NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 4209 may be NGC 4185. Or it may be a star about 2 arcmin south-southwest of WH's position. The problem with equating N4209 and N4185 (which is about 2 minutes west of N4209) is that WH found them both during the same sweep (396 on 11 April 1785). Dreyer's note in the Scientific Papers is a bit misleading as it suggests that the position of NGC 4209 is somehow dependent on that of NGC 4196 (which precedes NGC 4209 by 1min 18sec in the sweep) -- it is not. NGC 4196 indeed has its transit recorded to a full minute only, but NGC 4209 has both minutes and seconds recorded. Dreyer was right, however, that JH, d'A, and Bigourdan all did not find the object. I also do not see anything in the sweep that would suggest that either NGC 4185 or NGC 4209 was observed out of order, or that they could be the same galaxy. However, Dreyer has shown us (see e.g. NGC 4208) that WH, at least once, probably unknowingly observed the same galaxy twice in the same sweep. But that does not seem to have happened here. Wolfgang Steinicke has chosen the star noted above as being N4209. This is certainly possible as there is nothing else within 5 arcmin of WH's position that he could have seen. However, WH's description "F, pS" does not give us very much to go on. The size "pS", by the way, would make the object larger than NGC 4196 which is described as "F, S". If it were the star, I would have expected WH to say "vS" or "eS". Perhaps there was a momentary burst of very bad seeing ... At the moment, I favor taking Wolfgang's star, but am not yet convinced that this is WH's object.