Andrew Cooper
Jun 11, 2010    Hale Pohaku, HI (map)
46cm f/4.5 Newtonian, Deep Violet @ 175x
Seeing: 8 Transparency: 7.5 Moon: 0%

Nice edge-on in a rich starfield, faint, good sized, elongated 5:1 northwest-southeast, no core or dust lane visible

Harold Corwin

IC 4402 is a large, pretty bright, nearly edgewise, spiral galaxy that John Herschel missed. It turned up on one of the Harvard plates that Frost examined.

It's nucleus is very faint and not at all clear on any of the southern survey plates. There is also a star (or knot?) just a few arcseconds north of the position of the apparent nucleus -- the 2MASS positions appear to be a blend of the central region of the galaxy and the star. Given that, and the lack of any other position from automated surveys, I have reluctantly adopted my own positions from the DSS2 red plate. A higher-resolution image is clearly needed for this fine galaxy.

― 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