Harold Corwin

Bigourdan's first observation under his number 149 is a triple star, with a few other fainter stars involved, about 20 arcmin west of NGC 2359 and NGC 2361 (both of which see). His second observation, which he himself recognized to be of a different object falls into a blank area about 5 seconds of time west of the triple star. It is just possible that he saw a blended double star about 45 arcseconds south-southwest of his nominal position, but I think this second observation is more likely to have been one of Bigourdan's "fausse images".

IC 468 has been misidentified as a part of NGC 2359 ("Thor's Helmet") in several catalogues and atlases, most recently "Annals of the Deep Sky." I have traced this back at least as far as Sven Cederblad's 1946 Lund Observatory thesis, and it may go even further than that. No matter what the earlier observers had to say, Bigourdan's measurements are definitive. I've adopted his first measurement -- the one that eventually ended up in the IC -- as the position for IC 468.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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