Harold Corwin

IC 4677 is a part of the corona of NGC 6543, the bright planetary near the north pole of the ecliptic. It is a complex of relatively bright knots in the planetary's corona, preceding the central star by an arcminute or so. While its position has never been in doubt (Barnard's position and description of it in his private communication to Dreyer is exact, and there is a sketch of it in his Yerkes observations along with several micrometric measurements, all kindly sent to me by Leos Ondra), its character has been questioned, primarily by Vorontsov-Velyaminov. He included it in his first list of interacting galaxies (where it is No. 121), and in the MCG (it is MCG +11-22-017). This is a bit surprising as VV was an early authority on planetary nebulae; his book from the 1930's is now something of a classic on the topic. Still, the object does look something like a distorted late barred spiral on the PSS prints.

It is nevertheless clear that the object is not an interacting galaxy. Its radial velocity is the same as N6543 (-70 km/sec), and large scale photographs clearly show filamentary connections between it, the planetary, and the rest of the corona. The best photo that I've seen is that published in AJ 79, 1259, 1974, taken with the Mayall 4-m telescope at Kitt Peak.

Barnard's measurements put IC 4677 16.526 seconds west and 4.98 seconds north of NGC 6543. These yeild the position that I've credited to Barnard in the big table. It falls between the brighter eastern and somewhat fainter middle lobes of the nebula.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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