. Stars small." The DSS2 red image shows a star cloud about 33' x 18' with the long axis at a position angle of 40 degrees (more or less aligned with the Milky Way here). As with other star clouds in this part of the Milky Way, it is defined mostly by the absorption patches surrounding it. JH's position applies to the richest part of this cloud, and that may indeed be a cluster. In the main table, I give positions for this "core" as well as for the star cloud itself. ===== NGC 6510 = NGC 6511. Swift's RAs and descriptions, from his first and fourth lists, are far enough apart that both he and Dreyer took the observations to be of different objects. They are, in fact, of the same galaxy. Swift's observations can be reconciled to the field by recalling that his eyepiece had a half-degree field. Then, the "curve" of three stars he notes are probably the brightest three 7-12 arcminutes to the northeast, and his "one vF * nr" is most likely the double star about 5 arcmin to the southwest. Bigourdan's observations, quoted by Dreyer in the IC2 Notes, are of the galaxy and a faint star preceding it by over 40 seconds of time. He called the star "NGC 6510" in his big table, but it is clearly not. There are too many others around that are brighter, and Swift's are positions too poor in any case to pick one like this out of all the others. ===== NGC 6511 = NGC 6510, which see. ===== NGC 6514. This is the main body of the Trifid Nebula, M 20. The position I've adopted is (following JH) for the triple star near the center of the nebula. Lauberts, in ESO-B, has a position a few arcminutes to the northeast, to include the fainter extensions in that direction. Also see NGC 6533. ===== NGC 6519 is a double star. Schmidt measured his position micrometrically, so there is no question about the identity. ===== NGC 6522. See NGC 6551. ===== NGC 6523 is the star-forming core of M 8 at the heart of the bright northwestern part of the nebula. NGC 6526 (which see) is the southeastern part of the nebula, and NGC 6530 is the bright star cluster 10-12 arcmin following N6523. NGC 6533 (which see) applies to the entire M 8 complex, and IC 1271 and IC 4678 (both of which see) apply to condensations in its eastern reaches. ===== NGC 6525. Though listed as "nonexistent" in RNGC, there is an obvious poor cluster of bright stars just where JH placed it. It covers about 10 arcmin, and has a tight core of half a dozen stars. The position I've given in the table is for this core. ===== NGC 6526 = H V 9 is probably the part of M 8 southeast of the dark lane. The nebula sweeps on up to the northeast to encompass NGC 6530, the bright, well-known cluster in M 8. WH found this the 22nd of May 1784, and measured the position with respect to 51 Ophiuchi. When re-reduced using the modern position for that star, WH's position for N6526 falls at 18 04 18, -24 27.4 (J2000), well within the M 8 complex. As Dreyer notes in the Herschel papers, the GC and NGC positions are one degree too far north due to an error by Caroline Herschel in her reduction of the position. WH describes V 9 only as "Large, extended, broad, milky figure." Thus, this could apply to any part of (or even all of) M 8 (look at WH's second description of M 20 = IV 41 for another almost discrepant description of the same object). Since this was apparently his first sweep across the area, and since we know his positions were rather error-prone at the time, I think that the object he saw was, in fact, M 8. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, however, I think it fair to assign the NGC number, as I said above, to the southeastern section of the complex. See NGC 6533 for more. ===== NGC 6528 may also be NGC 6551, which see. ===== NGC 6529 was apparently first seen by James Dunlop who claimed two observations of it. His description reads, "A pretty large faint nebula, round figure, 5' or 6' diameter, resolvable into very minute stars, with nebula remaining." Unlike most of Dunlop's nebulae, JH claims to have seen this one, though only once. He lists an estimated position (both coordinates with +- signs, the RA given to a full minute only) that is close to Dunlop's and calls it "A large milky way patch, much compressed, one portion much more so." However, checking the position on the SERC IIIa-J film shows nothing more than a rather unremarkable part of the Milky Way. Nothing stands out that strikes me as something that would catch an observer's eye. Compare this to other Milky Way fields that have NGC numbers (e.g. NGC 6476 and NGC 6480) from JH's sweeps -- there is nothing obvious here. I've put the nominal position in the table. I also checked the other nebulae seen in the same sweep; all are at about the same declination, so there is no large error in that part of JH's observation. A large RA error is possible, but I found nothing in the obvious places (plus or minus one minute, ten minutes, etc.). Neither Lauberts nor Steinicke has anything aside from the nominal position, though Lauberts has a "concentration of stars" noted in ESO-B. Finally, I checked the sweep itself (sweep 792 on 8 June 1837) when I went over this field again in January 2016. The observation, number 24 in the sweep, reads only "[17] 57" for the RA, and "3 26" for the NPD index (most of JH's description is illegible). Fortunately, the very next object in the sweep is a star, HD 166197. We know the position and proper motion of this star, so can use it as a reference. Doing that we find for NGC 6529 18 07 02, -36 17.0 (J2000). Unfortunately, this field is just as unremarkable on the DSS as the one at JH's published position. Perhaps a visual observer can turn up something here. ===== NGC 6530, an open cluster, is part of M 8. See NGC 6523, NGC 6526, and NGC 6533 for more. ===== NGC 6533 = M 8 = H V 13. Here is what I had to say about this before I reread WH's 1785 paper quoted by Glyn Jones: WH's position for this, reduced from the offsets published in the Scientific Papers is in a pretty empty patch of sky roughly 30 arcmin south of M 8. He does give a pretty good description in his 1786 first catalogue, however. He observed it only one night, 12 July 1784: "Extensive milky nebulosity divided into 2 parts; the most northern above [larger than] 15 arcmin, the most southern followed by stars." What struck me about this was its uncanny similarity to his description of M 8 given in his 1785 paper (which I unfortunately do not have a copy of), quoted by Kenneth Glyn Jones in his fine book on the Messier objects: "An extensive milky Nebulosity divided into two parts; the north being the strongest. Its extent exceeds 15'; the southern part is followed by a parcel of stars which I suppose to be the 8th of the Connaissance des Temps [i.e. M 8]." WH's 1786 description reads like a simple condensation of his 1785 description. Is it therefore possible that H V 13 = N6533 is M 8? Now that I have a copy of the 1785 paper (in the 2003 reprinting of the Scientific Papers), I see that Dreyer explicitely names WH's nebula "V. 13 = N.G.C. 6533." Here is the rest of my earlier note on the object: WH's position doesn't encourage that interpretation. Both JH (in GC) and Dreyer (in WH's Scientific Papers which he edited in 1912) have notes about WH's problems determining the position -- as I've noted, that position is over 30 arcmin south-southeast of M 8 in a barren patch of sky. But if WH was indeed looking at M 8, is there any way that his offsets (4m 54s following, 38':: south of 5 Sagittarii) can be made to fit? Well, once I tracked down 5 Sgr (it is SAO 186074, not labeled as "5 Sgr" in Sky Catalogue 2000.0), it was clear that the NGC position was properly reduced (once the earlier bugs found by JH had been cleaned up. He says in GC that the offset as originally published in PT for 1786 -- 39' north -- is wrong). Did WH observe any other nebulae that night? In particular, did he use that same comparison star? The answers are "Yes" to both questions. H V 10, H V 11, and H V 12, all = NGC 6514 = M 20 = the well-known "Trifid Nebula" have a single position referred to that same star on that same night. When we reduce that position, we find that it is about 30 arcmin south-southeast of M 20 in a barren patch of sky .... Yet there is no doubt that these three nebulae constitute M 20 (along with IV 41); both JH and Dreyer accept that in GC and NGC. So what's going on? The short of it: WH may have misidentified his comparison star (but see also N6698, found the same night, referred to a different star). He probably used 4 Sgr = SAO 186061, rather than 5 Sgr as is printed. Once that correction is made, it's clear that NGC 6533 is, in fact, M 8. WH's resultant position is about a minute of time following the brightest part of the nebula (N6523), but is more in line with the center of the entire complex as we see it on photographs. However, as Steve and I have noted before, WH's positions from these early runs of 1783 and 1784 have generally larger errors than his later positions -- he was still perfecting his observing techniques. The mystery here is this: if JH and Dreyer knew that H V 10-12 referred to the Trifid, why then did they not make the connection -- through the comparison star in common -- to the Lagoon as well? I don't see an answer to this in any of the papers I have in my collection. However, if there is any information in WH's 1785 paper that might shed some light on this, we should look at it again. It's clear now that Dreyer did, in fact, make the connection between NGC 6533 and M 8. It's also annoying that he only published this in a footnote to a paper discussing "the construction of the heavens" and not in the catalogue of nebulae itself. While he probably would not have saved me any time in reducing the position and finding that WH misidentified his comparison star, he could have saved me a bit of angst over it all. Oh, well. I finished my earlier note by simply saying: M 8 also encompasses several other NGC and IC objects: NGC 6523, NGC 6526, NGC 6530, IC 1271, and IC 4678, all of which see for more discussion. ===== NGC 6534. When I looked at this nearly 20 years ago, I wrote NGC 6534 is probably lost, like so many other of Swift's nebulae. The galaxy that CGCG chooses (CGCG 322-022) is about 1.2 minutes of time preceding Swift's position, and 2.3 arcmin south. Furthermore, the surrounding star field does not match Swift's note "... in center of a semi-circle of 4 stars." In particular, there is a fairly bright star within an arcmin of the galaxy to the north. If Swift saw this galaxy, he would surely have noted the star. Are there any other candidates in the area? Galaxies that could be forced to fit Swift's description include NGC 6505 (= UGC 11026), NGC 6536 (= UGC 11077), and CGCG 322-032. None of these, however, are at positions that would be even digits off of the nominal position. I don't think they are likely to be the correct nebula, either. I'm listing the CGCG identity with a question mark. It's clear to me that it is the wrong object, but there is nothing else that comes as close. Searching the field again in January 2016, I see that CGCG 322-020 is in the "... center of a semi-circle of 4 stars." It's position is 2m 45s west and 5.9 arcminutes north of Swift's place. Normally, this would not bother me too much given what we know now about the errors that can occur in Swift's positions -- but the other 10 galaxies he found that night all have very good positions. The mean offset is just 3.6 seconds of time east and 36 arcseconds north with no outstandingly bad places. One difference to note is that the observation that became NGC 6534 is over an hour and a half east of the mean position of the other 10 galaxies; did Swift somehow loose his tight lock on the coordinate system that he used for the first ten? This assumes, of course, that he swept up his nebulae in RA order. So, there are still questions and no really good candidates. I've listed the two most likely ones with question marks, and note again that the galaxy chosen by CGCG has a pretty bright star less than an arcminute north that Swift would surely have commented on. ===== NGC 6536 may just possibly also be NGC 6534, which see. ===== NGC 6543 is the famous planetary near the north ecliptic pole. See IC 4677 for a bit more about it. ===== NGC 6546. JH says of this, "The middle of a great and rich cluster in the milky way" (he never capitalized "milky way"). He listed the NPD only to a full minute of arc; his habit is to specify a precision of an arcsecond, so this is clearly intended to indicate more uncertainty than usual. In the DSS images, the object does indeed appear to be a cluster superposed on a Milky Way star cloud. As usual, the star cloud appears defined by the absorption patches surrounding it, and I have a suspicion that the edges of the cluster are similarly defined. Also as usual, astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic studies may provide an answer to the question, "Is this a real cluster?" ===== NGC 6548 and NGC 6550 = NGC 6549. There are two galaxies in this field; the brighter, NGC 6548, was found by WH in June of 1786, and given the number III 555 in his catalogue of nebulae and clusters. WH's position reduces to 18 03 55, +18 33.5 (B1950.0), about 2.2 arcmin southeast of the modern position for the brighter object. The position in GC and NGC was either reduced with respect to a rather crude position for the comparison star (101 Her), or a (simple digit?) error of -20 seconds of time has crept into the RA. The fainter galaxy was first seen by Marth in July 1864, and was rediscovered 18 years later by Stephan. Both noted the brighter object. Marth simply says "... near III 555" in his description, while Stephan says "Distinct from [GC] 4377 and [GC] 5892." Dreyer condensed that for the NGC by adding "... near m361" to Stephan's description. Since there are only the two nebulae here, and because Stephan did not measure the brighter objects he claims to have seen, we can only speculate on what his third object must have been. Perhaps it is the line of three stars east of Marth's galaxy. In any event, it is clear that Stephan and Marth found the same galaxy. Stephan's accurately measured position precesses to 18 03 38.4, +18 31 48, while Marth's less accurately estimated position precesses to 18 03 36, +18 32.2, still quite close to the galaxy. There matters would have stood had Lewis Swift not published a cryptic note in his 11th list of nebulae (AN 147, 210, 1898): "NGC 6550 = H III 555. 6550 must be struck out." The wording of Swift's original note in his "Catalogue No. II ..." (which appeared in PASP 9, 186, 1897, and in MNRAS 57, 629, 1897) makes better sense: "NGC 6550 must be struck out, as it is identical with H. III 555." Dreyer made what sense he could of all this, and has a Note in the second IC which reads "6548 = 6550, Swift in Cat. XI." (Dreyer also changed the NGC number to "6550" for H III 555 in his 1912 collection of WH's papers.) Swift was apparently trying to tell us that there are only two galaxies here, too, but his wording in the AN list just made the cataloguing problem worse. Enough people have read the IC Note that the modern identifications are thoroughly confused. An obvious predilection for the objects in RA order has also fed the confusion. In the end, though, it is clear that WH found the brighter, northeastern galaxy, while Marth saw both objects -- and Stephan not only saw the two real galaxies, but (apparently) an asterism as well. So, my position table reflects this by keeping Dreyer's original NGC number, 6548, on H III 555; and by equating Marth's and Stephan's "novae", N6549 and N6550. N6549, by the way, has several stars superposed and is, itself, superposed on a much fainter galaxy. I've attempted to give the positions of the NGC object as well as the background galaxy. ===== NGC 6549 = NGC 6550, which see. Also see NGC 6548 for the full story. ===== NGC 6550 = NGC 6549 is not NGC 6548 as we have long supposed. Thanks to Malcolm Thomson and Steve Gottlieb for first directing my attention to this puzzling triplet of numbers, and to Christopher Watson for questioning the inconsistency in my earlier "untangling" of the problem. See NGC 6548 for the full story. ===== NGC 6551 refers to an object found by Leavenworth in July of 1885. He has left us a vivid sketch showing what looks like a globular cluster placed exactly between two moderately bright stars. The position on the sketch cover matches that published in the AJ list (18 02, -29 34 for equinox 1890), but there is nothing in the area that matches the sketch. The only other notes on the sketch besides the position and Leavenworth's initials read, "Drawn July 6 from sketch July 7 '85. Power 500+-." The dates are not mistakes -- the date "drawn" really does precede the date "sketched." One must be wrong. Andris and Wolfgang have taken N6551 to be the asterism of half a dozen stars near Leavenworth's position. But they do not match his sketch at all. The nearest globular cluster is NGC 6522, and while that might be seen as "vF, vS, R, rr" at -29 degrees from Leander McCormick, the stars flanking it do not correspond with those shown on the sketch. The next closest cluster is NGC 6528; its flanking stars are a considerable distance from the cluster, and there are enough others in the field to make me wonder why Leavenworth sketched in just two. Other globulars that might fit are NGC 6293, 6453, and 6624 (all seen through rich fields), though the flanking stars are conjectural for some of these clusters. I also checked some of the fainter and smaller clusters (e.g. the Terzan clusters) using positions from Bill Harris's on-line cluster list (http://physwww.physics.mcmaster.ca/~harris/mwgc.dat). None seemed reasonable aside from Terzan 5 -- but again, the flanking stars have to be moved on the diagram to match the sky. My own guess, after some digging around on this again in January 2016, is that Leavenworth saw NGC 6528. Its declination is just thirty arcminutes south, and the RA is 4 minutes west of Leavenworth's position. NGC 6522 is another strong possibility, so I've put NGC 6551's number on both objects -- with the requisite question marks, of course. So, another mysterious L-M object with no definite identification. ===== NGC 6554. During the plate scanning for SEGC, I noted this as "20-30 stars in a 20 arcmin area." I don't believe that these stars are a real cluster, but they do stand out from the field enough that they could be picked up during a visual sweep. JH's comment "Has several double stars in it" also makes it clear that he was seeing the same concentration of stars. I put the center somewhat east-northeast of JH's position, but the identity is not in question. Looking at this again in January 2016 on the DSS2 red image, I see some nebulosity -- brightest on the northwest boundary -- associated with the stars. This suggests that this is a real cluster, after all. Detailed studies are in order. ===== NGC 6556. The problems with this object began with Sir John himself and his summary description published in the GC, then copied faithfully into the NGC. That description makes the object "F, vL, cE, lbM, rr." On the other hand, JH's original notes read "Cl VI. An oval patch comprised within limits of the field, barely resolvable into infinitely minute points, but which, without attention, appears as a great nebula 15' l; 12' br; hardly bM." Howe saw it the same way 65 years later: "I see nothing in the entire region except thousands of the minutest stars." Dreyer summarized this in the IC2 Notes simply as "No nebulosity (Ho)." The object is actually part of the complex region of star clouds and obscuring dust clouds near the Galactic Center. JH's position points to an otherwise unremarkable part of the Milky Way, comprised of, as both he and Howe saw, "... thousands of the minutest stars." This is an apt description. I've adopted a position just an arcminute south of JH's place, and make the cloud -- in the red DSS2 image -- nearly as large as he did. ===== NGC 6559. For some time, I had this as a "double" diffused nebula, taking my own position for the "northwest" part, and Andris Lauberts's ESO-B position for the "southeast" section. Ahem. JH's object is a relatively small nebula centered on a double star, with another slightly fainter star to the southeast. Looking at this again in January 2016, I see that Andris got this right ("3 sts in neby"). I didn't; my apologies. Well, it is fixed now. I've adopted the position of the double star close to the center that JH noted as that for the nebula. I also note that the nebula itself is relatively blue (probably a reflection nebula), while a streamer of red nebulosity appears to the northwest. This in turn leads to a large patch of fainter nebulosity overlaid by twisting bands of absorption. All in all, this is quite a pretty area. See also NGC 7088 for comments by Steve Waldee. ===== NGC 6563. I've taken the very faint star nearest the geometric center of this planetary as its central star. There is a brighter star about 5.5 arcseconds west-northwest, presumeably in the foreground. Unfortunately, the faint star has not been picked up by any of the automated surveys, though the USNO-B1.0 may have a position near it applying to the entire nebula. I've adopted my own position, a mean from the three DSS images that show it. ===== NGC 6564 is perhaps a triple star 1.5 seconds preceding and 1.5 arcmin south of Marth's position. There is no galaxy near that he might have seen, and the triple might resemble a nebula with Lassell's 48-inch. Marth found two other galaxies the same night (N6375 and N6379); the mean offset of their positions from Marth's is in the same direction and about the same size (1 second of time and 1 arcmin) as those for the triple. All in all, this amounts only to circumstantial evidence, and there are other asterisms in the area that might be more convincingly nebulous at the eyepiece. So, I've put colons on the positions for the stars. ===== NGC 6573 may possibly be the Milky Way star cloud about 30 seconds following JH's position, a choice I made on the POSS1 prints. It is, however -- based on Jeffrey Corder's 17.5-inch observation -- much more likely to be the large scattered clump of clumps of stars centered a bit southeast of JH's position. His description, from one night's observation at Slough, reads, "A cluster composed of 2 or 3 clusters of very small stars, and loose large ones. Perhaps an outlier of VIII. 31 [N6583]." He marks the RA with a plus/minus sign. I had written earlier that "[NGC 6573] is a candidate for observation at the eyepiece." Jeff's description, sent to me in July 2009, reads, F, vL scattered cl of sts in 2 or 3 groups, mags 13-14.5 in 'L-shape', in v rich Milky Way field, 15' x 15' in size. This is almost certainly the correct object. Wolfgang and Andris have chosen the western-most clump of stars in it as the NGC object, but JH's description, and Jeff's, point to a much larger object. ===== NGC 6574 is probably also NGC 6610, which see. Also see the "notngc" files under UGC 3840 for more on Stephan's observations. ===== NGC 6581 = IC 1280. The position that Stephan quotes for his comparison star is off by about 15 seconds of time, so the NGC position for the galaxy is also off by the same amount. Digging into the data a bit more suggests that there is an additional 2 second error in Stephan's RA, but his description "... between two very small stars" is exactly right. Bigourdan, of course, could not find N6581 at its catalogued position, but rediscovered it at its true position. Thinking it was a "nova," he included it in his third list of new nebulae. He saw it only on one night, and commented then that it is "Impossible to measure, because I cannot easily distinguish it from 2-3 vF neighboring stars." His position is therefore based on a single estimate from the same star that Stephan used, and points to the same galaxy. ===== NGC 6582. Swift says of this "eeF, pS, R; in vacancy, bet. 6 sts like sickle in Leo, and 4 like [alpha], [beta], [gamma], and [delta] Ursae majoris." His position falls in an empty place in a group of galaxies, the brightest two of which he could have picked up. All the stars are on the sky, but are far enough from the candidate galaxies, that either could be Swift's object. CGCG 254-023, a double system, is usually taken as NGC 6582, though CGCG 254-021 just half a magnitude fainter may also be a reasonable possibility. The declination is less than an arcminute north, and is actually closer to Swift's than -023; the RA is further off, however. I'm going to stick with the classical identification with CGCG 254-023 because of the RA and brightness, but do want to call attention to the residual uncertainty here. ===== NGC 6583. See NGC 6573. ===== NGC 6586. See NGC 6591. ===== NGC 6588 is probably one of the asterisms that I've listed in the position table. My guess is the line of three or four stars that I've marked with a colon. The southern most of these is the brightest, and is a merged double which might have looked nebulous on a night of less than perfect seeing. It is at JH's declination and is just 30 seconds preceding his RA. Otherwise, JH's description, "eF, S; among stars. A *6 m sp 10 arcmin distant," fits nicely. The star is SAO 254209. Checking the sweep, I see that JH has recorded wire 1 as the RA wire. Had he actually used wire 2, the RA would have been off by 1min 10sec. As the difference is only 30 seconds, I doubt a wire error. The same comment holds for the other two candidates mentioned next. However, there are two other asterisms that might be JH's object. I've listed them with question marks. I also checked for a large blunder in the position, but found none. In particular, the other objects in this sweep (No. 708 on 8 June 1836), are in the same declination range, and at much the same RA as well. ===== NGC 6589 may also be IC 4690 (which see for more discussion). Swift's position for N6589 is about 36 seconds of time off, a mistake corrected by Barnard, and included in the IC1 Notes. Ironically, Barnard is also responsible for a mistake of his own which makes the identity with IC 4690 probable. Also see the discussion under NGC 6590 and IC 1283 for more on this field. ===== NGC 6590 = NGC 6595 = IC 4700. JH found the brightest nebula in this group while observing at Slough; his position is good. Swift came across it and another nearby nebula nearly 60 years later in 1885, but misplaced both by about 45 seconds of time in RA from the correct positions. In a note in AN 3101, Barnard corrected the positions for both of Swift's objects, noting the identity of N6590 with N6595. He also announced the discovery of another larger, though fainter nebula (IC 1284) northeast of the brighter pair. (In still another note in AN 3111, Barnard also announced the discovery of yet another nebula here, IC 1283. See that for more). Curiously, Barnard mentions the AN 3111 note in AN 4239, but not the AN 3101 note. Had he done so, it might have alerted Dreyer to the identity of one of Barnard's nebulae mentioned there (see NGC 6589 for the passage) with NGC 6595. Had this happened, Dreyer probably would not have been included it in the second IC. ESO, by the way, notes the cluster associated with the nebula. On the optical DSS images, the cluster appears to be centered about 15 seconds of time to the west. I suspect that the two bright stars near the center of the nebula are also involved with the nebula, so I've adopted the mean of their positions as that for the object. ===== NGC 6591 may be the galaxy that I've flagged with a question mark in the table. That matches Marth's description ("eeF, vS, stell") and is not too far off his position (the RA is 12 seconds too large). However, it may not be the object that Marth saw. That object was found the same night as NGC 6586 which has offsets from Marth's position of -2 seconds of time and -14 arcsec in declination. At similar offsets (-3 seconds and -32 arcsec) is a faint galaxy with two foreground stars just to the southwest, the brighter star superposed on the galaxy itself. This group of objects more or less matches Marth's description -- in particular, the brighter superposed star might well have made the entire ensemble of galaxy plus two stars appear stellar -- and its positional coincidence within Marth's usual observational errors is fairly compelling. Still, I'm keeping open the possibility that the somewhat brighter, isolated galaxy is Marth's object. I had earlier suggested that an asterism of five stars 2.5 arcminutes northwest of the triplet (galaxy plus two stars) could be the object that Marth saw. But I've discarded that option because its brightest star is nearly of the 10th magnitude, far too bright to match Marth's description. It's approximate position is 18 13 55.4, +21 05 22 (J2000 from source HCds) should you wish to check it out yourself. ===== NGC 6592. Swift's position is not very good, but he notes "nearly between 2 stars." Given that he was working with a large field, that comment pins down the galaxy. See NGC 6607 for more on the field. ===== NGC 6594. As with NGC 6592, Swift's note about nearby stars "between a faint and a more distant bright star" nails the identification. The bright star is SAO 17798. See NGC 6607 for more about other objects in this field. ===== NGC 6595 = NGC 6590 (which see) = IC 4700. ===== NGC 6597. Swift's comment "Difficult by proximity to a bright star" is correct -- the star is SAO 17798, the same one he mentions in his description for NGC 6594 (which see). Also see NGC 6607 for more details about this field. ===== NGC 6599 is probably also NGC 6600, which see. ===== NGC 6600 is almost certainly = NGC 6599, though RNGC suggests NGC 6602. Marth could have seen either, but since N6599 is nearly a magnitude brighter and has a higher surface brightness as well, it is the more likely candidate. This makes Marth's declination 7 arcmin off, and I am going to suggest that the printed north polar distance should actually be "65 07" rather than "65 01". Marth's RA is exact. This is suggestion is reinforced by checking the mean offsets for the other ten galaxies that Marth found on 6 June 1864: +0.4 +- 1.1s in RA and -6 +- 14arcsec in Dec. There is no significant offset here; for these same ten galaxies, the standard deviation in Marth's RA is +-3.4s, and in Dec +-44 arcseconds. With the 6 arcmin correction, Marth's position fits right in with these statistical errors. If Marth's RA is off instead, and this is NGC 6602, it would be 52 seconds too small; the Dec would then be just an arcmin off. Since Marth lists this as one of his "verified" nebulae, I'm more inclined to believe that the NPD he gives is in error. ===== NGC 6601. Swift's note "Near end of a curve of stars" is accurate and unambiguously identifies this galaxy. See NGC 6607 for the reason this particular identification is so important. ===== NGC 6602 is probably not NGC 6600, which see. ===== NGC 6603, a relatively small and faint cluster, is not M 24. This was noted by JH whose GC comment is included in the NGC Notes. The Messier object is actually IC 4715, which see for more. ===== NGC 6605. There appears to be a +2 minute error in JH's RA, as a cluster matching his description "Loose straggling cluster; stars 10...12m" is at his declination, but 2 minutes of time preceding. There are about 30 stars of the correct magnitude scattered over a 15 arcmin by 15 arcmin area, while there are none brighter than 14th or 15th magnitude at the nominal place (which is laced with a complex of absorption bands). The RA in the sweep is given to a full second of time and is marked uncertain, but JH published it with his usual precision of 0.1 seconds and no indication of the uncertainty. In any event, an RA error is not inexplicable. Coincidentally, the RA is one minute of time off in the Alter et al. 1970 catalogue of star clusters where this is OCl-47. ===== NGC 6607, 6608, and 6609. This is a trio of objects all credited to Lewis Swift. They were all discovered on the night of 4 Aug 1883, and are listed in Swift's first paper as being the 5th, 6th, and 7th of 8, respectively (numbers 91-93 in his sequential numbering of the entire list). The other five objects are N6592, N6594, N6597, N6601, and N6617. Though Swift's positions aren't too good for these five, either, those galaxies are nevertheless unambiously identified by Swift's comments about nearby stars (or the lack of them). N6601, by the way, is the only other object of the eight that Swift found that night in 1883; the remaining four are dated 14 June 1885. Swift's declination for NGC 6608 is the problem. He places it at exactly the same declination as NGC 6609 just 15 arcsec north of NGC 6607. So, while there are three galaxies in the area, only two are at Swift's declination while the other is 2 arcmin south. Furthermore, the southern object is a faint edgewise Scd or Sd with a low mean surface brightness. Not only does it not match Swift's descriptions of shape ("R", "R", and "lE" for the three objects) it is so faint (around V = 15.5 at a guess -- it is not included in CGCG -- compared to V = 14.5 and 15.0 for the other two) that I would be surprised if Swift could have seen it at all. The object that Swift described as the faintest of the batch of eight (NGC 6617, which see) is considerably brighter than than this spindle. In addition to that, Swift says there is a "vF star near" his object -- there are none near the spindle that he could have seen that are not nearer NGC 6609 (and that leads to yet another hypothesis for NGC 6608; see the last paragraph of this note). Still, there are three galaxies here, and three NGC numbers. If we assume that Swift's RA's for the four objects found this night are correct among themselves in a relative sense, then we can apply the correction necessary to make his RA for NGC 6601 agree with the GSC position (+13 seconds of time) to the others. This leads to RA's for the others that are different from the true RA's by -4, -4, and -3 seconds of time, respectively. Thus, Swift's RA's for the three galaxies are in very good relative agreement. So, in spite of my doubts that he saw the faint edgewise galaxy (MCG +10-26-024), I'm going to assume a 2 arcmin error in the declination for this object and call it NGC 6608, though with a question mark added. The other two, NGC 6607 and NGC 6609, fit his descriptions very well -- including the "F star near" NGC 6609 -- so there is no problem with them. As a final possibility, I'm going to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, Swift's observations of the latter two objects (numbers 92 and 93 in his list) refer to the same galaxy. Had the observations been made on different nights, I would have said "A-ha!" at the beginning of this story and equated them with hardly a doubt left. As is, we'd have to assume some sort of blunder in Swift's observations within a single night in a small area of sky. With that third galaxy just south, though -- well, Occam's razor slashes deeply enough that it remains a slightly more likely choice (but I've put colons on, just in case). ----- Courtney Seligman wrote about these three in March 2017, and has said that he favors equating the observations that led to NGC 6608 and NGC 6609. As I noted above, this is certainly a possibility. However, I am still stuck on the fact that Swift tells us that his observations were all made on the same night. However, a few other objects may have been found twice on the same night by the same observer. Examples include NGC 1269 = NGC 1291 (JH), NGC 4505 = NGC 4496 (WH), perhaps NGC 6467 and NGC 6468 (Marth), and possibly even NGC 6237 = NGC 6232 and NGC 6245 = NGC 6236 found by Swift himself. NGC 6608 and NGC 6609 constitute another case where "possibly" is the relevant word, so I am reluctant to make the identification. I have nevertheless changed the colons on NGC 6608 to question marks to suggest further caution here. ----- Courtney wrote again in June 2020 to say that he has reconsidered NGC 6608 -- he is now listing it as "probably = NGC 6609" based on Swift's descriptions. While I am sticking with "possibly" -- meaning I use question marks rather than colons on the name -- I have nevertheless added lines to the position file suggesting that NGC 6608 is possibly identical to NGC 6609. It's worth noting that Gary Kronk, in his 2017 book on Swift, simply follows the NGC in assigning the three numbers to the three galaxies with no notes to even hint at a problem here. Well, that is certainly the easiest way to handle the problem of the mismatching description and declination. ===== NGC 6608. See NGC 6607. ===== NGC 6609. See NGC 6607. ===== NGC 6610 is probably NGC 6574. There is nothing at the catalogued position of N6610, and there are no reasonable changes to the calculated offsets (+1m 0.11s, -4' 31.3") from Stephan's nominal comparison star ("208 W. (A.C.) H.XVIII") that point to anything aside from very faint stars. However, about 1.3 deg north, and 1.75 minutes following Stephan's nominal position is a star-galaxy pair that matches the offsets to within Stephan's normal observing errors (the actual offsets are +59.77s and -4' 32.5"). The galaxy, UGC 11198, also matches his description pretty well. So, I had taken this to be a very good candidate for NGC 6610, with some sort of confusion in Stephan's observing records. But the question about the identity had originally come from Leos Ondra who posted it to one of the astronomy forums on the Internet in 1999. There, it attracted the attention of Steve Gottlieb who did the same kind of digging back into the literature that I did, but did not come up with a candidate. Brian Skiff suggested that NGC 6574, about 5 minutes west, might be N6610, but noted that there is no comparison star at the correct offsets. Leos also noted a paper by Seares in PASP 28, 122, 1916 titled "Identification of NGC 6610." Brian checked a copy of that paper and found that the object Seares suggests is actually a plate defect on an early plate of the area. The object is not on either POSS1 or POSS2. Finally, Leos sent me a copy of a note that he had had "off-list" from Jim Caplan, a research astronomer at the Observatoire de Marseille where Stephan observed and was director between 1866 and 1907. Jim called attention to a monograph containing a complete re-reduction of Stephan's observations by Monsieur E. Esmiol, presumeably one of the younger astronomers at Marseille. This was published in 1916 after Stephan's retirement, and carries not only the reduced positions, but mean values of Stephan's micrometric measurements, too. (I had seen a copy of this at the library at ROE in the late 1970s, but failed to make a photocopy for myself -- bad move! I have had a copy for several years now courtesy of Jim Caplan, and it has come in handy several times.) The observation previously leading to the NGC number 6610 is listed in the monograph under the designation "anonyme" with completely different offsets (-1m 42.63s, -0' 14.0" from six settings in RA and 3 in Dec) from a completely different star (BD +14 3453). A footnote reads "Class\'e \`a tort 6610" ("Called 6610 by mistake"); this is apparently the only published "explanation" of this particular case. Reducing these observations with the GSC position for the comparison star puts the position directly on NGC 6574. So, it looks like Brian is correct, though for a different reason than he probably envisioned. I am still curious, however, about the extraordinary coincidence of the earlier calculated offsets with the UGC 11198/BD +16 3447 pair. Where did Stephan's originally published positions come from? Jim tells me that many of Stephan's original observing records and reductions are still in existence; we may be able to eventually find an answer to this question. Finally, see the "notngc" files under UGC 3840 for more about Stephan's observations. ===== NGC 6611 = M 16. Messier describes this as a cluster with some faint nebulosity involved. WH only mentions stars in his single observation, while JH has no description. The position I give falls between the core of the cluster and the "Pillars of Creation", an attempt to reflect Messier's observation. The entire star forming complex is, of course, much larger than the dimensions I estimate on the DSS1 quick-V image. But that image does give a good impression of the extent of the object in a small telescope. ===== NGC 6612. See NGC 6285. ===== NGC 6616. Though Swift's RA is off by 24 seconds of time, Herbert Howe found the correct galaxy and remeasured its position. His correction is included in IC2. ===== NGC 6617. Swift not only describes this as the largest, faintest, and most difficult of the eight objects he found in the area, he also says that it is "in [a] vacancy." While there are faint stars nearby, the ones he would have noticed are far enough away that the object does indeed appear to be pretty isolated. See NGC 6607 for more on this field. ===== NGC 6618 = M 17. Though JH has five observations of this, he gives RAs for only three of them, and those apply to two different parts of the nebula. His NPDs are similarly scattered over the face of the nebula, and two are marked uncertain with colons. I've decided to not try to give his raw positions, but instead adopt the GC position for his center. I note that the NGC position is nine seconds east and 0.3 arcmin further south, very nearly coincident with the position I've adopted for the center of the bright "bar" extending east- southeast from the "omega" portion of the nebula. ===== NGC 6621 and NGC 6622 are a well-known interacting pair (Arp 81 = VV 247). In spite of the NGC's explicit note (from Swift) that NGC 6621 is the "s of 2", there has been confusion about the numbers as the southern galaxy is the southeastern of the pair. Thus, the numbers are indeed out of RA order. This is also a pair that Swift announced twice. It was apparently first seen by his son, Edward -- curiously, Edward's name appears only on the northern object -- on 2 June 1885. (If the dates given in Swift's first list are correct, this is the third nebula found by Edward Swift.) Lewis Swift himself claims the second "discovery" on 11 Aug 1885. Neither set of positions is very good, but Dreyer, apparently unlike Swift, recognized that the observations referred to the same pair of nebulae. He used simple mean positions for the NGC; those are about 2 arcmin southeast of the galaxies, good enough to find the pair. ===== NGC 6624. See NGC 6551. ===== NGC 6625. JH's RA is marked uncertain in his 1833 PT catalogue where he describes it only as "A loose straggling cluster of stars 11 .. 12 m." In the sweep (number 34 on 31 July 1826), he gives the RA to a full minute of time only and marks it "+-"; there is no wire or chronometer beat given. M 16 = NGC 6611 is 4 minutes 20 seconds west, and NGC 6639 is 8 minutes 15 seconds east in the sweep (before the wire corrections are applied), so the RA is approximately correct. JH's description in the sweep is the same as he published, but he has two additional words that I cannot make out. Another curiosity of the observation is HD 169033 with V = 5.7; it is within 1.5 arcminutes of JH's published nominal position for the cluster, yet is not mentioned at all in the sweep (unless the two unreadable words are a reference to it). There is no immediately obvious cluster at his clearly uncertain position, but about two arcmin northwest there is a clump of stars, four arcmin by two arcmin in size, that might be his object. This is on the southeastern edge of a much larger clump (roughly 10 arcmin by 8 arcmin) that could also be JH's object. Neither is particularly striking, but the former has been identified as a real cluster. Since it stands out a bit more, and might make an impression during a sweep -- and for lack of anything better -- I've adopted it as N6625, though with a colon. The larger clump gets a question mark, but on reflection, it might be more in keeping with JH's description of "loose" and "straggling". ----- In "Star Clusters", Brent Archinal chooses an even larger group (39 arcminutes across) centered on the HD star. Given that JH describes the cluster as "loose" and "straggling", Brent's suggestion might be JH's object. But JH's magnitude estimate of the brightest stars at 11 is in conflict with the magnitude of HD 169033, so I can't put much weight on Brent's suggested size or position. On further reflection, however, I've changed the question mark and colon on my original two choices so that the larger object is now more likely to be JH's cluster. This, of course, is simply a suggestion. JH has just not left us enough to tell for sure what he saw here. ===== NGC 6633. Found by CH in 1783, this sparce, scattered cluster of bright stars is centered about 30 seconds of time west and 7 arcminutes south of WH's position. The cluster is larger than WH's sweeping field, though, and is extended east-west, so WH may have not seen its entire extent when he measured the position. Note, too, that the RA offset given in WH's complete papers as edited by Dreyer is incorrect -- for "27 26", read "27 56". The sweep has the correct offset. The comparison star, called "62 Serpentis" in WH's day, is HD 175515; it has a large proper motion in declination, so the position reduced by CH and adopted for the NGC is just over an arcminute too far south. ===== NGC 6634 is probably the asterism of four stars at La Caille's position, but some doubt remains. JH inserted the GC number into the GC's "Supplementary List" at the very end, without any notes as to why he was doing so. It's probable that he had seen the note in Auwers's 1862 reprinting of La Caille's list. Auwers called attention to the declination being a degree too far south for M 69, and also commented on Piazzi's note to the same effect that also included M 70 (see the GC and NGC Notes for JH's rejoinder under the entry for M 69 = GC 4411 = NGC 6637). In any event, La Caille's position would be 20 arcmin off M 69 without the one degree error. His description -- "It resembles a small nucleus of a comet" -- fits M 69 so well that Messier and many others have adopted the identity without even commenting on the position error. Glen Cozens, however, argues that M 69 is too faint (at V_total = 7.7) for La Caille to have seen with his 0.5-inch aperture telescope on the mural quadrant that he used to measure southern stars from the Cape of Good Hope, and further points out that the asterism of four stars is at La Caille's position (the eastern of the four stars is just south of the nominal position). However, if La Caille saw M 69, it is not the faintest object that he found. That is the globular cluster NGC 4833 at V_total = 8.4; La Caille also found M 83 = NGC 5236 at V_total = 7.5 with a somewhat lower surface brightness than M 69. So, M 69 is clearly still a candidate. La Caille's description is initially puzzling, though. But we need to keep that 0.5-inch telescope in mind. While he says that he had access to larger instruments, he also apologizes to his readers for rarely using them to examine the nebulae and clusters that he discovered. Given all this, his description makes perfect sense: the asterism, even though it is 4.0 arcmin across with a total V magnitude of 6.90 (Tycho-2 system), would appear as a faint blob of light. By way of analogy, I recall my first view of NGC 7150 (which see) in my 6-inch reflector in the early 1960's: it appeared as a very small, elongated nebula. Yet on the POSS1 plates, it is a simple asterism of four stars (total V magnitude of 12.0) that is almost a direct copy of the asterism at La Caille's position, but fainter by 5 magnitudes and shrunk by a factor of about 50 in diameter. It must look in the 6-inch much as the four stars would look in a 0.5-inch telescope. Cozens reports that the asterism is an unresolved blob in 12x60 binoculars, and is easier to see than M 69 in the same instrument. ----- March 2009: Jeffery Corder has sent another visual observation, this time with a 6x30mm finder 'scope stopped down to half an inch. Here is his note: The 4-star asterism you mention is not resolved and appears nebulous. I would say that the asterism is what he (La Caille) actually saw. However, 10X or more would probably resolve the 4 stars, and under a superb dark sky, 6X would probably resolve the asterism -- based on my visual observations. However, I [also] used a 0.5" offset mask on my F/10 C-8 and observed the asterism with a 55mm Plossl (37X). This is the lowest power I could get and it was still resolvable, easily. Given all this, I'm inclined to take La Caille's position and description at face value and keep L I-11 = NGC 6634 as a separate object. However, there is still a possibility, however slender, that it could be identical to M 69 = NGC 6637, so I include that as an alternative. ===== NGC 6637 may possibly also carry the number NGC 6634, which see. This is unlikely, in my opinion, but still possible. ===== NGC 6647 = H VIII 14. WH found this on 18 June 1784; he called it "A Cl of sc pL sts" in his PT paper. The sweep has it as "A cl of sc stars filling the field; not rich and the stars less than those in the foregoing [M 25 = IC 4725, which see]". JH also claims to have seen it; his position -- somewhat east of his father's and marked "+-" in RA -- is adopted in GC and NGC. Curiously, he has it as "A very loose parcel of v small stars, hardly noticeable as a cluster," not in very good agreement with his father's description. Further, in the GC, JH has "Cl, L, Ri, lC, sts vS." How he got that out of his and his father's observations is a mystery to me. Perhaps he penned the description in haste, or mistakenly copied it from another object. There is nothing obvious at either position. WH's original position is about 8 arcmin west-northwest of his son's. There is no evidence in the sweep that WH's position is incorrect; reducing it with respect to another star (HD 170680) in the sweep gives the same position as the star that WH uses in his published list (43 Sgr). The position for M 25 that WH finds is about 25 seconds of time west of the modern positions, but that cluster is much larger than his field, so he would have had some trouble estimating the center. Just four arcmin northeast of WH's position is a group, about four arcmin across, of a couple of dozen stars. The brightest is around 12th magnitude. These may be some the stars that WH took to be a cluster, so I had earlier listed it as a possibility for the NGC object. However, having finally (in early February 2016) seen the sweep with it's fuller description, it's clear that WH's cluster is much larger, on the order of the field size, 15 arcminutes. The only DSS image that offers a fairly clean view of the field is the DSS1 blue image. Mentally filtering out the myriads of background stars leaves a sprinkling of brighter stars that more or less match WH's description. I make this apparent "cluster" approximately 13 by 10 arcminutes, and put the center almost exactly at WH's position. But seeing it in the DSS image leaves me unimpressed; I'd be surprised to find a real cluster here. Curious to know if this larger grouping persists at the eyepiece, I checked Steve Gottlieb's visual observation from July 2013 with a 24-inch telescope at 125X; his field was 50 arcminutes across. Steve sees only half a dozen 10th magnitude stars centered a few arcminutes northeast of WH's position. These may be the same clump that I picked out earlier, and are included in the larger "cluster" that I think I see on the DSS. Like me -- and JH -- Steve is underwhelmed. Digging into the literature, I found a reference to the cluster in one of Walter Scott Houston's Sky and Telescope columns (in the January 1976 issue), asking for information on this cluster and other of the RNGC "nonexistent" clusters. This led me to Archinal and Hynes who suggested the star cloud 1.2 minutes west and five arcminutes south of WH's position. Tracing this back to Brent's Webb Society Monograph, I see that he credits one of my early lists of (R)NGC corrections based on my SEGC sweeps for galaxies -- I was indeed checking every NGC number in the south-equatorial zone. I now think this star cloud is very unlikely as there no hint of an error in WH's observation that would push his position back this far to the west. And WH describes a scattering of brighter stars, not the fainter ones comprising the cloud. The professional catalogues are no help, either. The Alter et al (1970) catalogue has only a token entry for the cluster at the same position as Archinal and Hynes give (which is probably from Alter et al), though does give an integrated magnitude of 8.0. Lynga (1987) repeats this, but makes the declination just an arcminute to the north, perhaps a typo. Finally, working with the Archinal and Hynes position as input, Kharchenko et al. (A&A 558, 53, 2013) used PPMXL and 2MASS to find a "remnant cluster" here. Their algorithms put the remnant at 5.25 kpc away with a barely significant proper motion, and give it 136 stars over a diameter of thirteen arcminutes, with 43 in the central 7.2 arcminutes, and just three in the 1.5 arcminute core. They also note "Poorly seen in the rich background." My feeling is that they have applied their computer pipeline to a random patch of the Milky Way. This, by the way, is cluster number 2939 in their catalogue. My overall assessment of this "remnant cluster" -- "Underwhelmed." Whatever the case, the clump of stars that I believe to be WH's object does not match the NGC description, though it does more or less fit what WH himself recorded. So, I am going to take it, with some trepidation, as NGC 6647. ===== NGC 6648 is a double star, Struve 2322. It is also the seventh entry in a short list of "new" nebulae in Struve's "Catalogus Novus ..." of double and multiple stars, hence the "[Sigma] 7" entry in the GC and NGC. Auwers also included it in his list of nebulae discovered by other observers than the Herschels where it is number 41. He says (originally in German; my translation using Google Translate), "Double star of Herschel's class III 8.9 and 11 m, surrounded by a small, oval nebula". He adds in a note "The nebula surrounds [the double star] and aside from a drawing in Catalogue Novus, where it is about 15 [arcsec] long and 8 [arcsec] broad, I could not see anything." Wolfgang has more of Struve's and Auwers's "back stories" in his marvelous 2010 book; those make interesting reading. But this is still just a double star in spite of Struve's mistaken impression that they are immersed in nebulosity, and my mistaken impression in the 1990s that one or two fainter stars are involved. ===== NGC 6651. As with several other objects (see e.g. NGC 2128 and NGC 7065), Steve Gottlieb drew my attention back to this one in the winter and spring of 2011. Here's what he had to say about NGC 6651: Swift's position for N6651 (list IV-69) is just 24 tsec W and 34" S of UGC 11236 = CGCG 340-044, so this identification appears secure, though I'm not sure about "bet a F nr * and a distant B one." The bright star could be the mag 7 star 10' NE, or [it could be] 4th magnitude phi Dra[conis], located 23' SW, but what is the "faint near star"? In any case, CGCG and UGC misidentify UGC 11193 = CGCG 340-042 as N6651. Because of this error, the magnitude in the RNGC applies to CGCG 340-042. N6651 is correctly identified in the MCG, RC2, RC3, and RNGC. The "bright" star is about 5 arcmin west-southwest of the galaxy while the "faint near" star is roughly 2 arcmin east-southeast. This secures the identification. I found that I had penciled the correct identifications into CGCG, MCG, and UGC, probably during work on RC2 in the early 70s. But as with many other corrected NGC/IC problems, I was not yet writing notes at that time. ===== NGC 6655 was found in June 1855 by Winnecke with the 9-inch Fraunhofer refractor in Berlin and has not been seen since. Auwers lists it as the 42nd new object in the appendix to his 1862 reduction of WH's nebulae where he gives Winnecke's description. This boils down to pF, S, E, 10 x 3 arcsec. The position is 18 25 43, -06 06 for 1830. There is nothing there. (Auwers also notes that he could not find the object.) However, 20 seconds of time west, and 3.3 arcmin north is a 14th magnitude double star with a separation of about 11 arcsec. This may be the object that Winnecke saw. ===== NGC 6659 appears to be a clump of about 20 stars between 10 and 15 mag covering an area about 9 x 5 arcmin. JH describes it tersely, "A v poor cluster 8th class." His position is about 2 arcmin southwest of the center of the clump of stars. Archinal adopts the position of HD 342450, near JH's position, as that for the object, yet has its type listed as "nf?" -- "not found?" Perhaps; but I have nevertheless adopted my position from the DSS2R. ===== NGC 6660 = NGC 6661. Swift's declination for N6660 is 10 arcmin too small, but his description fits, including the note "between 2 stars." The identity was first noticed by Pechule, and included in the Notes to IC1 by Dreyer. ===== NGC 6661 = NGC 6660, which see. ===== NGC 6666 could be any of a number of galaxies within a degree or so of Swift's position. It could also be UGC 11278 or UGC 11281 five degrees north. Whatever Edward Swift saw, it is certainly not at the position his father sent to Dreyer or later published. Bigourdan's single observation a decade after Edward Swift's is for an asterism of five stars, the brightest three in a line extending from northwest to southeast. I don't think that this is likely to be Swift's object, but it is a possibility. The asterism is 20 seconds east and 2.5 arcmin south of Swift's position, but I don't think that it would match his description. This could be easily checked, of course, with a 15-inch class telescope. Jeff Corder did just that, but did not like Bigourdan's asterism any more than I did. I looked again, and thought I had found a decent candidate, CGCG 173-011, just one degree south of Swift's published position. It is indeed "eF" and "S" -- but is certainly not "R". It is about 1.1 x 0.3 arcmin, much too flat to have appeared round to the Swifts. Also, it is embedded inside, near the western edge, of a group of at least a dozen brighter stars that the father/son observers would surely have commented on. It might make a very pretty sight in a large telescope, but I doubt very much that this is what Edward Swift found. ===== NGC 6667 = NGC 6668 = NGC 6678, both of which see. ===== NGC 6668 = NGC 6667 (as well as NGC 6678, which see). Found by Swift (number 70 in his 4th list), this is most likely to be NGC 6667 as there is nothing at Swift's place resembling a "pB, pS, vE" nebula. Howe could not find it, either, and suggested that N6668 might be N6677. However, N6667 is brighter and its inner regions perhaps fit Swift's description better. Also, the difference in position is exactly 50 arcmin, suggesting a transcription error or a typo somewhere in Swift's reduction/publication chain. The galaxy itself looks like an S0, distorted and with a dust lane and other dust features, as well as a very extended, distorted arm reaching well out to the northwest. The modern position I've adopted comes from two 2MASS point sources in the dust lane, perhaps bracketing a hidden nucleus. Or perhaps one of the PSC sources is the nucleus. This is an unusual galaxy. ===== NGC 6669 is most likely the asterism of five faint stars just north of Marth's position. There are fainter stars involved that may have added to the nebulous appearance of the object. This is of an appropriate size and combined magnitude that he would probably describe it as he did, "eF, pL." Wolfgang followed the LEDA group's lead in assigning this number to a 16th magnitude galaxy with a 12th magnitude star superposed well off Marth's place. Had Marth seen this object, he would certainly have mentioned the star. I think that the galaxy is faint enough, however, that the star would mask it, even at the eyepiece of Lassell's 48-inch reflector. ===== NGC 6672 is a triple star at Stephan's position. The mean position (measured on DSS) for the three stars is less than three arcseconds away from his micrometrically-measured position. ===== NGC 6677 and 6679 = IC 4763. Malcolm and I have fussed over this field for several years now, and have been unable to come to a consensus. So here is my take on the area. The two brightest galaxies here -- Malcolm's objects "A" and "B" -- were seen by Swift, Bigourdan, and Howe. (Kobold also has an observation of NGC 6677 in the Strassburg Annals, Vol. 3, 1909, but his comparison star has a high proper motion which makes the derivation of an accurate position more difficult.) I agree with Malcolm that A must be NGC 6677, but am pretty well convinced that B is NGC 6679 = IC 4763. Here's why: As I always do for identification problems, I determined as accurate a position as I can for every object bearing on an identity question. In this case, this meant reducing Bigourdan's micrometric observations, and digging positions out of the Guide Star Catalogue. Here are the results for Malcolm's three objects (positions are for the equinox 1950.0): Galaxy NGC/IC RA Dec Source Notes A N6677: 18 33 39.20 +67 04 09.8 GSC 18 33 38.83 +67 04 11.3 Big 5 Sept 1891 only 18 33 40 +67 04.1 Howe B N6679:=I4763 18 33 33.29 +67 05 47.1 GSC 18 33 33.58 +67 05 44.8 Big 18 33 35 +67 05.7 Howe C --- 18 33 34.36 +67 06 21.8 GSC Notice that I have used Bigourdan's observations only from the night of 5 Sept 1891 for NGC 6677. His observations on 25 June 1897 refer to the star southeast of the galaxy. I also suspect that his comparison star (BD +66 1115 = GSC 4227-00549) has a relatively large proper motion as there is a systematic offset of +0.24 sec and -7.8 arcsec between his positions and the GSC positions for all the objects for which he used this star as a comparison. I've corrected his positions in the table above for these offsets. The excellent agreement between Bigourdan's, Howe's, and the GSC positions convinces me that the two micrometric observations from each of the early observers do indeed refer to Malcolm's objects A and B. Furthermore, their descriptions also make sense -- and agree with Swift's -- if we note one additional fact: object B is in fact a close double galaxy. Object C is more than 30 arcsec north of B, which puts it much too far away to be part of the object that Howe measured as NGC 6679: "This is a nebulous D * of mags 12.5, distance 5 arcsec, [position] angle 60 deg." Bigourdan's description of it as a double star, one that he could not resolve at 344X, also points to the close pair as the actual NGC 6679 -- and adds support to the evidence from his measured position that the pair is equal to Big 333 = IC 4763 (it is, of course, clear that Bigourdan himself realized this). All of this evidence, combined with Swift's own descriptions (in his papers 1, 3, and 9) seem to me to pin down the identifications without much doubt. I've not taken Swift's own positions into account as we know that they are not very good. In this case, Howe has noted that Swift's declination for N6679 in the NGC is out by 8.5 arcmin. Swift corrected this by 10 arcmin when he finally published the observation in AN 3004, but by then, the damage had been done. Having said all of that, I urge you to read Malcolm's unravelling of the field -- he comes to a different conclusion and might be right. But the agreement of the positions and descriptions as I've laid them out above strongly suggest to me that the identifications I've adopted are probably right. As usual in these cases, however, I've put colons on the NGC numbers. ===== NGC 6678 = NGC 6667 (which is also = NGC 6668, which see). IC 4762 = Big 332 is a double star at exactly the location given by Bigourdan. Until I found that it was a double star, I thought that it might be NGC 6678, found by Swift (it is No. 99 in his first list), and with an identical declination. However, I'm more inclined to believe that N6678 is the same as NGC 6667 (see NGC 6668 for more discussion); this galaxy is brighter than the double star, and its inner regions might be taken as a "pF, pS, R" nebula. Howe could not find this, either, but suggested no alternative identification for it. ===== NGC 6679 = IC 4763. See NGC 6677. ===== NGC 6680. When I went over this field in the late 1990s, I called this an interacting quadruple system. Looking at it again in February 2016, I think it is more likely to be a double system with several stars superposed. But even that is not sure. Unfortunately, the SDSS does not reach this far west, so the only high-resolution views of the galaxy available are from 2MASS. The false-color image shows the extended nuclear region of the galaxy with at least three stars superposed, and perhaps two or three knots in the arms. The galaxy is certainly distorted, but the companion -- if there is one -- is not obvious. Whatever the case, I've given positions for the five obvious objects seen in the 2MASS images. ===== NGC 6682. Bigourdan was the first to notice that JH's RA is 2 minutes too large. Alister Ling picked up the error independently a century later. With an additional small correction in Dec (about 3 arcmin to the south), JH's "A large, pretty rich cluster of straggling stars ..." is found to be located in a Milky Way star cloud. The remainder of his description "... having a vacuity in the middle and broken into 2 or 3 clusters. Fills field. 70 or 80 stars of all magnitudes from 10 to 18 counted. Extended in parallel. The most compressed part following," is accurate. Unfortunately, the sweep is on one of the Herschel Archive left-hand pages that is too faint to read. The reduction page on the right shows the position that JH published in his 1833 catalogue, so we are no further ahead in trying to understand JH's mistake. Archinal and Hynes adopt a position similar to the one I've used, but make the diameter 47 (!) arcminutes. Unfortunately, they have no notes on the object, but Archinal, in his Webb Society Monograph, has a discussion where he seems to conclude that this is a star cloud, but gives little data beyond the position. ===== NGC 6683. I'm not quite sure just what JH was seeing here. His position is that of a small cluster of stars, yet his description is at odds with this: "A more than usually condensed portion of the enormous cluster of the Milky Way. The field has 200 or 300 stars in it at once." Looking at the DSS, a one-degree wide field shows clouds of stars defined by the many dust patches and lanes in the area, but none are centered exactly at JH's position. All that is eye-catchingly there is the small cluster. Thus -- the colon. Consequently, realizing that this is not what JH meant to record, I've reluctantly adopted the little group as his object. This follows almost, but not quite, everyone else who has looked at this -- see Archinal and Hynes for modern data and aliases and Archinal's Webb Society Monograph for a more extensive discussion of earlier speculation. ===== NGC 6688. See NGC 6693. ===== NGC 6689 = NGC 6690, which see. ===== NGC 6690 = NGC 6689. Both Swift and d'A found this galaxy twice. D'A, however, realized that his two observations referred to the same object, while Swift's second position was far enough off to mislead him into including the galaxy twice in his fifth list. Dreyer somehow recognized Swift's mistake, so only included one of the entries in NGC -- but he (Dreyer) also missed the identity with d'A's object, even though the two positions are less than an arcminute apart on the sky. Whatever happened, there is certainly only one galaxy, and it clearly bears two NGC numbers. The several descriptions are good, and all the nearby field stars are just where d'A and Swift put them in their notes. ===== NGC 6692 is a close double galaxy (the separation is just 7.5 arcsec), or perhaps a single object with a faint dust lane. It presents us with just a single overexposed blob on the first Palomar Sky Survey red plate. On the blue POSS1 plate, a faint dust lane apparently crosses the nucleus, so this object may be close to the end state of the "hamburger" galaxies formed by the merging of two objects. On the other hand, the object is clearly resolved into a pair in the 2MASS images, and Marzke et al (AJ 112, 1083, 1996) have separate velocities for both components. The two objects are also clearly separated on all of the DSS2 images. This may also be NGC 6693, which see. ===== NGC 6693 may be identical to NGC 6692. There are only faint stars in the area of Marth's position for N6693. The RNGC claims the object to be a star, but I see no particular single, double, or multiple star around that might have caught Marth's eye. Of the nine other objects that Marth found the same night ("1864.59"), two bracket N6693 in RA, and are at similar Dec's: N6688 and N6713. Neither has a large offset in Marth's position from the modern positions, so I have to presume that N6693 is also unaffected by any systematic error. However, this does not preclude an accidental error. Candidate galaxies include NGC 6692 with a +1 second and +2 degree 4 arcmin error in the position (at B1860), CGCG 201-030 (with a +26 second and +1 degree 53 arcmin error), and CGCG 201-035 (with +1 minute and 3 seconds and +1 degree 18 arcmin error). CGCG 201-030 has a couple of similarly bright stars quite close to the north and east that Marth might have commented on, so I don't think this is a good match. CGCG 201-035 is also in a fairly rich field, but there are no really eyecatching stars nearby. Its larger RA error and non-integer Dec error also takes it out of real contention. So, I'm inclined toward the identity with NGC 6692 -- it is within Marth's usual errors of being just 2 degrees off his position. But given his scanty description "vF", this could be a stretch. So, I've put question marks on the identity. ===== NGC 6695. See IC 1294. ===== NGC 6696. Swift's position is a minute of time too large (first commented on by Herbert Howe; see the IC2 notes), but there is no doubting his galaxy. He says "... in vacancy pL; sev B sts f and p it ..." While I do not know if the "pL" applies to the vacancy or the galaxy, the galaxy is indeed in a vacancy, and there are indeed several bright stars to the west and the northeast. ===== NGC 6698 may be the somewhat denser region of stars about 25 arcmin north of WH's position. If so, his position for it shares the same large offset that affects his positions for N6514 and N6533 (which see), found the same night. Another position can be derived by noting that WH's positions from this sweep are generally poor, and are not internally consistent within the sweep. Here, for example, are the positions for NGC 6698 and for M 22 (NGC 6656), the cluster in the sweep observed just twelve minutes before NGC 6698, as derived from four different stars in the sweep: M 22 NGC 6698 Star RA (J2000) Dec RA (J2000) Dec 22 Sgr 18 36 51 -24 03.1 18 49 00 -25 52.1 25 Sgr 18 37 49 -24 01.3 18 49 59 -25 50.6 34 Sgr 18 36 10 -24 05.5 18 48 20 -25 54.7 42 Sgr 18 36 16 -23 57.3 18 48 26 -25 46.6 Modern 18 36 24 -23 54.3 [18 48 18 -25 43.5] The mean values of WH's positions from these four stars for M 22 is 18 36 47, -24 01.8. This implies offsets from the modern position of 23 seconds of time and 7.5 arcminutes. Applying these to the mean position from the four stars for NGC 6698 gives the position above in brackets. I don't see much there that would suggest even a "suspected cluster", so am more drawn to the star cloud of the first paragraph above. If this is WH's object -- his description "A suspected cluster of vF stars of considerable extent" certainly fits -- it is probably not a true cluster, but just a concentration in the rich Milky Way field. There is a question of why he included it in his 6th class, "Very compressed and rich clusters of stars." The description perhaps better fits a cluster of his 8th class. Coincidentally, the planetary nebula PK 009-10.1 is close to the center of the concentration. The proper motions would have to be checked to see if there is a connection, or indeed if there really is a cluster here. ----- Brent Archinal in "Star Clusters" adopts WH's (the NGC) position and notes a "Possibly [sic] 10' x 5' slight concentration of stars here?" This might be a possibility, but I don't see much of anything here. As with many of these scattered "clusters", we have more questions than answers, and not enough data to make even reasonable guesses at identifications. ===== NGC 6709 may also be NGC 6724, which see. ===== NGC 6713. See NGC 6693. ===== NGC 6714. Earlier, I wrote NGC 6714 is probably lost. There is nothing at Swift's position, though his note "... sev B sts nr n" is appropriate for his field. Did he perhaps see a faint comet? Since he rarely comments about verifying his nebulae, this seems a possibility worth mentioning, at least in this case. Barring a digit error, though, this object may be gone forever. However, in July 2009, Jeff Corder picked up on the idea of a digit error and found an appropriate asterism just one minute of time following Swift's position. There are about 10 faint stars here, appearing to Jeff in his 17.5-inch reflector as "eF, S, irr R, mottled, one eF * res[olved with] averted vis[ion], v diffic, sev B sts n[orth]." This reads almost exactly as if Swift himself had written the beginning and ending of it. I'm comfortable taking this as a prime candidate for Swift's object. ----- Gary Kronk has pointed out that Herbert Howe was the first to suggest the asterism in his article in MNRAS 61, 29, 1900. Checking JPL's "Small Body Identification" web site, I found that there were no comets near Swift's position on 27 May 1886 when he found his object. The asterism that Jeff suggested is still the prime candidate for NGC 6714. ===== NGC 6717. IC 4802 (which see) is a clump of stars in this globular. ===== NGC 6724 is described by JH simply as "A cluster discovered with the 7-feet (sic) equatorial, Sept 5, 1828." He puts a plus/minus sign on the RA which he lists to only a full minute of time, though the NPD is given to his usual precision of an arcsec. Checking the Herschel Archive material, however, shows that both RA and NPD are marked with plus/minus signs. This is recorded in his observing "Journal No. 1" as number 45 in Sweep 172 where he copies an entry from his "Equatorial Book": "Discd a Cluster VIII. Cl VIII nova. Vide Equatorial Book No. 201 -- RA 18 49+- PD 79 51 30 +-." (For reference, this is page 110 of 120 in file "J0001-0002-0002.pdf" on the first DVD of the three in the Herschel Archives.) Unfortunately, the Equatorial Book from Slough seems to not be included in the Archives, so checking that will have to wait until it can be located. The crude position is confirmed, at least in RA, in JH's "Register of Objects observed in Sweeps ..." (J0001-0004-0001.pdf, page 117), where this is the only entry under 18h 49m. However, the NPD looses its +- sign. The remainder of entry there reads "Cl VIII Discd. with Equatorial Sep. 5 1828. See Eql. Papers. No 201", confirming the information from the observing Journal. About five arcmin northwest of his place is a small (5 arcmin by 3 arcmin) clump of stars, a dozen of which are bright enough to be in GSC. Given the paucity of information, though, the object could also be NGC 6709, a much richer cluster 10 minutes west at the same declination. Pending a study of the Slough Equatorial Book, I am going to adopt the poorer clump of stars for this number -- though with a colon to flag the uncertainty inherent in the observation. Finally, I note that Brent Archinal reports two observations of an obvious group of stars at JH's position in his Webb Society monograph. Archinal and Hynes have a very long note about this object, collecting observations by several different veteran observers. In the end, they somewhat reluctantly adopt the same clump of stars that I note here. ===== NGC 6726, NGC 6727, and NGC 6729 are all stars immersed in nebulae. Delisle Stewart found them associated with a much larger and fainter nebulosity, IC 4812 (which see), on a 5-hour Harvard plate. The positions I give apply to the stars. ===== NGC 6727. See NGC 6726. ===== NGC 6728 could be Isserstedt 662, a stellar ring (though it does not look very ring-like to me). This is one minute, 13 seconds preceding and 1.6 arcminutes north of WH's position at which there is nothing resembling a cluster. WH describes his object as being composed of "... coarsely scattered stars, not rich." This certainly fits Isserstedt 662 which is the only object in the area that WH might have picked up. Those interested in Schmidt-Kaler and Isserstedt's idea that the stellar rings have a constant size -- so can therefore be used as distance indicators -- can read more about them in A&A 9, 70, 1970 which gives other earlier references. Note added in February 2013: Well, Isserstedt 662 is not the only "cluster" that WH could have picked out. About half a minute of time east and three arcminutes south is a scattered group of stars approximately 14' x 7' across that actually better matches his description. This is now my prime candidate for his cluster. I would be surprised if it turned out to be a real cluster, but it at least has the appearance that might attract the eye of someone scanning the sky. By the way, Brent Archinal's Webb Society monograph mentions a November 1988 letter of mine to him in which I credit Alister Ling with the Isserstedt 662 suggestion (Brian Skiff passed this on to me from Alister). In their "Star Clusters" book, Archinal and Hynes identify the cluster with Isserstedt 662, but list an incorrect position, and make its size 18 arcminutes, while the ring catalogue has its size as 2.2' x 1.4', elongated in PA = 120 degrees. It's possible that they were looking at a different "cluster." ===== NGC 6729. See NGC 6726. ===== NGC 6731 is probably the double star whose position I give in the main table. It was found by J. G. Lohse, and is similar to other "nebulae" found by him (e.g. NGC 6344 and NGC 6767, both of which see). He describes it simply as "Very faint," though, so the identification is not as secure as it might be. ===== NGC 6735 is a clustering of stars around SAO 142915 (JH's position refers to this star), though the center of the cluster seems to be a bit southwest of the star. It matches JH's description quite well, and would probably stand out nicely in a wide-field eyepiece. ===== NGC 6737 is another of JH's clusters nearly lost against the bright Milky Way background on the modern sky surveys. His position refers to SAO 162109, though the cluster itself is centered about an arcminute east of the star. Wolfgang followed Andris in ESO-B and chose a somewhat larger clump of stars about 10 arcminutes on east. This is also possible, though JH's position -- unless faulty -- and smaller size rule it out as a candidate. ===== NGC 6738, found by JH, is an optical alignment of a couple of dozen bright stars seen through varying amounts of dust. It is not a real cluster. Boeche et al (A&A, 406, 893, 2003) have done a thorough photometric, astrometric, and spectroscopic study of the field and have not been able to find a real cluster here. There are undoubtedly many other such clusters in the catalogues. ===== NGC 6739. There is no problem with the NGC identification, but the RC2 position for "A1903-61" points only at a star. NGC 6739 is nearby to the northwest, while a much fainter S0 is a bit closer to the northeast. I do not find this object in Sandage's southern redshift survey papers from which the RC2 references suggest it comes. Curiously, N6739 is in those papers, though three arcmin south of its correct position (probably a simple typo). ===== NGC 6743. JH describes this as "A pL, poor cl of stars forming irreg groups or patches, 11 ... 12 m; diam = 8'." About an arcminute preceding his position are three pretty bright stars and roughly 30 fainter ones scattered over an area about 8 - 10 arcmin across. This is doubtless the group that JH saw. As with many of these apparent clusterings, it may not be a real cluster (see e.g. NGC 6738). It will take astrometric, spectroscopic, and photometric studies to determine whether the stars are neighbors in space. ===== NGC 6745 is the southern component of a double interacting system. Until the SDSS image appeared, the interpretation of this interesting star-forming galaxy was dependent on the wavelength of the detectors used to examine it; I had taken it to be a triple system. The SDSS, however, shows two galaxies, a brighter distorted spiral to the south, and a low-surface-brightness barred dwarf irregular to the north, apparently joined by a distorted, knotty arm from the spiral. The DSS2 infrared image shows this configuration almost as clearly as the SDSS. I've given positions for these objects, and have renamed them from my earlier lists, following the SDSS images and my usual conventions. ===== NGC 6748 is a second observation of NGC 6751, with the comparison star misidentified. I had written earlier that it "... is probably lost forever." Not true! Simply comparing the offsets between the object and the comparison star implied in Stephan's second list of new nebulae with those published by Esmiol showed that this is indeed one of the observations of NGC 6751 in Esmiol's list. Those implied offsets (for equinox 1870.0) from the star are -4m 18.53s and -9 arcmin 25.5 arcsec. There nothing at these offsets from Stephan's nominal comparison star, but NGC 6751 is just at those offsets from the star named by Esmiol, "6596 AG. W. Ott." which we now know as HD 178806. This must have been a bookkeeping error on Stephan's part. Esmiol documented a few others, but did not mention this one. Had he done so, we would have known about this long before now. So, another "lost" nebula has been recovered. ===== NGC 6749. Steve Gottlieb pointed out to me in an email in August 2016 that the globular cluster usually associated with this NGC number does not match JH's position or description. His position is roughly eight arcminutes off, not terribly far from the globular, but his description "A cluster of loose small stars of various magnitudes; fills the field" is not at all concordant with the appearance of the cluster. Steve's several observations of the globular with telescopes ranging in size from 13 inches to 24 inches are also at odds with JH's description. I've left the globular in the position table with the appropriate name "N6749 nearby GC" as a precaution against identifying it with JH's NGC 6749. I also recognize that this will be a difficult change to "enforce", given that the globular has carried this NGC number for many years. A more appropriate scattering of stars actually overlaps the globular but extends well to the southwest. Bigourdan examined the area on 24 August 1891 and wrote (my translation), "Extended region, slightly rich in stars, but which offers nothing remarkable." This is exactly my own assessment of the area. So, even if this is JH's intended object, I think that it is no more than a random clumping of Milky Way stars. ----- Early in 2021 as I was pulling together my list of Galactic globulars, I wondered if the nearby cluster Berkeley 42 might be identical to the globular that I had called "GCl 107" after its entry in the Alter et al (1970) cluster catalogue. However, I was not able to find a copy of the Berkeley list of star clusters (Setteducati and Weaver, 1962) to provide a definitive check on the position. Knowing my own propensity for typos and other numerical blunders, I wanted to eliminate the possibility that an entry in the online lists of Berkeley might not be correct. Steve again came to the rescue with a scanned copy of the Berkeley list that came from Pierre Paquette in Toronto via Sue French. That lists No. 42 at 19 02.6 +01 48 for B1950 (19 05.1, +01 53; J2000), calls it NGC 6749, and notes it as "Probably globular". The position from Setteducati and Weaver is clearly rough and falls about 2.5 arcmin from the center of the globular and 2.9 arcmin from my estimated position for JH's "cluster". The Berkeley list correctly makes the diameter 6 arcmin, and estimates the brightest stars as "18:". This makes the identification with the globular sure, even though Setteducati and Weaver -- along with virtually everyone else since! -- have appropriated the NGC name of JH's "cluster" for it. ===== NGC 6751 is also NGC 6748, which see. ===== NGC 6752 could just possibly also be NGC 6777, which see. ===== NGC 6762 = NGC 6763. The identity was first suggested by Howe. He apparently had a letter from Swift confirming that the two numbers apply to the same galaxy as he starts his note in MN 61, 42, 1900 by saying "These are identical; Swift admits it." Since Swift found them on different nights (30 August 1883 and 30 April 1884), and gave them virtually identical positions, there is little doubt that they indeed refer to the same galaxy -- especially as there is only one galaxy here bright enough for Swift to have seen. ===== NGC 6763 = NGC 6762, which see. ===== NGC 6766 = NGC 6884. Things were not looking good for this stellar planetary discovered by Pickering -- until Dave Riddle began digging around in the old literature. There he found a paper by the Reverend Thomas Espin (MNRAS 72, 150, 1911) in which Espin quotes Pickering as correcting the published position by one hour of time (20h instead of the original 19h copied into NGC). The corrected position is also the one which Pickering published in HA 60, where N6766 is tellingly out of numerical order, though without the additional NGC number (from Copeland whose position is good). Pickering's early method of finding the planetaries is interesting: he simply swept the sky looking through a low-dispersion spectroscope attached to his telescope. The stars' spectra would have appeared mostly continuous through his instrument, while the planetaries would still appear as stellar points because most of their visible light is concentrated in the emission lines of oxygen at 4958 and 5007 angstroms. Pickering later pioneered the use of objective prism photography, and several planetaries were found on Harvard plates as a result, primarily by Williamina Fleming. ===== NGC 6767 is another double star found by Lohse. He describes it as "Very faint, small, round, stellar; small star near north." The double star is very close to his position, and the "small star" is 33 arcsec north. ===== NGC 6769, NGC 6770, and NGC 6771. As Delisle Stewart first reported in his section of the big HA 60 paper on nebulae, the NGC RAs of this famous triplet are 1 minute of time too large. These are among JH's CGH nebulae, so I checked the positions in the CGH monograph -- they are, of course, a minute of time too large there, too. Unfortunately, the numbers in the Sweep (726 on 11 August 1836) are faint and blurry in the Herschel Archive copy, but the RA for NGC 6769 looks like it reads "19 03 55", with the beat being either "-12" or "-42". The RA's for the other two are given relative to that for NGC 6769, so even though they are more or less legible ("-42 +25" and "-42[?] +27"), they don't help us much. The first star in the sweep is lambda Pavonis with its RA given as "18 37 50". The difference between its RA and that for NGC 6769 is 26m 05s in the sweep. The difference in the J2000 positions is 26m 09s suggesting that JH has made a simple digit error of 1 minute of time in his reduction of the three RAs for the triplet. I also found that the RAs of NGC 6770 and 6771 are marked uncertain in the Sweep, but not in CGH nor any of its successor catalogues. This uncertainty comes from the chronometer beats recorded in the sweep with colons; the beat for NGC 6771 is additionally shown as "+27:" where the "7" overwrites either an "8" or a "5" (probably a "5" as the beat for NGC 6770 is "+25"). Picky details, yes, but they show just how careful JH was most of the time in his observations and reductions. Still, he wanted to move all these numbers across his desk as quickly as possible, so made mistakes now and then. ===== NGC 6770. See NGC 6769. ===== NGC 6771. See NGC 6769. ===== NGC 6773. This is a "Coarse; not very rich, eighth class" cluster found by JH. His position refers to a pretty bright star, BD +04 4036, west of the cluster's center where I place it in a 10 x 10 arcminute DSS field. In a 30 arcminute DSS field, the center moves on further east and a little north; the cluster grows to 12.7 by 6.1 arcminutes with the long axis at position angle 60 degrees. Is it real? As with many other of these "clusters", only a detailed study will tell. ===== NGC 6774. Earlier, I wrote, "[This] is a large cluster, over 20 arcmin across with perhaps 75 to 100 stars as possible members." JH has it as much larger: "Fills 2 or 3 fields", and calls it "A fine, L, loosely scattered cl of large with some small stars" in one sweep and "A very large straggling space full of stars 8, 9, and 10 m" in a second. I also said, "His position [from one sweep only] is close northeast of SAO 162395, the brightest star in (or superposed on) the cluster, but the center on the POSS1 prints is six arcminutes west-northwest." Looking at a 1 degree DSS field, I see that -- if JH's diameter estimate is right -- his object nearly fills it, easily covering 52' x 34'. But that includes many outlying stars that may well simply be field stars. I'm going to stick with my original guess of a smaller, but still quite large, cluster of pretty bright stars with diameters of 24 by 22 arcminutes. Again, I note that the center is about half a minute of time west of JH's center, so my "cluster" may not represent what he saw very well. ===== NGC 6775 may not be a real cluster, but it is clear on the sky as a tight clump of about a dozen stars, with another looser clump about five arcmin to the west. JH's position is on the tight clump. He calls it "A cluster; poor, loose, irreg fig; stars 10 and 11 m." Looking at this again in February 2016, I see not only those two clumps, but a third another 4-5 arcminutes on to the northwest. There are "bridges" of stars between these three clumps, so I am tempted to build a single, larger cluster out of them all. If it is a cluster, it's size is similar to that of NGC 6773 (which see), with a position angle of about 115 degrees. Further study is clearly necessary! ===== NGC 6777 may be NGC 6752 (first suggested by Owen Gingerich in a Sky and Telescope article which appeared in the February 1960 issue on page 207). If so, there is a large error in La Caille's position. Much closer to his position is a fairly close pair of 9th magnitude stars, SAO 257685 and 257686. These were mentioned by Delisle Stewart in his Harvard Annals 60 list, and were subsequently picked up by Andris Lauberts for ESO-B. Would these two stars look like "the nucleus of a small comet" in the eyepiece of La Caille's half-inch aperture quadrant? Probably (see the discussion of a similar asterism, NGC 6634). But Gingerich's idea needs representation, too, so both objects are listed, even if with colons and question marks. ===== NGC 6778 = NGC 6785, which see. ===== NGC 6781. The position is for a very faint, very blue star -- the southeastern of two -- near the geometric center of the planetary. The star is not seen at all in any of the 2MASS images, but is clear on the DSS2B image. ===== NGC 6784. There are two galaxies of virtually equal magnitude and diameter here, separated by 4.6 seconds of time, and 30 arcsec -- the orientation is southwest-northeast. The northeastern one is slightly brighter at V = 13.62 -- the southwestern is V = 13.80 -- and slightly larger at D_25 = 58 arcsec -- the southwestern is D_25 = 50 arcsec. The mean surface brightness of the brighter galaxy, however, is slightly lower at 13.29 Vmag/arcmin^2, while that for the fainter galaxy is 13.14. Which one did JH see? He has three observations of his nebula and records it as "eeF" all three times. He made only two firm measurements of its position, however (about the third, he says, "No RA observed, and the PD not to be put in competition with those of regular observations."). These are separated by 8.2 seconds and 68 arcseconds, within his usual error bars for repeated measurements of the same object. Also his positions are oriented nw-se, while the galaxies are sw-ne on the sky. So, the positions don't help us decide. Falling back on the photometry, I'm going to take the brighter galaxy as JH's nebula. If he saw the fainter one, its slightly higher surface brightness may have given it the appearance of a faint star. But I have to stress that the galaxies are so similar that we really can't say for sure which one JH saw. The colons reflect that. ===== NGC 6785 = NGC 6778. JH's description reads "An eS stellar neb = a * 15m; it is 2/3 of a diam of field (= 10') from a double star which it follows, to S. Pos from the star = 240 deg +-. The RA is excessively loose." This fits N6778 if the phrase "which it follows" is changed to "which follows it." Then, the position angle agrees as well. This means, however, that not only is the RA "excessively loose," but that there is 30 arcmin error in JH's Dec as well. Bigourdan's correction to the RA quoted in the IC2 Notes applies to a random clump of stars at JH's original (incorrect) Declination. These are clearly not NGC 6785. ===== NGC 6786. Like NGC 6784 (which see), there are two nearly equal galaxies here, though spirals rather than lenticulars. And the position, from Lewis Swift's fifth list in AN 2763, like JH's for NGC 6784, is not good enough to decide which galaxy Swift saw. Fortunately, he tells us, saying, "eeF, S, R; sp of and near 2 sts." One star is obvious nearly straight north of Swift's galaxy. The other is superposed on the second galaxy, effectively hiding it from Swift's view. ===== NGC 6795. The NGC description, "Cl, Ri, bet 2 sts 9", transcribed correctly from GC, doesn't really do justice to JH's original description: "The first of 3 sts 9 m, nearly in the parallel, joined by a rich clustering portion of the Milky Way." I sometimes wonder if JH wrote the GC descriptions or had a clerk do the chore for him. I've made the position a little closer to the middle of the three stars. That seems to represent the "rich clustering portion" better than JH's own place nearer the first star. I've also given the positions of the three stars. ----- Brent Archinal ignores JH's "cluster" and "clustering" comments -- even though this is pretty clear on the DSS2R image, especially southwest of the second star -- concentrating instead on the three stars themselves. He in fact has this object as a triple star. Given JH's description, I have to add some of the other stars in the area. While I doubt that this is a true cluster, it is certainly a "clustering", just as JH described it. ===== NGC 6797 is a triple star. Peters only gives its position and the note, "* 9m att f." The 9th magnitude star is there, but there is no nebulosity associated with the triple. Andris Lauberts was the first to identify this object correctly, in his ESO/Uppsala Catalogue. ===== NGC 6798 = IC 1300, which see. ===== NGC 6800. WH's published RA is 1 minute of time too small. It comes from two conflated observations on 10 Sept 1784 -- the published date -- and 17 July 1785 -- the published offsets. The comparison stars are different, too -- 10 Vulpeculae on the first night, 6 Vulpeculae on the second. The first night actually gives the correct position. 6 Vul has a large proper motion, so may be partly to blame for the problem. But see NGC 6882 = NGC 6885 for more on WH's observations on the night of 10 Sept 1784. However, none of this seen in the GC or NGC positions, adopted from JH's single observation on 18 August 1828. His position is good. ===== NGC 6804. Both WH and JH believed this to be a compact cluster of stars. WH's observation, from the sweep of 25 August 1791, reads, "cB, S, iF, er, some of the stars visible." Based on that, he put the object into his sixth class, "Very compressed and rich clusters of stars," as number 38. His position is good enough to identify the object as the planetary nebula G045.7-04.5 with several of the superposed stars thrown into the mix. His description suggests that he actually did see some nebulosity here. JH picked this up on four nights. His descriptions are more or less consistent: 21 Aug 1827: Doubtful if a resolved cl or a neb of first class. pL, R, bM, 60"; with 2 or 3 accidental stars of the Milky Way. 22 Aug 1827: A cluster. Has a * 16 m, one or two 18 m, and neb. 29 May 1829: A vS roundish cluster, 40" diam, of vS stars, one brighter than the rest and = 15 m. It is like a nebula well resolved, and is a curious object. 15 Aug 1830: A very small compressed fan-shaped cluster of stars 11...18 m, diam = 1'; a * 11 m on the nf side forms the vertex of the fan. My attention was caught because JH makes it clear that he is looking primarily at a cluster of stars; it seems almost coincidental that a planetary nebula is involved. In any case, it is clear that both of the Herschel's considered this to be primarily a cluster rather than a nebula. So, while I've given the position of the planetary in the main table, I've also made it clear there that the NGC object is actually an amalgam of the nebula and the superposed and nearby stars. ===== NGC 6811. JH has two observations of this, separated by nearly a minute of time in RA and 6 arcmin in Dec. The RA of the first observation is correct, while the declination of the second is correct. Unfortunately, the position JH adopted for the GC carries the RA of the second, and a declination ten arcminutes further on north. I think he meant to use only the second observation (he notes that the first observation refers to "A double star in the southern part ..."), so the incorrect RA must be a transcription or typographical error. Once these errors are corrected, though, N6811 turns out to be quite a nice cluster, ten or twelve arcmin across, with perhaps a hundred stars, many of the 10th and 11th magnitudes. ===== NGC 6813. This was found by Marth who called it a "D * in vF, S neb". In the current literature, it has drawn attention as an IRAS source (it is IRAS 19383+2711), and searched for -- unsuccessfully -- in CO and water/methanol maser surveys. It has also been called a planetary nebula, a reflection nebula, and a star cluster. My guess, based on all of this, is that the object is a young star cluster with some of its nebulosity still intact. It is brightest on the red DSS images with an irregularly-extended, rather faint corona. As Marth saw, there are two stellar images toward the center, both detected in the 2MASS and UCAC surveys. I've adopted a mean position for the two 2MASS sources as being representative of the object. ===== NGC 6815. On POSS1, this appears to be a cluster about 20' by 10', elongated roughly in position angle 135 deg, centered about 4 arcmin southwest of JH's position. It's not too obvious on the photographs, but could well stand out while sweeping with a large telescope. In the DSS2R image, I make the cluster a couple of arcminutes broader, and put the center about an arcminutes to the northwest, but it still appears elongated in about the same position angle. JH marked the position "+-" in his 1833 list, and the cluster is indeed scattered enough that its position could be moved around inside a five- arcminute area without anyone noticing ... ===== NGC 6816. RC3 is indeed wrong on this as it followed ESO and RNGC. SGC got the wrong galaxy, too, and as Steve Gottlieb noted earlier, JH's original description of the position of the star (six arcmin north) is correct. Looking at GC, I see that the description is exactly the same as in NGC; it does not follow the Cape of Good Hope description. So, the modification of the description is due to John Herschel himself, not Dreyer. JH must have done this to save space, though how he decided to place the star preceding as well as north is a mystery to me. He also apparently mistook the nucleus of ESO 460-G030 for one of the "vS stars" around the bright star 6' north. Herbert Howe (1898, MN 58, 515) also has a curious observation of this object: "In this is a star of mag 13.5. h noted a '* np.' I saw only a star of mag 14 at an angle of 20 degrees and a distance of 30 arcsec. The sky was dull, so that the nebula was difficult to measure." I see his "star" of mag 13.5; it looks like it is actually a superposed interacting galaxy. Howe also did not publish his position; this means that he found that the original position to be correct to within two arcmin. However, there are no stars 30 arcsec away at PA = 20. There are stars at about this PA, but they are 14 arcsec and 55 arcsec away from the nucleus of the galaxy. I wonder if Howe somehow picked up the wrong object. Well, whatever the case, while there are some unsolved mysteries here, the identification of N6816 is clear. ===== NGC 6818. See NGC 6822 = IC 4895. ===== NGC 6820 is a small knot of nebulosity, roughly 1' x 1', perhaps a reflection nebula around a few young stars or pre-stellar objects. It is specifically NOT the much larger HII region Sharpless 2-86 as has been many times been claimed, nor is it the cluster Colinder 404 = OCl 122, though that may represent the stars involved with the nebula. Marth's original observation with Lassell's 48-inch reflector mentions only the nebulosity: "F, S, R, bM". Steve Waldee has an extensive discussion of this on his web site: http://freescruz.com/~4cygni/faintfuzzies.blogspot.com/quandary-near-dumbbell.html See that for more on the confusion about this NGC number. ===== NGC 6822 = IC 4895, which also see. The IC number is easily explained, but I am a bit puzzled at the record concerning NGC 6822 itself. William Sheehan, in his biography of Barnard "The Immortal Fire Within" has the galaxy being "swept up with the 5-inch Byrne refractor in 1884". However, in his short note on its discovery in Sidereal Messenger, Barnard says that he used the 6-inch refractor to determine its position, and that it is in the same low- power field (in the 6-inch) as the well-known planetary nebula, NGC 6818. Barnard is also a bit parsimonious with his description of the galaxy, calling it only "exceedingly faint". There is nothing about its size or shape, so the NGC description "vF, L, E, dif" probably reached Dreyer in a letter. This galaxy is important historically as it is the subject of Edwin Hubble's first published paper on Cepheids in external galaxies. Though he announced the discovery of extragalactic Cepheids in M 31 in 1924, he chose NGC 6822, "a remote stellar system", as the first to have his systematic studies reported in the Astrophysical Journal (Volume 62, page 409, 1925). M 33 and M 31 followed in 1926 and 1929, respectively. So, extragalactic astronomy begins here, too. ===== NGC 6825 is at least a double system as noted in CGCG. There are, however, four knots involved; two -- which I labeled "n" and "e" -- may be superposed stars. We really do need some high-resolution images of this. I've simply taken the mean of the four objects as the position. All, regardless of their nature, contribute to the visibility of the object. Swift's position is about 15 seconds of time too far east, but at the northern declination, this amounts to only 2 arcminutes. With no other galaxies as bright in the area, there is no identity problem. ===== NGC 6828 may be simply a random scattering of stars around HD 187567 = SAO 125116, but has the look of a scattered cluster matching WH's description: "A cluster of coarsely scattered stars, with one pretty bright star in the middle". JH was pretty dismissive of the cluster, calling it on 21 August 1827, "Coarse, straggling, 15', not remarkable; chief * = 9.10 m", and on the next night, "A * 8 m in a poor cl, hardly to be called a cluster. (Night very bad)." He gave a full position on the second night, listing only an estimated NPD on the first. The GSC has a scattered concentration of about 60 stars, 12 x 10 arcminutes across, centered about 2.5 arcminutes southwest of the star, but this does not show well on the POSS1 prints. It does, however, show up on the DSS2R image, where it extends to about 15 x 10 arcminutes. I've adopted this somewhat larger size and the position southwest of the star for the cluster. ===== NGC 6832 is similar in appearance to NGC 6828 (which see) -- a few dozen fainter stars are scattered around a bright "central" star, HD 187748 = SAO 32016 in this case. However, because the background here is not dominated by the Milky Way, the cluster stands out more on the POSS1 prints and on the DSS. There are even a few galaxies seen through the cluster. I've put the center a couple of arcminutes northeast of the star. ===== NGC 6837 is probably a small cluster of about 15-20 stars 12th magnitude and fainter, only six by three arcmin in size, centered about 3 arcmin west of WH's nominal position. The position in the GC and NGC comes from JH whose notes read, "Viewed. In place by working list? It is a coarse straggling part of the Milky Way." He puts plus/minus signs on both RA and NPD, and the position he publishes in his 1833 list does not come from the sweep. There, the object carries the same description as published, but with the additional note "No cl." The sweep has no position given, though there is a peculiar notation that looks like an NPD with a few extra signs thrown in: "+78[deg]-8'+15"." The position JH published actually lands in a region void of brighter stars. It's no wonder that RNGC lists it as non-existent. I suspect that JH did not see the cluster that his father did as his description is not the one he uses for small clusters elsewhere in his observations. It instead suggests a much larger cluster of near-star-cloud dimensions. WH himself is not much more informative: "A small forming cluster of stars." He used the word "forming" literally as he interpreted the cluster as a young object just settling into clusterhood. The only real clue we have now is "small" and that fits the candidate object pretty well. So, I think the best we can do is to simply ignore JH and go back to WH's scanty observation. The position and sizes I have adopted is based on that. ===== NGC 6838 = M 71. I had speculated earlier that this might also be NGC 6839, which see, but Steve Gottlieb has found that it is certainly not. WH recorded both objects in the same sweep. ===== NGC 6839. Earlier I wrote: WH has one observation of this on 18 August 1784; it was the only object (not a star or double star) that he found that night. His description reads only "A very small cluster of compressed stars." There is nothing like that in the area. JH swept over the spot twice and did not positively identify the cluster either time. The position he gives for one observation is probably that reduced by CH, but he puts plus-minus signs on both coordinates. There are several small clumps of stars in the area that might be WH's object, but none stand out on POSS1, GSC, or DSS. It is barely possible that this could be M 71 (NGC 6838) which is 45 seconds preceding and 53 arcmin north of WH's nominal position. Since WH recorded no other nebulae or clusters that night, we can't say anything about systematic errors without digging into the detailed records of his sweep. The offset to M 71 is not unheard of in WH's observations, but it IS rare for him to have such a large position error. And M 71 is hardly a "very small" cluster. Steve Gottlieb has finally dug into the sweep (No. 252) and has found that this was NOT the only non-stellar object found that night. NGC 6838 (M 71) is actually the previous object in the sweep, referred to the same star (8 Sagittae), so it cannot also be NGC 6839. While there isn't anything obvious at WH's position that matches his description, Steve has found a candidate nearby; here is his report from 23 September 1995 with his 17.5-inch reflector. [A]t 100x there is a very weak enhancement of stars within 10' of mag 8.6 SAO 105398 at 19 54 04 +17 57.1 [2000]. More noticeable, though, is a partially resolved clump of faint stars just 3' NW. At 225x this fairly rich clump is resolved into 15 mag 13.5-14.5 stars in a 3' region elongated NNW-SSE. There are also scattered mag 10-12 stars to the southeast of SAO 105398 but these don't catch the eye. Located 50' S of M 71. The "clump" or string I mentioned is roughly centered at 19 54 00 +18 00.2. Still, the question remains why he [WH] didn't mention the nearby mag 8.5 star which is just 3' away. Otherwise, I don't see a reasonable candidate nearby. The group is pretty well seen on the DSS images, and I've included it in the main table as a candidate for WH's object. I've also included all of the positions reducible from WH's observations: 1) that from the offsets published by WH in the original Philosophical Transactions list and included in the Scientific Papers; 2) that from the 1800 position given in CH's fair copy of the Sweep; and 3) that from the offsets in the Sweep, reduced with respect to his comparison star, taking proper motion into account. ===== NGC 6840 and NGC 6843 are two sparce clusters seen by JH; his father found N6840. That cluster has two groups of seven stars (separated by about 5 arcminutes) in its core, surrounded by about 5-6 others. The stars are of fairly equal brightness, all being around 11th to 12th magnitude, and cover an area of 10 arcmin by 8 arcmin. N6843 is poorer with only around a dozen stars, again 11th to 12th magnitude, scattered over a smaller area. Both are superposed on rich Milky Way backgrounds, so I'm not surprised that they did not stand out enough to be identified for RNGC. In fact, neither may be a real cluster, but proper motions, spectroscopy, and photometry could tell us that. ===== NGC 6842. Is this also NGC 6847 (which see)? Probably not, but it is a possibility. ===== NGC 6843. See NGC 6840. ===== NGC 6845. JH's position (from a single night, 7 July 1834) falls nearest the second-brightest of the galaxies in this well-known quadruple system; this galaxy also has the highest surface brightness of the four. JH's descriptions, however, from this night ("eF, lE, glbM, 30[arcsec]") and one other ("vF, R, bM, 15[arcsec]; found and viewed by the place of [7 July]" on 5 September 1836) are consistent with either of the two brightest objects. Both are near the limit of his telescope, and both are within his nominal position errors of his measured place, so he could well have seen either. If I had to make an informed guess, I would take the second-brightest object with the higher surface brightness. Since JH mentions no other nearby objects -- in particular, no faint nearby stars as the second-brightest might have been seen -- this is perhaps the galaxy he saw. But that is still a guess. Hence, the colons and question marks. ===== NGC 6846. The RNGC position is 2 degrees too far south. At the correct position is a compact little cluster matching Stephan's description exactly: the three brightest stars are clear enough that he could see them, but the others are considerably fainter, so the entire group must have looked quite nebulous to him. ===== NGC 6847 may be the star cloud and HII region roughly a degree north and 45 seconds west of WH's single position. Earlier I had this just 30 seconds west. That, however, assumes WH's object was a cluster -- but see his description, given below, where this is clearly noted as a "nebulous" object. This identification was first suggested by Wilhelm Tempel in 1871 in a paper about his discovery of a comet at the Brera Observatory in Milan (my thanks to Wolfgang Steinicke for sending a note about this). There is certainly nothing obvious near WH's place, and Tempel's objects could be the ones he saw. They are immersed in a fairly large star cloud in the Milky Way, which might have led to his comments about the surrounding area. His full description, given in the sweep and repeated by Dreyer in the Collected Papers of 1912, reads, "A resolvable nebulous patch; there are great numbers of them in this neighborhood like forming nebulae; but this is the strongest of them." Another possibility is raised by Dreyer's note in the NGC, "Not noticed by d'A, who has 2 observations of GC 5947 = m 403 [= NGC 6842, a planetary]." Is N6842 the object that WH saw? It is just 2 minutes of time preceding and 3 arcmin south of his position. There may be enough stars around the nebula to lead to WH's description, so this may be a candidate. Checking the sweep, I find no problems with the reduction, or with the adopted position of 12 Cygni, the comparison star. To make Tempel's objects work, WH's offsets from 12 Cygni need to be at least 17m 06s east and 7 arcminutes north. These would translate to a clock reading of 19 44.2 to 19 44.4 instead of 19 44.9, and an index reading of exactly "0" rather than 1 deg 0 arcmin. These are certainly possible errors, but I do not like having to suggest two errors in a single observation; in general, one error is the expectation unless a comparison star is misidentified. I also checked the sweep for other objects referred to 12 Cygni. The object immediately preceding NGC 6847 is NGC 6834 for which WH's RA is 25 seconds too large, though the Dec/NPD is only 4.3 arcminutes too large. The near half- minute error in this cluster's position suggests that a similar error in the RA of NGC 6847 is due to some systematic problem rather than an accident of observation or transcription. This leaves the 1 degree error in the index reading as perhaps the only "blunder" here, if Tempel's suggestion is, in fact, the correct explanation. Two other possibilities are nearby on the POSS prints. First is a clump of stars about 20 arcmin north of WH's position. The second is another clump about 55 arcmin south. Neither of these, however, has "great numbers" of similar clumps nearby. Dreyer notes that Bigourdan found no nebulosity at WH's place, though he searched the area four times. His one micrometric observation (I haven't reduced it) probably points at a double or multiple star. There are many of them around. Finally, using the POSS1 overlays, I thought that this might be identical to "NGC 6846" (which see). However, the overlay copies RNGC's 2 degree error in the declination for N6846 so that it lands on top of the cluster and HII region I noted at the beginning of this story. N6846 is not these objects, though as I said, N6847 might just be. All in all, I am not quite as convinced as I was earlier that Tempel has turned up the correct object. After all, WH included this as a nebula in his catalogue, not as a star cluster, which is what most of the objects in the area would look like at the eyepiece. Perhaps that is what is needed here. ----- In an email of May 2017, Wolfgang supports the idea that NGC 6847 is actually NGC 6842, with the difference in RA perhaps "due to a clock-reading error." He also mentions WH's description of the object, noting its similarity to that for NGC 6849; this planetry is also called "resolvable" by WH and was found later in the same sweep. As I noted above, this suggestion has the advantage of explaining NGC 6847 by a single error in the RA, rather than requiring both RA and Dec errors. ===== NGC 6849. See NGC 6847. ===== NGC 6851A = NGC 6861A, which see. ===== NGC 6854. This is a double galaxy, though the second component has been sometimes mistaken as a superposed star -- it is extremely compact. The redshifts are within 200 km/sec, and the corona of the brighter object is slightly distorted by the fainter. JH noted only one nebula here, so the second is probably too faint and too close to the first to have been seen. ===== NGC 6859 is a triple star found by G.P. Bond and included in the Harvard Zone catalogues. The description of the field, given in AN 1453, with the 10th magnitude star near to the southwest is accurate, so there is no question about the identification. At least two of the stars appear to be double on the DSS2R image, so it is perhaps more accurate to describe this as a quintuple star. However, neither 2MASS nor UCAC has resolved the doubles, so I am retaining the triple star designation. ===== NGC 6861 = IC 4949, which see. ===== NGC 6861A = NGC 6851A. This galaxy was found on two plates that Gerard de Vaucouleurs took with the 30-inch Reynolds Reflector at Mt. Stromlo in the early 1950s. However, his estimated position (20 01.4, -48 09 for 1950.0) for "NGC 6861A" was far enough off that he did not notice the identity. He was nevertheless skeptical about the object: His description reads "At edge; defect?" It was not until we were working on SGC in Edinburgh the mid-1970s that I looked into the possible identity. Later, back in Austin, setting the two original Reynolds plates side-by-side made it clear that there is, in fact, just one galaxy here. ===== NGC 6863. JH's description is exactly right: "A little compact knot of 7 or 8 stars taken at first for a nebula (and liable to be mistaken for one hereafter). Stars 19 m." His position is also exactly on the asterism, so there is no doubt of the identification or the object type. ===== NGC 6866. WH found this cluster on 11 Sept 1790 and described it as "A very rich cl of L stars considerably compressed; above 15' diam. By the size of the stars, it is situated among the milky way towards us." This matches the cluster that we find at his position. I'm not quite sure how to take his second sentence, however. My guess is that he means to suggest that the cluster is superposed on the Milky Way. So far, so good. JH looked for his father's object in just one sweep and found "A coarse rough cluster. Taken for VII. 59, but the place does not agree." In the sweep, he says the same thing, but notes that the position is that of a double star. His RA is close to that of his father, but he places the double -- and the cluster -- ten arcminutes further south. There is no mistake in his reduction, and the cluster is close to neither the northern or southern limits of the sweep, so he somehow simply missed the cluster. Another curiosity is that when it came time to assemble the GC, he adopted his own position, but his father's description for the cluster. Dreyer copied this faithfully into the NGC, so we have had the wrong declination attached to the cluster for a well over a century. As far as I know, Brian Skiff was the first to notice this, but I have not checked all of the cluster catalogues. ===== NGC 6871 is not much of a cluster, being defined primarily by the 4-6 bright stars in the area. Aside from the curving line of 6-8 stars just to the south, there just isn't much here to suggest a cluster. I haven't checked the professional literature to see if these dozen or stars actually do form a cluster, but -- with the bright stars to the north -- this might well be a pretty sight in a telescope. ===== NGC 6873. JH's position (and so GC and NGC) is 1 minute of time too large. The correct position for Struve 2631 (the double star noted in the description) puts it into the midst of a relatively rich Milky Way field. But JH is right in calling it "... a coarse straggling group of stars 10...13m, hardly entitled to be called a cluster." The grouping is approximately 13 arcmin x 10 arcmin with a center of gravity just south of the double very close JH's position corrected by 1 minute in RA. On the DSS2R image in February 2016, I make the cluster smaller (10' x 8'), and put the center somewhat to the southeast of the double star. While I can just make out the somewhat larger cluster that I mentioned earlier, it no longer impresses me as much, so I would suggest a visual survey of the field to find JH's object. ===== NGC 6874. WH found this on 15 Sept 1792, describing it as "A coarsly scattered cluster of large stars, of a right-angled triangular shape." This is exactly the configuration seen about 15 seconds preceding the NGC position (from JH), and is the cluster that I've taken as the NGC object. The tabulated position refers to the approximate center of the triangle. JH's position, copied correctly into GC and NGC, refers to the 10th magnitude star at one apex of the triangle, east of the center. ===== NGC 6876A = IC 4945. During his "Reynolds Survey" of the southern Shapley-Ames galaxies, de Vaucouleurs found this object near the edge of one of his plates. His position (20 11.7, -71 00; J2000) is just far enough off the IC position (20 11.2, -71 00) that he did not find the IC number so thought the galaxy was previously uncatalogued. Thus, the suffixed NGC number appeared in his Stromlo 13 list. ===== NGC 6882 is probably a duplicate observation of NGC 6885. Both clusters were found by WH on subsequent nights (9 and 10 Sept 1784; N6882 is from 10 Sept), were referred to the same star, and have almost identical descriptions: "A cluster of coarsely scattered stars." For NGC 6885, he adds, "... not rich". There is nothing striking near the position of N6882, but that for N6885 is in the middle of a large scattered cluster also observed by JH. Over the years, there has been considerable speculation about what WH saw. Some observers have made the clusters identical, while others (notably Reinmuth) have pointed at the wide group of three bright (m = 6) stars about 20 arcmin north of N6885. Brent Archinal has suggested that the clump of nine stars at 20 11 57, +26 44.1, including HD 192043 (the southernmost of Reinmuth's three stars), is N6882. This is unlikely as the clump is only 2-3 arcmin across. Had WH seen this, he would most likely have put it into his 7th class; it certainly is not "coarsely scattered." Since neither of these matches WH's description, I'm more inclined to the identity of the two NGC objects. This would imply an error of 15 arcmin in WH's declination; the RA's are 12 seconds different, but both are still well within the central part of the cluster (which is about 20 arcmin across). Adding to my conviction that N6882 = N6885 is the fact that, of the seven objects found by WH on 10 Sept 1784, four have significant offsets in WH's positions (the three besides N6882 are: N6800, -1 minute off in RA; N7720, +40 seconds off in RA; and N7741, +4 arcmin off in Dec). WH was clearly not up to snuff that night, and the +15 arcmin error in the declination of N6882 fits right in with the other problems. Brent has more about 20th century cataloguers' notions on the identity of these two NGC numbers in his marvelous book with Steve Hynes, "Star Clusters." I've tried to stay with to WH's observations, though, spare as they are: they are the source of the two NGC numbers, so it is primarily to them that I looked for a solution. ===== NGC 6883. JH found this ill-defined cluster on 19 August 1828, giving it the position of a bright double star towards its southeastern edge. He says only, "A double * in a cluster of a good many stars 10 ... 13 m ...", so we have no idea of its perceived diameter. It is immersed in the Milky Way, so the field is rich. There is also whispy emission nebulosity here; its extent -- as well as that of the cluster itself -- seems to be defined by the absorption patches scattered across the field. The grouping that I've picked out more or less matches JH's description -- but I certainly wish he'd given us some idea of the cluster's size. ===== NGC 6884 = NGC 6766, which see. ===== NGC 6885 is probably also NGC 6882, which see. ===== NGC 6888 is part of a large oval-shaped nebula (Sharpless 105), illuminated by a strong stellar wind from its central Wolf-Rayet star, HD 192163. It is brightest along its northeastern side in the red DSS images, and along the northwestern side in blue DSS images. WH's place is supposed to apply to the double star immersed in the northern side of the nebula, but is about +20 seconds and -3 arcminutes off the star. Nevertheless, it is clear from his description in the sweep -- "8 m. Double. A faint milky ray south preceding joins to the double star; it is about 8' long and 1 1/2' broad" -- that the northwestern section is the part of the larger nebula that he saw. Bigourdan's position falls closer to the center of the oval. His descriptions of the field on two nights (he claims to have seen the nebula on only one of them) makes it clear that he did not see WH's object, just two stars near the revised place given in the IC2 notes. It looks like purest coincidence that this is near the center of the Wolf-Rayet nebula. See NGC 2359 for a bit more on these fascinating stars and their accompanying nebulae. ===== NGC 6892 is a group of four faint stars a bit southeast of d'A's position (from a single observation). His description fits, too -- d'A suspected the object to be resolvable, but was not able to do so with his 231X eyepiece. The summary description in the NGC is an accurate assessment of how the object must appear in a moderate sized telescope at fairly high power. Also see IC 1312 for a bit more on the field around this object. ===== NGC 6895 is described by WH as "A cluster of scattered stars, above 15 arcmin diameter, pretty rich and joining to the Milky Way, or a projecting part of it." This was the only deep sky object found by WH on 30 September 1790. At the beginning of the sweep, WH comments that "The heavens [are] extremely rich in S stars", and about 20 minutes after his observation of the cluster, he notes "The Aurora borealis is so bright that it eclipses the small stars in the field." When I went over the field before, I found "Centered close to his position (I put the center about 2 arcmin northeast) is a large cloud of stars, about 20 by 18 arcminutes, most likely a random clump in the Milky Way. Four SAO stars, and dozens of fainter stars are included." The cloud that I see now is about a minute of time west of WH's position and is more or less centered on HD 192983. The size I estimated earlier is about right, so I wonder if I too made an error of one minute in RA. Whatever happened, the current "cluster" fits WH's description nicely, and is just a minute of time off his position, a common digit error. So, I've taken this as WH's object, correcting my earlier position by a minute of time. ===== NGC 6896. There is only a double star at d'A's position. He has three accordant observations, and I do not see any mistake in the transcription into GC and NGC. However, d'A does mention an RA error in his first observation, but adds that the following two observations correct it. Whatever happened, the RA on all three nights is the same, "20 12 28". His descriptions on all three nights are pretty accordant: "A small accumulation [of stars], mixed with nebulosity", "A collection of three or four stars of 15th or 16th magnitude", and "[A] mass of stars". The only object near his position is the double star, so that is what I have taken as his object. ===== NGC 6901 = IC 5000. Seen only once by Marth, his position, correctly copied into the NGC, is off. This misled Bigourdan to measure a nearby star which he took to be N6901, and to rediscover Marth's galaxy. Thus, it got a second number, IC 5000 (which see). There is only one galaxy in the area, however, and Marth's and Bigourdan's descriptions are near enough that they undoubtedly refer to the same object. My supposition in RC2 that the galaxy is also = IC 1316 is, however, incorrect. IC 1316 (which see) was another of Bigourdan's discoveries, which he "observed" twice in different places on the same nights on which he also saw N6901. It is, in fact, non-existent. ===== NGC 6902 may also be IC 4948. See IC 4946 for the story. ===== NGC 6904 was described by JH as "A small straggling cluster of stars 10...11m. One of the 9m, whose place is taken." In spite of the inconsistency in the magnitude of the brightest star, JH's description and position is exactly correct. Wolfgang and I put the center of the cluster just southeast of the 9th magnitude star. Curiously, neither Reinmuth nor RNGC found this object. It is perfectly clear on the POSS1 and the DSS. It may not be a real cluster, but JH's object certainly exists on the sky. ===== NGC 6906 is not IC 5006, which see for the details. ===== NGC 6907. See NGC 6908 which is a superposed companion galaxy. ===== NGC 6908 is a companion of NGC 6907 superposed on its northeastern arm. Barry Madore first pointed this out to me after he examined an image from 2MASS -- N6908 is clearly a separate object interacting with N6907. It is overwhelmed on blue plates by N6907's arm, but is clearly seen not only in the 2MASS images, but on red plates as well. I suspect it would be just as clearly seen at the eyepiece of a large telescope. For more, see Barry and his colleague's paper in AJ 134, 314, 2007, "The Curious Case of NGC 6908". Unfortunately, they imply there that NGC 6908 was discovered by JH at the same time he found NGC 6907. It was, in fact, found by Albert Marth with Lassell's 48-inch reflector. Marth's original description reads "eF, vS, lE (close to h. 2076)." Dreyer shortened the parenthetical comment to read "h2076 p". This is just enough different that it may have thrown both RC1 and RNGC off the trail; both noted it as identical to N6908, which it is definitely not. ===== NGC 6914 is the northern-most of three similar nebulae, probably all reflection nebulae -- they show up best on the POSS1 blue plate. Interestingly, the area on the red plate is dominated by a large HII region, centered 20-30 arcmin to the northeast of N6914. Are the reflection nebulae part of the same system of gas and dust, or are they merely superposed along the line of sight? I suspect the former, but of course can't say for sure. ===== NGC 6922. When I looked at this many years ago, I interpreted it as a double galaxy, the primary object being the eastern spiral. The fainter western object has shown itself on the DSS2 images to be a bright knot, probably a superassociation similar to NGC 2070 = 30 Doradus in the LMC, or NGC 604 in NGC 598 = M 33. There is also a star superposed, brighter than either the knot or the nucleus, to the northwest of the nucleus. I've given positions for all of three objects. ===== NGC 6923 = IC 5004, which see. ===== NGC 6925 may also be IC 5015, which see. ===== NGC 6928 = IC 1325, which see. ===== NGC 6930 = IC 1326. See IC 1325 = NGC 6928. ===== NGC 6933 is usually taken as the double star centered a few arcsec northeast of Schultz's position. However, it is clear from Schultz's detailed note in his monograph that his object is actually the single southwestern star of the pair. He says of his object that it "... forms an elongated triangle with 2 stars north: star 9.5 mag preceding, star 10 mag following." His position, from 11 settings in RA and 8 in Dec on two different nights, agrees exactly with that measured on the DSS. The identification with the single star is not in doubt. Why did Schultz think it nebulous, though? His notes on the sky conditions give us clues. On 14 September 1865, his note reads, "Strong gale; images very unsteady," while on 26 August 1867, he has, "Aurora; sky first very fine, soon clouding." However, his description of the nebula itself reads, "Nebula is nearly stellar, its nebulous atmosphere scarcely perceptible; yet it looks quite differently from the surrounding stars, and has a peculiarly flickering light." By the time Schultz found this object, he was an experienced observer. His description reminds me of several of JH's descriptions of "nebulous atmospheres" around stars, stars which today show no sign at all of any accompanying nebulosity. ===== NGC 6938. The original observations of this "cluster" by WH and JH are confused enough that I've thrown in the towel and designated two different groupings as the NGC object. First, I note that the problems arise in the RA of the object; the NPD's and declinations are reasonably consistent. JH uses his own position in GC, and Dreyer follows along for NGC. Thus, NGC purists may wish to adopt JH's cluster as the NGC object. This is the scattered group of stars more or less at JH's position; he saw it twice, first in August 1827 and again just a year later. He was not impressed with the field either time. On the first night he only gives us an approximate NPD "68 23+-" and no RA with the comment, "Very poor. The large star taken but carelessly, as it offers no interest". The view on the second night enthused him only slightly more: He measured the RA of the star, but again only estimated the NPD as "68 20+-", and noted, "Place of the chief * 10 m of a coarse, poor, straggling, cluster." He also misidentified the cluster as "VII. 17" rather than "VIII. 17" as it properly is. On the modern sky survey red images, there is a small core about 5 x 3 arcminutes at the eastern end of a larger elongated grouping roughly 18 x 8 arcminutes; both are elongated in the same position angle (about 105-110 degrees). I give the approximate position of JH's "* 10 m" as a stand-in for more accurate positions for his cluster(s). On the blue POSS1, the small core is southeast of the center of a poorly-defined, nearly circular grouping of stars about 20 arcmin across. WH's published position is from a single observation on 18 July 1784. For publication, WH simply notes "A Cl of many L sc sts." In the sweep, he offers us a more detailed description than he published: "A cl of sc stars more than 20' in diam, not very crowded and containing a great many large ones." All this actually matches what we see on the sky at his published offset from 33 Vulpeclae, and is a different grouping of stars than JH saw 43 years later. However, there are only two stars in the sweep, 33 Vul and 2 Peg. Though the NPDs are consistent within the sweep, the RAs are not, with the suggested clock corrections being over 1.2 minutes different. If instead of using 33 Vul as the reference star, we adopt 2 Peg, the RA becomes just 20 seconds larger than JH's -- but the position lands well east of JH's cluster in a relatively barren zone. Even so, I have to regard WH's RA as uncertain. All in all, I'm just not sure which "cluster" actually is NGC 6938. This is why I offer you the choice. If anyone can come up with something that I've missed in this that might settle the matter, please let me know! ===== NGC 6940. Though WH noted this as having five observations, the position comes only from the discovery sighting on 17 July 1784 -- it is about a minute of time off in RA. I've not yet pulled the other later observations out of the sweeps, so can't yet comment on the other four positions. WH noted the cluster as "A v rich Cl of pS sc sts most of the same size. 20' d." ===== NGC 6950 looks like a good, if scattered, cluster on the POSS1 prints. It was seen by both WH and JH, and their positions and descriptions agree. Still, no one has included it in a cluster catalogue, and RNGC has it as not found. I suspect, though, that it could be easily seen with a six- or eight-inch telescope. ===== NGC 6951 = NGC 6952, which see. ===== NGC 6952 = NGC 6951. Credited to Coggia, N6952 is clearly N6951 with a 20 arcmin error in its declination. The description is exactly right, and the note of a 15th magnitude star close following is also correct. Denning was apparently the first to notice the identity, but the note in IC1 gives the impression that it is the position for N6951 that is wrong. Dreyer corrects this in the IC2 Notes, but does not give a source. I suspect it is Herbert Howe's micrometric position that Dreyer is indirectly citing. I've not yet traced Coggia. Dreyer gives no clues in the introduction to the NGC, nor do I recall running across Coggia's name before. Any information would be welcomed. ===== NGC 6953 may be the group of five or six faint stars noted by Howe and Bigourdan 17 seconds west of Swift's place; Dreyer copied the correction into the IC2 Notes. Since this group has some historical value, I've given the positions of the four brightest stars, presumeably the same four that Howe saw (he measured the position of only the western star). The position of the asterism that I've adopted is a simple mean of the positions of these four stars. Or Swift's object may be the similar grouping of 12-15 stars three minutes of time east of Swift's position, but this is further away and therefore perhaps less likely. There is no galaxy near Swift's position in any event. Swift found his object the same night as he found NGC 6951 (see NGC 6952 = NGC 6951 for another observation in the area), so we might expect that the same relative offsets might apply to both objects and hopefully lead us to the correct object for N6953. When we do this, however, we find that N6951 is east of Swift's position, while the group of 5-6 stars is west. So, I'm not even sure that the Howe/Bigourdan group is the correct identification. The number is flagged with a colon in the main table. ===== NGC 6959. This is a galaxy in the NGC 6962 group. Discovered by Lord Rosse or his observer (though incorrectly credited to Bigourdan in NGC), and measured by Bigourdan, the resulting accurate position pinpoints it exactly as object "a" in Lord Rosse's sketch. ===== NGC 6960, NGC 6974, NGC 6979, NGC 6992, NGC 6995, and IC 1340 are all part of the Veil Nebula, the wonderful supernova remnant in Cygnus. Four of these "objects" are so large and so bright, that the generally poor positions in the NGC don't matter. Only the positions for NGC 6974 and NGC 6979 (both of which see) are completely off their intended parts of the nebulosity. For NGC 6960, both WH and JH adopt the position of [kappa] Cygni. They describe the nebulosity as extending north and south of the star, with JH noting it as brighter to the north. He traces it a little less than half a degree north, and just about that far south. I've followed the Herschels in adopting the position of [kappa] Cyg as that for this part of the Veil. WH described his "front-view" (what we now call the Herschelian focus of a reflecting telescope) in a note to his observation of NGC 6960. He wrote that at the Newtonian focus the nebula extended one degree across the sky, while at the Herschelian focus, it stretched twice as far. He was clearly extremely pleased with the performance of his telescope in its "front-view" configuration, and used it for most of his observations. In the IC2 Notes for NGC 6992, Dreyer paraphrases a short note by Pickering (at the end of an article in ApJ 23, 257, 1906) which describes the appearance of the entire Veil as seen on a 24-inch Bruce plate of 4 hours exposure. Unfortunately, Pickering chose to not publish the photograph; it would have made an impressive plate in this early ApJ paper. ===== NGC 6961. The identification is not sure. Since it is credited to Lord Rosse in the NGC, Dreyer apparently intended that the number apply to one of the five brightest objects in the N6962 group. However, Dreyer's own measurement (with Lord Rosse's telescope) on 23 August 1876 points at one of the fainter galaxies in the area. In addition, he claims that this object was found by d'Arrest, though he gives d'Arrest credit for NGC 6966 in the NGC. Micrometric positions by Bigourdan and Kobold agree with the one by Dreyer, so I've taken the measured galaxy -- located between those labeled "a" (N6959) and "d" (N6962) in Lord Rosse's diagram -- as N6961, rather than any of the brighter galaxies to the north. The evidence is contradictory, however, so I can't insist that this interpretation is correct. ===== NGC 6962 is the brightest in a group of 8-10 galaxies in Aquarius. It and the second brightest galaxy here, NGC 6964, were found by William Herschel, and remeasured by John Herschel. Of all the galaxies in the group, these two are the only ones with absolutely positive identifications in the literature. The others (N6959, N6961, N6963, N6965, N6966, N6967, I5057, I5058, and I5061) have all been misidentified at one time or another. I think that I've sorted out the mess as well as possible, but the published record remains contradictory for a couple of the objects. See the separate discussions of the other NGC and IC numbers for more details. ===== NGC 6963 is a double star found by Bigourdan just northwest of NGC 6965 with which it is often confused. Bigourdan has two accurate measurements that point exactly to the double, and he also gives offsets to five neighboring objects in his remarks. All of these can be easily and positively identified with nearby stars or galaxies, so there is no question about this identification. ===== NGC 6964 is the second brightest galaxy in the N6962 group. See NGC 6962 for a general discussion. ===== NGC 6965 = IC 5058. This is the northern-most of the brighter galaxies in the NGC 6962 group. It was first found by Lord Rosse in 1857, and labeled "b" in his diagram. Unfortunately, it was apparently not seen again until Bigourdan went through the area a fifth time in 1891. Thus, the NGC position was apparently estimated by Dreyer from the diagram, and is not good enough to unambiguously identify the object. Bigourdan's entry under the number simply says "I can't see anything at the place indicated by Lord Rosse." He searched for it only once in August 1885. However, Bigourdan actually did see NGC 6965. It appears in his fourth list of new nebulae under the number Big 436, so received the number IC 5058. He has five measurements of it, so the position in the IC is good. That the object really is NGC 6965 could perhaps be questioned as we have only Lord Rosse's sketch to rely on. However, it is one of the brighter objects in the area, and the diagram is good enough to support the identification. ===== NGC 6966 is a double star. It is credited in the NGC to d'Arrest (incorrectly) and Bigourdan who provides an accurate position for it. d'A probably saw one of the brighter galaxies near NGC 6962 rather than this object. ===== NGC 6967. The eastern-most galaxy in the NGC 6962 group has been correctly identified by most catalogues except MCG and UGC which called it "NGC 6965." This error, combined with the correct identification in CGCG, led RC3 to include two entries for the galaxy, both, fortunately, under the correct number. See the RC3 errata paper for the correct data, which I summarize in the main table here. ===== NGC 6968 is not IC 5062, which see. Bigourdan saw and measured the two objects on the same night. ===== NGC 6973 and NGC 6980 are both stars near the NGC 6976/6977/6978 triplet. Bigourdan thought the stars slightly nebulous, so listed them among his "novae." His positions are excellent and identify the stars exactly. ===== NGC 6974 was found by the fourth earl of Rosse on 20 August 1873, and is probably part of the Veil Nebula (see N6960 for general comments on this huge supernova remnant). However, LdR's nominal position for it falls in a pretty empty patch of sky inside the main loop, well away from any bright nebulosity. His description in full reads, "Nebulous *, neby cE pf, RA = 20h 45.5m, NPD = 59d 50'+-." Dreyer assumed the equinox of the position to be the epoch, and precessed it to 1860 for the NGC entry. Searching in the area of the Veil suggests a couple of nebulous patches that might be LdR's nebula. One of these is IC 1340, actually found in September 1866 by Truman Safford and given in the NGC Appendix where it is number 51 in Safford's list. The second is a few arcminutes to the northeast. Either of these might match LdR's description, if not his position. RNGC has a position (20 50.8, +31 52; J2000) about 1.2 degrees north of LdR's nominal place. This, too, lands in a pretty empty patch of sky, but five or six arcminutes to the southeast are some brighter patches of nebulosity. However, they have no obvious star associated with them, and are not obviously extended in any particular direction, let alone east-west. So, even though Wolfgang Steinicke also chooses this as LdR's object, I've marked the identification questionable. Another, less likely, possibility is that N6974 is one of the 20 or so observations of NGC 6960 made with the 72-inch reflector. In this case, the position error would be in RA (5 minutes too large), and the description would have to read "cE ns." The star would be Kappa Cygni which JH took for the position of NGC 6960. I offer this as just a possibility, however, and do not even list it in the position table. Finally, I should mention that another NGC problem due to the 4th earl, NGC 4912/13/16 (which see), has a solution that also involves a large position error. So, while these suggestions for NGC 6974 may seem to be plucked off the sky at relatively large distances from LdR's nominal position, they may not be all that unusual. All in all, I am inclined to go with IC 1340 or its companion. This is reflected in the number of question marks on each object listed in the position table. ===== NGC 6975 = NGC 6976. Even Bigourdan, who "found" NGC 6975, admits that it is identical to N6976. Here is a free translation of his comment: "Does not exist. Because of an error of 180 degrees in the position angle estimate, Big 88 (= N6975) was thought to be new. It is identical to N6976." The RNGC is wrong. RC3 is also. ===== NGC 6976 = NGC 6975, which see. ===== NGC 6977. See NGC 6973. ===== NGC 6978. See NGC 6973. ===== NGC 6979 is a part of the Veil Nebula. However, WH's position for it is not particularly good, and points to a very faint piece of the supernova remnant. His description, from the sweep, reads, "F, S, crookedly E, r". Dreyer has a note in the Scientific Papers: "Birr Castle, three times not found, once eF nebulosity seen. Bigourdan, stellar, neb?" The one time that the nebula was seen was on 16 August 1873 by Ralph Copeland. He has this to say, "eF neby, f s end are 4 F sts forming a S arc. * 9.5m Pos 226.2 [deg], Dist. 216.9 [arcsec]" (this note is the source of the comment in the NGC "sev F sts f nr"). In principle, this could help us sort out which bit of the Veil Copeland was looking at. Unfortunately, there are no stars as bright as V = 9.5 in the area, but there are several at around 10-10.5. One, GSC 02691-00200, is at 20 50 31.27, +31 57 18.5 (J2000), about the distance Copeland measured from the patch of nebulosity usually taken as NGC 6979. There are also four stars to the southwest forming more of a line than an arc, but this is all I can find within about 10 arcminutes of WH's position. (For the record, the four stars are at 20 50 45.0, +32 00 26; 20 50 44.3, +31 59 30; 20 50 45.6, +31 58 46; and 20 50 46.2, +31 58 12; all for J2000.) I, of course, don't know that these stars are the ones noted by Copeland, but they more or less match his comment. All this leads us 7-8 arcmin to the southwest of WH's position where we find a brighter piece of the Veil that WH might have seen. Given nothing else obvious in the area, I've taken this as NGC 6979 -- but with a colon. See NGC 6960 for more on the Veil. ===== NGC 6980 is a star. See NGC 6973. ===== NGC 6985. RC3 follows Skiff in placing this galaxy at 20 42 19.1 -11 17 14. This is correct, and my earlier "correction" was itself incorrect by one minute. Sorry about that (sigh). ===== NGC 6989 is listed as non-existent in RNGC. However, it seems to be a grouping in the northern reaches of the North America Nebula looking pretty much as WH saw it, "A large cluster of pretty small stars of several sizes." I put the position within a minute or two of WH's position, and make the diameter seven or eight arcminutes. This may not, however, be a real cluster, but simply a random group of stars in the rich Milky Way field. And it may not be the object that WH saw. JH looked for his father's cluster, VIII 82, twice, once saying only "Viewed. A mere clustering portion of the Milky Way," without determining a position for it. The second night, he makes it a "Coarse, poor, pretty large cluster; stars small." He determined a position for it then, but it is 2 minutes, 15 seconds of time east, and 12.5 arcmin north of his father's position. So, when it came time to prepare the GC, he made two separate clusters out of the observations he had at hand. Since there are "clustering portions of the Milky Way" at both positions, I've kept JH's separate entries as they appear in GC and NGC. The other entry is NGC 6996, which see. NGC 6997 is a third cluster, probably a real one, in the North America Nebula. See its discussion for even more information. ===== NGC 6991. WH and JH saw two different clusters; JH mistakenly included them in GC under a single number. Dreyer, of course, followed GC for the NGC. I've included both in the table, so you get to choose which one you want. Here are the stories to help you along: In the sweep, WH describes his object as "6 m not in Fl[amsteed]. A L star surrounded with many considerable stars, forming a brilliant though much sc cluster; the star 6 m is not in the center, but towards the following side." His position is a couple of arcmin south of the bright star, but there is no mistaking the group that he saw. There is also some nebulosity on the preceding side of the cluster, but it is faint enough that neither of the Herschels saw it. Unfortunately, WH gives us no further information about the size of the cluster he found. This could be important; more below. JH has two observations of his cluster, which is smaller, fainter, perhaps a bit richer, and southwest of his father's. The first from 14 September 1829, reads, "A star 11 m. The last of that magnitude in an irregular triangular cluster 6' diameter; poor and straggling." His second, from his next sweep, says simply, "A star 9 m; the largest of a cluster." His positions are significantly different, but point pretty accurately to the stars he mentions. The 11th magnitude star is nearer the east side of the cluster, while the 9th magnitude star is at the southwest apex of his cluster. That cluster, well-defined by JH, is clearly not the one that his father found. Choose one if you wish. I'll take both. ----- In October of 2005, I had the following email from Tony Flanders at Sky and Telescope: Sue French and I have been discussing NGC 6991, which she described in the October 2005 issue of Sky & Telescope (page 71). As you note on the NGC/IC website and she notes in her article, this could refer to either of two clusters, one discovered by William Herschel and one by John Herschel. There's not much doubt about JH's cluster. But I believe that the NGC/IC website has mis-identified WH's cluster. The notes (both yours and Steve Gottlieb's), together with the position and size data and the illustration at the top of the "Public Database" page, imply that WH's cluster is the concentration of stars in and around the nebulosity IC 5076. But it's hard to believe that this tiny collection of faint stars (illustrated on page 72 of Sue's article) would have been described by WH as "a brilliant scattered cluster." Sue and I both believe that Brent Archinal identified WH's cluster correctly in "Star Clusters" (pages 106 and 189) as a much larger group, about 25' in diameter, centered around 20:54.9, +47:25. As usual, it's hard to say exactly which stars are in the group, but I'm attaching a sketch of Sue's showing the "cyclops" that she describes in her article. I replied: You folks could well be right. But given the size of WH's field -- 15 arcmin -- and the magnifcation he used while sweeping -- 157X -- I think his object is more likely to be the more compact 12 arcmin x 8 arcmin cluster that is embedded in the nebulosity. My reading of his description seems to indicate this as the probable object, too (but you knew that already ... :-) However, since WH gives us no indication of size (this may also have been what threw JH off), your argument has considerable merit. If you don't mind, I'd like to quote your note above in my notes and offer it as a third choice for the NGC object. This may be one of those cases where we won't be able to reach a definite conclusion, but both interpretations should certainly be aired. Then, observers can decide for themselves. Checking Brent's note in Star Clusters, I find that he's quite adamant about his interpretation. As you might have gathered, I'm rather doubtful. So, the position Brent gives is in the table, but with a question mark on the identity. See also NGC 7011 where JH's object here provides some support for the identification of the later cluster. ===== NGC 6992 is part of the Veil Nebula. Given its size, WH's and JH's positions are surprisingly accordant. The position I've adopted is close to JH's. Reading WH's published description, I have to wonder if he intended to include NGC 6960 in his V.14 (i.e. the 14th nebula in his list of "Large Nebulae"): "Branching nebulosity, extending in RA near 1 1/2 deg., and in PD 52'. The f[ollowing] part divides into several streams uniting again towards the s." He did pick up NGC 6960 two nights later as a separate nebula, but the size in RA that he assigned to NGC 6992 is suggestive that he saw the whole thing on that first night in September 1784. See NGC 6960 for further discussion. ===== NGC 6993 may be ESO 529-G011. Found by Leavenworth in the first seasons of observing with the 26-inch at Leander McCormick, its nominal position is particularly bad -- nearly 6 minutes of time and 12 arcmin off if the identity with the ESO galaxy is correct. Leavenworth's sketch more or less supports this notion, with the stars shown roughly in their right places with respect to the galaxy. Both the galaxy and the sketch also support his description of a small, bright nucleus surrounded by a fainter envelope. ===== NGC 6994 = M 73 is an asterism of four fairly bright stars. The Hipparcos data suggest that they are at different distances, so this is one of THE prototypical asterisms. ===== NGC 6995 is part of the Veil Nebula. The position I've chosen is more or less for the middle of the nebulous complex shown in JH's sketch, published as Figure 82 in his 1833 Slough Catalogue. He probably saw the knot we now call IC 1340 (which see) as well. Though it is off the southwest side of the sketch, the entire panel of the figure is filled with nebulosity, and I'm pretty sure that JH could have traced the nebula well beyond the boundaries he chose to include in his drawing. See NGC 6960 for more discussion of the Veil. ===== NGC 6996. This is a loose cluster, or rich region of the Milky Way, in the northern part of the North America Nebula. It has often been confused with NGC 6997 (which see) in the cluster catalogues, but the position from JH's single observation seems to be pretty good. However, JH was actually looking for his father's VIII 82, which eventually entered the catalogues as NGC 6989 (which see). As I note there, the positions that JH had when he was pulling together the GC are far enough apart that he made two different clusters out of the observations. I (1970, Griffith Observer) and Brent Archinal (1993, "non-existent" RNGC clusters monograph) present observations and further discussions of these objects. ===== NGC 6997 is a real cluster immersed in the "East Coast" part of the North America Nebula. Several of the cluster catalogues have confused it with NGC 6996, but the GC/NGC position, from a single observation by WH, is pretty good. As with NGC 6996, I (1970) and Brent (1993) have further discussions and observations. Reinmuth and Bigourdan pretty much agree with these assessments of the three clusters (N6989, N6996, and N6997) involved in the North America Nebula. And they wrote their descriptions long before Brent and I did, independently, and from different observing techniques. ===== NGC 7000, the North America Nebula. WH saw only a small part of the brightest, southern-most portion of this huge emission region, "Central America." His published description reads "vL diffused nebulosity, bM. 7 or 8' l[ong], 6' b[road], and loosing itself vg and imperceptibly." In the sweep from 24 October 1786, we see "vL diffused nebulosity plainly visible, bM; 7 or 8' l, 6' b, and loosing itself gradually." The offsets are those published, and CH's reduced position has no errors. Interestingly, WH goes on just a minute later in the sweep to write, "All this time suspected diffused nebulosity throughout the whole breadth of the sweep. RA from 20 52 09 to 20 55 46, PD from 45 35 to 48 38." This corresponds to approximate limits of 20 59 22 to 21 03 02 and +42 09 to +45 12 for J2000 which covers the eastern half of the North America Nebula and some considerably fainter nebulosity extending on south. This is part of the 44th entry in WH's list of "extensive, diffused nebulosity" which he published in 1811 (See Phil. Trans. 101, 269). While many of these areas have been shown as illusory (see e.g. A. Latusseck, JAHH 11, 235, 2008 and JAD 14, No. 4, 2008), some -- including this one -- are not. JH was uncertain if his father had in fact seen the same nebulosity as he did, as WH's position is nearly a degree south of his own (I put the approximate center even further north than JH did). JH's description makes it clear why he put a question mark on his father's number in his 1833 list (the query persists through the GC to the NGC itself): "An immense nebulosity all around this place, but too ill defined to fix the limits. RA that of V 37, from working list, not being settled by the obs." This raises a couple of minor mysteries about this nebula. WH claims only one observation of it in his published catalogue, as does JH in his. Yet, in GC, JH has the total number of observations by himself and his father as "3." Even though JH claims that his RA is from the working list (i.e. his father's observation), the RA he quotes is nearly a minute of time larger than WH's published RA. The RA that JH adopts for GC is not quite a mean of the two values, but is closer to WH's original. I wonder if WH had another observation that he somehow overlooked when it came time for publication. Wherever JH got his position, it is more or less appropriate for the entire nebula that we now call the North America Nebula, so I've adopted a position pretty close to it for NGC 7000. I have, however, given a separate position for the bright section of it that WH saw. ===== NGC 7005, found by d'Arrest near M 73, is nothing more than three 10th- magnitude stars, with a handful of fainter ones scattered around. D'Arrest questions whether there is nebulosity accompanying the stars -- there isn't, at least on the sky survey plate scanned for the DSS. This is one of d'A's few "novae" that is not included in his 1867 monograph, instead appearing only in AN 997 (1855). Dreyer included it in his GC Supplement. The position I've adopted is a simple mean of the seven brightest stars. Still, the stars are isolated enough from their surroundings that they might be worth a look now and then. ===== NGC 7010 = IC 5082. John Herschel's declination is 10 arcmin too far south. Howe pointed this out, and his correct position was copied into the IC2 notes by Dreyer. At about the same time, Bigourdan scanned the field looking for N7010. The object which he points to as the NGC object is a star (GSC 05779-00648). He did rediscover the galaxy, however, and measured the correct position for it on three different nights. Dreyer unfortunately failed to notice that Bigourdan's position and Howe's for N7010 are identical to within the mutual errors. So, he listed Bigourdan's object as IC 5082. ===== NGC 7011. My original thought on JH's "cluster" reads as follows: NGC 7011 is most likely the V-shaped group of about 15 stars 2-3 arcmin northwest of JH's position. While he gives no more information than a position and the brief non-description, "A cluster. No further description," the group is very eye-catching on the DSS. There are a few other stars scattered around it that might add to its "eye appeal" during a sweep. Wolfgang also picked this same group when he looked at the field. So, I've adopted the identification. However, after correspondence with Steve Waldee in 2013, I'm no longer sure about this -- these stars are quite faint, and may have been seen by JH as part of the random background. Steve has several candidates for the cluster, based on his observations with his 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain. He also quotes Steve Gottlieb's observation with a 17.5-inch reflector. All this is in an entertaining web page at http://freescruz.com/~4cygni/haggisizing/astro/NGC7011-matter.htm which I recommend for the interested observer. For the record, here are the positions (J2000.0 for the SAO stars noted) and some brief remarks on the other candidates that Steve has singled out: 21 04 58, +47 08.8 "SAO 50429 ... & NW. A f group of *s (12-13 mag) stretching out about 2' x 3' with 50429 in SW end. Seems like a 'cluster' ..." 21 06 03, +47 10.4 "... a grouping of *s involving SAO 50450 -- looks like 2 sm r clumps of *s side-by-side, with 9th mag *, maybe 4' x 2'." 21 03 51, +47 06.4 "... definitely looks like a CL! 'Mini Cygnus' -- kite shaped asterism of 5 *s, SAO 50410 points to the SE of grp. Peppering of much f'er *s to N, NW -- a streamer of about 8 *s, 13th m, in a straight line, not evenly spaced, plus a few other f'er ones. It looks like an oddly shaped OCL." Steve Gottlieb's candidate: 21 02 34, +47 32.7 "... a fairly bright scattered group located to the SE of mag 7.5 SAO 50376. This group is about 5' in length and elongated NW-SE. Near the center is the brightest star (mag 10) at [the position given]. Finally, yet another candidate from Jaakko Saloranta, a long-time correspondent of Steve Waldee's: 20 59 49, +47 31.3 "There was a little more obvious grouping of stars north of 4th magnitude 59 Cygni ... but it is unlikely this is what John Herschel noted." In all of these, I was struck by the presence of a brighter star with considerably fainter ones nearby. In reply to Steve Waldee's query about Jaakko's observation, I wrote: My thinking about 59 Cyg, so much brighter than any other star in the area, is that if it were involved in JH's cluster, he would have mentioned it specifically, saying something like "A star 4.7 m (59 Cygni) with a few others much fainter scattered around ..." He's made this sort of notation with many other clusters in his catalogues, including the two in Sweep 210 that bracket NGC 7011: NGC 6991 = h2091: "A star 9 m; the largest of a cluster" and NGC 7039 = h2107: "A star 6.7 m situated just beyond the nf edge of a L, p rich cluster ..." (Notice in both cases that he gives the position of the star, not the cluster itself.) 59 Cyg is so outstanding that I think he would have done the same with it, too, if it were involved with his [NGC 7011] cluster. I think if JH had picked up any of the other candidates that Steve mentions, he would also have made a comment about the brighter stars near them. Given all of this, it's obvious that question marks have to go on the object in the big table. While I continue to have a slight preference for the small V-shaped asterism -- it has the advantage of being close to JH's position -- the visual observers' work has convinced me that the story is not yet settled. This led me to dig into the Herschel Archive. NGC 7011 is object number 15 in Sweep 210 on 19 Sept 1829. The entry for that number has JH's usual information needed to find the position, then a "VII" which I presume is an object class, in this case "Pretty much compressed clusters of large or small stars", then a brief description "a sm[?] cl of vS *s." All of this is in pretty scratchy handwriting not very well photocopied on the left page of the observing log booklet. The right page carries over the object number and shows (in much darker handwriting) the reduced position for 1830 that was copied into the 1833 Observations paper (20 56 06.5, 43 20 50; note NPD, not declination). There is also a comment on the right page, "A Horrid Set of Zeros, but the [two indecipherable words] stars [another scribbled short -- abbreviated? -- word or letter] agree well, [symbol for "therefore"] all right." This suggests a possible larger uncertainty in the positions than JH usually gives us. However, five other clusters in the same sweep (NGC 6991, 7039, 7062, 7071, and 7209) have modern positions that differ insignificantly from JH's. So, there is apparently no large systematic error in the position of NGC 7011. Having said all of that, I should also note that the left page of JH's log is pretty well packed full of partially indecipherable scribbles. I'm sure JH could make out this handwriting (probably by his observing assistant John Stone), but until I have a lot more experience with it, anything I read has to be taken cautiously. It may also be that the comments and descriptions are not aligned across the page with the information for the positions; though in this case, I believe they are. In any event, there is the possibility that the description for NGC 7011 can be expanded a bit. If "A small cluster of very small stars" does indeed apply to NGC 7011, then my original identification with the V-shaped asterism might be correct after all. It fits the description perfectly. However, the queries remain in place. ===== NGC 7012 is the brightest galaxy in a compact group of at least seven obvious members; there are other fainter galaxies in the area that are probably also associated. I've listed positions for the seven brightest galaxies. ===== NGC 7020 = NGC 7021, which see. ===== NGC 7021 = NGC 7020. JH has made a simple error of 30 arcmin in his NPD in CGH. Once that is corrected, the identity is clinched by the bright star about 10 arcmin preceding the galaxy. In his observation of N7021 (in an earlier sweep than the one in which he found N7020), JH notes "... has a * 7.8m 10 arcmin prec, exactly in the parallel." Both Stewart and Frost noticed on Harvard plates taken at Arequipa that NGC 7021 was not in its position, but neither apparently made the connection with NGC 7020. Both SGC and ESO identify the correct galaxy, however. The galaxy itself is one of the most strangely beautiful ringed galaxies in the sky. A complete, though faint, outer ring encloses a hexagonal inner ring which is connected by "spokes" to a peculiar quasi-barlike inner structure. The inner ring also has bright knots at the end intersections of the hexagonal segments where ansae or nubs would be found in a normal early-type barred and ringed galaxy. See Ron Buta's comments about this galaxy in "The de Vaucouleurs Atlas of Galaxies" for more information. ===== NGC 7023 is an impressive diffuse nebula surrounding HD 200775 in Cygnus, made more so by the obscuring dark cloud in turn surrounding it and the star. It makes a fine sight in a six-inch which will not see deeply enough to pick up what faint stars there are scattered around the nebula -- it appears to stand alone in a large void in the sky. There is no difficulty with the identification, though I am curious as to why JH did not pick it up. The NGC entry is based on a single observation by his father. Perhaps JH did not sweep across this patch of sky. I've adopted the position of the star as that for the NGC object. ===== NGC 7024. Even though RNGC claims non-existence for this cluster, it is a very nice object of about 30 stars close to the NGC position. The diameter on the DSS is about 8' x 8', and the brightest stars are around 11th magnitude, not far off JH's estimate of 10. ----- Checking JH's observations, I find two not very accordant positions in his 1833 list, the first from Sweep 180 on 18 Sept 1828, the second from Sweep 183 on 1 Oct 1828. JH's second observation agrees with the modern positions, and is the one he adopted for the GC, and Dreyer for the NGC. There is nothing obvious at JH's first RA. Is it possible that the RA of JH's first observation simply carries an error of plus one minute of time? This is looks likely as the clock entries in the sweep for object number 5, the cluster, and number 7 (a double star; number 6 is an entry for one of his father's objects "looked for not found") read "21 02 20" and "21 02 10" respectively. Even given that the fifth was taken at wire 2 and the seventh leaving the field (the difference between the wire and the edge at +41 degrees is 36.7 seconds in RA), I still find it odd that the later clock reading precedes the earlier in the sweep. So, the reduced RA of the cluster appears to be a minute of time too large in this sweep, and the most obvious error is that the clock reading is also one minute of time too large. Whatever happened, JH chose the position that most closely agreed with his father's. That insured that we can be certain about what the Herschel's were seeing on the sky in this position. ===== NGC 7025. See NGC 7028. ===== NGC 7028. This may be lost. There is certainly no nebula near Marth's place, even though he claims to have verified the object. The closest candidate object is a triple star well to the southwest. Since there is no large systematic offset (in Marth's positions from the modern positions) for the other four objects that he found the same night (N7025, N7033, N7034, and N7056), I don't believe that the triple is Marth's object. A possible candidate is CGCG 448-039. It matches Marth's scanty description (very faint, small, very little extended), and the declination is the same, but the RA is over 2.5 minutes of time off. However, the large non-digit difference makes the identity difficult to accept, so I've put a question mark on it in the main table. ----- Looking at this again in April 2016, I'm even less convinced than before that CGCG 448-039 is Marth's object. There are three other galaxies, all at Marth's RA (within his usual uncertainty), two of which are extended. However, looking at the field, I think that the triple star I noted earlier is also a good candidate, so I have put it into the position table. The four galaxies are there, too. Here are some notes on them: CGCG 448-039 -- As I noted earlier, this matches Marth's description and declination pretty well, but is 2.5 minutes of time off his RA. CGCG 449-004 -- This, too, would match Marth's description and the RA matches. But the Dec is about 40 arcminutes south of the nominal Dec. CGCG 449-005 -- This is the brighter of a pair with 449-006. Again, the RA fits, but the Dec is off by 17 arcminutes, and the galaxy is very nearly exactly round. CGCG 449-006 -- Here is another extended galaxy at more or less the right RA. However, the Dec is again off by about 17 arcminutes and the galaxy is fainter than its close companion 449-005; it has a lower mean surface brightness as well. So, if this Marth's object, why did he not pick up the brighter companion? In the end, I see no really good candidates for this NGC entry. I slightly favor the triple star, but it might be too bright to be mistaken for a nebula at the eyepiece of a 48-inch reflector. Visual examination is needed. ===== NGC 7031. This is probably a small cluster of fairly bright stars. It was first seen by WH in September 1788 who called it "A cluster of coarsely scattered large stars, not rich, 6' diameter." JH followed on about 40 years later, saying only "A curious scattered cluster of triple stars; RA taken from working list." This second note is curious in itself as the "working list" RA is 45 seconds of time on east of WH's reduced position. But the cluster is so clear from JH comment about triple stars that there can be no mistaking it. It may actually be larger than WH's (and my) estimate of about 6 arcminutes, extending west for about 10 or 12 arcminutes from the group of triples. There appears to be a faint haze of nebulosity over this extended cluster, but the eastern edge is clearly defined by patches of dark nebulosity. This entire extended "cluster" may simply be a rich patch of stars seen through a clear spot in the clouds, so I'm reluctant to say that it really is a cluster. For the record, this 14' x 11' patch is centered at 21 06 39, +50 52.4 (J2000). In any event, this extended star cloud is not the cluster that the Herschels found. The position I've adopted applies to the "cluster of triple stars" that JH noted. ===== NGC 7033. See NGC 7028. ===== NGC 7034. See NGC 7028. ===== NGC 7035. This number probably includes both galaxies in the pair. Muller has the diameter as 0.5 arcmin and calls his object "irregularly round". This sort of description and size would fit the bright inner parts of the galaxies pretty well. But it could possibly just apply to the brighter, larger western galaxy. We need an eyepiece evaluation of the galaxies. Perhaps Muller did see just one. Lacking firm evidence of this, however, I'm assigning the NGC number to both galaxies. ===== NGC 7036. Claimed "non-existent" in RNGC, this cluster is clearly seen in DSS images and the POSS1 prints. I put the center about 4 arcmin south of JH's position, but otherwise it matches JH's brief description: "A scattered cluster of small stars." There are about 20 stars in the cluster scattered over an area of about 8 arcmin by 5 arcmin. ------ Looking at this again in April 2016, I see that the cluster is superposed on a group of galaxies. Though they are quite faint, I've put three of them into the position table. ===== NGC 7037. JH describes this cluster as "... not very rich; irregular figure, 8' l[ong], 5' br[oad]; stars 11 ... 15 m." This is just the sort of cluster that exists at his position. There is also a more compact "core" of stars a couple of minutes to the northeast (I put this core at 21 10 59, +33 46.1 for J2000) that JH does not mention. In any case, JH's cluster is clear on the DSS. RNGC nevertheless has it as non-existent. ===== NGC 7039 is a very large cluster about 20 arcmin long and 7 arcmin wide according to JH's notes; the Sky Survey images confirm this. Curiously, JH says it is "Extended from nf to sp." While this is correct, it struck me as a peculiar way to note the elongation, so I had this called a "simple error" in a previous edition of these notes. That, too, now strikes me as peculiar as there is really no error involved, just an unusual way of expressing the elongation. The position that JH gives is for HD 201935 = SAO 50547 on the northeastern edge of the cluster. On POSS1, DSS, and GSC, there are two overlapping concentrations of stars within the cluster. The position in the main table is for a point midway between the centers of these concentrations. See also NGC 7011 for another small mystery cluster found in the same sweep. ===== NGC 7040. The faint galaxy near Harrington's position does not match Dreyer's summarized description "eF, vL, mE ns," so I was originally inclined to believe that Harrington might have seen another object. Thanks to Brian Skiff, I have recently seen the original note in AN 2479. It reads in full, "New Nebula, by M. W. Harringtion, Director of the Observatory, Ann Arbor, Mich. I wish to put on record a nebula which I found Aug. 18th of this year and which I believe to be new. Its position is RA. 21h 7m 34s Decl. N. 8d 25m. It is 67s preceding and 12' north of Argelander 8d 4632. It is so faint that I can only see it after resting my eyes in the dark a few moments. It is about 3' long by half that in bredth and is extended nearly north and south, the northern end preceding a little. Ann Arbor 1882 Oct. 31." This makes it clear that Harrington really did see the galaxy. The extension along the north-northwest/south-southeast direction is almost certainly due to the line of faint stars on the southern side of the galaxy. For the record, Harrington overstates the galaxy's size -- as I noted, he must have included the line of stars to the south. However, his the offsets (for J2000.0) from the BD star are 62.2 seconds and 12 arcmin 20 arcsec, close to his estimates. ===== NGC 7042. See NGC 7043. ===== NGC 7043 is very close to Marth's place northeast of NGC 7042. Reinmuth, however, lists N7043 as "Not found." I found, though, that he has the note in parentheses which indicates that the only plate available to him showing the object was less than optimal in some respect -- underexposed, or the object was near the edge of the plate, or perhaps covered by a defect, etc. His description of N7042, considerably brighter and including the note "difficult," is also in parentheses, so I am not surprised that N7043 did not show up on the plate. ===== NGC 7045 is a triple star (I had called it a "double" earlier, but it is clearly triple in the DSS2 and SDSS images). JH says of it "eF; field feebly illuminated by moon, but I remained satisfied of its reality." He has only this single observation of it in Sweep 79. His position is only 30 arcsec north of the triplet, so the identification is pretty certain. There is another star about 12 arcseconds west of the line of three that may have added to the illusion of nebulosity here. Spitaler first identified the object as a double; the southern two stars were probably blended in his eyepiece. Dreyer noted in the NGC that d'A failed to find the object on two nights. The stars are either too faint for his telescope, or he dismissed them as being obviously stellar. A curiosity: Bigourdan has six observations of the asterism on two different nights, and apparently thought it nebulous on both nights. He used it as the comparison object for his estimated positions for IC 5097 and IC 5098 (both of which see). ===== NGC 7048. There are several stars and faint knots "in" the interior of this planetary. Most of the stars are only optical companions along our line of sight to the nebula. One, however -- clearly seen on the DSS2B image and no other -- is the central star. I've adopted the position of this star for that of the nebula itself. Just east of this on the DSS2R image is a tight group of faint knots; the star has disappeared from this R-band image. ===== NGC 7050 is another of RNGC's "nonexistent" clusters. However, close to JH's position, there is a group of about 15 12th to 15th magnitude stars scattered over an area about 5 arcmin by 2 arcmin. Even though JH left no description for his cluster, the group stands out from the field well enough that it is almost certainly the sparce swarm of stars that he saw. There are about half a dozen stars in a line roughly 3 arcminutes to the south that could have enhanced the impression of the cluster. Finally, Wolfgang has taken just the eastern, more populous part of the cluster as JH's object. This is clearly a possibility, so I've given it a separate entry in the position table. ===== NGC 7054. Here is what I wrote about the object in August of 2000: NGC 7054 is another lost object. Found by Stephan, its position is the same in both the AN and MNRAS lists in which it appears. The comparison star also has the same position in both lists; that position is about an arcsecond off the GSC position. But no nebulosity or asterism exists at Stephan's position, or at the positions implied by sign errors in the offset. Furthermore, a search of the POSS1 prints shows no nearby star with an obvious nebula at the correct offset. Jim Caplan finds no trace of NGC 7054 in Esmiol's 1916 monograph, so this object has to be listed simply as "not found." Since that time, two things have happened. First, I have obtained a complete copy of Esmiol's monograph in which he reduces all of Stephan's data (this is available on the web now, thanks to ADS and Jim Caplan's interest in the matter). Second, Jeff Corder went over the nominal area with his 17.5-inch reflector, searching for something that might be Stephan's object. He wrote in July 2009 that he had found a double star at 21 20 29.0, +39 12 58 (J2000.0) that might fit Stephan's description. However, it certainly does not fit the micrometric position. There is no comparison star 1m 45.05s west, 22.1 arcsec north, so this cannot be Stephan's object. This led me back to Esmiol's monograph. There I found an "Anon" object at +1m 45.08s, -0' 22.1" from a star which he called "12518 AG Camb. Eng." (m = 9.1), measured on 31 August 1872. This is just the offset implied from Stephan's positions published in his 4th list in 1873, so must be the observation that came to be called NGC 7054. But reducing this with respect to a modern position for the "correct" comparison star again led to an empty field ... But about 25 seconds on east and 2.8 arcmin south, is NGC 7080. Is there perhaps a star at the right offsets from this galaxy? Indeed there is: BD +26 4171. Using a modern position for this with Stephan's micrometric measurements gives a position within 4-5 arcsec of the modern position for NGC 7080. So, NGC 7054 turns out to be a duplicate pre-discovery (31 August 1872) observation of N7080 with not one, but two misidentified comparison stars. See UGC 3840 in the "notngc" files for more on Stephan's observations. ===== NGC 7056 = IC 1382, which see. Also see NGC 7028. ===== NGC 7058. There is nothing at JH's position, but just one minute of time to the east is a clump of about a dozen stars that matches his description. All he has to say of this object is, "The chief star of a coarse, poor cluster." The brightest star in this 5 arcmin by 3 arcmin clump is SAO 33352; this may be the one that JH measured. Since I don't see another reasonable candidate in the area, I'm taking this as his cluster. However, I would suggest that a more thorough search at reasonable digit offsets may be called for. ----- Examining the sweep (number 207 on 8 Sept 1829), I see that JH has a note, "A very odd break in the RA between two almost contiguous stars." It's not clear to me which two stars he's referring to -- there are several in the sweep around the time he picked up this cluster. However, the fact that he saw a problem suggests that the idea of a one minute error in his RA is a reasonable suggestion. So, I am going to stick with the idea for now. ===== NGC 7062. See NGC 7011. ===== NGC 7063. JH describes this object, seen only in one sweep on 19 August 1828, as "A poor cluster, stars 10 m." His position falls within an oblong clump of stars roughly 8 arcmin by 3 arcmin, though it seems to be concentration in a somewhat larger (11 arcmin by 8 arcmin) group centered about 2.5 arcminutes to the southwest. Given the paucity of the description, and JH's usual position uncertainties, either group could be his object. However, the clump of stars to the northwest is much more obvious on the DSS, so I am taking this as JH's object. ===== NGC 7065. Steve Gottlieb has written to me about several objects during the winter and spring of 2011 (see e.g. NGC 218, NGC 2128, NGC 5744); this is one. As with a couple of the others, I can do no better than quote his note (with his permission, of course): [Concerning] N7065, this galaxy was discovered by Marth (m 440) on 3 Aug 1864 (credited in the NGC), and independently found [later] by both d'Arrest on 24 Aug 1865, and Stephan on 22 Sep 1876 ([only d'A] credited by Dreyer). Their positions for 2000 are 21 26 58 -07 02 Marth 21 26 45 -07 00.1 d'Arrest 21 26 43.3 -06 59 46 Stephan 21 26 42.9 -06 59 48 Esmiol's corrected position [from Stephan's observations] These suggest that while d'Arrest and Stephan observed MCG -01-54-017, Marth's entry possibly refers to NGC 7065A = MCG -01-54-018, a larger, lower surface brightness companion 4' SE. Both of the MCG galaxies were visible in my 17.5" and pretty similar in terms of visibility. So, it's very possible that both of these galaxies should have received NGC numbers. Now the question becomes which should be tagged as the historical N7065? Dreyer notes that Marth's RA for the NGC entry is 13 seconds of time further east, but he nevertheless chose to assign the observations of both d'A and Marth (he does not mention Stephan) to a single entry. In fact, as Steve has pointed out, Marth's RA is very close to that of the MCG -01-54-018, while his declination is just 45 arcsec south. It's a shame that Marth so rarely mentions neighboring stars as there are several bright ones north and east of the galaxies that he could have used as neighborhood benchmarks. d'A mentions the nearest and brightest of these stars in both of his observations; the same star is, in fact, Stephan's comparison star for his micrometric observations of N7065. Is it possible that Marth thought the slightly smaller, slightly brighter MCG -01-54-017 just a star? Given the general uncertainty of Marth's positions (a couple of arcminutes; the other ten galaxies he found the same night are, aside from a couple of obvious blunders, all within this general error ellipse), it is clearly possible that he actually observed it and not -017. Whatever the case with Marth, it is clear that both d'A and Stephan picked up the northwestern galaxy of the pair -- their positions and descriptions are unambiguous. So, I've retained the northwestern galaxy -- MCG -01-54-017 -- as the main candidate for NGC 7065, but have included the southeastern as a possible alternative. Note that MCG -01-54-017 has a star superposed. On the Siding Spring IIIa-J survey plate, and in the 2MASS J-band image, it is as prominent as the nuclear region of the galaxy. Only in the 2MASS H- and K-bands does the galaxy's nucleus show more brightly than the star. Is it possible that Marth thought this and the galaxy's nucleus a double star? ===== NGC 7067. JH's position is for a double star about four arcminutes east of the center of the cluster. I doubt that the double is part of the cluster, so have not included it in the diameter that I measured. ===== NGC 7071. JH says of this, "A very poor and small cluster of an oblong figure. It is followed by a loosely scattered mass of stars." JH's cluster itself is obvious -- an elongated group of about a dozen stars, just 3.3 by 1.0 arcminutes in size, at his position. His "loosely scattered mass of stars", however, could refer to any of the clouds of stars in this pretty rich Milky Way field. Reinmuth suggested that this might be another observation of NGC 7067 (which see), an idea picked up by RNGC. However, JH's descriptions preclude this -- they are too different to refer to the same object. In any event, both positions have "clusters" that match JH's admittedly scanty descriptions. Finally, I think this is simply an asterism. As with all these, we need to get into the astrophysics to determine its true nature. Also see NGC 7011 where this has some bearing on the identification of that object. ===== NGC 7074 is a close, interacting double galaxy about 6 arcmin south of its nominal position (another interpretation is that the eastern "galaxy" is a bright blue knot of the western; see the SDSS image). Both Bigourdan and Spitaler noted the displacement, but neither commented on the fact that this is one of Marth's "verified" nebulae. I'm a bit surprised that one of these is so far off its nominal position (however, see NGC 7028!) -- but there it is. Bigourdan has two additional objects (IC 5112 and 5113, which see) near N7074's nominal position, but both of these are either single stars or asterisms. The positions I've chosen give you the option of considering this as a single rather peculiar galaxy, or as a double interacting system. In the latter case, the position I've chosen for the western galaxy is for the reddest part of the SDSS image. The other chosen positions are from the 2MASS PSC. ===== NGC 7078 = M 15 is one of only four Galactic globular clusters known to host a planetary nebula, in this case, PK 065-27 1 = Ps 1 = Ku 648 (see e.g. Jacoby et al ApJ 836, 93, 2017 and Alves, Bond, and Livio, AJ 120, 2044, 2000). The nebula was also the first to be found in a globular. The presence of planetaries in Galactic globulars is surprising as the clusters are very old objects with the member stars that normally puff out planetaries evolved well past that stage. A hypothesis that is often mentioned is similar to the hypothesis explaining the "blue stragglers" in globulars: mergers of stars. I won't go into the details here, but any of the papers on blue stragglers or planetaries in globulars will have references. ===== NGC 7080 is also NGC 7054, which see. There is more on Stephan's observations in the "notngc" files under UGC 3840. ===== NGC 7082. This cluster was found by WH in October of 1788, and observed again by JH (who gives no sweep number). WH notes, "An extensive cluster of large stars, considerably rich, above 20' in diameter." This makes it clear that my earlier estimated size, 11': x 9':, is too small and does not include all of WH's cluster. JH's description is appropriate; he notes, "A * 10 m, the chief of a p rich, L, coarse cluster. Stars 10 .... 13 m." His position, however, lands in an empty space about a minute of time east of the brightest star in WH's apparent cluster, BD +46 3329. That star is on the western edge of the cluster and could well be the one that JH measured. But without a sweep number, it will be difficult to dig out of his observations. In any event, I've adjusted my previous position and size to more or less follow WH's comments, if not his position. I put the center nearly half a minute of time west of his. ===== NGC 7084. JH calls this simply "A coarse scattered cluster." There is nothing obvious at his position, but about 30 seconds following there is indeed a cluster matching his description. JH has noted that the positions from his early sweeps are more untrustworthy than those from his later ones; this, from Sweep 12 on 11 October 1825, seems to be an example. Examining this on the POSS1 shows that it extends on to the north and east from the core that JH apparently saw. The overall size is 18 arcmin by 16 arcmin, while the core is 10 arcmin by 9 arcmin. This cluster stands out pretty well on the POSS prints, so RNGC's "no cluster" is a bit surprising. ----- Looking at this on the DSS2R nearly 16 years after my note above from July 2000, I see a slightly different configuration for the cluster. There seem to be two lobes, northern and southern, with JH's NPD more nearly aligned with the southern. The northern clump, however, has brighter stars and is a bit more compressed on the sky; I would think it would be more obvious at the eyepiece during sweeping. The sweep itself has no more in the way of a description than the words "Scattered coarse cl", and there is no error in the reductions. Without more guidance from JH's observation, I'm going to take the mean position of the two lobes for his cluster. I've also listed the positions for each lobe, too. ===== NGC 7086. See IC 5115. ===== NGC 7088, along with M 102 (see NGC 5457 and NGC 5866), may well be one of the most controversial deep sky "objects" in the early catalogues. While clearly non-existent, there have been many "observations" of it over the years. Here is what I originally wrote about it. NGC 7088 does not exist, even though around a dozen sightings have been reported of it in the literature, including one by Dreyer himself in the NGC Notes. The nominal position, by Dreyer from Baxendell's description, is about half a degree north of M 2 (NGC 7089), but there is nothing there but faint field stars. Baxendell describes it like this: "It has an irregular oval form, its longer axis lying in a nearly east and west direction. A mean of several estimations gives its length about 1 1/4 [degrees], and its breadth about 52 [arcmin]." Baxendell does not tell us which telescope he used for his observations, but he is known to have owned a 6-inch F15 Cook refractor. His usual targets were variable stars and solar system objects. About half a degree on to the northwest of the NGC position is a 1.5 degree long streak of interstellar "cirrus", dust well above the plane of the Galaxy reflecting the light of the Galactic disk back to us (see IC 336 for some of these dust clouds that are definitely in the old catalogues). The cirrus is most easily visible in the IRAS 100-micron ISSA images of the area, though it also shows up in the 12-, 25-, and 60-micron images, and on the POSS1 prints, AND on the IIIa-J film copies of the latest optical surveys from Palomar and Siding Spring. While I suppose it is just vaguely possible that this may be Baxendell's object, his clear description of a southern boundary just 7 arcmin north of M 2, and of an oval shape, clearly rules this out. The IRAS 100-micron images in particular show a "hole" in the dust north of M 2, just the opposite of what we'd expect if the nebula were real. My own feeling about this object is that it may have been a reflection of some other object (perhaps even M 2) within Baxendell's telescope or eyepiece, and that later observations are similar illusions simply "wished" into existence (see NGC 2529 and NGC 2531 for a discussion of two other such objects). There is also the possibility that some transient atmospheric phenomenon led to Baxendell's belief that he had found a large, faint nebula. Or, following an idea floated to me recently (Feb 2007) by Dave Riddle, could this have something to do with the gegenschein or other zodiacal dust scattering phenomenon? Regarding this, I think it's worth noting that the nominal position for NGC 7088 is roughly as far north of the ecliptic as that of NGC 56 (see that for more on the gegenschein hypothesis). Also see NGC 1990 where a similarly elusive nebula has occasionally been seen around Epsilon Orionis. Added July 2013: Steve Waldee, one of the several modern observers who has seen NGC 7088 repeatedly, has an extensive article on it at http://freescruz.com/~4cygni/haggisizing/astro/invisible.htm (Steve's web site was unfortunately shut down when he moved to Utah recently, but the article apparently can still be dug out of the "WayBack Machine" web archive.) In it, he quotes (from a note to me in 2012) some speculation on how the eye interprets threshold stimuli. There is apparently quite a literature on this going back to the early 1940s (I would not be surprised to find even earlier work). In any event, here are the paragraphs from Steve's note that I think are particularly relevant to this discussion: Now, I understand that perception of faintest stars is certainly unreliable. Over-simplifying all that I've read about this, from Hecht's 1942 paper forward, it seems to me that the eye/brain has quantizing error down at the threshold of detection of a single receptor stimulus. Below a certain threshold, the receptor registers NOTHING. The only thing you get is random optical noise that, with your eyes closed, you cannot localize at one apparent "place" in what would, with eyes open, have been the field of vision. Just a jumble of erratic speckles like the picture on an analogue TV receiver turned to a channel without a TV station carrier. [Note that about one percent of these particular speckles are due to our "old" TV's responding to 13.7-billion-year-old photons from the microwave background radiation!] ... So with, say, my 10 inch scope, no matter how long and hard I stare, I can never see the 17th-19th mag individual stars that are so clearly registered on the POSS plates. It is as though they simply do not exist. A lot of amateurs have used faulty reasoning to assume that these faint stars form a "bias", a background noise that is detectable IF you pull back and see them across a sufficiently wide field: the wider you go, the more they add up to a sheen of glow. I believe this is wrong. The quantizing effect of the visual threshold cut off ignores them and they might as well not exist at all, close or wide view. So, it's not that I was detecting something "too faint to be seen"; no, whatever it is, I *could* see it. I think that it's simply a matter of stars that are faint and close together so that at a larger scale the individual, virtually identical, stimuli are perceived on more than one receptor, and they are so similar in magnitude that the brain says, "Aha: a continuum over this region! The light I perceive is all the same brightness, from here to here." And of course, the astronomically-trained mind equates that with gaseous nebulosity...and Baxendell's "nebula" is thus the conception that the cognitive mind creates, to explain what was experienced. While I remain skeptical about this as an explanation for NGC 7088 -- as I do for all the explanations so far put forward -- this is nevertheless a step toward a reasonable approach to understanding Baxendell's (and all subsequent) visual observations of this non-existent nebulosity. By the way, one of those subsequent observers of NGC 7088 is Bigourdan. He searched for the object on three nights (5 and 27 October 1888, and 2 August 1889). He records only "Non vue" (not seen) for the 1889 attempt, but has these notes, translated by me, from his observations in 1888: 5 October: Occasionally, I believe I suspected, at the [NGC position], a few traces of nebulosity whose existence is quite dubious. 27 October: I suspected extremely faint traces of nebulosity in several places in the region eight minutes south of the GC position. This object would require a better sky and a more powerful instrument. These notes make it clear that Bigourdan did not see much, if anything, of the extremely large nebulosity that Baxendell describes. Finally, on 12 August 2013, Steve Waldee sent another observation of NGC 7088 which he made around 2AM on that day. With his permission, I quote this in full as it usefully expands on what he has said previously: By the way: at 2 am, the seeing and transparency were just awesomely good, and the fog [below] had cut out ALL light pollution. I was able to pick out stars fainter than 7th mag. with my mediocre Wal-Mart plastic lens spectacles. I have no idea how a youngster with good distant vision and no astigmatism would do; maybe > 7.6 or so. My glasses cause a loss of something around half to two thirds' magnitude. Since the elevation is 3400 feet, well above the inversion layer and fog, much better than the distant coastal site I used a couple of months ago to study Baxendell['s NGC object], I put the 10" Newtonian on M 2 and looked around with a wide field eyepiece. INSTANTLY the Baxendell "effect" just jumped out at me--unmistakable! I had been looking earlier at some nebular objects in Sagittarius, including NGC 6559 and three associated IC nebulae in one large continuous patch, and Sh[arpless] 2-35. The apparent "nebulosity" of Baxendell['s object], in a FOV of about 70', was very distinctly brighter than the background away from the center; had about the same sense of character and brightness as the Sharpless nebula, if not being quite as bright as the best parts of N6559; and had a sort of "sheen" that was contributed by the six or seven stars across the "face" of it, as Steve Coe remarked. Of all the previous attempts to see what this might look like, THIS was the most convincing! I tried numerous eyepieces and kept moving about 1/2 to 1.5 degrees away from the apparent center; and always I could "return" to it. I did not use a chart; it just leaped out with no ambiguity! The most effective magnifications, with a 10" f/4.7 reflector, were from 80x to 109x (exit pupils of 2 to 3 mm.) I tried an anti-skyglow filter that works quite well if there are traces of sodium vapor streetlight glow; that had a degrading effect, causing the "nebulosity" effect to disappear completely, but revealing a vague, lumpy background texture as if the sky had very faint darker, broken lanes or streaks. A narrow passband filter centered on the H-Beta and ionized oxygen lines just dimmed everything to a dead black. I think it's reasonable to conclude that this was not "imaginary" and that, furthermore, the "confirmations" were not due to argument from authority and delusion. You have some even-brightness faint stars that cause the brain to "connect the dots"; and "underneath" them might be some VERY slight concentration of dust or cirrus. Those stars tend to focus the attention on that very pale "difference" in background illumination level, and the eye/brain system logically concludes that there's something there in a vague continuum. It can be duplicated and repeated with different scopes--I've now seen it in FOUR different instruments from 4.7 to 11 inches' aperture. It is definite enough that you don't need to plot or triangulate carefully from known stars; just put M 2 at the edge of the FOV and nudge the scope a bit north: and there it is! I guesstimated that it was, on the long axis, about 1/3 the FOV of my 15 mm (49' true field) view at 80x, or about 16+ arcminutes; with a size ratio of around 3 to 1. This is much smaller than Baxendell's original report; and it was further N from M 2 than his starting boundary at 7' distance. The globular was so bright that it was best to get it entirely out of the field of view to see the "nebulosity" to best effect. ... So, conceivably, an acute observer like a young Baxendell, in a sky without electric lights affecting it anywhere, MIGHT have hit some nights with better clarity and at least as good registration of dimmest stars; therefore he could seem to sense that the glow started closer to M 2... Now that I've had this last "sighting" of whatever-it-is, I really cannot fault Dreyer et al. for confirming it. If one had NEVER seen a photograph of unmistakable nebulosity, and had experienced only dim averted-vision glimpses without bandpass filters, then this effect is JUST like, say, a rather bright and distinct Sharpless nebula! I even had something of the same sensation of "sheen" from Sh 2-35, as there are numerous stars in the spot, some being distinct enough to look like a notable asterism or cluster. They seemed to make that real nebula have lanes or bright zones: purely a psychological effect...JUST like Baxendell['s object]! My conclusion from years ago remains the same: NGC 7088 does not exist and is nothing more than a visual illusion. What has changed is my understanding of the possible cause of the illusion. Thanks to Steve Waldee's work, I can accept that the distribution of stars at the threshold of perception, combined with the known neural effects within our eyes/brains, can actually lead to the repeatable observation of "nebulosity" that really does not exist on the sky. If so, there must be many other areas of the sky that will have the same sort of effect on a careful observer's visual system. It will be interesting to follow this thread over the years to see if others can pinpoint other patches of sky similar to that which Baxendell found over a century ago. This same effect may also lead to similar explanations for those of William Herschel's fifty-two large areas of sky "affected by nebulosity" that have not been found by anyone else in subsequent investigations (but see Arndt Latusseck's article in The Journal of Astronomical Data 14, 4, 2008 for other possible explanations). ===== NGC 7089 = Messier 2. Shawl and White's position, though correctly copied from their 1986 list, is apparently 2 seconds of time too large. The cluster's image on both POSS1 and POSS2, though burned out in the center, is elongated and symmetric about a position 33 arcsec west of the Shawl/White position. I suspect a typo in their table. Also see NGC 7088. ===== NGC 7091 = IC 5114. JH found this on 1 September 1834, about 6 months after he began observing from the Cape of Good Hope. He says of it "... place considerably uncertain having been found when much past the meridian in searching in vain for Dunlop 561." The RA and NPD are both given only to full minutes of time in his CGH Observations. Unfortunately, he precesses this imprecise (and inaccurate) position to 1860 and gives it to 0.1 seconds of time and NPD in GC. The only indication that it is an approximate position is on the "Number of times observed by H and h" -- that is given as "1::". Dreyer either ignored or missed that, so the object came into the NGC with its position given nominal accuracy (1 second of time and 0.1 arcmin of NPD) and with no note. The galaxy is a good ways off JH's position (1m 20s preceding, 7.5 arcmin north), but can be positively identified by JH's note "It precedes a * 6m nearly in the parallel, about 40 seconds of time." Swift's position is even further off -- see the IC 5114 entry for that story. ===== NGC 7093. JH does not tell us much about this cluster. His description in full reads: "The chief star (9m) in a cluster of the 8th class. The double * No. 1660 of my fourth catalogue belongs to this cluster." The cluster is indeed little compressed and scattered, and is apparently centered about two arcminutes south of JH's accurate position for the star. Visual confirmation would be desireable. ===== NGC 7095. The GC and NGC NPD's are wrong, probably copied by mistake from the NPD for NGC 7097. JH's CGH observations have the correct NPD. I incorrectly equated NGC 7095 and 7097 in the SGC, and ESO's two suggested identifications are also of course wrong. The correct object is ESO 027-G001 at 21 45 48, -81 45.9 (1950.0); this is PGC 67546 which is also in RC3. The NGC number should be attached to this object. ===== NGC 7096 = IC 5121, which see. ===== NGC 7097. See NGC 7095. ===== NGC 7098. The incorrect RA from JH's CGH observations (it is 2 minutes too large, probably a simple reduction or clock reading error) has been copied into various catalogues all the way up to RC2. RC3 used the correct position from ESO. This is one of the brighter and larger ringed galaxies in the southern sky, and is probably not included in the Shapley-Ames catalogue because its outer ring (formed from the arms) has a relatively low surface brightness. ===== NGC 7100 is a star at Bigourdan's position. Unfortunately, his position as first published -- and as copied into the NGC -- is 14 seconds too large in RA, and 3 arcmin too small in Dec. This, combined with a 6 arcmin error in Marth's Dec for NGC 7101, has led several cataloguers to put the number 7100 on the galaxy that is properly called N7101. Marth's RA is correct and leads us to the right galaxy. The confusion began with Spitaler (copied into the Notes in both Index Catalogues), and continues today in UZC and LEDA. Bigourdan got the identifications correct, and his micrometric offsets -- when re-reduced -- lead to the correct objects. The identifications I've adopted are Bigourdan's. ===== NGC 7101. See NGC 7100. ===== NGC 7102 is probably also IC 5127, which see for the story. ===== NGC 7105 is one of the Leander McCormick nebulae found by Leavenworth; its nominal position is particularly bad. Fortunately, Leavenworth left a sketch so that we can positively identify the nebula with MCG -02-55-001, about 25 arcmin southeast of the nominal position. ===== NGC 7108 = NGC 7111. Marth's position is 1 minute of time too far west, but his description and declination are reasonably close to Stephan's. And both match Stephan's galaxy pretty well. Stephan's degrees of NPD, by the way, are misprinted in his MNRAS note, but not in the version in AN 1939. ===== NGC 7111 = NGC 7108, which see. ===== NGC 7112 = NGC 7113. Though Marth makes no mention of the star close west of the galaxy, there is little doubt that his object is the same as the one found by Swift 22 years later (Swift does mention the star). Marth's position is just three arcmin north of the galaxy, and his description fits it well. A puzzle here is Howe's note: "A search on two nights failed to reveal this (NGC 7112)." Swift's position is not that far off the galaxy (six seconds west and less than an arcmin north) and Howe has recovered many other of Swift's nebulae much further away from the nominal positions. Perhaps the star is close enough on the sky to the galaxy that its light swamped that of the much fainter galaxy. Another puzzle is why CGCG ignored the NGC description of NGC 7112 with its note of the star and put the number on the fainter galaxy 4.2 arcmin to the south. My guess is that they had two NGC numbers at hand and two galaxies on the sky, and simply dumped the numbers on the galaxies without much thought. ===== NGC 7113 = NGC 7112, which see. ===== NGC 7114 = Nova Cygni 1876 = Q Cyg. Dreyer included this in the NGC because -- as he mentions in the Notes -- "Mr. Lohse asserts that it is surrounded by nebulosity." There is no nebulosity around the star on the POSS1, but given the presence of expanding shells around other novae, it is possible that Lohse could have seen one around this nova, too. However, I would have expected that it would not completely disperse in the 75 years from the time of its outburst to the time the POSS plates were taken. Unless, of course, it was a light echo. We should check the date of Lohse's observation. Today, the star is at 16th magnitude. Gaia has measured a small but signifcant proper motion and parallax for it. ===== NGC 7119. JH has this interacting pair as a single object, describing it as "Not vF, S, R, gbM; 20[arcsec]" in a single sweep. His position is very nearly coincident with the fainter, southern galaxy, but he almost certainly saw only the larger, brighter, northern galaxy. So, I have called that one "NGC 7119". Note, too, that the pair are the brightest two galaxies in a group. ===== NGC 7122 is the double star that I've included in the position table. This was first identified as a "nebulous" star by Edward Cooper in his "Markree Catalogue" of stars near the ecliptic. Auwers includes it as the 47th object in his list new nebulae culled from the pre-1860 literature. Reinmuth noted it as a "* 10.5, eF eS neb or * 15 att np." The northwestern object is clearly a star on the modern sky surveys, though on the DSS2B plate, its image is pretty well blended with its brighter neighbor to the southeast. It is well enough separated on the DSS2IR plate that I've given positions for both objects. UCAC has also separated the stars, so I've adopted those positions. ===== NGC 7127. JH notes this as "A small, poor, but neatly defined cluster of stars 10...12 m; with appendages np at some distance." When I looked at it, I saw a cluster with two concentrations. My estimated position for the southeastern group is close to JH's, so I suppose that is the one that he measured. I am, however, going to include the northwestern group since it's pretty clear that JH saw that, too. ===== NGC 7129 is a diffuse nebula enveloping three or four pretty bright stars. Both Herschels described it the same way, and JH measured the position angles and distances of two flanking stars with respect to the brightest, more central southern one, BD +65 1638. His mean position for the nebula, adopted in GC and NGC, is for that star. Bigourdan apparently did not read JH's 1833 description before he examined the area in the 1884, 1889, and 1895. Bigourdan applied NGC 7129 only to the patch of nebulosity to the northwest of JH's star C, the northeastern of the three stars. He also found a "new" nebula in 1895 around JH's star A, the south-central of the three. This now carries the number IC 5134 (which see). In addition to the knot which he took to be NGC 7129, and IC 5134, Bigourdan measured four stars in the area, two of which to the southwest have only faint clouds of nebulosity near them. Bigourdan did not mention nebulosity around any of these four stars, though all are associated with at least faint wraiths of nebulosity. Another "nova" in the area from Bigourdan, NGC 7133 (which see), was apparently an illusion as there is nothing near his place but faint stars. ===== NGC 7130 = IC 5135 (which see). JH's declination is 30 arcmin off. I suspect this is a transcription error with JH's minutes of NPD supposed to read "43" instead of "13". In any event, there is no question about the identification of the galaxy that JH saw. Would that that were true of Swift's "nova" as well ... ===== NGC 7132. Spitaler was the first to notice that Swift's RA of this galaxy is 22 seconds too large. However, Swift's description is not bad: "vF, pL, lE; bet 2 sts; 5 sts w? in the form of a pyramid. My memory locates the stars east of the nebula." Swift's memory is, however, wrong. The stars are indeed to the west as his observing notes describe. ===== NGC 7133 does not exist. Bigourdan describes it as a "Pretty extended area, perhaps 2 arcmin across, in which I suspect some extremely faint nebulosity, at the extreme limit of visibility." There is nothing near his single micrometrically-measured position northeast of NGC 7129 but a few faint stars. My guess is that this is another of what he would call his "fausse images," perhaps enhanced in his perception by the nebulae involved with NGC 7129 (which see). See NGC 7088 for a discussion on how such "nebulae" might arise at the limit of perception. Dreyer, by the way, took this number to be the first new object in Roberts's short note (in MNRAS 56, 380, 1896), so it did not receive an IC number. See IC 5132/33 (Roberts's second and third new objects) for that story. ===== NGC 7134 is an arc of 4 stars 30 arcsec south of the 11th magnitude star mentioned in the NGC description. Howe (see the IC2 notes) was apparently the first to notice that there is no nebulosity associated with the astersim. Peters's position is not micrometrically measured, but is good enough to positively identify the object. ===== NGC 7135 appeared in Swift's 11th list (it is No. 209), but was saved from having an IC number given to it by Herbert Howe. Howe saw the star just preceding the object and the triangle of brighter stars also preceding, and realized that Swift's object must be the same as JH's. However, IC 5136 turned up in Swift's 12th list with a description that makes it sound like yet another observation of this galaxy (see the IC note for more discussion on that object). Since NGC 7130 is in the area, that and I5135 are also part of the mess that Swift made here. See those numbers for even more discussion. This, by the way, is one of the strangest galaxies in the sky, looking rather like a sting-ray, and having a lower surface brightness than a normal galaxy. It is probably the result of a recent collision; most of these pathological objects are. ===== NGC 7136 is probably a double star. There is nothing at Muller's crude place, but 3/4 minute east, there is the double (with two or three much fainter stars involved) with a fairly bright star following by 2 arcmin, just as Muller describes. Howe was the first to suggest this as Muller's object, and I've followed along for lack of anything better in the immediate area. A more extended search would be useful. ===== NGC 7140 = NGC 7141. JH found this object twice, once on 4 Oct 1834 and again the following night. But his positions differed by just about a degree. When he wrote up the observations for publication in CGH, he had this to say (in square brackets and italics, meaning that he was at Collingwood, so could not go out to the telescope to resolve the question): N.B. -- It is not impossible that this [NGC 7141] and the nebula immediately preceding [in Sweep] 499 are identical, one or other being mistaken 1 degree in PD. Still, as both observations are clearly written in MS., and, as the difference of PD even then is rather considerable, (1 arcmin 28 arcsec) I have thought it necessary to enter them separately. For JH, that was it. The two remained separated in GC without even a note. But for NGC, Dreyer adds this to the description for NGC 7141: "(? = h3892)". Since there is nothing at the position of NGC 7140, it's clear that JH's two observations were indeed of the same object. ----- Late in December 2019, Magda Streicher sent a note around via amastro suggesting that NGC 7140's position from JH's sweep 499 corresponds to a double star. However, precessing that position to J2000 and examining the DSS there shows only a "double" at 21 52 24.7, -56 39 58 with the fainter star about 20 arcsec away from the brighter in position angle ~40 degrees. Since JH's position is seven arcminutes north of that (21 52 16, -56 33.0), I doubt very much that this is the object he saw. I think it is much more likely that he saw the nucleus of the galaxy, and simply entered the wrong NPD offset in the sweep. Checking the sweeps in the RAS microfilmed versions, I see that JH, probably while he was reducing the positions after he returned to England, enclosed the NPDs for both objects in parentheses and flagged them with question marks. Interestingly, for sweep 499 when he saw h3892 = NGC 7140, he has a note about half an hour after the observation of the object, "Clouds, a [underlined] *black* south gale[?] coming in [illegible];" there are no further observations that night. There are several mostly illegible notes in Sweep 500 as well, but that night, too, seems to have been substandard. Whatever happened, the simplest interpretation is the one I've advocated since I scanned the IIIa-J plate in Scotland in the late 1970s, NGC 7140 = NGC 7141. ===== NGC 7141 is also NGC 7140, which see. ===== NGC 7142. This large, rich cluster was first seen by WH in October of 1794. He noted "very small and large" stars in it, and made it approximately 12 arcminutes across. JH has it somewhat smaller at 10 arcminutes, but also noted the member stars as 10-11 to 14th magnitude. In the DSS2R image, the structure is a bit curious with the brighter stars generally east of the center, while the fainter stars are to the west. Without having seen astrophysical data (proper motions, photometry, spectra) for the member stars, it looks as this could be two clusters seen more or less along the line of sight. Nevertheless, the Herschels considered the cluster to be a single object, and that is how I have presented it in the table. Perhaps not coincidentally, my position from the DSS2R image is close to WH's. JH's position applies to one of the bright stars on the east side of the cluster, while Brian Skiff's position is appropriate for the fainter stars to the west. ===== NGC 7143 is a zigzag line of five stars at JH's position. He suspected that the object might be a nebulous double star, but the Birr Castle observers saw no nebulosity here. Hence, Dreyer has a short note in the NGC saying that the object is probably only a very faint double star. On the POSS1 and DSS, however, the asterism is a striking object, and I can easily see why JH picked it up while sweeping. His double star is probably the brighter northeastern pair; Wolfgang's position applies to this pair. Lord Rosse and his observers did talk about a small cluster in two of their observations, however, and I'm a bit surprised that Dreyer did not include a number in NGC for it. ===== NGC 7148 is a triple star. (I had originally called it a double, but the SDSS shows the northeastern of the pair to be a close double star.) Observed three times on two nights by d'A, its identity is pinned down not only by d'A's accurate absolute position, but also by his relative position to NGC 7149 just 2.5 arcmin to the south. N7149 was observed the same three times on the same two nights, so there is no mistaking the identity of N7148 as anything but the double star. LEDA has nevertheless incorrectly taken a double galaxy, much too faint for d'A to have seen with his 11-inch telescope, as NGC 7148. The galaxies are also well off the mean of d'A's three accordant positions. Tsk. There is also a very faint galaxy just south of the double. At V = 17.7, it is well below d'A's visual threshold with his telescope, so plays no role in the visibility of the NGC object. ===== NGC 7149. See NGC 7148. ===== NGC 7150 is an asterism of four stars (the northern star has a faint companion just south) found by Bond in February 1848 with the 15-inch Harvard refractor soon after it was installed. Though Bond describes it only as "A nebula," there is no nebulosity associated with the stars. Bond's position is good, so there is no doubt about the identification. This object, by the way, is almost an exact miniature of what is almost certainly NGC 6634 (which see). It was my recollection of observing NGC 7150 with my 6-inch F7 reflector in the early 1960's that convinced me that La Caille could indeed have mistaken the four bright stars at his position for a nebula resembling "... a small nucleus of a comet." NGC 7150 appeared to me as a small, faint nebula, clearly defined, yet unresolved (it must have appeared similarly to Bond). La Caille's asterism, if they are indeed the stars he saw, would have appeared quite similar to him with his 0.5-inch telescope. ===== NGC 7155 = IC 5143, which see. ===== NGC 7158 is a triple star. It is precisely identified by Muller's note "* 9.5 PA = 40 deg, distance = 2.8 arcmin." Both Bigourdan and Howe found the object 0.6 minutes following a typically poor Leander McCormick position, and there it still is on the sky today. ===== NGC 7161 is apparently a group of three double stars about 2 arcmin south of d'A's position. However, his two descriptions are inconsistent, with only the second suggesting his object is a cluster. Both descriptions mention the 10th magnitude star 11 seconds preceding the object, and both also mention the two flanking 14th magnitude stars (though d'A puts them at 16th magnitude; underestimating magnitudes numerically was a common occurance in the 19th century before good photometry was available). This object appeared first in GC thanks to a list of 125 new nebulae that d'A sent directly to JH; thus the entry "d'Arrest, 115" in GC. D'A next published a summary list of many of his novae in AN 1500. This object is number 194 there. Finally, when d'A's massive monograph appeared a few years later, the full observations finally appeared. Given the problem with the declination, I'm not completely happy with the identification. Reinmuth called the object simply a double star, and RNGC followed along. The brightest of the three pairs is the northern most, so I can see why it might be taken as d'A's object. The position I give, though, is a mean for all three -- but I'm not sure that this is the correct interpretation. Perhaps a complete translation of d'A's Latin notes would help. ----- Coming across this object again in April 2016 when I have Google Translate available, I've done the translation. Here is d'A's first observation on 13 September 1862, cleaned up to read smoothly in English, of course (the bits in double quotes are from the original Latin text, untranslatable by me; perhaps you can manage it): Nebula is very faint and indistinct; very small, oblong. And there is no moon. Verified at 231X. 2 stars 9-10 preceding; the closer star is 11 seconds preceding the nebula, somewhat south, 3 1/4' "a neb. olongata." It is not easy to see. The next night, d'A has this to say about it: Very small cluster of a few stars of 19th magnitude; between 2 stars of around 16th magnitude. Star 10-11 preceding 11 seconds. This is GC 4720. All this leads me to doubt my earlier conclusion that the object is composed of all three doubles. Given that d'A was using an 11-inch refractor, the southern two pairs are probably beyond his limit. Also, he has the brighter, preceding star "somewhat south". This would be an appropriate comment if the brightest pair -- the northern double -- was his intended object, but would not describe the position of the two southern pairs; those are very nearly straight east of the star. Finally, he says "very small, oblong". This, too, is appropriate for one, but not all three, of the pairs. So, I am going to take just the northern double as d'A's object. Wolfgang has done that, too. For the record, the J2000 positions of the other two pairs are 21 56 58.2, +02 54 50 (I had previously called this "N7161: m pair") and 21 56 58.4, +02 54 26 (previously called "N7161: s pair"). ===== NGC 7164. This galaxy is clearly identified by Leavenworth's comment, "4 vF stars north." This places it about two minutes of time west of its catalogued position, another example of the "standard offset" in the early Leander McCormick right ascensions. There is an interesting footnote to this NGC object in Bigourdan's unsuccessful search for it. See IC 1415 for the story. ===== NGC 7175 is probably part of the Milky Way. JH's position applies to "The chief * 9 m of a vL, loose clustering group which fills two fields, and is pretty rich of large stars." Checking the POSS1, I see such a grouping of a few dozen stars, roughly 30 arcmin by 20 arcmin, oriented pretty much east- west, and centered about 3 arcmin southwest of JH's 9th magnitude star. I've also checked the sweep (number 212 on 25 Sept 1829) in the Herschel Archives. The page is faint (aside from the reduced position which comes through as strongly as usual -- it agrees with JH's published position) but insofar as I can make out the handwriting, the information there suggests that JH's position reduction is correct. [But see below!] However, about 30 arcmin south is a smaller, sparcer, but much more obvious clustering of brighter stars. Years ago, I suggested that this might be JH's object. It is much too small, though, to "fill two fields" (30 arcmin), and JH's position is close to the bright star he mentions in his sweep. So, while his object is less obvious on the POSS (and DSS), it is almost certainly the one he saw. Jaakko Saloranta independently suggested to me in October 2010 that the cluster to the south might be NGC 7175. He further pointed out that the southern object has been found to be a real cluster (see Karchenko et al, A&A 440, 403, 2005 where this is number 116). While this might be a candidate for JH's object, the objections I note above suggest that it is not the one that JH saw. Nevertheless, I've put the new cluster in the main table with a query. Note, too, that Karchenko et al put it about 10 arcmin closer to JH's position than I did. In summary, then, the fields are only candidates for JH's object. We may need some more visual work on this, and a look at the original pages of the sweep. ----- In August 2020, Steve Waldee sent another note about this object, endorsing Jaakko's suggested identification which implies a 20 arcminute error in JH's NPD/declination. I went back to the Sweep in the Herschel Archives, and was able this time to make better sense of the scribbled observation. I found that JH's reduction was indeed correct in Dec, though about 14 seconds of time off in RA. However, I compared his observation only with the nearest star in the sweep, HD 210855, while JH's reduction took into account all the stars in the sweep. The reduced position for the cluster is 21 58 37.8, +54 49 08 for J2000.0 with respect to this single star; JH's published reduced position is 21 58 51.5, +54 49 15, again for J2000.0. The difference in RA is not large compared to the size of the either cluster candidate. I found, too, that the description in the Sweep reads slightly differently than the published description. Instead of the published, "... is pretty rich of large stars," the Sweep's description reads "... is pretty rich of large and small stars." This could still be a description of either candidate, of course, and better fits the appearance of whatever it was that JH observed. However, I still attach considerable weight to JH's estimate of the size of his cluster: "... a vL loose clustering group which fills 2 fields." This not only fits better with JH's original northern position than with the alternate southern one -- that cluster is only about half the size of the larger northern one -- but actually includes about half of the southern as well. Finally, looking at my copy of the NGC, I see that decades ago I penciled in a correction to the NPD that places the cluster 20 arcminutes south of JH's position, not 30 as I stated above. Perhaps my "30 arcmin south" is a simple typo; it would not be the first I've made! In the end, take whichever identification you wish. As there is no obvious error in JH's observation, I slightly favor the larger northern "cluster", but I can see why modern observers would choose the southern. Steve Waldee has an extensive discussion with finding charts at http://waldee-wormhole.byethost8.com/faintfuzzies.blogspot.com/three-nights-part-3.html . See that for details of his own observations and more about Jaakko's. ===== NGC 7186 is an asterism of at least eight stars about three arcmin southwest of WH's single position. Though he describes it as "5 or 6 stars forming a parallelogram with mixed nebulosity, verified 240," there is no nebulosity. Bigourdan and Reinmuth got the correct object. ===== NGC 7190. See IC 1424. ===== NGC 7193. While this is another of RNGC's "non-existent" clusters, it is clearly seen on DSS and the POSS1 prints about 1 minute preceding JH's position (he cautioned that many of the positions from early sweeps -- this is from Sweep 14 on 13 October 1825 -- are unreliable). The core is a band of 11 stars, 6 arcmin by 1 arcmin, stretching from the northwest to the southeast. There are other stars scattered around it, primarily to the south and west. ===== NGC 7201. See NGC 7202. ===== NGC 7202 is a star. JH has only one observation of it, though he swept the area three times. Interestingly, he never saw more than three objects in this field in any sweep, and picked up only two in one sweep. Nevertheless, he entered the group as four nebulae in GC, in spite of his descriptions clearly stating that there were only three nebulae in the area. Still, this is not a compact group, with N7201 and N7204 being separated by 13.5 arcmin, so he probably realized that he could have easily missed one. He stresses in a note that the RA is determined relative to NGC 7203 -- he puts it exactly one second of time preceding. The declination difference also puts N7202 exactly 3.0 arcmin south, so I suspect that this, too, is a relative determination, perhaps a simple estimated distance. In any case, the object at the offset is a star; it matches JH's description ("eF, S, star like") as well. ===== NGC 7203. See NGC 7202. ===== NGC 7204 is a peculiar interacting system. JH has only one observation of it, and notes it as pretty bright, large, and little extended. He notes no irregularity for it, so we have no idea which of the two main parts he saw. We will just have to assume that the whole assemblage is his object. See NGC 7202 for more about the triplet to which this belongs. ===== NGC 7208. JH's RA is one minute of time too small. This was first reported by Herbert Howe in MNRAS 58, 356, 1898, his first paper reporting observations of nebulae with the 20-inch Clark refractor at Chamberlin Observatory near Denver. The galaxy itself is a peculiar I0 (but aren't they all?!) with a dust lane not quite aligned along the major axis. The position I've adopted is for the apparent nucleus to the west of the dust lane, but other positions in the table from GSC and UB10 are more or less centered on the outer isophotes. ===== NGC 7209. See NGC 7011. ===== NGC 7210 = NGC 7487. JH's RA is one hour too small, and the GC and NGC NPD is one degree too large. Earlier, I had written this: NGC 7210 is lost. There are notes about it in GC and NGC. Dreyer has a note in LdR's 1880 monograph that the object is the only nebula found by JH in Sweep 103 (I scanned JH's 1833 list between 14 hours and 8 hours, and found no others). In addition, JH marked both RA and Dec with double colons; he apparently had reason to doubt the position. Finally, his north polar distance is one degree less in the 1833 list than it is in GC (Dreyer adopts the GC position for NGC) -- this was apparently not noticed by anyone who tried to find N7210. Unfortunately, there is nothing matching JH's description at either position. For the record, that description reads, "eF, R, bM, ill-defined; a vF double star 45[deg] np 4' dist points just to it." I scanned the POSS1 prints for several degrees around JH's nominal position, but found no galaxy in the area with a faint double where JH placed it. So, even with two positions and a striking description, the object remains at large. Checking in the Herschel Archives in April 2016, I've found that Sweep 103 is a most unusual one: it has only three objects in it, two double stars and this one nebula. There are no "standard" stars with known positions. Here is the left page of the sweep in full: 103 h m s 1 22 41 20 -14 2 Q = 25 7 30 D [diagram] 60 np or sf 4" 10=10m neat[?] Swept below Sweep by [illegible] 2 { 51 55 -17 1} Q = 24 15 30 D [diagram] 80 nf 10" 8&10m or 8.9&10 { 52 30 -17 2} [illegible] 3 23 0 20 -16 2 Q = 23 50 40 N Extremely F. R. bM. ill def a very faint d star 40[deg] np dist 4' +- points just to it. Index = 0. 12 25} Q = 18[deg] 7' 10" 0. 12 35} Mean i = 0 12 30 Sweep 103. Sat Nov 17 With the Quadrant, the PD pieces[?] being in use for the sweep to follow. And the right page 103 Sw 103 Red in RA to 1828 1 D 21 39 29.7 64 0 20 __ 1st w -0 1 7.9 2 D 50 38.6 63 8 20 __ 2nd w -0 1 43.8 3 N 58 28.7 62 43 30 21 58 35.5 62 43 0:: R Red in PD PD = Q^t + 38[deg] 52' 50" Red of 2nd wire Finally, there is a line at the beginning of the next sweep (104) on the same night: 0 23 1 +- -------- 0 12 30 Q^t ------- Q^t = 18.7.10 To connect this with Sweep 103 Working through this, we see the usual object number within the sweep, its clock reading and chronometer beat, the wire number, and -- in place of the usual NPD index -- a quadrant reading. This is followed by the object type (D = double star, N = nebula), then the description. Following that are two index readings, their mean, and the "Q = 18 7 10" from Sweep 104. On the right page is the reduction to 1828 for each object. Note that the hour here is shown as "21", not "22" as we might expect from the clock readings. The nebula has been further reduced to 1830 with a colon added to the NPD and an "R" following to indicate that the object has been entered in the "Register", the master list of nebulae ordered by RA. Next is the equation to reduce the PD, and last, a note to indicate that the reduction was referred to the second wire. At the beginning of Sweep 104, the mean NPD index is repeated, along with the Q^t needed for Sweep 103. All this, plus the different NPDs, led me for a while to believe that the main error must be in one of the NPDs. This is the only case I've seen in JH's sweeps where the NPDs are determined in such a roundabout way. However, accepting JH's equation for the "Red[uction] in PD" leads to the same NPDs that he shows on the right page. So, the incorrect NPD appearing in the GC and NGC must be a transcription error. Next, Working through the clock readings, beats, and wire corrections shows that the RAs were reduced consistently, though I do not yet know how JH zeroed them. The only problem is that the reduced positions on the right-hand page all begin, as I noted above, with "21" hours. Where did that "21" come from? The recorded hours are either "22" for the doubles, or "23" for the nebula, so the "21" -- like the incorrect degrees of NPD -- must be a transcription error. Adopting the corrected numbers for the RA hours and the NPD degrees leads us to NGC 7487 for the nebula. The description fits, including the "vF double star 45[deg] np 4' dist points just to it." Similarly, the two double stars are found close to the corrected positions. For the record, JH's positions are 22 47 42, +26 53.3 for h 943; and 22 58 55, +27 46.2 (both J2000.0) for h 950. With these positions, it's clear that JH found a double previously credited to Hough from 1883 -- it is "Ho 297" = WDS 22479+2652; and independently discovered a double found by Struve, [Sigma] 2967 = WDS J22590+2745. My thanks to Brian Skiff and Yann Pothier for the updated information on these two doubles. In any event, simple transcription errors of 1 hour in RA and 1 degree in NPD are the culprits for NGC 7210's erroneous position. ===== NGC 7211. Marth's RA is exactly 1 minute of time too large. There is nothing at his given position, and the galaxy a minute preceding his position matches his description exactly. ===== NGC 7223 has companion objects that Mitchell noticed in 1857 when he was observing with LdR's big Birr Castle reflector. The story is in the "notngc" files under "NGC 7223 companions." ===== NGC 7226. Holden describes this as a "pB Neb connected with a small cluster of stars which radiate in two streams from f to p side. Diam of neb 5', of cl 15', np in p = 315 deg is a small knot which may be nebulous." His "neb" is actually a small cluster, and the "knot" is composed of only four stars. The two streams of stars, pretty clearly visible on the DSS, are probably random field stars. If they are in fact a cluster, the size is about 10 arcminutes by 7 arcminutes (in April 2016, I made the "cluster" 13 by 6 arcminutes). ===== NGC 7234 = NGC 7235. N7234 was found by WH. Reducing his observation as given in Dreyer's 1912 Collected Papers gives a position considerably different from the one given in GC and NGC. Earlier, I wrote at this point, "Auwer's reduced position agrees with the correctly reduced one, so this must be an error in CH's reduction of her brother's data." In fact, that is only the RA part of the problem. The reduced position in CH's fair copy of the sweeps agrees very well in NPD with the correctly reduced position, but the RA is about 20 seconds off. The NPD mistake must rest with JH during his preparation of the GC. This idea is reinforced by JH's entry in his 1833 catalogue where he has his cluster as identical with his father's. It was not until his GC work that he separated the two objects. He has no notes explaining his decision to give the observations separate entries, so we can only speculate that he believed the (mistaken) position difference was large enough to warrant the two listings. In any event, there is only one cluster on the sky, and both father and son saw it. ----- In spite of that, AH have two separate objects here, making a 3.5-arcminute "cl?" out of eight stars at WH's incorrect position. I've not included this in the position table. ===== NGC 7235 = NGC 7234, which see. ===== NGC 7238 is lost. Swift describes it as "pF, S, R, mbM; 4 sts in form of a square nr p." There is nothing like this for several degrees around his position on the POSS1 prints (I've also looked at larger distances: up to one hour east and west, and up to 10 degrees north and south; also 20 degrees north and south). There is little systematic offset in the positions of the other objects Swift found the same night, though several have large RA errors (10 or 20 seconds of time), and one (NGC 716 = IC 1743) has a large declination error (40 arcminutes). So, it's still lost. ===== NGC 7242. See IC 5195. ===== NGC 7243. WH's position is a minute of time too large, but the cluster is so big that the position still lands in a clump of stars on the eastern side. We could imagine that WH meant to have this be his cluster, but he notes the diameter as 16 arcminutes. Given that the clump is only about half that size, I am pretty sure that the RA is in error. ===== NGC 7245. Pulling this cluster up on the DSS, I wondered at first if the somewhat richer, but more distant cluster, King 9, at 22 15 29.9, +54 24 36 (J2000.0) might have been seen by one of the Herschels. However, their positions make it clear that they both saw the same, nearer, poorer cluster: both positions are within an arcminute of the center as I see it on the DSS. ===== NGC 7246 = IC 5198, which see. ===== NGC 7252 has been called the "Atoms for Peace" galaxy because of its inner region's vague resemblance to the symbol adopted by a 1955 conference in Geneva. See the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace for more information on the conference; and see e.g. Schweizer, ApJ 252, 455, 1982 for more on the galaxy itself. It appears to be the result of a recent merger of two galaxies -- the existence of extensive thin plumes to the northwest and east, as well as the loops leading to the "Atoms for Peace" name, suggest the merger. ===== NGC 7253 is an interacting double system with a bridge between the galaxies, plumes streaming off both, and lots of dust. In the blue, the brightest parts of the galaxies are knots in the disrupted arms. The images smooth over quite a bit in the red, but in the near-infrared, the two galaxies appear almost normal -- thin bulges whose light evenly rises to bright nuclei. It is these bright nuclei that I have preserved as the positions for the two objects, with one of the bright knots in the southeastern object as an optical highlight. Marth's position is not accurate enough, and his description not detailed enough, to tell us which of the two galaxies he saw. So, I am presuming that the brighter northwestern galaxy was Marth's object. Steve Gottlieb's two observations support this supposition: he calls the northwestern galaxy "fairly faint" and "very faint" in 24- and 17.5-inch telescopes, while the southeastern galaxy is "very faint" and "extremely faint" in the same telescopes. ===== NGC 7254 = NGC 7256. Herbert Howe made this identification in the late 1890s. Here is what he had to say in his note in MN 63, 356, 1898: These are identical. The place of 7254 is wrong in right ascension, and the place of 7256 is wrong in declination. I could find only one nebular object in this vicinity. Two of the three faint stars involved, and mentioned by Marth were seen; the third was suspected. The northern most one was brightest, and was of mag. 14. The 11 mag. star which Muller saw 4.'5 preceding the nebula was also observed. The position is 22h 17m 06s, -22d 14.'5 [for 1900.0]." It remains for me to say that Marth's description reads "3 ** involved in F nebulosity", and that he observed the object at least twice -- his date, 1864.74, is marked "ver", meaning that he verified the nebula. So, his declination, exactly 10 arcmin south of the true position, must be a simple transcription error. His notation "3 **" is interpreted by both Dreyer and Howe to mean "three stars" rather than "three double stars". Given the two stars superposed on the galaxy and its nucleus, this makes sense. Muller's RA is about 30 seconds of time too far west, but his measurement of the companion star ("P[A] 280d, [distance] 4.'5") is accurate and pins down the object that he saw. ===== NGC 7255. This object is positively identified with Leavenworth's sketch. RC3 has the correct. ===== NGC 7256 = NGC 7254, which see. ===== NGC 7257 = NGC 7260. Marth's position is 24 seconds of time too far west, and 5.5 arcmin too far north, roughly the same offsets as for NGC 7266 which he found on the same night. This makes N7257 identical to N7260, one of Stephan's micrometrically-measured discoveries. Swift also found this galaxy independently; his position in his 4th list is close to Stephan's. However, when Swift found the nebula in Dreyer's GC Supplement, he withdrew his discovery claim (see his 6th list). ===== NGC 7260 = NGC 7257, which see. ===== NGC 7261. JH's cluster is probably the scattered group of pretty bright stars, stretching nearly north-south across an area 15' by 10', about 20 seconds preceding his position for the bright star on its following edge. There is a smaller core (7' by 5') of generally fainter stars about five arcminutes north-northeast of the center of the larger group. Is this perhaps a background cluster? Or is JH's larger cluster simply a random collection of brighter stars? The standard call for proper motions, photometry, and spectra ... ===== NGC 7266. Though Marth's position is well off the galaxy, Bigourdan managed to find it and provide a corrected position for the IC2 Notes. This correction also helps identify NGC 7257 (which see) which Marth found on the same night. ===== NGC 7268. JH has this about 30 seconds preceding NGC 7277 in the CGH observations, but the separation in GC and NGC is one minute larger. I'm guessing that JH or his "computer" was momentarily confused -- or simply lost the minute of time -- when he averaged JH's three accordant positions. These are given in CGH as "22 15 58.7", "60.5", and "64.6" on successive lines, the latter two over 60 to indicate that the RA minutes increased to "16". The galaxy is an interacting pair, and was correctly identified by ESO-LV, as well as in SGC and RC3, in spite of the RA error. ===== NGC 7281. JH's position, apparently for a star on the western edge of the cluster, is about 30 seconds of time preceding the center. The cluster is large enough -- at about 15' by 9' -- that the RA difference does not affect the identification. ===== NGC 7283. Found by Marth, there is nothing near his unverified position aside from a double star about two arcmin preceding. It's possible that he saw CGCG 452-017 a minute of time following his published position, but it would also be 2.5 arcmin north. I'm leaning toward the smaller positional error, but do not want to insist on the double. So, both objects are listed in the main table. ----- Coming across this again in April 2013, I wondered why I had not checked for other objects that Marth might have found on the night of 8 August 1864 (give or take a day; Marth has the discovery date listed as "1864.60"). This was a productive night (or 2, or 3) -- Marth found 24 objects during his sweeps. Aside from this object (and NGC 7350/53, which see), his positions are very good with no significant offsets in either RA or Dec, and standard deviations of only 0.4 arcminutes in RA and 0.9 arcminutes in Dec. So, Marth's position for this object may well have been the result of a blunder of some sort. However, aside from the galaxy and double star I noted earlier, I don't see any other reasonable candidates. There is nothing north or south at decimal offsets (+- 1, 2, or 10 degrees), nor it there anything east or west at +- 1, 2, 5, or 10 minutes of time. So, this is still a bit of a mystery. ===== NGC 7287 may be the double star listed in the main table. This is Howe's identification for an object found by Frank Muller with the 26-inch refractor at Leander McCormick. His description fits Muller's except for the magnitude: Muller makes his object 15.0, while Howe puts his at 11.5 + 11.5 for a total of 10.7! The position angles are the same, though: 150 deg (Muller runs it on around the circle to 330 deg), as are the separations at 6 arcsec. On the DSS, Howe's "double" is actually a triple in a line at PA = 145 deg, with the largest separation being about 12-13 arcsec. The magnitude, as nearly as I can judge it, is about half way between the two earlier estimates. So, this could well be Muller's object. However, Dreyer has an interesting note in IC2: "Ho[we] says that the RA is about 2 minutes too great, and that the object is only a F D*, dist 6 arcsec. But he must have found a different object, as Burnham (Lick Obs, ii, p. 180) [which I have not seen] without noticing any great error in RA, gives Pos 60 deg, Dist 20 arcsec, and states that the p one is undoubtedly a nebula, while the f one may be a star." Muller's published position falls in group of galaxies, one of which is a pair with a star nearby roughly in the configuration noted by Burnham. I've included this in the main table, too, as it may be Burnham's object. This, too, could have been the object seen by Muller -- his telescope was certainly big enough to pull in the photons. But with Howe's stars being brighter, near the 2 minute RA offset shared by several other of the Leander McCormick nebulae, and with their sharing the correct description with Muller's original observation, I'm more inclined toward them. Hence, they have only one query in the table, while the galaxies and star that Burnham may have seen have two question marks. ===== NGC 7294 = IC 5225. Leavenworth's RA is about 2 minutes of time off, typical of the early Leander McCormick list. It was first corrected by Howe who had nothing more to say about the object. However, the galaxy was also picked up by Lewis Swift in October of 1897 along with IC 5226 (which see also). See IC 5225 for more on Swift's observations. ===== NGC 7295 = NGC 7296. The equality rests on the supposition of a 30 arcminute error in JH's position for NGC 7295. JH himself suggests the identity in his 1833 list, noting h2163 as "VII. 41?". His description ("A Milky Way straggler; a poorish cluster of stars 12 ... 13m."), though scanty, matches N7296, so I'm adopting the identity. ----- AH has suggested a "Small group right at J. Herschel's position, although he may have intended to include more scattered stars in area." This is a reasonable interpretation, so I've included the AH position in the table, though with a question mark. ===== NGC 7296 = NGC 7295, which see. ===== NGC 7300 is probably also IC 5204, which see for the story. ===== NGC 7302 = IC 5228. See IC 5204 for the details. ===== NGC 7303 is not = NGC 7304 as is sometimes stated, nor is it the double star (= Big. 452, but not in IC2 as Dreyer had noted the stellar character of the pair in 1875 while observing with LdR's Leviathan) southwest of the galaxy. It is the galaxy found by JH, and is clearly identified as such by d'Arrest who saw N7304 (which see for more) only once. ===== NGC 7304 does not exist. It was seen only once by d'A who put it 137 arcsec away from NGC 7303. He looked for it the second time that he observed N7303, but could not find it again. There are no objects, not even single stars, in the area where d'A put it that one night. For a while, I thought that the asterism of three stars 168 arcsec northeast of N7303 might be d'A's object, but these are very faint stars. Observing the area with a telescope larger than d'A's, Bigourdan tried and failed on three nights to find N7304. Dreyer, using the largest telescope in the world, could not find N7304 in spite of having "... looked most attentively for ..." it. All the observers had no problems with N7303 (which see for more). ===== NGC 7308 = IC 1448. The poor position from the first Leander McCormick list led Javelle to overlook the NGC number. Herbert Howe, however, caught the mistake and correctly identified the galaxy. It is about 40 seconds of time east and 3 arcmin north of Leavenworth's position. A sketch would not have helped to identify this as Leavenworth correctly notes, "No star in field." ===== NGC 7317 is the western-most of the five galaxies making up "Stephan's Quintet." See NGC 7318 and NGC 7320 for more. ===== NGC 7318 is one of four galaxies in the famous "Stephan's Quintet" found by Stephan on the night of 23 Sept 1876. I've been curious as to which of the interacting pair that forms what we now call "NGC 7318" he actually saw. So, I recently (December 2006) re-reduced his position using the Tycho-2 and UCAC2 data for his comparison star. The proper motion is significant, so I included that, too. It turns out, not surprisingly, that he saw and measured the brighter of the pair, though his position is a bit off the nucleus toward the fainter galaxy. ===== NGC 7319 is one of the members of "Stephan's Quintet". The others are NGC 7317, NGC 7318 (which see for the "missing" galaxy), and NGC 7320. ===== NGC 7320 is another of the galaxies apparently in "Stephan's Quintet" (Edouard Stephan actually saw only four of the five galaxies; see NGC 7318 for that story). This particular galaxy is a foreground object, coincidentally superposed on the interacting group of four much more distant galaxies. It is also a companion of the much brighter NGC 7331 which is about half a degree away. ===== NGC 7320A, B, and C are three galaxies near NGC 7320 labeled by de Vaucouleurs while classifying and measuring galaxies on Lick 36-inch Crossley plates in the mid-50s (RC1 has a note that the plates were taken between 1933 and 1939). Only N7320C is positively identified in RC1; the other two may be marked on the Lick plate, but it would have to be examined to be sure. De Vaucouleurs's notes are probably lost, though may possibly still exist in the de Vaucouleurs material surviving in Ron Buta's possession at the University of Alabama, or in storage at the University of Texas, or in Steve Odewahn's care at McDonald Observatory. I've simply adopted the RNGC's identifications for NGC 7320A and B. Since these are the first objects published to carry these numbers, they are, ipso facto, the "correct" objects. Sigh. ===== NGC 7322 is also NGC 7334, which see. ===== NGC 7325 is a close double star north preceding a slightly fainter single star. There can be no question as to the identity: Schultz's accurate position pinpoints the object he was looking at, and Lord Rosse's observer's offsets (distance and position angle) land on exactly the same object. The RNGC is of course wrong (RNGC 7325 is a relatively bright star superimposed on a much fainter galaxy). Both Schultz and LdR found the object while they were observing NGC 7331. Note, too, that Schultz's position is very close to the northern of the two stars. This star has a much fainter companion just to the northwest that may have lent a more nebulous appearance to the object. ===== NGC 7326 is, like NGC 7325 (which see), a close double star, though somewhat fainter. It is almost directly west of the nucleus of NGC 7331. Again, the distance and P.A. measured with the 72-inch at Birr Castle pinpoint the double; and again, RNGC is wrong. ===== NGC 7327, unfortunately, is one of those "....many novae merely alluded to in (Tempel's) published notes." A rough translation by me of what Tempel has to say about N7327 in his published article doesn't really help much, but here it is: "Of my eight companions [to N7331], Lord Rosse has still not seen two; one [N7338, which see] is located in the middle of the four brighter companions following, closer to the two southern objects; while the eighth [N7327] precedes the northern end of the spindle." That is it. Tempel gives no accurate positions or offsets, so all we have are the numbers published in the NGC to lead us to the area. There is nothing in the immediate vicinity but stars. However, about 4 arcmin northwest is a compact galaxy with a star superposed (I think the object is the one that RNGC incorrectly chose for N7325, which see) that might have been within range of Tempel's telescope. I've chosen it as a possibility for his object. However, there are four stars scattered around the NGC position. The brightest is 1.5 arcmin southwest, the faintest is 1.1 arcmin north-northeast, and the intermediate stars are 0.9 arcmin southeast and 0.9 arcmin east- northeast. One of these is taken to be N7327 in RC1, MCG, and RNGC. Given that so many of Tempel's new "nebulae" in other fields (see, e.g. NGC 4322 and NGC 4768/9) are stars or asterisms, it is actually more likely that one of these stars is his object than the galaxy that I give in the table. But which one? So, I put them all in the table with question marks everywhere. ===== NGC 7331. See NGC 7320, NGC 7325-27, and NGC 7335. ===== NGC 7333 is a single star. Again, Schultz's accurate RA and Dec make the identification absolutely certain. The double star mentioned in the RNGC is taken directly from Carlson's 1940 article in Ap. J. Carlson misquotes Reinmuth (who got the right object, but called it a "nebulous star 15, star 14 p 0.7 arcmin)" as noting a double star. So, I suppose that we could say that the RNGC is half right in this case. ===== NGC 7334 = NGC 7322. JH has just a single entry for this object in CGH, but it carries this note on his last of three observations: The obs makes the RA 29m 06.5s [but the minute is implied as "28"] and as the PD fails of a perfect agreement [it is 1.5 arcmin north of the mean of two other measurements], it is not impossible that this may be a different nebula. In GC, however, JH added a second entry to cover the possibility of that "different nebula", but with no note beyond some question marks. Dreyer copied this into NGC with the simple query "? = G.C. 4812" added to the description. Since there is nothing at JH's place a minute following the galaxy, the second number clearly has to be applied to the galaxy, too. ===== NGC 7335, 7336, 7337, and 7340 are correctly identified by just about everybody except the Lick astronomers who, as Steve Gottlieb notes, have thoroughly mangled the identifications in the area of NGC 7331. ===== NGC 7336. See NGC 7335. ===== NGC 7337. See NGC 7335. ===== NGC 7338, the second of Tempel's two "new" objects in the area of NGC 7331, is most likely the double star about 3' sf N7335. Tempel notes that it is closer to the two southern galaxies following N7331 than to the two northern ones, even though the position that Dreyer quotes is a bit off. See also NGC 7327, the first of Tempel's "new" objects here. ===== NGC 7340. See NGC 7335. ===== NGC 7346. See NGC 7350. ===== NGC 7347. See NGC 7350. ===== NGC 7348. See NGC 7350. ===== NGC 7349. I agree with Steve Gottlieb's identification. In the SGC, I note the position as being 1 deg off. ===== NGC 7350 and NGC 7353. Here is what I wrote earlier about this puzzling pair: [These] are two of a trio of nebulae discovered by Marth in August 1864. The third object, found the same night as N7350 and N7353, is N7348 and is the only one of the three listed near its discovery position in modern catalogues. N7350 is given as non-existent in RNGC which also suggests the galaxy at 22 39.6, +11 47 (J2000) as N7353. RC3 accepted this identification. This, however, is incorrect as there is a faint galaxy close to Marth's position (22 41.4, +11 56; J2000) that he could have seen with Laselle's 48-inch reflector. N7350 is possibly a star with one or two faint companions, again near its discovery position. While the identification of NGC 7350 is not secure, that for NGC 7353 is. So, RC3 and RNGC got the wrong object. Running across this again in May 2016, I'm not happy with this. I've demoted my previous identifications -- a triple star and KUG 2213+116 -- with question marks, and have cast around for other objects. Here is what I've come up with so far. Of the 24 objects that Marth found on the night(s) of 1864.60 (8+- August), these (and NGC 7283, which see) are the only ones with no obvious objects on the sky near his positions. There is no significant offset between Marth's positions and the modern positions for the other 21 objects, and the standard deviations are just 0.4 arcminutes in RA and 0.9 arcminutes in declination. Thus, only a real blunder could account for the big differences between Marth's positions and whatever the positions are for the actual objects he saw. I think it more likely that Marth found a pair of galaxies separated by about 20 seconds of time and 2 arcminutes, oriented northwest-southeast. Such a pair exists in the area -- NGC 7346/47 -- but Marth himself found the fainter of these, NGC 7346, on the same August 1864 night(s) as he recorded N7350/53. The only possibility then, for this to be his pair is if he actually found N7346 on a different night than he found NGC 7350/53. This would also require that he recognized the accompanying galaxy as h 2176 on one night, but not the other. This is getting pretty far-fetched, isn't it ... Marth's descriptions don't help as he calls N7350 "vF" and N7353 "eF". N7347 is nearly edgewise, and considerably brighter than N7346, so I would have expected that not only would the brightness estimates would be reversed, but that N7353 would have been called "E" (as JH did), or even "mE". So, I regard the N7346/47 hypothesis as no more than a remote possibility, and put it into the position table with double question marks. ===== NGC 7352. JH describes this as "A star 9-10m, chief of a p rich, vL, very coarse cluster." His position coincides with SAO 034672 = HD 214833, but the "cluster," if it exists at all, is indeed "very coarse." I see nothing around the star that is at all eyecatching. Perhaps a sweep across the field with a telescope might draw out JH's object. There is, however, five minutes of time following JH's place, a more obvious clustering of stars scattered across an area about 15 arcmin by 10 arcmin. There are about 30 stars from the 9th to the 12th magnitudes. If this is the group that JH had in mind, his star is on the western edge of the group about two arcmin northwest of his position. This "cluster" is apparently not catalogued, and I suspect that it is merely a concentration of unrelated stars along the line of sight in the rich Milky Way field. I also think that it does not match JH's description of "very coarse." However, it, too, should be examined at the eyepiece. ----- Looking at this again in May 2016, I dug into the sweep (211 on 24 September 1829) in the Herschel Archives. Unfortunately, the part of the page with the cluster -- it is No. 31 in the sweep -- is nearly illegible. However, what I can make out of the dim writing is consistent with the cluster being at JH's position and not five minutes of time further east. So, back to the DSS. JH calls it a "very large" cluster which suggests a diameter of 20 arcminutes or more. If we take JH's position at face value, then his "chief" star is towards the eastern edge of a clump of 11th to 13th magnitude stars approximately 18' x 10' across. I've tentatively put this in the position table, but have also entered my earlier "cluster" on east as another candidate. There are, by the way, no clusterings of stars either one degree north or south of JH's position. Two degrees south of his position, I see two long linear streams of stars in a more or less arrowhead shape pointing north, but this is beyond the limits of the JH's sweep. There is nothing suggestive of a cluster to the north. Brent Archinal in his 1993 monograph is similarly vague about the cluster, citing observations by Houston and Ling. His entry in "Star Clusters" is internally inconsistent -- he gives it a diameter of 5 arcminutes, then goes on to say, "Scattering of bright stars over a 45' or so DSS field. Brightest star at center." His position corresponds to HD 214833. ===== NGC 7353. See NGC 7350. ===== NGC 7355. There is a one degree error in JH's CGH position that was copied faithfully into GC and NGC. The correct galaxy is pinned down, however, by JH's note about the double star 40 seconds following the galaxy. The double is there, and is bright enough that it might well be a noteworthy object on its own. ===== NGC 7361 = IC 5237. JH's RA is just 2 minutes of time out. This is obviously a digit error as his NPD and description are correct. Curiously, Swift's RA is also about 2 minutes out, but in the other direction. See IC 5237 for that story. ===== NGC 7365 may also be NGC 7481. See that for the story. ===== NGC 7374. See IC 1452. ===== NGC 7380. First seen by CH in 1787, this cluster is quite a spectacular sight on the DSS -- it is embedded in nebulosity, bright and dark. None of the Herschel's mention the nebulosity, though some is bright enough that it could be visible in rich-field telescopes. JH has two observations of this. The first, in Sweep 211 (24 Sept 1829), has an RA 3/4 minute of time too small (see NGC 7352 for another cluster in the same sweep with a possibly problematic RA). His second position from Sweep 214 (30 Sept 1829) is for a double star on the southwestern edge of the cluster, but his estimated diameter, ten arcminutes, is appropriate as is the rest of his note: "... a fine, p rich, L cluster, 10' diam; stars 9...13 m." WH's position is closer to the center, but is still southwest of the positions that Brian and I have estimated. ===== NGC 7383. See NGC 7384. ===== NGC 7384 is a star about 5 arcmin southeast of NGC 7383. Both objects were found by LdR; while N7383 has been measured, the only reference to N7384 in his monograph is in the sketch of the group around N7385 and N7386. Dreyer unfortunately got the offset wrong for his description of the object (for north following, read south following), but the NGC position implies the right direction. However, having said all that, I have to say that there is not one star near the position, but five. These are spread over an area of one by two arcmin, and form two triangles with a single star at the common vertex in the middle of the group. It is this star that I've entered in the main table, but the "correct" object could be any of the others. I note, however, that NGC 7388 (which see) -- also a star -- is about the same brightness as the vertex star I've chosen. This makes it somewhat more likely that this star is the one in the diagram. So, I've put colons on the number rather than question marks. ===== NGC 7385. See NGC 7384. ===== NGC 7386. See NGC 7384. ===== NGC 7387. See NGC 7388. ===== NGC 7388 is a star 4.5 arcmin north-northeast of NGC 7387. Unlike N7384 (which see), LdR has a micrometric measurement of N7388 with respect to N7387. In turn, he also measured two stars southeast of N7388. While not exact, the numbers he published are quite good enough to show that N7388 is not the faint galaxy another 1.5 arcmin on to the north. ===== NGC 7394 is a scattered group of pretty bright (9-11m) stars including JH's double. Stretched out in a ragged band 12 arcmin by 5 arcmin to the northwest is an extension to the core (8 arcmin by 5 arcmin) that JH describes: "A double star, the last of a poor cluster of about a dozen stars." I doubt that all this is a part of any physical cluster, but proper motions, radial velocities, and photometry should tell us eventually. ===== NGC 7400. There is no problem with the identification or position of this galaxy. There are two stars superposed on the outer parts northwest and southeast, and there is one other 18 arcsec north of the nucleus. This final star appears only in the DSS2R image; this is apparently the source of the position reported in GSC3. The star is not in the DSS2B or IR images, nor does it appear in any of the 2MASS images. It is, in fact, SN 2002ge, possibly a subluminous Type Ia supernova, or a Type Ic. See IAU Circulars 7987 and 7990 for more information. ===== NGC 7403 is a star, another of those mistaken for a nebula by the Harvard observers in the late 1850's. The NGC position is more accurate than that published in AN, and comes from the Harvard Zone catalogue. Dreyer's note in the first IC indicates some interest in the object, and shows that Coolidge was the only observer to suspect any nebulosity around the star. ----- I've seen the Harvard Zone catalogue in which the star appears, HA 6, 153, 1872. As Dreyer says in the IC1 Note, the star occurs only in Zone 156. Nevertheless, the position that Coolidge measured is coincident with the modern position to within about 8 arcseconds. As there are no other stars as bright within about five arcminutes, the identification is secure. ===== NGC 7404 = IC 5260, which see. ===== NGC 7405 is lost. Marth found this in August of 1864, describing it merely as "eF, S, R." Though his position was copied faithfully into the NGC, there are no galaxies nearby that Marth could have seen. The nearest object fitting his description that he could have picked up is NPM1G +12.0573, chosen by RNGC and Wolfgang Steinicke to carry the NGC number. However, it is 40 seconds of time preceding and 7 arcmin north of Marth's position, not an obvious error to make. Another candidate is CGCG 430-021 -- but that is even further away at 2 minutes 45 seconds of time preceding and 5 arcmin north. Searches at reasonable digit errors -- +-1, 2, 5, 10 minutes of time, +-1 hour, +-1 and 2 degrees -- turned up nothing. My own desperate, last-ditch, guess is that Marth picked up one of the faint stars nearer his position, but I have no idea which one. He found ten other nebulae that same night, but there is no significant systematic offset in his positions for them from the modern positions, and all are within 1.5 arcmin of his nominal positions. So, N7405 stands alone among them as unrecoverable. ===== NGC 7412A = ESO 290- G028 is a very low surface brightness, late-type spindle galaxy. Its light distribution is asymmetrical, and it appears as a fainter analogue of NGC 55. With no obvious nucleus or bright bulge, the position is poorly constrained. The one that I've finally chosen applies more or less to the center of the bulge as seen on the DSS2B and R images. As the galaxy's position angle is almost exactly 90 degrees, however, the declination is considerably more accurate than the RA. ===== NGC 7413 and NGC 7414 are two nebulae found on 2 Sept 1886 by Lewis Swift. Both are entered in NGC as "eeF," "R," and "v diffic;" with N7413 being "pS" and "s of 2", and N7414 being "S" and "n of 2." This, and the positions, would imply a pair of similar galaxies, oriented north-south, separated by 2.5 arcmin. Curiously, Howe has two apparently independent observations of NGC 7413 in which he corrects the position by 14 seconds of time. However, he does not mention NGC 7414 in either observation. If the pair were nearly identical objects as the NGC implies, then I would have expected Howe to at least mention N7414 and give a correction to its RA, too. Turning to Swift's original paper, we find considerably different descriptions for the two objects. N7413 = Sw IV-87 is "eeF, pS, R, e diff; 8 or 10 sts in an irregular line p; s of 2." N7414 = Sw IV-88 is "eeeF, S, R, eee diff; n of 2." Given this, I find it considerably easier to believe in RNGC's choice of the very faint northeastern galaxy as N7414. NGC 7413 does have the irregular line of stars preceding it, so this is pretty clearly Swift's object, even though his RA is well off. Howe, however, did get the correction right. ===== NGC 7414. Steve Gottlieb wrote in August 2010 that he had finally seen this galaxy. He was at a site in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California, 8200 feet above sea level, observing on a splendid, still, dark night. Yet, even with his 18-inch reflector, he had trouble spotting NGC 7414. With averted vision, knowing exactly where to look, he had it in view only 25% of the time he swept over its place. With that kind of an observation, he suggested that this may not have been the object that Swift saw. Yet, since it is the only companion to NGC 7413, my feeling is that it must be the galaxy found by Swift. I think that Swift may have found NGC 7413 (which see for more) while sweeping, then noticed NGC 7414 in the field. It is nevertheless one of the faintest of Swift's discoveries. Other galaxies with the same "eeeF, eee diff" description in his 4th list are considerably brighter: NGC V 6034 13.9 6275 15.1 7066 (14.0) from RC3 m_B = 14.8 and approximate B-V = 0.8 7414 15.7 and 7413 14.2 for reference These magnitudes come from SDSS, their g-band "Cmodel" magnitudes converted with a transformation equation from their Web site V = g - 0.59(g-r) - 0.01 (this equation is really only appropriate for stars -- galaxies have complex spectra that complicate magnitude and color transformations -- but is still useful for comparing one galaxy in the same system to another). So, while I think that Swift probably did see the object, Steve's comment is well-justified! ===== NGC 7416. See IC 1376 and IC 1528. ===== NGC 7418. Dreyer suggested that this might be IC 5265 (which see), but it is not. ===== NGC 7419. Though JH's position from two observations is accurate, his descriptions of this cluster and its surrounding field don't match well what we now see on the sky. His first observation from Sweep 213 on 29 September 1829 reads A * 10m in a cluster of vS stars 15...18m; p rich, vgbM. A * 8m is 2' south. His second description from the next sweep on the following night reads A S cluster of small stars 12m, diverging in a fan shape; a * 10m follows. The cluster's stars are indeed quite faint, and the fan shape is obvious. However, the 8th magnitude star is northwest of the cluster, not south; and there is no star of the 10th magnitude east -- it is on the western edge of the cluster and represents the pin holding the fan together. Still, with his and his father's positions being accurate, there is no mistaking the cluster itself. ===== NGC 7423 is a nice, compressed cluster at the NGC position. It sits between two brighter stars, and would probably be an interesting, if faint, object at the eyepiece. JH was not sure in his 1833 catalogue if this was his father's III 745 or not. When he compiled the GC, however, he adopted his own position and his father's description. This is actually the best combination as both are correct. WH's position, however, is a minute of time east of the JH's position. Dreyer noticed this when he published all of WH's papers in 1912, and wrote a short note about it. In that note, Dreyer also mentions "In the sweep a star 6 mag = +56 2923 is 3m 41s f, 10' s." Doing the math from WH's reference star (Delta Cephei) for III 745, the BD star ends up close to its true position -- but III 745 is stubbornly 1 minute of time off. Curiously, RNGC calls the cluster non-existent though it is clear on the POSS, and is included in the cluster catalogues as Berkeley 57 (that identity was apparently first noticed by Alister Ling in 1985). SIMBAD mistakenly equates the cluster with a faint planetary (an infrared source) a few arcmin to the northeast. ===== NGC 7431, as faint as it is, is pinpointed by Bigourdan's micrometric observation as a compact galaxy with a superposed star just three arcminutes preceding NGC 7433. I had called this a double galaxy when I looked at it earlier on the POSS1 prints, but the SDSS clearly shows the preceding object to be a star. The NGC position, derived from Bigourdan's observation, is fortuitously within a few arcseconds of the true position. The slightly brighter star is included in GSC, and is one of the Lick Northern Proper Motion survey reference "galaxies." The Lick plates were taken with an 18-inch astrograph and clearly had even less resolution than the 48-inch Palomar Schmidt. ===== NGC 7433 and NGC 7435 are galaxies close to NGC 7436, the brightest object in a subgroup of a cluster. All three objects, along with the fainter component of NGC 7436, are shown in Lord Rosse's sketch of the field. Though the NGC positions are not too good, the sketch positively identifies the objects that Dreyer catalogued. Bigourdan's observations of NGC 7433 and NGC 7435, by the way, refer to stars (see the discussion under CGCG 097-087 in the "notngc" files), while d'Arrest measured NGC 7435 (not N7433 as noted in the NGC) as well as N7436. ===== NGC 7435. See NGC 7433. ===== NGC 7436. The "F * att p" noted in the NGC is actually another galaxy. It was first seen on 12 October 1855 when R.J. Mitchell noted it as "... a * or nebulous knot closely p [NGC 7436]; ..." On 18 September 1857, he wrote, "... closely p is a * or sharply defined nebulous patch, ..." Finally, on 29 September 1875, Dreyer observed the group and wrote, "The object p in the diagram from 1857 is a F *. Night bad." So it was that the companion to NGC 7436 did not receive an NGC number. It is in the "notngc" files, and is also included as "NGC 7436B" in the main position file where I have finally (March 2015; sorry it took so long) fixed the CGCG, MCG, and UGC identifications (note that the UGC letters components of multiple systems in RA order). Yann Pothier has pointed out that there is also an even fainter galaxy that Dreyer picked up on his "bad" night about one arcminute south of NGC 7436. It was not included in the sketch in LdR's monograph, but is the only object just south of the bright galaxy, so the identity is not in question. This is also in the "notngc" files where you will find a bit more about it. See NGC 7433 for a bit more on the group. ===== NGC 7438. JH describes this as "A large oblong cluster which fills two fields. Place that of the double star h. 3157 of my fifth Catal." DSS and POSS show a cloud of stars, elongated southwest to northeast, more compressed on the southwestern end into two apparent clusters separated by about 10 arcmin. Though well-defined on that end, it is very poorly defined on the northeastern side. The overall dimensions are roughly 30 arcmin by 10 arcmin. I doubt that the entire group is a cluster, though the southeastern-most two clumps might well be. Those portions of JH's object could stand out well in even small telescopes since the stars are fairly bright, 9th to 11th magnitudes. ----- In one-degree DSS and DSS2 images centered on JH's position, the cloud of stars seems to break up into three discrete clumps, not just two. There are absorption patches and streaks all across the field, and these serve to define the separate "clusters" as much as the distribution of stars. I'm even less convinced now that all this represents a real cluster. Nevertheless, I'm giving the positions and sizes of the three clumps as hopefully representing what JH saw on that night in November 1831. Note that the clump I previously named "NGC 7438 ne" is now named "NGC 7438 m", and "NGC 7438 ne" is a "new" clump on to the northeast. ===== NGC 7439. Dave Riddle has pointed out that the NGC description of this nebula, found by Albert Marth in the summer of 1863, does not match the galaxy that the NGC number is usually attached to. Marth's description, copied faithfully into the NGC, reads in full, "Long patch of F nebulosity." The only detail beyond the discovery date given by Marth is the brief note "ver." ("verified"), which simply means that Marth saw the object on at least two nights. Interestingly, there is nothing at all at Marth's position. The usual recourse in cases like this is to search the area for the nearest non-stellar object. Here, the object is the galaxy UGC 12273 = MCG +05-54-021 = CGCG 496-027 = NPM1G +28.0471. This does not at all match Marth's description or RA (30 seconds off), though the Dec is within 1.5 arcmin, and it is certainly a galaxy that Marth could have seen -- many that he discovered are considerably fainter. MCG put a question mark on the NGC number, though CGCG and UGC accepted it without question marks. At one point or another, I penciled a question mark into my copy of CGCG (but not UGC until today, 19 July 2005), probably copied from MCG. Just today, I have also put question marks on the entries in the accurate position list. Other people searching unsuccessfully for the object were Curtis at Lick and Reinmuth at Heidelberg, both noted by Carlson in her 1940 ApJ list of NGC/IC corrections. The IC2 Note has a correction to the north polar distance by Bigourdan, but his object (seen only on the last of three nights that Bigourdan searched for NGC 7439) is a double star. Again, the appearance of the double does not match Marth's description, and there are other doubles in the area, too. I did a search around the area of Marth's position today, and around the areas of digit errors in his position (+- 10 arcmin, +- 1 degree, +- 1 hour, etc). I found no galaxies aside from NGC 7729 (41 min, 47 sec from Marth's position) that fit two of the three basic data bits (Dec and description). But given the large, non-digit separation in RA, I doubt very much that this is much more than a wild guess. So, I've put a question mark on the NGC number. I suspect it is the right object (right declination, RA just 30 seconds out), but the odd description is bothersome. ===== NGC 7441 is probably IC 1458. Even though Ormond Stone's position is well east of the galaxy -- as many of the Leander McCormick positions are -- there is a 10th magnitude star preceding the galaxy as in his description, and the galaxy itself also matches the description well. Stone marked the declination with a question mark, so it's not surprising to find that it is 30 arcmin off. The galaxy usually taken as N7441, MCG -01-58-013, better fits only Stone's position, though not the description. In particular, there is no 10th magnitude star preceding the galaxy; the nearest star of any consequence is 12th magnitude and 1.7 arcmin northeast. Still, this could be Stone's star if he confused "preceding" and "following". So, because of the better positional coincidence, I think the galaxy is still a candidate for Stone's object. ===== NGC 7447 apparently does not exist. It is a star of 11.5 magnitude flagged as "nebulous" in the Markree Catalogue on 8 October 1855, but has not been seen again. Auwers, Tempel, and Burnham all failed to find it. Dreyer says that Burnham also noted a "F triple star a little np the place", but I do not see anything within about 10 arcmin that could be called a triple star. The nearest star to its position is about an arcminute to the northeast. The position difference is significantly larger than Cooper's estimated errors of about 5 arcseconds in both coordinates. So, this is not likely to be the intended star even though the magnitude is approximately right. So, aside from the possibility of a faint comet, this object remains a mystery. ----- A search for a comet using JPL's "Small Body Identification" web page, within about 5 degrees of the position of Cooper's "nebulous" star turned up nothing. This object still remains a mystery. ===== NGC 7452 is probably the second-brightest object in a poor cluster with N7459 (which see) being the brightest. Swift's RA is bad, but it is off in the same direction as are his RAs for N7455 and N7459 (which also see); he found all three objects on 14 October 1884. Interestingly, Howe probably picked this up, too. See N7459 for more. ----- Is the discovery date actually 13 November 1884? See NGC 7455 where a letter from Swift to Barnard suggests that it might be (I thank Gary Kronk for sharing the letter with me). ===== NGC 7453 is a double star at Peters's position. I had called it triple earlier, but that is wrong. There are only two brighter stars with blended images on the IIIa-J plate, giving the appearance of a triple. The SDSS shows the two stars clearly with two much fainter ones east and west of the brighter two. The images are also almost in contact with the 11th magnitude star 15 arcseconds north that Peters noted in his description. ===== NGC 7455. Is this perhaps Comet 2P/Encke during its 1885 appearance? Swift claims that he found the nebula while searching for the comet. There is nothing near his place, and the galaxy usually taken as N7455, Markarian 523, does not have a "pS * nr p" as Swift notes. As Howe first noted, the star is 10th magnitude and 6 arcmin northeast of the galaxy, not west as Swift would have it. Also, Swift's brief description (eF, cE) might fit a faint, slow-moving comet quite well. Still, if Swift did see the galaxy, his RA is off in the same direction, and by about the same amount, as are those for N7452 and N7459 (both of which see). ----- JPL's "Small Body Identifier" has only Comet 1948/L1 Honda-Bernasconi in the area on 14 October 1884 when Swift found his object. However, it was about 1.5 degrees northwest of Swift's position, and probably would have been much too faint to see (though no magnitude estimate is available). So, Howe's object is still the main candidate. ----- Gary Kronk, searching through correspondence from Swift to Barnard, has found that Swift's published date for this object is probably wrong by a month and a day -- Swift's letter to Barnard, dated 14 November 1884, has the observation date as 13 November 1884. On this date, Comet 2P/Encke was just three quarters of a degree from Swift's nominal position for the nebula. However, the nuclear magnitude of the comet was approximately 21 according to the model used by JPL's Small Body Identification Tool. Unless the model is seriously wrong, or the total magnitude of the comet much brighter, Swift could not have seen it. It is also probably too far away from Swift's nominal position to suggest that he saw the comet rather than the nebula. Interestingly, Swift's position for his nebula, as noted in his letter to Barnard, is about an arcminute north of his published position. This is still within his usual error bars, but the fact that he changed the position before publication suggests that he either reobserved the object, or altered his initial measurement for some reason. ===== NGC 7459 is probably the double cD galaxy in a poor cluster of galaxies. Swift found only three galaxies on the night of 14 October 1884 -- this, N7452 (which see) about 20 seconds of time preceding it, and N7455 (also which see) about half a degree north. Assuming reasonable identifications for the three, Swift's RA's are well off for all the objects (-21s for N7452, -38s for N7455, and -29s for N7459), though his declinations are within 30 arcsec in each case. For this particular object, his position and description relative to N7452 fit reasonably well. This is "eeF, pL, R; * nr; sf of 2," while N7452 is "eeeF, pL, R, e diff; np of 2." Since Howe apparently saw this when he examined the field; he "suspected another nebula preceding about 15 seconds;" this was most likely N7452, the second brightest object in the cluster. See it and N7455 for more about the field. ----- Is the discovery date actually 13 November 1884? See NGC 7455 where a letter (kindly shared with me by Gary Kronk) from Swift to Barnard suggests that it might be. ===== NGC 7468 is not IC 1465 (which see). Bigourdan measured both objects on the same nights, and actually used N7468 as a comparison "star" on one of those nights. ===== NGC 7471 is lost. Seen only once by Frank Muller with the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor, there is nothing within several degrees of its position that comes close to matching his description, accurately copied into the NGC (Muller made the magnitude 15.8, and the size 0.2 arcmin). There is no sketch. Wolfgang chose a 19th magnitude galaxy 3+ arcmin southeast of the nominal position. That, however, is too faint, has no 10th magnitude stars 20 seconds preceding, and has a different position angle; it cannot be the object that Muller saw. I have not checked large digit errors (10 degrees, 1 hour, etc). Someone with more time and patience than I might uncover Muller's nebula that way. ----- Retirement has its benefits. I've done this checking for large digit errors and have turned up a candidate galaxy at 23 08 55.0 -22 52 55, five minutes of time east of the nominal position. The stars are 30 seconds west rather than 20, and there is a line of fainter, though still obvious, stars just 10 seconds west. Finally, there are two stars to the south and southeast, bright enough that I would have expected Muller to mention them had he seen the galaxy with the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor. So, this object is a candidate only, and has settled into the position table with a question mark. ===== NGC 7472 = NGC 7482. Burnham (and Dreyer in an IC1 Note) suggest that these are also identical with NGC 7477 (which see). But they are not. The two numbers DO refer to the same galaxy, but d'Arrest's object is a different one. In this case, Struve's RA is 2 minutes of time too small, but his Dec is correct, as is his brief description (in a rough translation by me) "Faint small star ('sternchen') with nebulous envelope." The RA error is probably a transcription error. Marth's position is close to the galaxy, and his description "F, vS, stellar" is also appropriate. ===== NGC 7474. See NGC 7475. ===== NGC 7475 is one of the brightest galaxies in a poor cluster. It was found by Marth in August of 1864; NGC 7474 is another in the cluster that he found on the same night. In previous NGC lists, I had the companion of the brighter galaxy listed as a part of the NGC object. However, Marth makes no mention of duplicity of his object, and I think it is likely that he saw only the brighter object. So this time around, I've split them up to reflect this. ===== NGC 7477 is an asterism of two stars superposed on a fainter galaxy close to d'Arrest's position. It is not, as supposed by Burnham (and Dreyer in an IC1 Note), identical to NGC 7472 = NGC 7482 (which see). D'Arrest describes a 17th magnitude star which is attached to his nebula to the north. N7482 has no such star to the north, while the asterism does (there is also an even fainter star to the southeast that d'A did not see). D'A also discusses Struve's object and suggests that it is identical to his (d'A's). Since Marth's observations had not yet been published when d'A drew up his monograph, this was a reasonable assumption on d'A's part. However, it is probably wrong. Struve's description matches N7482 very well, and d'A's asterism only roughly. ===== NGC 7481 is also lost. Described by Ormond Stone as being of magnitude 14.0, very small, round, and gradually brighter in the middle, it is certainly not the galaxy that ESO chose as a possible candidate. That is too faint, elongated, has a brighter star superposed just east, and an equally bright companion galaxy within an arcminute to the northeast. A search of the POSS1 prints around the nominal position reveals no galaxy matching Stone's description. Since there is no sketch, and Stone mentions no nearby stars, we probably won't be able to recover this object. As with NGC 7471, I have not checked for large digit errors. ----- And, as with NGC 7471, I've now checked for digit errors. This turned up a couple of candidates: 1) NGC 7365, and 2) one or another of the brighter galaxies in Abell 2538 (at 23 08.6 -19 53 for J2000). Of these, NGC 7365 is the more likely choice as its description -- by Leavenworth using the same telescope as Stone -- is nearly identical. The declinations of the objects are indeed identical as published in the AJ paper, though the RA's are different by 21 minutes of time. The Abell cluster galaxies are much fainter, enough so that I doubt that they could be swept up by even LdR's Leviathan. So, I've put NGC 7365 in the table as a possible identification for this object. Is it the correct object? I frankly doubt it, but it is all I've been able to find. ===== NGC 7482 = NGC 7472, which see. ===== NGC 7485. See NGC 7486. ===== NGC 7486 is a tight group of four stars about two arcmin southeast of N7485. Copeland found it on 25 August 1871 with LdR's 72-inch, and Dreyer managed a quick micrometric measurement with the same telescope on 3 December 1877 just before "Clouds and fog came on." That measurement, with respect to N7485 -- position angle 109.5+- degrees, distance 114 arcsec -- pins down the asterism exactly. ===== NGC 7487 is also NGC 7210, which see. ===== NGC 7493 is a star. Its micrometrically measured position and its description, from a single observation by Bigourdan in October 1886, clearly identifies it. Bigourdan was not so sure about it the second time he saw it: "Star 13.3 around which I suspect an exceedingly faint trace of nebulosity of which the existence is not certain." ===== NGC 7500. See NGC 7726. ===== NGC 7502 is a triple star (at first glance a double) 32 seconds of time west, and 1 arcmin north of the nominal position from a single observation by Frank Muller with the 26-inch refractor at Leander McCormick. The combined magnitude of the stars, their separation, and their position angle all agree with Muller's estimates (15.8, 0.3 arcmin, and 290 degrees). In addition, he notes the possibility that the object is only a double star. The southeastern "star" is itself double which undoubtedly added to the impression of nebulosity. ----- Looking at the DSS2R and IR images, I no think believe that the southeastern star is double. I've changed the type and notation in the position table to reflect this. ===== NGC 7504 may be a star, as first noted by Reinmuth. It was one of eleven nebulae found by Marth one night late in the summer of 1864 (his date reads "1864.67"), and the only one not clearly a galaxy. The other ten have a systematic offset in the sense Marth-modern of -1.0 seconds in RA, and +0.6 arcmin in Dec from the modern positions. Applying these to his position for N7504 moves the position a bit closer to the star that Wolfgang and I chose as Marth's possible object. However, it is still further from its modern position than most of Marth's other objects from that same night. So, I am not at all sure of the identification of N7504 with this star. There are other galaxies in the area that Marth could have seen, but none have positions suggesting digit errors in Marth's position. ===== NGC 7507 might also be IC 1475 (which see). But so might NGC 7513. ===== NGC 7509. See NGC 7726. ===== NGC 7513 might also be IC 1475 (which see). But so might NGC 7507. ===== NGC 7515. See NGC 7555. ===== NGC 7519 is UGC 12424, not UGC 12416. Marth's position and description fit UGC 12424 very well. While Bigourdan's correction, quoted by Dreyer in the IC2 Notes, suggests that NGC 7519 is UGC 12416 rather than UGC 12424, it nevertheless leaves us with a large declination offset (2 arcmin) and a description that does not fit the galaxy. Checking Bigourdan's observations, we find that the declination he measured is also correct for UGC 12416, so it is clear that he simply observed a different galaxy than did Marth. To preserve Marth's priority here, we have given the NGC number to UGC 12424. ===== NGC 7520 may be IC 5290. Tempel had trouble with the position, and gives it as "23 06 :: -24 35 :" (equinox 1855) in his paper. He does note that the nebula was "repeatedly seen". I5290 is the only object near his position -- aside from stars -- that he could have dug out. Of course, since there are many stars (e.g. NGC 4322) in his lists of "nebulae", this object too could well be another. Dreyer adds a note in the second IC that Howe could not find the object on two nights. A further curiosity is the added note in the NGC description reading "between 2 stars." This is not in Tempel's paper, so was apparently added by him later in a note to Dreyer. (Or, horror, Dreyer got the object confused with another ...) ===== NGC 7522. There is no trace of a nebula matching Muller's description (magnitude = 16.0, diameter = 0.3 arcmin, irregularly round, suddenly brighter in the middle? [the query is Muller's], star 10 in position angle 75 deg, distance 3.2 arcmin) in his published position. Unfortunately, no sketch of the field survives among the unpublished Leander McCormick papers. ESO has suggested that the number might apply to an extremely faint galaxy near the NGC position, but it is almost certainly too faint to have been seen even in the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor -- it is barely visible on the blue POSS1 print. Another possibility for Muller's object is the faint star about 2 minutes of time following the published position. It has the correct distance and position angle from a brighter star to the east-northeast, is about of the right magnitude, and is offset from the published position by about the same amount and in the same direction as many other of the nebulae in the Leander McCormick lists. I stress, however, that this is just another possibility for the identity of N7522. It could well be wrong, and Muller's nebula truly lost. ===== NGC 7526. WH simply calls this "eF, vS", then adds, "240 left doubtful." Whatever it was that caused him concern has not come down to us as GC and NGC not only left off the final remark, but gave us no notes, either. In any case, the object is a short line of three stars; there is a fourth nearby to the northwest. WH's position is 8 seconds preceding and 1.5 arcmin north, but that is well within his usual errors. ===== NGC 7528 is one of the fainter of the NGC nebulae, having been found by A. A. Common using his 36-inch glass-mirrored reflector. Though he calls it simply "F, S", it is around V = 15.5 - 16. Similar nebulae were usually called "eF, eS" by other observers. Fortunately, there are no other nebulae anywhere as bright in the area, so we can be fairly sure of the identity. Common's approximate position -- which he determined simply by reading his setting circles -- is about 25 seconds of time preceding the galaxy. ===== NGC 7531. This beautiful, large, southern spiral has a companion -- perhaps optical -- about 2.9 arcminutes west. The second galaxy has a very low surface brightness, but is nevertheless fully two-thirds the size of NGC 7531 itself at the 26.5 B mag/arcsec^2^. Note that the redshift given in the HIPASS list (see A&A 377, 801, 2001) applies to NGC 7531. The HIPASS "pixels" are approximately 10 arcminutes on a side, and the two galaxies are contained in the same pixel. Ron Buta has a little more on this strange galaxy in "The de Vaucouleurs Atlas of Galaxies" (Cambridge, 2007) on pages 54-56. ===== NGC 7536. See NGC 7555. ===== NGC 7538 is an HII region discovered by WH. He notes the two brightest stars involved, but apparently saw the nebula as a single object. Indeed it is, of course, but it has two lobes that appear on the DSS images. I've given an approximate position for the northeastern lobe, and have adopted the position of an embedded star in the southwestern lobe. For the nebula itself, I've simply taken the mean value. The resulting position is coincidentally close to the northeastern of WH's two stars. I note, however, that there are faint streamers and plumes on to the northeast. ===== NGC 7540 is not NGC 7551, which see. ===== NGC 7541 may also be NGC 7581, which see. Also see NGC 7560. ===== NGC 7547. See NGC 7553 and NGC 7571. ===== NGC 7549. See NGC 7553 and NGC 7571. ===== NGC 7550. See NGC 7553 and NGC 7571. ===== NGC 7551 is a faint galaxy with a somewhat brighter star superposed just to the southwest. The pair of objects is about 2/3 of an arcmin north of Marth's position. Some lists have N7551 equal to N7540, but Marth found that the same night that he picked up N7551. The two objects are, therefore, almost certainly not identical. Marth also described his object as a "neb. * 13m"; this suggests that the star is an integral part of the NGC object. This is how I've treated it; if you don't agree, however, I do give the separate positions for the galaxy and the star. ===== NGC 7552 = IC 5294, which see. ===== NGC 7553 is almost certainly the faint galaxy northeast of NGC 7550. LdR and his observers saw it at least four times, and it is correctly placed in the diagram that Dreyer included in the 1880 monograph. LdR also mentions seeing a fifth nebula in the group; this would be NGC 7558, credited to Marth in the NGC, but seen first by LdR fourteen years earlier in 1850. d'A and Schultz both saw the brightest three of the group, while JH picked up the first two, and WH saw just NGC 7550. Yann Pothier has suggested that LdR also saw the faint galaxy -- with its equally faint superposed star -- at 23 15 38.9 +18 58 18 (J2000, HCsv). However, all the suspected nebulae in the five different observations are accounted for as noted just above, so I do not think that LdR or his observers saw this object. ===== NGC 7555 is probably one of the following: NGC 7515, NGC 7536, NGC 7559, NGC 7563, or NGC 7570. If I were betting, I'd narrow it down to N7536, N7559, or N7563. Here is JH's full description: "F, R, bM; place very loose; two or three more nebulae suspected in the neighbourhood." There is a fairly rich, scattered group about a degree north of JH's "very loose" position. Just about any of the brighter of the galaxies in it could be the one he saw, with the some of others being his "suspected" nebulae. Just to be sure, I checked for other objects found in the same sweep; there are only two, N14 and N7810. JH's positions for both are well within an arcmin of the modern positions, so there is no reason to suspect a systematic offset in the position of N7555. There certainly is, however, a large accidental error. ===== NGC 7556 has several faint companions, one of which was seen by Bindon Stoney in November 1850. The story is in the "notngc" files under "NGC 7556 companion." ===== NGC 7558. See NGC 7553. ===== NGC 7559. See NGC 7555. ===== NGC 7560 and NGC 7561 are a double star and a single star, respectively. Both were found by Herman Schultz in the early 1860's about 1.5 minutes of time east of NGC 7541. Though he saw N7560 three times, and N7561 on the later two of those nights, none of the nights was very good. The first two nights he notes as turbulent with "gales" and aurorae, the third as being interrupted by clouds. His positions are good, though, and point to within a few arcsec of the objects. So it was that Reinmuth had no trouble identifying the stars; his identifications were picked up by Carlson, and by RNGC. ===== NGC 7561 is a star. See NGC 7560. ===== NGC 7562 may also be NGC 7575, which see -- but probably is not. ===== NGC 7563. See NGC 7555. ===== NGC 7564 is a star identified exactly by Bigourdan's micrometric measurements. CGCG 406-036, a few arcmin southwest chosen by Wolfgang, RNGC, and LEDA, is clearly not Bigourdan's object. ===== NGC 7565 is lost, probably for good. It is one of the fourteen new nebulae found by Brother Ferrari and announced by Father Secchi in AN 1571. See NGC 7667 for more on these nebulae. ===== NGC 7568 may also be NGC 7574, which see. ===== NGC 7569 has a two-degree error in its published Declination: instead of +10 16 45, it should be +08 16 45. Swift's position then falls very close to UGC 12472. He also noted "3 F sts sf form a small right angle triangle." The stars are there. So, however, is another star of about the same brightness, closer to the galaxy. Perhaps the triangle is so eye-catching that Swift hardly noticed the closer star. ===== NGC 7570. See NGC 7555. ===== NGC 7571 may be NGC 7597. Or it may be NGC 7578. Or maybe not. Here is Schultz's entire note from page 103 of his 1874 monograph on the object (I've expanded his abbreviations): "A poor stellar group of pretty bright stars follows the above nebulae [N7547, N7549, and N7550] about 1 1/2 minutes; and the whole region following this stellar group seems nebulous: [Schultz italics] a group of small nebulae or a considerably extended nebulosity with several knots? [end italics] As yet the sky was not sufficiently dark, and the nebulosity very faint and indistinct, no decision could be arrived at. This nebulosity independently remarked in the autumns 1867 and 1869, as on the second occasion the elder notice was forgotten. Description and position do not at all agree with III. 181 [N7550]!" There is no such group of bright stars 1.5 minutes following the N7550 galaxy group. The stellar group is instead 1.5 minutes of time following NGC 7578 (coincidentally, RNGC makes N7571=N7578; it probably isn't unless Schultz got his direction wrong and the nebulosity is PRECEDING the stellar group). But Schultz would have had to misidentify N7578 as N7547 or N7550. This, I admit, is a bit of a stretch. But the group of stars is 3.3 minutes following the N7550 group, as well as nearly 20 arcmin to the south. Schultz would probably have been aware of that considerable difference. Scattered around through the bright stars are several galaxies, four of which (N7588, N7597, N7598, and N7602) Marth ran across about the same time using Lasalle's great telescope in Malta. These are bright enough that Schultz could have pulled them out with his 9.6-inch. So, I've tentatively put NGC 7571 on the brightest of Marth's galaxies, N7597. The other possibility is that of RNGC's: N7571 is the same as N7578. N7578 is double and is the brightest in a tight group of galaxies (Hickson 94). This would be in accord with Schultz's description of his object as possibly being a group of nebulae. However, it also requires Schultz to make a mistake in his directions. Also, N7578 is considerably fainter than N7550 or N7597 -- but either of these hypotheses requires that Schultz saw N7578. I'm leaning slightly toward the N7597 hypothesis, but the other could well be the correct one. ----- On a somewhat more practical level, Schultz left us no position for NGC 7571, so I suppose that Dreyer himself worked it out for the GC Supplement. This was copied correctly into the NGC. Bigourdan provides a "corrected" RA in the IC2 Notes, but he observed a double star at 23 17 10.6, +18 58 02 (J2000, UCAC) not the kind of object that would match Schultz's rather unusual description. Wolfgang adopted Bigourdan's double in his 1997 list of NGC objects, though in his 2010 book, makes the object identical with NGC 7597. This may be as good an identification as any other, but I am still skeptical given the problems in Schultz's note. So, the question marks that I put on this earlier stay firmly in place. And then I looked at NGC 7578 again -- "... a group of small nebulae or a considerably extended nebulosity with several knots?" That seems to describe N7578 and its accompanying nebulae and stars pretty well. So, is this Schultz's mystery object? See the last two sentences of the previous paragraph! ===== NGC 7574 may be identical with NGC 7568. This would require errors of 30 seconds of time in RA and 30 arcmin in Dec in d'A's nominal position. He only observed the object once (on 2 Oct 1866), so these are possible. With no other reasonable candidates that I can see, I've adopted the identity, though with a colon -- upgraded from my earlier question mark. ===== NGC 7575 is probably CGCG 406-044, just one degree south of Marth's otherwise not-too-badly-determined position. The description matches, and the considerably fainter galaxy just to the south would probably have escaped Marth's attention. The identification as a star (by Reinmuth, copied by Carlson and RNGC) seems less likely given that a "Faint, small, very little extended" nebula would be well-seen in a 48-inch telescope. Still, Marth has probably picked up a few other stars, so this remains a possibility, however -- ahem -- faint. Another, even less likely possibility, is that N7575 is NGC 7562 with a 1.3 minute error in RA. The one-degree digit error strikes me as a better bet. ===== NGC 7577. I was skeptical about Wolfgang's identification of this (the Lyon folks fingered the same faint galaxy), even with the star close northeast. So, I reduced Bigourdan's observation -- his position falls exactly and cleanly between star and galaxy. He apparently really did see the pair, so it is in the big table. ===== NGC 7578. The modern catalogues make a small mess of this NGC number, so here are the facts in RA order (the positions are from Gaia EDR3): RA (1950.0) Dec Hickson VV UGC RC2/3 23 14 42.50 +18 25 39.5 94b=N7578A 181b 12477=N7578a N7578A 23 14 44.00 +18 26 04.4 94a=N7578B 181a 12478=N7578b N7578B Hickson and VV did things logically (by magnitude), choosing the brightest component as "a". UGC followed its internal scheme, also logical, of choosing component letters by RA. RC2/3 followed UGC. Looking at the NGC, we see that N7578 was only observed by William and John Herschel. Though WH noted "4 or 5 small stars with nebulosity," JH saw only one object here which he succinctly described with a single letter "F." Neither of their positions is good enough to pin down one or the other of the galaxies as the real N7578, but since Hickson 94a is brighter by over 0.6 mag, I think that we can choose it as N7578 without bending the history too much. So, I have ignored the NGC identifications in Hickson, UGC, and RC2/3; and have made the brighter north-following object (UGC 12478) = NGC 7578. This group, by the way, may also be NGC 7571, which see. ===== NGC 7580. See NGC 7644. ===== NGC 7581 may be NGC 7541. Dreyer credits the object to Holden, but it is not in either of the lists in the Washburn Observatory Publications that Dreyer credits in the NGC. Nor does Dreyer give a reference in the GC Supplement where the object first appears. If Holden published a note about the object, it must have been in the time between the GC's appearance in 1864 and the publication of the Supplement in 1878. Perhaps someone could check the appropriate journals of the time (AN, MN, The Observatory, AJ, and so forth). In any event, the identity with NGC 7541 was first suggested by Reinmuth. From Die Nebel Herschel, it was picked up by Carlson, then RC1, and RNGC. The identity is reasonable: aside from being called "very faint," the remainder of the GC/NGC description "much extended, star 12-13 close following" is accurate. However, the position is 3 minutes of time off in RA, and 8 arcmin in Dec. These don't seem to suggest simple digit errors, though they could be if the declination error is 10 arcmin, with the 2 arcmin remainder accounted for by random error. I've put a question mark on the identification because of the position mismatch and the lack of a reference. ----- Note added in August 2007: Wolfgang found the relevant observation in the "Astronomical and Meteorological Observations made during the Year 1875 at the United States Naval Observatory", Vol. 15, 1878. On page 285 is this curious note: "1875 Jan. 11. Nebula (nova). In looking for Encke's Comet, found a vF, elongated nebula [alpha] = 23h 11m.4 [delta] = +3d 59. Tuttle." Assuming that this is for the equinox of 1875, this precesses to exactly the NGC position. But it is curious indeed that the observation is credited to Horace P. Tuttle rather than to Edward S. Holden. Not only is Tuttle's name given explicitely in the Remarks column, but his initial appears in the Observer column as well. On the other hand, Holden is credited with observing a "Satellite of Neptune" on the same night, so perhaps the person who prepared the table of observations with the 26-inch refractor misattributed the observation. In his 2010 book, however, Wolfgang makes no mention of this possibility, apparently accepting Tuttle as the nebula's discoverer. If that is the case, then Wolfgang argues that Holden must have sent a letter to Dreyer correcting the attribution, and adding the note about the star close following. If that is in turn true, then we need to search Dreyer's records (in Oxford, Armagh, or the RAS Library in London?) for that letter. Hypotheses to check! ===== NGC 7582. See IC 5308 = NGC 7599. ===== NGC 7583 = NGC 7605. See NGC 7604 for the short story. ===== NGC 7586. Marth's position, verified on at least a second night, and copied correctly into the NGC, falls near a galaxy meeting his description "eF, vS, alm stellar." For some reason, CGCG ignores this object and incorrectly puts the NGC number on a considerably fainter galaxy 17 seconds preceding and a full 20 arcmin to the south. At least Hubble got the right object in his thesis. ===== NGC 7588. See NGC 7571. ===== NGC 7590. See IC 5308 = NGC 7599. ===== NGC 7593. Found by Albert Marth, the RA he listed is off by 30 seconds of time. See NGC 1474 about other nebulae found by Marth on this night. ===== NGC 7594 = IC 1478. The confusion arose because Ainslie Common's position is none too good. His description, however, pinpoints the galaxy: "Faint, round, following 3 stars in a line [oriented at] 90 deg pointing to another fainter nebula south." The "fainter nebula south" is IC 5306 (which see; it was rediscovered by Kobold). I suspect that Dreyer did not include this in the NGC because of the lack of a position. That did not prevent him from including other poorly observed nebulae, however, so his decision remains a bit of a puzzle. ===== NGC 7596 = IC 1477. Here is another case where the Leander McCormick RA is well off the real RA. In this case, we have Leavenworth's sketch showing the galaxy and four stars around it in a distinctive pattern to positively identify the galaxy. His description also fits well, though the position angle of the major axis is closer to 25 degrees than to zero. Javelle picked up the galaxy just a few years after Leavenworth discovered it. The IC position, correctly copied from Javelle's list and referred as usual to a BD star, is good. Presumeably his micrometric offsets and a modern position for the star would yield an even better position, but I've not reduced them. The identity is obvious, and we have better modern positions in any case. ----- In my 2016 sweep through the NGC, I reduced Javelle's measurements with respect to a modern position for his comparison star. His position is now in the position files. ===== NGC 7597 may be NGC 7571, which see. ===== NGC 7598. See NGC 7571. ===== NGC 7599 = IC 5308, which see. ===== NGC 7602. See NGC 7571. ===== NGC 7604 and NGC 7605 were found by Marth late in 1864. There is nothing in his places that he could have seen with Laselle's 48-inch telescope, but just one minute of time preceding is a pair matching his descriptions and relative positions. It happens that he had found the brighter of the pair, NGC 7583, earlier in the same year. Thus, that object has two entries in his list, and two NGC numbers. Unfortunately, CGCG put the number 7583 on the fainter of the galaxies, though it does in fact belong to the brighter. ===== NGC 7605 = NGC 7583. See NGC 7604. ===== NGC 7607 = IC 1480 is a double star. The NGC object is one of Tempel's "nebulae" with a very good ring micrometer measurement. That pins down the star accurately, as does his note of a 16th magnitude star half an arcminute to the northeast. The IC entry comes from Bigourdan, whose micrometric position falls within seven arcsec of the double. Curiously, the NGC object is missing from his big table. There is no entry for it, not even with his frequent, terse "Non vue" comment. See the IC number for more. ===== NGC 7610 and NGC 7616 are two of the objects found by Ainslee Common with his 36-inch reflector. His positions coincide with nothing on the sky, but close to the position for NGC 7610 is a relatively large Scd galaxy that might well have been described as "diffused" by him. There is nothing at all near the position for NGC 7616, and I suspect that Common's two observations refer to the same object. This galaxy has been micrometrically measured by Kobold. His second measurement, reported under the number NGC 7610, was corrected on his errata page. The corrected measurement is obviously a repeat measure of the same object as his first measure, listed under NGC 7616. He therefore added a note to that effect, saying that the measured object was "most likely" to be NGC 7616. I think this is because Common's description is "pF, difffused" for N7616, but "F, S, difffused" for N7610. Bigourdan has no observations for either object, though he reports having seen NGC 7610 at its NGC position. Carl Wirtz also provides only a description for it, and includes the object under the number "NGC 7616?" in his collection of the Strassberg micrometric positions. The galaxy was subsequently ignored until its appearance in CGCG, MCG, UGC, and the 10th KUG list. Steve Gottlieb reports a visual sighting of it in 1992, but could find nothing near the position of NGC 7616. He pointed out, though, a very faint galaxy a few seconds of time east of the NGC position; I doubt that Common could have seen this, even with a 36-inch. If it were N7616, then Common's descriptions would be backwards: "F" for the much brighter galaxy, and "pF" for the much fainter. ===== NGC 7613 and NGC 7614 are two of Brother Ferrari's nebulae announced by Father Secchi in AN 1571. N7614 is "Very near with the 3rd object [N7613] south- preceding" according to the note that Secchi gives, but there is no obvious double nebula anywhere near the nominal position. There are many galaxies in this area, however. Perhaps one of them, plus a faint star or asterism, will turn out to be the objects the good brother saw. See NGC 7667 for more about these observations. ----- The faint galaxy (V = 16.5) with an eccentric nucleus at 23 19 51.7, +00 25 21 has sometimes been taken as NGC 7613. While Brother Ferrari called his object "vF", I do not think that it would have been visible in the 9.5-inch Merz refractor at the Collegio Romano. JH, for example, called NGC 7615 "eF, eS" with his 18.7-inch reflector on a night with the "sky clear" and measured a good position for it. Nevertheless, d'A, Schultz, and Tempel failed to find JH's nebula which is nearly 2 magnitudes brighter (V = 14.8) than this galaxy supposed to have been seen by Brother Ferrari. See NGC 7667 for more on the Collegio Romano observations. Still, to be inclusive, I've listed it in the position table -- with a couple of question marks appended, of course. ===== NGC 7614 is lost, though Wolfgang suggests it is a group of four faint stars. I have my doubts that these could have been seen with the 9.5-inch refractor, so have not listed them in the position table. See NGC 7613, also lost. ===== NGC 7616 is probably NGC 7610, which see. ===== NGC 7622. Curious! My early list of RNGC errata is wrong, but I've not yet found out why (probably a typo). I correctly identified the galaxy for SGC, however, and ESO also has the right object. RC3 is therefore correct. But what led me to think it nonexistent? Curious, indeed! ----- The actual note in my RNGC list (dated 2 Nov 1976 from my first year at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh) reads "T = 7 (Not found on UK Schmidt plate)." I'm even more puzzled now as this seems to rule out any simple error such as a transposition of numbers (e.g. "7262" or "7226"). This was clearly a blunder of some sort. Nevertheless, I've left this note here -- you mustn't think that I'm infallible, and it shows that you may indeed find bugs in this list of positions or in this set of Notes. If you do, please let me know so that I can fix the problem. Thanks! ===== NGC 7624. See NGC 7726. ===== NGC 7627 is probably NGC 7641. At least that is the opinion of Lewis Swift as expressed to Herbert Howe in a letter; see Howe's note in MNRAS 61, 29, 1900. Howe wrote to Swift after being unable to find the object on two nights. There is indeed nothing in Swift's place. However, in spite of Swift's imprimatur, I'm a unsure about this identification. While there are indeed two stars north of the galaxy, Swift's full note in his 6th list reads "vF, S, vE; coarse D * nr n; the D * is bet 2 sts." I would not call the two stars even a coarse double -- they are separated by nearly an arcminute and are quite faint. Furthermore, I see no trace of the two stars flanking the coarse double. Swift's description of the galaxy is accurate, but the lack of the stars is bothersome. A search of the area turned up nothing else that might be Swift's object, however (NGC 7644 is a few arcminutes to the northeast; it has its own story). The possibility of a large digit error remains to be checked. In the meantime, I've marked the identification with a colon. ===== NGC 7630. See NGC 7638. ===== NGC 7632 = IC 5313, which see. ===== NGC 7635. There is no problem with the identification of this marvelous HII region. But there is a curious "discrepancy" between the NGC itself and the GC, as well as the original observations. Dreyer has an 8th magnitude star involved, while JH and WH have the star as 9th magnitude. That is what JH used in GC too. Finally, the NGC has a position about an arcminute north of WH and JH (their positions are accordant to within 2 seconds of time). It looks like Dreyer has adopted a position close to the BD position for the star; he has certainly adopted the BD magnitude (8.0) as that of the star. Ironically, the modern V magnitude is 8.7, closer to the Herschels' estimate than to the BD observer's. ===== NGC 7638 = IC 1483 and NGC 7639 = IC 1485 are two nebulae discovered by Ainslie Common with his 36-inch reflector. They are mentioned only in his descriptive note for NGC 7630, presumeably found the same night: "There are 2 similar nebulae within 30' sf No. 32 [N7630]." Even though the position of N7630 is coarsely given (23 15, +10 47 for 1880), its identity is fortunately clear. We are also fortunate that the only two galaxies bright enough for Common to have easily seen "within 30' sf" are the only two candidates there are in that part of the sky. The identities are therefore very secure, even if the NGC positions (worked out by Dreyer for lack of anything better, and marked with plus-minus signs) are far off. The poor positions led Javelle to think these two nebulae "novae" when he went over the field in the early 1890's. So, they (and a third nearby, IC 1484) received IC numbers as well. ===== NGC 7639 = IC 1485. See NGC 7638. ===== NGC 7641 may also be NGC 7627, which see. ===== NGC 7643. See NGC 7644. ===== NGC 7644. There is nothing at Swift's nominal position. He found the object on 29 September 1886, calling it only, "vF, pS, lE." I wrote previously that "The faint galaxy two arcmin following is too faint and too small to match Swift's description." I must have meant 0.2 arcminutes -- if so, I am still fairly sure that this is not Swift's object. However, on good nights, Swift was capable of amazing feats of visual accuity, so I've listed this as a faint (sorry ...) possibility. Another "however": The object is faint enough that Marth or one of LdR's observers might have dug it out with their huge reflectors, but Swift was working with a 16-inch refractor. Consider that on the same night, he found NGC 7535 and NGC 7536, both considerably brighter and larger than this object, and called them "eeeF, pS" and "eeF, pS" respectively. I think it is very unlikely that he would call a fainter object brighter than either of those two. So, to return to my earlier note ... There are two reasonable candidates for Swift's object: NGC 7643 (found by Stephan) and NGC 7651, found by Swift himself just four weeks before N7644 (on 1 Sept 1886). N7643 is exactly two degrees south of Swift's nominal position, and 22 seconds of time preceding. The description pretty well matches the galaxy. N7651 has the same declination, and is 1 minute 15 seconds of time east of N7644's position. This is a fainter object -- Swift called it "extremely faint" rather than the "very faint" he used for N7644. In neither description does he refer to nearby stars, though N7651 is noted as being "in vacancy." This almost certainly rules out a third candidate, N7580 (5 min 32 sec west, but only 1.5 arcmin north) around which Swift noted four stars when he found it four nights earlier (on 25 Sept 1886)." The object that RNGC and Wolfgang choose as N7644 is an even fainter object of lower surface brightness just over an arcmin east-northeast of N7651. Had Swift seen this, he probably would have noted the two as a close pair -- in his 33 arcmin field, they would appear to be almost on top of one another. In the end, I suspect that N7643 is the most likely candidate, though N7651 has the advantage of only an error in RA. However, choosing either one is speculation, so I've sprinkled question marks liberally among the candidate galaxies in the table. ===== NGC 7646, which may be = IC 5318, is another of the Leander McCormick nebulae found by Muller, with its discovery announced before a decent position was available. Muller's description (magnitude = 14.5, diameter = 0.2 x 0.1, extended 260 deg) would fit IC 5318 if he saw only the bar of the galaxy. He also has a "*9, PA 10 deg, distance 3.6 arcmin." The star is actually 3.8 arcmin away at PA = 346 deg. Did Muller somehow get his PA into the wrong quadrant? (There is no sketch to help us in this case). The main thing that makes me question the identification is the star of magnitude 9 or 10 superposed on the galaxy. Muller surely would have mentioned the star had he noticed it -- since the nature of the nebulae was still in debate in the late 1880's, nearby stars were often taken as possibly physically associated with the nebulae. IC 5318 was found by Herbert Howe, using Chamberlain Observatory's 16-inch refractor. He measured the position of the galaxy, and noted the superposed star but, because of Muller's poor position, did not make a connection with the NGC number. Given the problems with Muller's position and description, we should perhaps simply note the possibility of the identity, and let it go at that. ----- Looking at this again in May 2016, with more objective data at hand, I find the V magnitude of the superposed star is listed at 11.66 in UCAC4. Similarly, the star to the north has a V magnitude of 11.71, nearly three magnitudes fainter than Muller's estimate of "9". Further, I also see another star of similar brightness at approximately 4 arcminutes south-southwest of the galaxy; its V magnitude is 10.85. All this makes my supposition that Muller's object is IC 5318 far less likely, so I've downgraded my colon on the identification to, not one, but two question marks. So, if NGC 7646 is probably not IC 5318, just what is it? Searches at all the usual digit error positions turned up nothing, so the conclusion is -- as with so many of these early Leander McCormick discoveries -- "Not Found." ----- Coincidentally, Yann Pothier sent an email note suggesting that Muller's object is the double star that I've noted in the table. This double has the brighter star at the correct distance and position angle, and itself fits Muller's description, particularly the magnitude and position angle of its extention. This is a much better candidate for Muller's object than IC 5318, so I've included it in the position table with a single colon. ===== NGC 7648 = IC 1486, which see. Also see NGC 7667. ===== NGC 7649 = IC 1487, which see. ===== NGC 7650. The northern arm of this late-type spiral is distorted. The galaxy may be interacting with another, smaller galaxy (as it appears to be in the DSS2IR image), or this may be a large, star-forming, superassociation (as it appears in the DSS2R and DSSB images). In either case, I've given a separate position for it. ===== NGC 7651. See NGC 7644. ===== NGC 7653 is not IC 1488, which see. ===== NGC 7654 = M 52. The NGC position (from JH) is for SAO 20606, west of the cluster itself. The cluster has a tight core of perhaps a dozen stars, but this is not at the geometrical center of the cluster. Hence, I've listed a few positions in the table -- one from DSS2R (source HCsv) includes a mostly detached clump to the northeast. Take whichever position seems appropriate to you. JH has the diameter of just 6 arcminutes, but this applies only to the region just northwest with the "core" at its southeastern end. The cluster actually sprawls a bit and looks to cover about 15 arcminutes in the DSS2R field. ===== NGC 7656 is a peculiar S0, the brightest in a relatively sparce group. It has a broad plume to the northwest and a virtually complete loop to the northeast. The plume has a faint companion involved in its southeastern end of the plume, and the loop has at least three companions, knots, or stars involved. My previous position for the loop was the approximate center chosen by eye. For this iteration, I've adopted the mean value of the three 2MASS PSC sources -- plus one of my own SkyView estimates for a knot too faint to show up in the PSC -- strung out along the loop, regardless of their classification or actual physical involvement. The resulting mean position is close to the previous eyeball estimate. ===== NGC 7663 is one of Brother Ferrari's nebulae announced by Father Secchi. It, unlike eight other nebulae found by Ferrari, has two candidate galaxies in the area of the nominal position. One, MCG -01-59-022 is slightly brighter than the other, MCG -01-59-023. The latter galaxy has the advantage of being closer to the nominal RA, but is just as far off in declination, and has a lower surface brightness -- I'd be surprised if it could be seen in a 9.5-inch refractor while sweeping with the 27 arcminute field that his eyepiece gave him (see NGC 7667 for more on the Collegio Romano observers). I've put both positions in the table -- with question marks, of course. ===== NGC 7666 is lost. It is one of the fourteen nebulae announced by Father Secchi in AN 1571. See NGC 7667 for more on these nebulae. ===== NGC 7667, NGC 7668, NGC 7669, and NGC 7670. Father Angelo Secchi was a Jesuit priest who worked at Collegio Romano in the mid-1800's. He is remembered today primarily as a pioneer in spectral classification of stars, and for his studies of the sun: he was among the first to photograph the corona during an eclipse, and also was the first to attempt to deduce the interior structure of the sun. It's fair to say that he was -- pun fully intended -- a father of stellar astrophysics. In 1866, he published in AN 1571 a short list of fourteen new nebulae that one of his fellow Jesuits, Brother Ferrari, discovered during a (fruitless) search for Biela's Comet from 11 November 1865 to 18 January 1866. Father Secchi has this to say about the 9.5-inch Merz equatorial at the Collegio, "From this study, we have convinced ourselves that the refractor at our observatory is at least as keen and powerful as the Herschels' telescopes ..." (translated by me from his French original). Also, he says that they "fitted [to the telescope] a large eyepiece which gives a 27 arcminute field." (My thanks to Wolfgang Steinicke for digging out the size of the telescope.) Back to the fourteen new nebulae. I searched near the nominal positions on the POSS1 prints for all of these, and was unable to find any trace of eight of them (NGC 7565, N7613, N7614, N7666, N7667, N7668, N7669, and N7670). There are good candidates for three others (N7683, the only one of the objects whose position was determined by actual comparison to a star; N7738, and N50), and poor candidates for the remaining three (N7663, N7739, and N116). Secchi (or Ferrari) also "corrects" WH's positions for two nebulae, N157 and N7648. His positions for those are indeed better than Herschel's -- but they don't help us find the other missing objects in his list. If we take mean offsets from modern positions for the "good" candidates -- excepting N7683 for which the position comes from a different method -- and the two corrected WH galaxies, we find systematic offsets of -5 seconds of time, and -1 arcmin 10 arcsec in Dec. The standard deviations on these numbers (+- 18 seconds and +- 26 arcsec) suggest that the RA offset is not significant and that the Declination offset is barely significant. But even that does not help us find the missing objects. Reading more of Father Secchi's note, I learned why the positions are so bad. "The position is determined from the setting circles of the equatorial, corrected for instrumental errors, simply by placing the nebula in the center of the field." Secchi, however, also says that he verified each of the nebulae after Brother Ferrari found them. He must have done this on the same nights as their discovery since he never would have recovered them otherwise. Since Secchi gives no equinox in his note, I, like Dreyer before me, have assumed that his positions refer to the equinox at the date of observation, i.e. 1866.0 give or take a few weeks. I adopted 1866.0. Specifically for NGC 7667 and its cohorts: there is nothing at all near the single nominal position that Secchi gives for them, and only one or two of the galaxies within a degree of that position are bright enough to have been seen with a 9.5-inch telescope. However, Steve Gottlieb has suggested that some of the knots in the arms of UGC 12578 might be N7668, N7669, and N7670 which Secchi says "surround" N7667. These are much too faint for a 9.5-inch telescope, but the galaxy itself may be bright enough to be one of Secchi's objects, in spite of having a pretty low surface brightness. However, it is 3 minutes off in RA and nearly five arcmin in Dec from the nominal position, so it would be a stretch to point to this object. There are also three other objects within 13.5 arcmin of it that might be Secchi and Ferrari's other three nebulae: UGC 12589, and the double stars at 23 21 54.6, -00 12 35 and 23 22 12.5, -00 21 42 (1950 positions). All are northeast of U12578, though, and Secchi's description clearly translates as "Very faint: the other three surround the 9th [in the list = N7667] in the field." So, U12589 and the double stars are pure guesswork, and I don't think that I'd want to stake my life on them -- or even on U12578 being N7667. ===== NGC 7668. See NGC 7667. ===== NGC 7669. See NGC 7667. ===== NGC 7670. See NGC 7667. ===== NGC 7674 has a faint companion seen by Hunter with LdR's telescope in September 1862. We often call it "NGC 7674A"; see its story in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 7675. See NGC 7674A in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 7681. CGCG, RNGC, and UGC all chose the wrong galaxy in spite of the very good NGC position (from two determinations by John Herschel). This is even more curious as the correct galaxy is a full magnitude brighter and twice as large as the one they all chose. Furthermore, the description in the NGC mentions the double star following the nebula: there is none following the wrong galaxy, but there is a clear double just north-following the correct object. The identification is unambiguous. The galaxy itself is a close double object oriented north-south. While redshifts are available for the object, they have been confused by the problem with the identifications. I've not yet taken the time to sort them out, so do not know if the object is an optical or physical double. The interaction with the very compact northeastern companion is clear in the distorted corona, and can probably account for all of the disturbance that we see. But we really do need redshifts for all three galaxies to sort out the actual situation. ===== NGC 7683 is the only one of Brother Ferrari's nebulae to be directly compared to a star; Father Secchi claims it was "425 Weisse H. 23." No offsets are given, and the published position is ten seconds of time too small, and ten arcseconds too large. But the galaxy, simply called "Faint" is at least close enough to the published position to be confidently chosen as the one the Brother Ferrari saw. See NGC 7667 for more on his other nebulae about which we cannot be so confident. ===== NGC 7686. This cluster was found by WH in December 1787, and reobserved three times by JH in September of 1829. JH's position is for HD 221246, as is Brian Skiff's from about 1.7 centuries later. I make the position closer to WH's -- which is northwest of the bright star -- and also make the diameter about twice JH's seven arcminutes. ===== NGC 7689. The RC3 position (from ESO) is correct (barring an error in ESO, of course), while RC2 gives the wrong RA. Oddly, there is nothing in the GSC at either position, though ESO-LV repeats the ESO position and gives plausible data for the galaxy there. ----- The incorrect RA in RC2 is from the NGC, GC, and finally JH whose RA is just 30 seconds too small. While I haven't yet looked at the sweep, I don't think that this can be wire error -- at this declination, the minimum wire error would be 48 seconds. So, it looks to be a simple digit error somewhere in the observation/reduction "pipeline". The surface brightness of the galaxy is apparently a bit too low for the GSC, by the way. The object itself is a beautiful SB(sr)bc I-II spiral, and has entries in the 2MASS lists, UCAC, GSC3, and UB10. I've adopted the position from 2MASS PSC. ===== NGC 7697 = IC 5333 = ESO 110-G012. Steve Gottlieb points out that the three- minute RA error in the NGC could well be a simple typo, while the ten-arcmin Dec error is apparently a digit error introduced in the GC precession. JH's original position in the CGH Observations (23 25 03.7, 156 20 34 for 1830) precesses to within 30 arcseconds of the modern position. Had the CGH position appeared in the NGC, Stewart would not have listed this as a new object. That modern position, by the way, is not well-constrained. The galaxy is a stubby, patchy spindle with no obvious nucleus. The declination is pretty well-determined as the galaxy is extended nearly along the equator. The RA, however, is a problem. I've given several in the table; the one I've chosen -- a mean from the 2MASS PSC -- is appropriate for the approximate center of the image, but does not necessarily represent the nucleus. The printed version of RC3 is wrong. The correct identification there is PGC 71800 = NGC 7697 = IC 5333, and the type is .S..3P/, with S(T) = S, T = 2.5 +- 0.7 (I now think the type is actually later than Sb, but we need a deep image with a large telescope to tell for sure). Also note that PGC 71812 is not NGC 7697. Therefore, the type for PGC 71812 is ".SBT6..", and T = 6.3 +- 0.6. ===== NGC 7699, NGC 7700, and NGC 7701. The brightest of this triplet was found by WH and given the number III 188 in his first catalogue. This galaxy was also observed by d'Arrest who marked the identification with H III 188 questionable (until I can find time to translate his Latin descriptions, I won't know why he queried the ID; I suspect Herschel's position is not too good). His four observations provide the good NGC position for NGC 7701. The NGC description is also accurate -- there is an 11th magnitude star south-preceding. In November of 1864, after d'Arrest had made his observations, but before he published them, Marth found the other two galaxies in the group with Laselle's 48-inch reflector during one of their stays at Malta. Though neither was verified, the positions and descriptions are good enough to establish the identifications. There the matter rested until I included the two largest of the galaxies in the SEGC. Unfortunately, I reversed the identifications in the prepublication version of SEGC, calling NGC 7700 "NGC 7701" and vice versa. Steve Gottlieb caught the mistake, but unfortunately not until after publication of RC3. In any event, this is one case in which the NGC positions and descriptions point to exactly the right galaxies. My apologies for muddying the waters! ===== NGC 7700. See NGC 7699. ===== NGC 7701. See NGC 7699. ===== NGC 7708. This is probably just a random group of stars. The NGC position, from two observations by JH, is for HD 221774, the 8th magnitude star mentioned in the NGC description. The other fainter stars seem to be scattered more to the north, and the extent of the "cluster" is indefinite on the POSS1. Perhaps it would appear better at the eyepiece. ----- Looking again at this in May 2016, I am more inclined to agree with the Herschels -- this looks like a pretty nice cluster. I am unsure, however, whether the two or three brightest stars -- HD 221774, BD +71 1211, and BD +71 1212 -- are cluster members or not. The usual study with astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy will be needed to tell us. In the meantime, I've given two positions -- one with the stars (which I finally adopted for the cluster), and my earlier one without them. In either case, the cluster looks to be more "cluster-ish" (as George Abell once put it in a different context) to me now than it did in the mid-1990s on the POSS1 prints. Finally, Brent Archinal makes the "cluster" considerably larger, including a scattered clump of 5-6 moderately bright stars 16-17 arcminutes to the east. This might be the Herschels' cluster, though the only estimate of its size we have is from JH on the final of the three nights on which he saw it: "It more than fills the field." This implies a diameter of at least 15 arcminutes, but I do not think that JH is saying it is as large as two field diameters. His full descriptions read, "A poor and coarse cluster of large and small stars. The largest (= 9m) taken"; "A star 8 or 8.9m [8-9m], the chief of a poor and diffused cluster of small stars"; and "A * 8.9m, the chief of a scattered cluster of 30....50 stars, 10....15m. It more than fills the field." WH says only, "A cluster of coarsely scattered large stars, not rich, but the stars are brilliant." His position is close to the center of the western clump, so I am inclined here to accept that as the Herschels' object. ===== NGC 7720 is the brightest object in the cluster Abell 2634. While some have suggested it to be an interacting double nebula, it could just as well be a single bright galaxy with a second superposed 12 arcseconds north. WH's RA is 40 seconds too large. See NGC 6882 = NGC 6885 for more on the observations he made on 10 Sept 1784. Also see NGC 7726 for more about the brighter galaxies in Abell 2634. WH may have glimpsed some of the other galaxies in the cluster as his published description reads, "vF, E, some S sts with nebulosity." (JH's description is more prosaic: "pF, R, bM; 20[arcsec]".) For GC and NGC, JH changed this to read simply "F, S, E, bM; am sts." This doesn't quite convey WH's original intent, and would suggest that we ought to be looking around for more stars in the field than actually exist. Still, the identification is not in doubt. ===== NGC 7726. When I measured positions in Abell 2634 for RC2, I assigned the number N7726 to the galaxy at 23 39 11.6, +26 06 58 (J2000.0; N7720 is at 23 38 29.1, +27 01 59; N7728 at 23 40 00.6, +27 08 06; and IC 5342 is at 23 38 38.5, +27 00 42). However, I had not then dug out Swift's original description: "eeF; pS; R; e diff; pB * nr f; [N7728] nr nf, but is not little, but very elongated." I really have to stretch to make my first choice fit this description; the "pB *" is hardly "near" (but keep in mind Swift's 33 arcmin field!), though it is north-following, as is N7728 (more following than north). And the galaxy is not round as Swift claims; it is quite elongated. Swift's description of N7728 is also wrong: it is indeed "little elongated," just as d'Arrest has it. So, which galaxy did Swift see? I don't see any other object in Abell 2634 that fits his description. For the time being, I'm going to let my original identification stand, but it is certainly questionable. RC3 is almost certainly wrong, and the number N7726 ought to be deleted from PGC 71991 and -- perhaps! -- added to PGC 72024. ----- So there it stood for many years. When I came back to this in May 2016, I wondered again just what Swift had seen nearly 130 years ago. Could he perhaps have rediscovered NGC 7720? He says nothing about it, and his declination is more nearly in line with it than the bright galaxies to the north. This would mean, however, that his "pB * nr f" would be about twenty arcminutes away, hardly "near" and certainly well out of his field if he had his new nebula centered at all well. Is it possible that he has gotten his directions confused; perhaps the "pB *" is near preceding rather than following. In this case, he may have confused his new object and NGC 7728. This might account for his comment about that object's elongation. None of that made much sense in view of the field, so I checked on other galaxies Swift found that night. The short answer is that there is a small systematic error in both RA or Dec for the other three galaxies (NGC 7500, 7509, and 7624), but it is not nearly large enough (-1 arcminute in RA, and +0.9 arcminute in Dec, in the sense Swift minus modern) to move Swift's nominal position anywhere near the candidate galaxies. My conclusion from all this is to change the colon on the identification to a two solid question marks. Swift just hasn't left us enough to go on -- and what we do have from him does not match the sky. ===== NGC 7728. See NGC 7726. ===== NGC 7730. Tempel found a pretty isolated "Nebula, good class II, extended, 2 arcmin diameter, no known star in the area", and published it with an approximate position in his first paper devoted to nebulae quoted by Dreyer in the NGC. Dreyer also has an IC Note that the NGC position is actually from a letter that Tempel sent to him in 1876. This would explain the difference between the NGC position and Tempel's position in his first paper. Unfortunately, there are no galaxies near Tempel's position that match his description. ESO 606- G002 is usually taken as NGC 7730 (except in SGC where I noted the NGC object as "not found" in the Note for NGC 7736), but as Steve Gottlieb points out, this is quite a faint galaxy. Would Tempel have called an object with B_t = 14.8 a "good [William Herschel] class II"? I doubt it, too. Given the uncertain nominal position and the sketchy description, I searched the area for several degrees around and found nothing that matches. The only "class II" nebulae nearby are NGC 7736 -- but that is exactly round and has three pretty bright stars just 6-7 arcmin to the northwest -- and ESO 605- G016, both at B_t = 13.65. The ESO object, too, is round (though is also a beautiful, large, ringed spiral in which Tempel just might have glimpsed some structure that would have allowed him to call it "langlich" -- "extended" or "elongated" in English), and has a 10th magnitude star about three arcminutes to the southeast. I've listed Andris's object as the most likely candidate in spite of its faintness, and have added the spiral to the list as well (but not NGC 7736; it is just too featurelessly round to begin to match Tempel's "extended"). But I'm going to suggest that Tempel's position is bad in Declination as well as in RA, and that his object is some other galaxy altogether. A search over a larger area is in order. ----- After that search over a larger area, the result is still the same -- there is nothing at any reasonable digit error that matches Tempel's observation. I've left the table as it has been, with two poor candidates. This object is probably lost. ===== NGC 7736. See NGC 7730. ===== NGC 7738 and NGC 7739. Father Secchi listed 14 new nebulae in his short discovery note (see NGC 7667 for more about these objects). Of these, I cannot locate eight. Three others -- including N7738 and N7739 -- have candidate galaxies, though the identifications are very uncertain. The only galaxies that even come close to satisfying Secchi's position for the pair and brief description ("Very faint: the seventh [N7739] is near to the south") are UGC 12757 and CGCG 381-038. The latter is nearly as far east of the former as it is south -- and it is very faint for a 9.5-inch telescope -- so I've put question marks by the identities. ===== NGC 7739. See NGC 7738. ===== NGC 7740. MCG apparently made an error in the RA when precessing the NGC position since the object called N7740 in it precedes the correct object by about a minute of time. The correct object is not in MCG, but is in CGCG -- it is CGCG 476-123. ===== NGC 7741. WH's position is almost +4 arcmin off (see NGC 6882 = NGC 6885 for more on this and his other observations of 10 Sept 1784). This led Stephan to include the galaxy (which he observed in October of 1881) in his 12th list of "new" nebulae. Stephan's position is good, but his description suggests that he saw only the central regions of the object. Nearly two decades earlier, d'A had six observations of the galaxy, noting the superposed double star to the north-northwest. D'A's mean position is also pretty good. On a more modern note, the actual position of the nucleus -- if there is one buried in the blue, patchy bar -- is indeterminant, at least optically. Given that the galaxy is a big, bright, well-known spiral, I've pulled positions out of all the online astrometric catalogues that I've usually consulted for this project. The position I've finally adopted is from the 2MASS PSC for four point sources in the central part of the bar. This is an adequate representation for the galaxy, if not for the nucleus -- if there is one ... ===== NGC 7744 = IC 5348, which see. ===== NGC 7745. MCG missed the NGC identification in spite of the fact that Marth's position is quite good. Though this is in a poor galaxy cluster, it is the brightest member. Since none of the other cluster members is nearly as bright, there are no other objects nearby that Marth could have confused with this one, so the identification is secure. ===== NGC 7748. Only the star (SAO 20818) is here. JH says, "About a * 8m is a very extensive space which I am certain is affected with nebulosity." He saw this on only one night, so the nebulosity may well have been a transient feature of some sort (thin cloud? aurora?). The magnitude of the star becomes "7" in the NGC; GC follows JH of course, in making it "8". I suspect that Dreyer followed a later list with updated photometry. The modern magnitudes are V = 7.15 and B = 7.18 (from Simbad, May 2016). ===== NGC 7752. Bigourdan 100 is a double star near this galaxy and NGC 7753. See the discussion under CGCG 097-087 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 7753. Bigourdan 100 is a double star near this galaxy and NGC 7752. See the discussion under CGCG 097-087 in the "notngc" files. ===== NGC 7754 is one of the Leander McCormick objects found by Frank Leavenworth. Fortunately, he has left us a sketch with the galaxy and two stars. These confirm the identification as the brightest of three galaxies southeast of NGC 7759. The RAs of both galaxies were corrected by Herbert Howe -- hence the shifting of the NGC numbers out of RA order -- and included in the IC2 Notes. ===== NGC 7756. Ralph Copeland (or perhaps the fourth Earl of Rosse, if he was observing the night of 11 December 1873) puts this object five arcminutes southwest of NGC 7757 using the Birr Leviathan. The original description reads in full "Another neb about 5' sp." Not much to go on! There is a star in the area that was taken by MCG and RC1 as N7756, and I've put a colon on it as it seems the most likely object. However, Copeland also has measures of two other stars just north of N7757 in his observation. Both of them are about the same magnitude as the star to the southwest. This makes me wonder why LdR didn't see them as nebulae as well. It also lead me to poke around the area a bit. There is a close double star -- quite faint, though -- closer to N7757, and a somewhat brighter and much wider double further south. Neither seems a likely candidate to me, but there isn't much else around that LdR could have seen with the Leviathan. Earlier, I had also suggested a star with a "faint galaxy" at 23 48 29.17, +04 02 52.8 (J2000; HCsv; previous approximate coordinates were 28.7 and 57 for the seconds of time and arc). The "galaxy" is a defect on the blue POSS1 plate, and the star by itself would not attract attention. So, I've deleted the object from the position table. ===== NGC 7757. See NGC 7756. ===== NGC 7759. See NGC 7754, and NGC 6285. ===== NGC 7761 = IC 5361. This is one of two galaxies in this area found by Ormond Stone in 1886 at Leander McCormick. As you know by now, I am not generally thrilled with the positions that Stone has left us in the AJ articles announcing the discovery of these things. Nevertheless, it has been possible to identify most of the objects. In this case, we need to go back to Stone's notes since he left us no sketch of the field. In the notes to NGC 7776 -- which he DID sketch -- we find the note "near [N7761]". We can definitely show that N7776 is the same object as IC 1514, so Stone's rough positions yeild an offset of about 3 minutes of time in RA and an identical declination (though the declination for N7776 is marked with a plus-minus sign) to N7761. When we apply those offsets to N7776 = I1514 -- noting that the nominal Dec for N7761 is not marked with any uncertainty symbol -- we find IC 5361 at just about where we'd expect it to be if it is indeed N7761. Since the description pretty well fits, I'm confident of the identification. The note in the second IC is a bit misleading because Howe thought he searched in vain for N7761 and N7776. He did, in fact, come across N7761, but took it to be new. Thus it, like N7776, ended up with an IC number -- IC 5361 -- too. ===== NGC 7765 is in a group with NGC 7766, N7767, and N7768. See the latter two for notes on the group. ===== NGC 7766 is in a group with NGC 7765, N7767, and N7768. See the latter two for notes on the group. ===== NGC 7767. Though both Reinmuth and CGCG suggested that this is identical to IC 1511 (which see), it is a different object. Bigourdan has measurements of both objects which show that I1511 is a star, while this is a galaxy with a star superposed about 15 arcsec southwest of the nucleus (Bigourdan actually measured this star rather than the galaxy itself). Lord Rosse's diagram is useful in sorting out the identities of the other galaxies in the field, NGC 7765, N7766, and N7768. ===== NGC 7768 is the brightest of a group of galaxies found by Lord Rosse. His diagram makes clear the identities of the objects he saw. Others in the group are N7765, N7766, and N7767 (which see). Bigourdan's two "novae" here (IC 1511 and I1512, which see) are stars. ===== NGC 7772 is an astersim of 7 stars, the southwestern brighter than the others. While probably not a physical cluster, it is a striking object, well isolated, and would probably stand out quite nicely at the eyepiece. This is one of JH's earliest discoveries, found in his Sweep No. 11 (of 810!) on 7 October 1825. Even though his published RA carries a double colon, it is accurate. His descriptions in the early sweeps tend to be terse; this one is no exception: "A cluster of scattered stars 10m." This is, nevertheless, appropriate to the object. As far as I know now (May 2016), this explanation for the NGC number was first proposed by Andrew Young in the January 1963 Sky and Telescope (Vol. 25, p. 14) "Letters" column. Andy was citing a question posed by Walter Scott Houston, in his "Deep Sky Wonders" column in the October 1962 issue (Vol. 24, p. 221) -- Scotty had run across the object plotted in Norton's Atlas, but found nothing remarkable on the sky. He gave an approximate position of 23 49.0, +15 59 (1950), close to the position of the asterism. The compilers of Norton's Atlas apparently thought enough of the object to include it, but they had several other deep sky objects plotted that puzzled those of us using the Atlas regularly. Given Norton's importance to an earlier generation of amateurs, it would be interesting to us to know a little of the history of the Atlas. Half a century on, I certainly don't remember any of that history myself. But I certainly do remember pouring over the Atlas as an eager teenaged observer, trying to find many of its deep sky objects! ===== NGC 7774. Swift says of this double interacting system, "eF, S, R; in center of equilatoral triangle of 3 sts; D * near np." His position is not accurate enough to tell us if he saw one galaxy or the other, so I am going to presume that both contributed to the image at his eyepiece. The stars are all there, by the way; the triangle is not quite equilatoral, and the double star is also the northwestern apex of the triangle. Also see NGC 153 where this galaxy bears on the identification of NGC 151. ===== NGC 7776 = IC 1514 is another of Ormond Stone's discoveries at Leander McCormick. Though his nominal position is quite poor (1.5 minutes of time off in RA and nearly 12 arcmin in Dec), he has left us a sketch showing the nebula and two nearby stars. The brighter of the stars is just outside of the nominal field diameter, but is nevertheless found on the sky where Stone placed it on the sketch. This clearly identifies his nebula as the same one that Johann Palisa found and measured accurately seven years later in September of 1893. Even though Palisa did not have a precise position for his comparison star, the position he published is quite accurate. So, there is no doubt about the identity of the galaxy he measured. Clinching the identity, Palisa noted an eccentric nucleus, and Stone's sketch shows that same offset nucleus. See NGC 7761 = IC 5361 for another Stone discovery that depends on this galaxy for its identification. ===== NGC 7780. See NGC 6285. ===== NGC 7787. Steve Gottlieb has found that this object has been misidentified in most catalogues. It is usually taken as UGC 12849, but Steve points out that Marth's position falls within the corona of UGC 12847. Aside from the possibility of a systematic offset in Marth's positions on the night he found the galaxy, there is no reason to suppose that he didn't see UGC 12847. We will check the possibility of a systematic error in other of Marth's positions measured on the same night. I am reasonably confident that the earlier cataloguers did not make this check, so am reassigning the NGC number to what is undoubtedly the galaxy that Marth actually saw. ===== NGC 7790. JH adopted his own position for "A double * in the p part ..." for this cluster. However, not only is it preceding the center of the cluster, it is 1 minute of time west as well. His father's position is much closer. ===== NGC 7791 is a double star. Even JH had doubts about its nebular character, adding to his notes "Query if not a star." His position is good. ===== NGC 7795. This is a sparce group of stars generally to the north and east of the 7th magnitude star (SAO 35922) that JH called "the chief of a vL coarse scattered but poor cluster which fills the field." It doesn't stand out well on POSS1, but may look better at the eyepiece where the background of faint stars would not be seen. JH's position is just over 1 minute of time east of the star, so I suspect a digit error. ===== NGC 7799 is a star about 20 arcsec northeast of a somewhat brighter star. D'A mentions both objects in his description, and has them in the correct relative orientation as well as at the correct distance. Furthermore, his position is within 20 arcsec of the true position. Other catalogues have pointed to UGC 12882 as NGC 7799, but that is a very faint object, and the even fainter star southwest is twice as far from the object as d'A has measured it. I don't think it likely that d'A could have seen either object with his 11-inch refractor. ===== NGC 7801. This is a possible cluster at JH's position. He says of it only "A double star in a tolerable cluster in which is one star 9 m." To my eye on a DSS image, this is a group of 20-30 stars covering an area about 15 arcmin by 11 arcmin. Brian Skiff sees it as an "asterism, center defined as position of a wide magnitude 12 pair." Whatever the true nature of the object, the 9th magnitude star is a couple of arcmin northwest of the double in the center of the group. ===== NGC 7804 is a double star. Dreyer, in a note in NGC itself, says that "von Engelhardt in 4 obs could only see a D* without nebulosity." Once Burnham turned the 36-inch at Lick on the object, the question was settled for Dreyer. His IC1 note is quite firm: "To be struck out, only a F double star without nebulosity (Burnham)." This is indeed what we see today. Wolfgang has a short biography of K. Gottfried Schweizer, the discoverer of this object. Briefly, Schweizer was director of the Moscow University Observatory beginning when he found NGC 7804 in October of 1860. Though I have not seen it, his observation, and a follow-up by the next director of the Observatory, F.A. Bredikhin, are listed in the Moscow Observations, Vol. II, book 2, pp 115 and 119. The story is on pp 232-233 of Wolfgang's 2010 book. The telescope, by the way, was a 23-cm Merz refractor. It must have been quite similar to the 9.5-inch Merz that Brother Ferrari was using at the Collegio Romano at about the same time (see NGC 7667). ===== NGC 7807. The ESO RA for 1950 has the seconds of time inverted -- instead of "23 57 05" read "23 57 50". This error was propogated into SGC (blush), NGC 2000.0, and DSFG by cataloguers who assumed ESO was correct (as it usually is!). Otherwise, all is well with this object. ===== NGC 7808 is one of Frank Muller's nebulae from the first Leander McCormick list with a poor RA, nearly two minutes of time too far west of the true position. We do not have a sketch of the field, but Muller gives an offset to a star about 3 arcminutes to the southwest: "* 8.5, P[A] 240[deg] [Delta] 3.6 [arcmin]". The star is there and allowed Herbert Howe to identify the galaxy. Interestingly, there is another galaxy just 0.8 arcminutes east of the star. Neither Muller nor Howe mention this galaxy, though it is bright enough that either could have seen it. I suspect it was hidden in the glare of the star. ===== NGC 7810. See NGC 7555. ===== NGC 7813 is probably identical with IC 5384, though the descriptions do not match, and Muller's position is a typically poor one from the second Leander McCormick list in AJ. The IC number comes from Howe who found the galaxy while looking for NGC 7813. The position angles for the galaxy (Muller, 80 deg; Howe, 160 deg) and surrounding stars (Muller, "*8.5 f 38s" and "*9 np 40s"; Howe "*8.5 p 49s" and "two sts 9 nnp") don't match, but the declinations are the same as are the general descriptions "eF, vS, E". I do see a somewhat fainter star (about 10th magnitude) roughly 25 seconds following the galaxy -- is this possibly Muller's "* 8.5"? Unfortunately, he has left us no sketch. The IC identification, at least, is secure. ===== NGC 7814. See IC 5378. ===== NGC 7815 is a single star, exactly at the position measured for it by Schultz. It is his "Nova XII" in his monograph of about 500 micrometrically measured nebulae. He comments, "Several fine stars seen in the neby? The object in the autumn of 1866 quite distinctly seen as a nebula with a stellar core; in the autumn of 1869, hardly visible!" I have to wonder if glare from the 9th magnitude star 2.3 arcminutes to the south had any influence on Schultz's observation. He lists only two night's observations for the object, 2 and 3 October 1866. Neither night was good; the 2nd was "Extremely variable; soon clouding" and the 3rd was "Very damp; object-glass covered with moisture." Given those conditions, it doesn't surprise me that he thought the star nebulous. In fact, I am a bit surprised that he does not have more than just an even dozen "Novae". Bigourdan, by the way, has this as two pretty-widely separated stars; his position, though, falls on Schultz's star. ===== NGC 7822. I wonder about JH's declination for this. He has only one observation of it, and places it quite definitely 1.5 degrees north of the center of a huge HII region that would match his description pretty well. Here is what he has to say about it: The central part of what I am positive is an enormously L, but eF neb of a round figure, though I cannot trace its limits. The night exquisite. I swept often across it to be sure, but always recurred to the same place. No doubt but can never be seen but in the best state of air and sky. Diam 10' +-. The Herschel Archive is no help -- the left-hand page with the part of the sweep (223 on 16 November 1829) with the observation is nearly totally blank; only random pieces of the writing can be seen. The right-hand page does show the same position that JH published, so there is no transcription error between the sweep and the published monograph. The sweep was about four degrees north to south roughly centered on NPD = 22 degrees (for 1830). That would place JH's object just about in the middle of the sweep's NPD range: his position is 23 56 01.1, 22 16 20 for 1830. This means that an error of one degree, or even 1.5 degrees, would still keep the object within the sweep. Dreyer attached two notes to the object, one in NGC itself: "Not seen at Birr Castle in two observations. It is, however, far north of the Zenith, and the speculum may have tilted." In the 2nd IC, he says briefly, "40' diameter, many stars involved (Roberts, MN lxviii, 301)." Roberts's description, from three 90-minute plates taken in 1901 and 1902, is clearly that of the large nebula south of JH's position. Roberts notes three pretty bright stars involved (BD +66 1675, 1676, and 1679) which make it quite clear that he thought N7822 to be the HII region. I'm puzzled, though, that neither he nor Dreyer mentioned the differing declinations. I also find JH's diameter estimate to be puzzling. Usually, a 10 arcmin diameter would rate a description of "vL", not "eeL". Also, there is, centered about 15 arcminutes south of JH's place, a "wing" of the nebula that could possibly be the object that he saw. But it is fainter than the main part of the object. Nevertheless, this fainter wing is a possible candidate for N7822. However, I'm going to follow Roberts and Dreyer in adopting the HII region as the object that JH probably described, and assume that his declination represents an error of some sort. So, it gets the colon, while the northern wing gets the question mark. I've put the position for the HII region roughly midway between the latter two BD stars in Roberts's note. I also make the HII region about a degree across, somewhat larger than Roberts's estimate. The HII region, by the way, is Cederblad 214B. It is incorrectly listed as a reflection nebula in at least one catalogue, and various pieces of it have ended up with separate numbers in Lynds's catalogue of bright nebulae. See Dixon's "Master List" for a complete list of the various names. ===== NGC 7825. The NGC positions for this and NGC 7827 are quite good, having come from John Herschel (via the GC) and from d'Arrest. This hasn't kept MCG from mangling the identifications for the galaxies. UGC sorted out N7827, but still got the wrong galaxy for N7825. This led PGC -- and thus RC3 -- to adopt the incorrect identification. CGCG got everything right, but PGC ignored it (and has further made a hash of the CGCG numbers, positions, and magnitudes in the area). In any event, delete the NGC number from PGC 377 in RC3. ===== NGC 7826 is "A triangular group of about a dozen stars" according to JH. What he doesn't say is that the stars are fairly bright, and are scattered over an area of 13 arcmin by 9 arcmin. The apex of the triangle is to the south. I think it's unlikely that this is a real cluster, but haven't checked the proper motions. The RA, by the way, is poorly constrained -- do we include the double star 8 arcminutes to the east as a part of the "cluster" or not? I'm undecided. WH's position and JH's description suggests "Yes, include it," while Brian Skiff's position suggests "No, let it hang out there by itself." My own position acknowledges the double, but has it well off to the east of the main part of the object. I've adopted it as a compromise. In the end, however -- your call. ===== NGC 7827. See NGC 7825. ===== NGC 7828 and NGC 7829 are an example of the rare "ring galaxy", probably the result of a collision. See NGC 4774, IC 298, and IC 3862 for more on these peculiar systems. ===== NGC 7829. See NGC 7828. ===== NGC 7830. Just a week ago (in May 2016), I wrote: There is nothing obvious in Marth's place, but his group including NGC 3, 4, 7834, 7835, 7837, and 7840 are all near their listed positions. Given that he found all of these on the same night, and verified all but two of them (NGC 4 and NGC 7840), it is very unlikely that NGC 7830 is a duplicate of any of them. Then I took a look at my note for NGC 4. So just how bright is it? And how does it compare with NGC 7830? Reading on in my note a bit, I found that I had written this about NGC 7830: What is near Marth's position -- in fact, nearly coincident with it -- is an extremely faint star with two (or perhaps three) fainter galaxies just north. I'm prepared to say that Marth could not have picked this up even with Lassell's 48-inch, let alone called it "eF, neb * 13 m". The "eF" I can deal with, but not the "13 m". The star and the galaxies have a total V magnitude of 15.7, almost certainly too faint to have been picked up sweeping. Finally, I note that another galaxy in the area that Marth found the same night, NGC 7834, has V = 15.0 -- he called it "eeF". At this point, I calculated the magnitude of NGC 4 from the SDSS data and found it to be V = 15.5 (the SDSS image apparently includes a star with V = 20.0). So, I hereby retract my previous words on NGC 7830. Marth probably could have seen the faint "nebulous" star. I'm still not happy about Marth's estimated magnitude, but that may represent in his mind the faintest object that he could see, just as Bigourdan set 13.5 as his magnitude limit. So, I'm changing the question marks to colons to reflect my lingering doubt that this might not be Marth's object. But could he have seen it? With a 48-inch telescope, almost surely. Here is the rest of my NGC 7830 note concerning the IC2 Note on the object. In the IC2 Notes, Dreyer cites an RA correction by Bigourdan. Reducing Bigourdan's observation, however, leads to 00 06 00.0, +08 22 19 (J2000) -- there is nothing in that position. This assumes that his comparison star is UCAC4 492-000201, the brightest of the stars in the area of Bigourdan's estimated place for the star. He gives an offset from BD +7 5129 of +0m 40s, -4' which leads us to the UCAC star. Coincidentally, this is the same star that I chose for NGC 7830 many years ago. It has a fainter companion at 00 06 01.2, +08 19 54; this is UCAC4 492-000200. But neither of these is near Marth's position, and it's clear that Bigourdan was "seeing" another of his "fausse images" when he "measured" what he took to be Marth's object. So, we can ignore the IC Note. While I am not entirely happy with this how this has played out, the star with its background galaxies, probably is Marth's object. ===== NGC 7831 = IC 1530. This galaxy was first seen by Lewis Swift on 20 September 1885. Unfortunately, Swift's position is well off the mark, as are his positions for all the galaxies found that night. This one, however, shares a common offset with three of the other galaxies (NGC 19, NGC 21, and NGC 7836). The correct identities are unmistakeable, though, because of Swift's clear descriptions of the star fields surrounding three of the four objects (see NGC 6 for more details). In this case, he notes "bright star south, very faint star very near." The bright star is SAO 053654, and the very faint star is at the southwest end of the galaxy. Swift's poor position led to the galaxy's being rediscovered by Bigourdan. So, it has ended up with the IC number as well. ===== NGC 7832 = IC 5386. This one is another blunder by Swift (his position for the IC object is 18 seconds too large and 3 arcminutes too far south), but also by Howe and Dreyer who evidently did not check the NGC. Howe's accurate position is only three seconds of time off the NGC position from JH, and Swift's description "pB, pS, vE" should have caught everyone's eyes. But it didn't, so the galaxy now has an IC number as well as an NGC entry. ===== NGC 7833 is an asterism of 5 stars about an arcminute across. Bigourdan's estimated position is less than 15 arcsec from the mean position of the five stars, so there is no doubt about the identity. At first glance, there appears to be a sixth star in the group. But this is a faint compact galaxy, 2MASX J00063413+2738284, well beyond Bigourdan's visual limit. ===== NGC 7834. See NGC 7830. ===== NGC 7835. See NGC 7830. ===== NGC 7836. Curiously, this is the only one of Swift's five discoveries on 20 September 1885 (suffering large offsets from the true positions; see NGC 6 for more details) to be correctly identified by most of the modern catalogues. Yet, Swift's notes about the nearby stars for this galaxy are the most ambiguous of the batch. He merely says "between 2 stars." There is a line of fairly bright stars about 2 arcmin following, but none of the fainter stars preceding the galaxy seem to be a match for the description. Nevertheless, the systematic position offset (+1 min 10 sec and +8 arcmin 8 arcsec) for the nebulae found that night is so closely shared by NGC 7836 (+1 min 14 sec and +8 arcmin 10 arcsec) that its identity is not in doubt. ===== NGC 7837. See NGC 7830. ===== NGC 7839. Bigourdan's position lands directly on the brighter and northeastern of two stars about 4 arcmin southwest of NGC 1 and 2. The fainter star is probably too faint for Bigourdan to have consciously seen with his 30-cm refractor, but it may have added some to the impression of nebulosity around the brighter star. So, I've included it as a part of N7839. ----- Looking at it again in May 2016, I'm not so sure that the fainter star deserves a role as part of Bigourdan's object. So, I've made it a neighboring star instead. Apologies for any confusion this may cause. ===== NGC 7840. See NGC 7830. =====