Harold Corwin

Found by Ormond Stone, this is claimed to be -2m 48.79s, +0arcmin 32.1arcsec from a star at 03 35 57.29 -18 45 02.2 (1890.0, or 03 38 39.67, -18 33 20.8 for 1950.0). Doing the math for the equinox of 1890 yeilds the position (precessed to B1950.0) in the big table.

For many years, I took this to be the star, now flagged as very questionable, cited in the table. I do not now (September 2013) believe that this is the correct object simply because the V magnitude of this star is 11.9 while Stone gave his object a magnitude of 15.5; the star's position is well over an arcminute different from Stone's as well. While the rest of his description (diameter 0.1 arcmin, "StellN" [stellar nucleus]) could be that of a star seen on a relatively poor night, neither the magnitude nor the position matches that of the star. Stone's position, by the way, rests on eight measurements of RA and two of Dec, with no indication that either coordinate is uncertain.

If I had to guess, I would say that Stone has misidentified his comparison star. It is a bit more difficult checking for this sort of mistake online than with a paper or film copy of the Sky Survey, but I haven't yet found any reasonable star/nebula pairs in the vicinity that match the offsets that Stone gives. I also checked to see if the signs of his offsets are reversed -- there is nothing at the position that reversed signs imply. Nor did checking other nebulae measured on the same night yield any clues (only one galaxy, NGC 1426 measured by Frank Muller, comes from that same night in 1887). Similarly, the other objects using the same comparison star either have their positions measured correctly (NGC 1391, NGC 1393, and IC 343), or they have the same problem that IC 339 does -- missing on the sky (the first observation for IC 346 [which see], labeled number "151" in Stone's table).

And again, a mystery.

― 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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