Harold Corwin

IC 2088 may well be LBN 792 (= LBN 172.09-14.64), a large (6 deg by 2 deg patch of nebulosity in northern Taurus). This suggestion comes from Dave Riddle. Earlier, I had written that IC 2088 might be "... a plate defect on Wolf's plate, a very low surface brightness nebulosity that does not show up on the POSS1 plates, a photographic effect of some kind, or perhaps even the unresolved Milky Way."

However, I hesitate to declare this a simple defect on the basis of POSS1 because Wolf's description, especially the orientation of the nebula along the plane of the Milky Way, is creditable. He may even have seen theNew Record California Nebula and gotten the position wrong -- though I doubt it. He gives the position only to a whole degree, and he would have to be several degrees off to have got NGC 1499. LBN 792 is closer, however, with Wolf's admittedly crude position close to being inside the boundaries of Lynd's nebula.

It's possible, too, that he was simply seeing the Milky Way. He comments that "The nebula is separated from the Pleiades nebula by a star hole [sic], many degrees long and ranging from tau Tauri to xi Persei." This sounds to me like a description of a large dark cloud, or simply the falling off of the Milky Way as the Galactic latitude increases.

Or it could be as simple as uneven emulsion, or even vignetting, on his early plates. We need to examine them, if they still exist.

Here is Wolf's full description from AN 4082, translated by Wolfgang Steinicke (thanks, Wolfgang!):

Another nebula [the others he mentions in this note are IC 1831 and IC 2177] being extended, too, but pretty diffuse -- perhaps due to its faintness -- and structureless, was found in Taurus with different small lenses. It measures at least 3 by 5 degrees; the longer axis lies in the direction of iota Tauri toward xi Persei. The nebula is separated from the Pleiades nebula by a star hole [presumably a vacancy], many degrees long and ranging from tau Tauri to xi Persei. The center of the extended nebula is roughly at RA = 4h 35m, Dec = +27d [for 1855].

Dave wrote that he thinks that Wolf's position is simply off by a few degrees and that his nebulosity could be LBN 792, 799, or 800. I looked at all of these, and think that 792 is the best match, both in description ("pretty diffuse ... and structureless") and in position (the separation of the nominal positions is 2 deg 53 arcmin). LBN 799 is narrow and rather serpentine, definitely not structureless, while LBN 800 is full of dark patches. Both are considerably smaller in at least one dimension than Wolf's estimate, and both are further from his nominal position than is LBN 792.

Very little of this, by the way, is visible on the DSS2 images, at least as they are served up by HEASARC's SkyView; much larger fields than one degree are needed. While SkyView can be coaxed into giving larger DSS fields, they are slow to download and detail is lost except on huge monitors. In any event, the above description of the situation as I gave it roughly 15 years ago stands today (June 2014) as the best I can do at the moment.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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