Harold Corwin

Described in the IC as "Doubtful, not seen a second time," this indeed does not exist. Bigourdan has only one estimated position for it on 5 August 1891, putting it 6.9 seconds west and 4 arcmin 42 arcsec south of a 10th magnitude star at 18 00 33.2 -09 11 00. The star is pretty well isolated in a field of much fainter stars, so is unmistakeable. But there is nothing at all at Bigourdan's position.

His description from that night reads in full, "Trace of nebulosity suspected for an instant; the sky, which was becoming stormy, prevented me from clearly recovering it." On 25 June 1895, he simply notes "Not seen," and goes on to repeat the offsets of his comparison star from BD -9 4639, which he had given in the first observation, to make perfectly clear that there really was nothing there.

Nevertheless, he inserted this in his list of "novae" as number 329 where Dreyer picked it up. It must be another of Bigourdan's "fausse images."

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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