Harold Corwin

IC 5340 is the result of two discordant observations made by Bigourdan on 2 Dec 1894. They give positions about 30 arcsec apart, neither of which falls near a star or a galaxy. This seems to be another case of Bigourdan's pushing too hard to glimpse an imagined object, or one that was caused by a random pulse of "light" in his visual system. In other words, another "fausse image." Wolfgang chose a star over an arcminute away from the nominal position, but I do not think that this star has anything to do with Bigourdan's "object." It is quite faint, and there are two other brighter stars that Bigourdan might have picked up instead.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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