Harold Corwin

IC 388 is at least a double galaxy and may include three foreground stars as well. Javelle described it as a "Very faint nebulosity, very diffuse, surrounding a small [faint] star." His position is somewhat closer to the eastern galaxy, but is well north of the pair, so we do not know which object he saw as the faint star.

Javelle's declination is the same as the northern star superposed on the pair, but his RA is about 5 arcseconds to the east. This is getting within range of his typical statistical error. His description reads "Very faint nebulosity, very diffuse, surrounding a small star." The northern star, however, is the faintest of the three near the two galaxies, so I find it unlikely that he saw this star and not one of the others. Perhaps he mistook one of the galaxies as a star. Whatever happened, we still do not know exactly what he saw the night of 28 January 1892, aside from a "fuzzy splodge" (what a colleague involved with QSOs once called the galaxies I was studying!).

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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