NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 1547. I was surprised to come across this galaxy in Archinal and Hynes's "Star Clusters". What is it doing there? A glance at the NGC itself gave me the beginning of an answer. Found by Frank Leavenworth with the Leander McCormick 26-inch refractor, it has a typically poor position. But the NGC description is fascinating: "pF, pS, iR (?Cl or neb w sts inv)". The full note in the first Leander McCormick list reads "cl? or neb with sev vF sts and one * 11.5 n of cen inv." Dreyer copied Leavenworth's "pF, pS, iR" verbatim into the NGC. There are two stars superposed, so it is possible that through a long-focus refractor, this might indeed suggest a mostly unresolved cluster to a visual observer. Well, carrying on with the paper trail, we find that Dreyer has a note in the second IC that reads, "RA is 4h 10m 57s [1860], Ho. (a cluster)." So, here is the definitive source of the "cluster" classification. But checking Howe's observation in MNRAS 60, 130, 1899 we find this: 1547. Leavenworth queried whether this were a cluster. I had no such suspicion. The southern end is the brightest portion. The position is 4h 12m 44s, -18[deg] 6'.3. Dreyer obviously misread Howe's note to mean that the object was indeed a cluster when Howe was telling us just the opposite. Howe did apparently glimpse the star superposed south of the nucleus, if only enough for it to suggest to him that the galaxy was brighter there. There is no problem with the identification as Leavenworth has left us a sketch which confirms Howe's position. So, the only problem here is Dreyer's misreading of Howe's note. This fine little galaxy is certainly not a cluster, at least as we usually use the word.

===== NGC 1547 17.5" (11/10/96): fairly faint, fairly small, elongated 4:3 NW-SE, 0.8'x0.6'. Contains a faint stellar nucleus offset to the south side or a mag 15.5 star is superimposed [DSS image appears to show a superimposed star]. A mag 13 star lies 1.2' NE.