NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 2846 is a double star. This was found by Lord Rosse (or by his observer at the time, Ralph Copeland) who thought it a star with a very small nebula nearby. Even though no accurate position is given, micrometric offsets to nearby stars positively identify the star they thought nebulous. A few years later, Lord Rosse (or Dreyer, who was then the resident observer at Parsonstown) reobserved the object, but could see no nebulosity. Instead, he suggested a very small cluster. A correction to the position, by Bigourdan, appeared in the Notes to the first IC. However, there is some error in Bigourdan's observation, since his offsets point to a blank region of sky. Just north of his position is a 15th magnitude star; another is just west. He probably saw one or the other of these. In any case, he missed Lord Rosse's double star, so we have to discount his correction. My first thought was to accept the first observation of the single star as N2846, but Glen Deen pointed out that the two star images are actually in contact on the Sky Survey. While they would not have been merged on a fairly good night at the 72-inch, they are still clearly close enough together to have misled some veteran observers into believing that one star was nebulous, or that there was a cluster present. Since the NGC itself accepts the second observation, it seems best to follow that.