Harold Corwin

IC 1247 is, like IC 1246 and so many other of Bigourdan's "novae", also a star. But he actually took the time to measure it once, the night he discovered it (21 June 1887). He described it then as "A star 13.3-13.4 around which I suspect a few traces of nebulosity. A star 13.3 is at PA = 27 deg, distance = 0.7 arcmin." Bigourdan's measurement falls within 2 arcsec of the position found from the DSS.

When he examined this object again on 9 June 1891, he calls it "A star 13.4 without a trace of nebulosity." A third and final examination yielded this description: "The object measured in 1887 is a star 13.5 or 13.4-13.5 without nebulosity." Herbert Howe also examined the area in the late 1890's and came to the same conclusion in one of his Monthly Notices papers. Dreyer put Howe's observation into an IC2 note, so there is no excuse for missing this one.

A curious coincidence: I did the debugging of this object on 21 June 2002, exactly 115 years after Bigourdan first found and measured it.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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