NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 3711. Herbert Howe has identified this object for us. Found by F. P. Leavenworth with the 26-inch Leander McCormick refractor, and given a typically crude position in the second list of nebulae discovered at the observatory, Howe must have recovered it by noting the 9th magnitude star four arcminutes south that Leavenworth noted. Howe's position given in MN 58, 515, 1898 is a good micrometric one. With the star just where Leavenworth put it (though there is a second, nearly equally bright star just two arcminutes east-southeast of the first star), the identification is pretty secure. The object itself is a pair of interacting galaxies, the southwestern a distorted spiral, the northeastern a somewhat fainter compact elliptical or lenticular with a distorted lens.

===== NGC 3711 16" LX200 (4/14/07): extremely faint, small, elongated 2:1 N-S, 0.6'x0.3'. Located 2.4' N of a mag 11 star. The observation may have been made through some clouds. 17.5" (3/29/85): extremely faint, very small, round. A mag 11 star is 2.4' S of center.