Harold Corwin

There is nothing in Bigourdan's place (derived from two measurements on 30 Oct 1891), not even a faint star. I checked the usual possibilities of wrong signs and misidentified comparison stars, but nothing worked. There is in fact one wrong sign in his table, but it is on the declination offset of just one measurement -- the other declination offset is correct. Finally, Bigourdan's comparison star is claimed to be BD-01 4344; that is also the "base" star for his measurement of NGC 7364 for which he used another nearer star, but gave approximate offsets to that one from the BD star. That trail led directly to the NGC object, so the BD number is correct.

So, once again, Bigourdan seems to have pushed his eyes too far, and picked up random intraocular fluctuations as a result. This set is a bit unusual as it persisted long enough to be measured twice. Another "fausse image"!

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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