NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 4987. Steve Gottlieb has found a curious thing about this galaxy. Though JH combined the numbers "H II 815" and "h 1542" in the GC, he had his own observation in the 1833 monograph listed as a "Nova". He has no note in GC explaining why he decided to combine the two observations. Furthermore, he adopted his own position for GC, but his father's position is nearly 40 seconds of time on east and 3.6 arcminutes on north. And there are galaxies near each position that both could have seen. WH called his "F, vS, stellar," JH "pF, S, R, 8...10 [arcsec]". By the time he got around to the GC, JH had changed the description to "vF, vS, stellar". I am pretty sure that the "vF" is a mistake for "pF". So, JH's galaxy (modern numbers are UGC 8216 = CGCG 271-013 = MCG +09-22-015) got the NGC number, position, and part of the description (if mistaken). This, as Steve found, has left WH's galaxy (modern numbers are CGCG 271-017 = MCG +09-22-020) with no NGC number, so I've included it in the short list of objects known before the NGC was compiled that have no NGC number. Steve has pointed out that for historical rigor and rectitude, we might want to move the NGC number to WH's object. I see two arguments against this. First, JH clearly wanted his own position to carry the GC number, and Dreyer followed along with the NGC. Second, changing the number will cause problems with subsequent work on these objects. While we've changed numbers with other objects (see e.g. NGC 6055 in the Hercules Cluster), there has been greater justification in those cases than there is here (only a single observer involved, systematic offsets seen, and so forth). In the end, I've decided to keep the NGC number on the UGC galaxy. Finally, how can it happen that, with two nearly equally bright galaxies on the sky near one another, WH picked up one, while JH found the other? Wolfgang Steinicke points out that the previous galaxy in WH's sweep (H III 819 = NGC 4998) has an RA nearly the same as H II 815. With two galaxies keeping him busy, WH missed the third. Perhaps JH was similarly distracted.

===== NGC 4987 18" (6/27/03): fairly faint, elongated 5:2 SW-NE, 0.9'x0.35'. Sharply concentrated with a fairly prominent 15" core. Located 8.5' N of mag 8.0 SAO 28644. MCG +09-22-020 lies 8.5' NE.