Harold Corwin

IC 45 can probably be taken as a pair of stars near Bigourdan's position. Malcolm Thomson and Steve Gottlieb have pointed out that the identification of UGC 449 as IC 45 in several modern lists, including my first guess in 1976 about its identity, is incorrect. Bigourdan's original observations support their idea.

Bigourdan found the 106th and 107th of his "new nebulae" on 15 Nov 1889, but measured only the first, giving an estimated position to the second of the two. A decade later, he remeasured the first, could not find the second, but noticed a "Granulated object which could be a small cluster about 40 arcsec across" nearby. He measured the object twice that night; his reduced position is almost exactly on the brighter of two stars aligned nearly east/west and separated by about 20 arcsec.

Even though his original estimated position (where he found nothing because there is nothing there!) is in the IC with the cursory description "Suspected nebula," his final list of novae has the later position with the note "Small cluster?" Thus, we take the asterism as his object even though it is not, strictly speaking, represented by the entry in the IC.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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