Harold Corwin

IC 4437 is another of Barnard's unpublished discoveries. The NGC position and description (such as it is: "No descr., * 8 mag nf") is all we have. There is nothing at the position, and the 8th magnitude star that Barnard notes is south-preceding his position, not north-following.

There is, however, a faint, star about 1.5 arcmin from Barnard's position. Barnard probably could have seen this, and it's possible that he got his directions confused in an inverting eyepiece. (I had previously noted this star as a double; Courtney Seligman points out that the better resolution of the SDSS image clearly show it to be single.)

Another, more remote possibility, is that Barnard picked up NGC 5630. But that is 15 arcmin south-southeast of his position, and the star east-northeast of it is over eight arcmin away. It is also 10th or 11th magnitude; would Barnard have bothered to mention it without describing his nebula? I doubt it.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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