NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 3721, 3722, 3724, and 3730. Here is another of the Leander McCormick fields that is irksome at best, frustrating at worst, and will probably never be sorted out satisfactorily. These four numbers are usually applied to various members of a group of galaxies north of NGC 3732 (found by WH, reobserved by JH, there is no problem with the identification of this galaxy). There is some justification for this; the true RAs for the Leander McCormick objects are often east of the nominal RAs, while the Decs are often (though not always!) fairly accurate. I've listed these identifications in the big table with two question marks. In this case, however, there is another group of galaxies to the west of Leavenworth's nominal positions. The brightest is IC 2910. With two others, this matches the relative positions, brightnesses, and diameters estimated by Leavenworth for three (N3721/22/24 of the four objects (though the declination for the northern-most, N3721, is 4 arcmin off). I've marked these candidate objects with a single question mark. This leaves NGC 3730, which Dreyer credits jointly to Leavenworth and A. A. Common. I'm not convinced that they both saw the same object. If Leavenworth saw it the same night as the other three, he rezeroed his RA because there is no galaxy offset from the other three by the amount in his table. This applies to both groups of galaxies, the one to the east as well as that to the west. Here is where we turn to Common's observation. He lists a single nebula at the position of NGC 3732 calling it "F, R", and adds the note "... a cluster of 3 similar ones 15' n." Dreyer, noting that Leavenworth's position is about 15 arcmin north of N3732, supposed that one of Common's "cluster" was the object that Leavenworth saw. However, Dreyer adopted Leavenworth's RA, nearly a full minute of time preceding N3732. He also has a note in the NGC reading "Common has '3, F, R, 15[arcmin] n of h913 [N3732].' This is not what Common actually wrote, of course, though it summarizes the situation pretty well. But we are still left to wonder which galaxy to take for NGC 3730. Not quite pulling things out of the hat, I'm going to go with the usual choice for this, the brightest galaxy in the "cluster" north of NGC 3732. There is a question mark on it, of course. The fainter spindle just to the south was apparently not seen by any of the visual observers. Had it been, then the situation with at least the number 3730 would be a lot clearer. What about Common's other two galaxies? If the object we take as NGC 3730 is one of his, then the other two are logically those that are sometimes called N3722 and N3724 (those with double question marks in the table). It's not beyond reason, though, to think that he saw those two and the third on to the east in the line, MCG -01-30-008. But all this is speculation. We don't have good positions from the original observers for any of these, so all we can do is -- speculate. Frustrating, isn't it? ----- Yann Pothier pointed out in an email from April 2016 that the pair I've called "NGC 3722?" and "NGC 3724 ?= IC 2910" better match Leavenworth's relative positions for his pair than any other galaxies in the area. I take this as another indication that these are reasonable candidates for Leavenworth's objects.

===== NGC 3721 24" (3/9/13): fairly faint, small, oval 5:3 NW-SE, 24"x15", lens-shaped. Two mag 15/15.5 stars lie 2' SE. The identification of this galaxy with NGC 3721 is uncertain.