NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 347. This is one of a group of six nebulae found by Albert Marth. There are other fainter nebulae in the area, but Marth has picked out the six brightest. In particular, RNGC got a somewhat larger, but fainter, galaxy about 4 arcmin to the south. This is a spiral with low surface brightness arms, but with a bright nucleus. It is not large enough to have made it into ESGC. I would guess that only the nucleus would be visible at the eyepiece, and the proximity to the 7th magnitude SAO 129088 would make it even harder to spot. The real NGC 347, which I picked up for ESGC, looks like a pair of interacting ellipticals close to Marth's position (however, it could well be simply a peculiar S0 with a dust lane, so I've retained just the single entry in ESGC). The total magnitude is about the same as the RNGC object, but since this has a much higher average surface brightness, it is more likely to be seen visually. A couple of additional comments: Marth's positions are so good here actually surprised me a bit. His positions have not impressed me in other areas of the sky (e.g. NGC 1474 and the other galaxies found that same night -- five out of the ten are more than 5 arcmin off the true positions). But in this area, the positions do seem to be pretty good, so I followed them for the identifications. Bigourdan's observation of NGC 347 may also be relevant. He observed it only once (on 21 Nov 1889), but did not measure its position. His description points clearly to the correct object, however: "I suspect an exceedingly faint object which could be nebulous, and which is situated toward [PA =] 3 deg , d = 4 arcmin, with respect to BD -7 159." This is just where Marth's position places NGC 347, another indication that this really is the object which Marth saw.

===== NGC 347 17.5" (10/8/94): very faint, very small, round, 20" diameter, very weak concentration. Located 4' N of mag 7.5 SAO 129988. A mag 13.5 star is 2.1' NE. Member of the NGC 349 group.