NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 3708 and NGC 3709 are lost. Seen only by Ormond Stone with the 26-inch refractor at Leander McCormick, he gave them his usual crude positions. He also left us a sketch of NGC 3708, showing it midway between two stars near the edge of his field (positioned at 2 o'clock and 8 o'clock). From other sketches with positively-identified galaxies, the field is only 6-8 arcmin across, so the stars are separated by about that amount. There is no trace of N3709 in the sketch. Since it is supposed to be just two arcmin south of N3708, I wonder if it is the same galaxy, but seen on a different night. I searched at all the reasonable digit error offsets where I've found other "lost" Leander McCormick nebulae, but found nothing that resembles the north- south pair in the table, nor the galaxy flanked by stars in the sketch. So, unfortunately, two lost nebulae. In early June 2009, Jeff Corder wrote to suggest that N3708 might be NGC 3776. I don't think this is likely as the star field just does not match the sketch. There turns out to be another galaxy nearby (at 11 35 20.8, -03 09 14; B1950.0) that does have approximately equally bright stars diagonally across the galaxy from one another. However, there are also other brighter stars close to the field that I'd expect to be in Stone's sketch. There is a fainter galaxy at 11 35 29.1, -03 11 30 that might be N3709 if the brighter is taken as N3708, but one of the brighter stars I mentioned is just 1.5 arcmin to the west-southwest. Stone could not have missed this star, and would probably have mentioned it in his notes for N3709.