Harold Corwin

IC 3503 is a star. It was the last object found by Javelle on 13 June 1896, a relatively productive night for him -- he found six galaxies as well as this star.

Given its faintness, I was a bit skeptical about the identification, first suggested by Wolfgang. But there is no galaxy nearby that Javelle could have seen, nor are there any at sign-error offsets from his comparison star. Nor are there any other star galaxy pairs in the area that have the correct offsets and brightnesses. Finally, Javelle has no significant systematic error in his measurements for the night that might lead to a galaxy.

So, by a process of elimination, we come back to the star. Reducing Javelle's measurements with respect to the AC 2000.2 position for his comparison star, his position for the faint star is just 7 arcseconds off the position I measured on DSS. This is just about Javelle's standard deviation, his "one- sigma error", so I am taking the star as his object with no further complaint.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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