NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 4107 = NGC 4078 with a 2 minute error in d'A's RA. The object is positively identified by the "star 10-11 30.2 seconds following, 1 arcmin south." Just north of this star is a line of three faint galaxies, two (N4082 and N4083) seen by Marth with William Lassel's 48-inch reflector, the third found by Frost on a Harvard plate. All are faint enough that d'A could not have seen them with his 11-inch refractor. There is a curious footnote to this: Burnham claims to have seen the nebula in 1891 with the Lick 36-inch, and also says that the star is north-preceding, not south-following as d'A has it. Since I haven't yet seen Burnham's notes, I can't say anything about this except to speculate that Burnham saw a different object. We can also speculate that he would have noticed the RA error had he picked up N4078. ----- Since I wrote that previous paragraph, Wolfgang has kindly sent me a copy of Burnham's note which appears in Publ. Lick Obs. 2, 163, 1894 (his discoveries of IC 258 and IC 259, which see, are at the end of this paper). It reads in full: No. 4107 R.A. 11 59 35 Decl. +11 23 Not planetary, but it is brighter in the middle, and extended in the direction of 115 deg. In Dreyer, it is described as having a star 10-11m south following. There is nothing in that place, but there is a star of that magnitude north preceding. Wolfgang points out that there is a fainter star very near to the west of the galaxy. Since Burnham does not mention a distance to his star, and since d'A's star is a considerable distance away, it's possible that Burnham did not notice d'A's star. It is also possible that he simply got his directions confused. Whatever happened, it's clear that Burnham got the right galaxy -- his position angle is accurate for NGC 4107.

===== NGC 4107 See observing notes for NGC 4078.