Harold Corwin

IC 286 is lost, though perhaps not permanently. Bigourdan found it while searching for NGC 1202 (which see, and which is about 24 seconds of time preceding Ormond Stone's discovery position for it), but gave it only an estimated offset from a star at 03 01 54, -06 39 (1950). Unfortunately, there is no star at that nominal position. Bigourdan notes the star at 43 seconds preceding and half an arcminute south of a star he called BD -7 545. This is 10 seconds following Bigourdan's nominal position, and there is still nothing there. I also checked at 43 seconds following the BD star -- nothing.

In his description of NGC 1202 (which he claims to have seen, but did not measure because of its faintness), Bigourdan describes the field around the BD star: "It [NGC 1202] is situated at PA = 175 deg, d = 2.5-3 arcmin with respect to the star BD -7 545. This star, magnitude 9.0, has a companion 12-12.5 toward PA = 125 deg, distance 1 arcmin." This precise description of the field does not match what we see on the sky around the star, so I am almost certain that Bigourdan misidentified some other star as the BD star.

A search for several degrees around BD -7 545 fails to turn up any other star of similar brightness with companions in the relative places Bigourdan gives. So, I've been unable so far to recover the objects which he took for NGC 1202 and IC 286. My earlier conjecture that IC 286 = NGC 1202 was based purely on the fact that Bigourdan's nominal position for I286 is 15 seconds of time away from NGC 1202. Given the problems with the comparison stars, that conjecture is clearly wrong.

There are couple of things still to check. For example, did Bigourdan by mistake look at BD +7 545, or BD -7 454? Until we've covered those possibilities, it may be premature to declare IC 286 "Not found."

By the way, IC 286 is not NGC 1202 as I supposed in SEGC. Bigourdan saw the two of them, or thought he did, on the same night, 14 December 1890.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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