NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort
(This is a very very beta version)
NGC4862
Basic Information
Location and Magnitude
Right Ascension: 12:59:30.8
Declination: -14:7:55
Constellation: VIR
Visual Magnitude: 14.2
Historic Information
Discoverer: Leavenworth
Year of discovery: 1886
Discovery aperture: 26.3
Observational
Summary description: eF, S, R
Sub-type: SBc
Corwin's Notes
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NGC 4862 (which is probably also IC 3999) and NGC 4863 were found by Frank
Leavenworth at Leander McCormick in 1886. Both galaxies are off their nominal
RA's and are just faint enough that Bigourdan could not find them. He also
searched in the wrong direction from his comparison star on one night. I
think it was this confusion that led him to rediscover NGC 4862 (see IC 3999
for that story). Both objects are positively identified by the sketches that
Leavenworth made of them.
Herbert Howe did locate NGC 4862 and gave a corrected position for it, copied
into the IC Notes. He states that "Another was suspected perhaps 5 arcmin
south of this one." That is about the correct distance north to NGC 4863.
Did Howe get his directions reversed, just as Bigourdan did when he was
looking for NGC 4862 in this field?
Steve's Notes
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NGC 4862
24" (6/1/13): extremely faint to very faint, small, round, 20" diameter, low surface brightness, no details though no difficult. A mag 14 star lies 1.8' NW. Located 6.8' SW of NGC 4862 (exactly on a line with the major axis of this edge-on) and 4.7' E of mag 9.8 HD 112771.
18" (5/15/10): not found.