Harold Corwin

IC 4816 is Nova Sgr 1898 = V1059 Sgr. Wendell gives a micrometrically- measured position Harvard Circular 42 (1899), but that is only good enough to get us into the area of the progenitor star.

Duerbeck, in his catalogue of classical novae of 1987, has a more precise -- and presumeably more accurate -- position that pinpoints the eastern of a faint double star as the cataclysmic variable. More recent papers (see e.g. Thorstensen, Peters, and Skinner, PASP 122, 1285, 2010) give positions that also identify the eastern object as the variable, and provide spectra and photometry that support the identification.

So, it is likely that the western star is not related to the nova. I've changed the table to reflect this, and have called the western object a "nearby star" rather than a part of the IC object as I had noted it earlier. Note also that even though both GSC3 and UB10 classify both stars as "non-stellar", this is likely due to the proximity of the two objects.

Gaia has finally given us very accurate positions for both stars, so those are the ones that I have currently selected as best representing the nova and the star to the west. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out if this star is in the spatial neighborhood of the nova...

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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