Harold Corwin

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 Notes by Harold Corwin

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