Harold Corwin

IC 1307 has the most extensive note of any of Espin's discoveries: "While sweeping on September 14 [1893] I suddenly came upon a dark space. On carefully examining the field there is evidently a large faint nebulosity, mixed up with stars, sharply defined on f side, stretching N. and S. Max Wolf's photograph shows this nebulosity."

Even so, there is no nebulosity here. There is, however, a fairly well- defined Milky Way star cloud. Espin's "dark space" marks its southern edge, while the eastern edge is not as clear as his description indicates.

The position I give is well to the north of Espin's. His is close to his "dark space", well off the center of the star cloud -- assuming that this is indeed what he saw. The area is near the center of Barnard's plate 70 in his Milky Way Atlas (taken with a 6-inch lens); it is no more nebulous than any other area on the plate. Wolf used a similar lens for some of his early plates. Espin may be referring to one of these.

See IC 1299 for more.

― 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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