Harold Corwin

IC 1090 does not exist -- or if it does, it is a very faint star. Bigourdan found the object on 18 June 1887, saying "At the measured position, I suspected a possibly nebulous object at the extreme limit of visibility." He has only one micrometric position for it from the same night, but there is nothing there. About an arcminute to the northwest is a 17th magnitude star. I doubt that Bigourdan could have seen it with the 12.2-inch refractor that he was using, so I favor the nonexistent idea for this observation.

Several catalogs have put this number on CGCG 221-022, but that is 1 min 54 sec west of Bigourdan's position, and nowhere near his nominal offsets from any star that Bigourdan would have used as a comparison star. Malcolm Thomson caught this mistake as he has so many others; I'm grateful, as always, for his careful work.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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

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