Harold Corwin

IC 2502 and IC 2503. In my previous note on these two, I said that they are lost, and went on to consider various objects near Javelle's nominal positions. The objects actually are NOT lost; Malcolm Thomson has recovered them by correcting the identification of Javelle's comparison star.

Javelle claims it is "BD +33 2042" with a magnitude of "6.5" at "09 34 16.1, 56 17.3" (1860.0 with north polar distance rather than declination). That BD star is actually at 10 42 33.2, +33 40.0 (1855) and has a magnitude of 9.5, in near complete disagreement with Javelle's printed data.

Malcolm notes that the star is actually BD +35 2042 at 09 33 58.2, +35 44.0 (1855). This precesses to 09 34 16.2, 56 17 21 (1860; again, with NPD), in agreement with Javelle's data, if the degrees of declination is changed to "+33". And that star at +35 degrees does have a BD magnitude of 6.5, just as Javelle notes.

Once that 2-degree error is corrected, the two galaxies are easily found, though the northern one -- the fainter of the pair -- is west of Javelle's position by about two seconds of time.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

Drawings, descriptions, and CCD photos are copyright Andrew Cooper unless otherwise noted, no usage without permission.

A complete list of credits and sources can be found on the about page