NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

(This is a very very beta version)

NGC3908

 

Basic Information


Location and Magnitude


Right Ascension: 11:49:52.6
Declination: +12:11:11
Constellation: LEO
Visual Magnitude: 15.0

Historic Information


Discoverer: Swift L.
Year of discovery: 1885
Discovery aperture: 16.0

Observational


Summary description: F, vS, R, mbM
Sub-type: E0

Corwin's Notes

===== NGC 3908. Though Swift describes his object as "F, vS, R, mbM," I have my doubts that he could have seen the galaxy listed in the table. At 16th magnitude, it is too faint to have been included in CGCG, and it is not large enough to have captured VV's attention when he was compiling MCG. Still, there is nothing else in the area, or at reasonable digit errors, that Swift might have seen. The only other object Swift found the same night (10 April 1885) was NGC 5304. That shares an RA offset with NGC 3908 (-15 arcsec for N5304, -13 arcsec for N3908), but the declination of N5304 is just 1.4 arcmin off, essentially perfect agreement for Swift. So, the faint elliptical is as good a guess as any as to which object Swift actually saw, but visual verification would be nice.

Steve's Notes

===== NGC 3908 24" (3/9/13): very faint to faint, small, round, 18" diameter, low even surface brightness. Located 3.3' SE of a mag 10.6 star and 12' E of mag 8.6 HD 102633.