Harold Corwin

IC 2172 = NGC 2282. Barnard published the NGC data in AN 115, 323, 1886, but sent the IC2 data directly to Dreyer. The positions and descriptions are not only appropriate for this HII region, but are in such close agreement with each other that I'm surprised (again; see e.g. IC 2123 = IC 412 and IC 2124 = IC 413) that neither Barnard nor Dreyer caught the equality.

Barnard's published description of the nebula is apt: "A 9 1/2m or 10m star surrounded by a faint nebulosity. The star is, I am confident, not perfectly stellar. Possibly a minute nebula with a faint atmosphere. 4' or 5' p. and slightly n. is a faint double star that I suspect is enveloped in nebulosity. Observed a number of times." Only his suspicion about nebulositiy around the double star is not borne out on the Sky Survey images. The double has a couple of fainter stars nearby that may have misled Barnard into thinking that he had seen nebulosity.

Curiously, Barnard's micrometric measurement of the declination is off by about 13-14 arcsec. His RA is accurate, and the position he adopts for his comparison star (HD 49567) is only 2 arcsec off the FK5 value. Perhaps the distance between the two stars (18 arcmin, 41 arcsec) was too great for a totally accurate measurement.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

Drawings, descriptions, and CCD photos are copyright Andrew Cooper unless otherwise noted, no usage without permission.

A complete list of credits and sources can be found on the about page