Harold Corwin

Bigourdan did not often misidentify his comparison star -- but he did here. Interestingly, he caught the error before he published his list of new nebulae in CR 123, 1243, 1896 from which Dreyer took the position which appears in the IC -- the position given there is correct. But in Bigourdan's big table of observations, he still gives the comparison star as BD+65 562 (= SAO 14129), the same one used for his observations of NGC 2347. The correct star for the IC 2179 observations is BD+65 560, about 10 arcmin north-preceding the brighter star.

Bigourdan also misidentified the nebulae, calling NGC 2347 "Big. 267," and IC 2179 (Big. 267) "NGC 2347." This assumes the common naming convention adopted by the modern catalogues with NGC 2347 being the southeastern of the two galaxies. At this point, I had a note that began "I wonder about this, however." No longer; re-reducing William Herschel's observation, and checking the Herschel Archives as well as Auwers's reductions, I find that NGC 2347 is clearly the southeastern galaxy. See the discussion of that for more information.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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