NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 296. WH's position is about 20 seconds too large and an arcmin too far north. That alone would not have caused people to miss the identification with the brightest galaxy in a group of five. What caused the problem was NGC 295 (which see). Copeland misidentified the field with N296, found a second object near it, and Dreyer put that into NGC as number 295. Unfortunately, with WH's position being off, the nominal position of N295 is very close to the actual position for N296. Hence, the confusion. The description in NGC is an "average" of WH's and Copeland's for the galaxy he thought was N296. WH's original description "F, E, preceding a B star", is closer, but the GC description (apparently taken from one of his father's observing logs by JH) is even better: "F, E, a B* f, vnr." Just about everyone has the wrong identification for this, but the correct one is not in doubt. Malcolm found this one, too. Good catch!

===== NGC 296 17.5" (11/25/87): fairly faint, moderately large, very elongated NNW-SSE, bright core. Located just 30" W of a mag 10 star. Brightest in a group of four with UGC 565 = (R)NGC 296 9' NNE and UGC 567 13' NNE.