Harold Corwin

IC 4308 is, at least for now, lost. Javelle's offsets and notes do not fit any star-galaxy pair in the area, so a wide-ranging search will have to be done. Here are some details.

Javelle's measurements on 17 June 1903 are +1m 58.58s, +5' 50.4" (declination, not NPD) from a star with magnitude 9.3 which he calls "BD +33 2354". He has one of his rare notes on this star: "Double; I took the second, the brighter." The BD star he names is not double.

I thought at first that UGC 8539 and BD +33 2345 (m = 9.3 -- caught my eye, of course) might be Javelle's object and comparison star, but the position differences do not match his measurements -- they are about 6 seconds of time and 1.4 arcmin off.

Wolfgang took a pair of very faint galaxies with an equally faint star superposed. The three are well beyond the limit of even the 30-inch refractor that Javelle was using at Nice.

So, we need to keep looking for IC 4308.

In early August 2015, I came back to this object. Looking for a double star that Javelle might have used, I came across BD +33 2355, just one digit off Javelle's nominal star. The eastern star is the brighter, just as Javelle noted for his comparison star. Unfortunately, there is no galaxy at his offsets nor at any combination of signs with the same numerical offsets. I've also found no other star in the area that might have been his double.

The search continues.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

Drawings, descriptions, and CCD photos are copyright Andrew Cooper unless otherwise noted, no usage without permission.

A complete list of credits and sources can be found on the about page