NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 1436 is almost certainly identical with NGC 1437. JH saw 1436 twice, but not on the meridian, so did not derive an accurate position for it. The one position he gives is a rough one from his working list for Dunlop 562. He has this to say about it: "... I have reason to believe this RA too great and the NPD also materially in error -- perhaps 126 35 [instead of 126 45] would be preferable." His single observation of N1437 is from a different sweep with a secure position. But his diameter estimate of '4"' must be in error as he calls the galaxy "vL". I would guess that the diameter should read "4'". This would match Dunlop's estimate of 3.5 arcmin. Unfortunately, the rough position in the CGH Observations was precessed and copied into the GC with very little to warn us about its inaccuracy. Only in the "1?" entries in the columns in GC marked "No. of Obs. used." is there a hint of the problem. Dreyer did not carry those over, but just copied the summary description and position directly from GC. So it is that JH's careful notes in his early work have been lost in the later collections. In any event, the first suggestion that I've been able to find that N1436 is N1437 comes from Harold Knox Shaw in Helwan Observatory Bulletin No. 15, 1915 -- but even that is indirect and found under his entry for N1437, not N1436. For N1436, Knox Shaw says, "Nothing here. [N]1427 answers fairly well to the description and there are several other similar objects not far away." For N1437 he writes, "vF, pL, vlE, prob. spir., prob. = Dunlop 562." I've found one other observation of N1436, that by Schmidt in his Fornax Cluster paper in AN 2097. There he has it in the penultimate place in his table of stars and nebulae, and labels it "h 2581". He gives only a position "3h 35m 11.8s -36 23 49" for 1830 with no description. This is correct only if the minute of RA is changed to "37". Then, it falls within a few arcsec of the modern position for N1437. So things stood until I did SGC in the mid-70s at ROE. There I stumbled across the missing N1436 again (see below), and scribbled this note in my copy of Dunlop's paper: "Though Herschel saw Dunlop 562 in two sweeps, he was not able to get an accurate position for it. His estimated position, however is nearly that of N1437 for which he did obtain a good place in a third sweep. The descriptions are similar, so the identity is assumed." This overlooks the 22 arcmin difference in the declinations (ahem), but for the RA, it is not so bad ... (ahem). Well, N1436 is a reasonable choice, especially since JH has his note about the 10 arcmin correction to the Dec. Knox Shaw's suggestion of N1427 strikes me as very unlikely as both the RA and Dec are well off JH's estimated position. Finally, I first became aware of this puzzle during my years as an amateur astronomer in the late 1950s. NGC 1436 appeared in the copy of Norton's Star Atlas that was my introduction to the sky. I was curious about this because the object did not appear in any other list of deep sky objects that I had at hand. What was this thing that the NGC claimed was a very bright globular cluster? Twenty years later, I had my answer. Now, after nearly another 30 years, I'm FINALLY writing it all down. Patience reaps its rewards.

===== NGC 1436 See observing notes for NGC 1437.