NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 5077 area. The Herschels observed the triplet, N5076-77-79 whose identities are not in doubt. Lord Rosse found N5072 and N5088, as did d'Arrest. There is some confusion in their observations concerning stars near N5072: both Howe and Swift comment that the object at first looks like a double star, with the nebula about 15 arcsec nf the star. But there is also another star about 1.7 arcmin nf the nebula; this was seen by Howe and Bigourdan (who, oddly, did not mention the star sp). It is possible that Lord Rosse's observers saw both, but on different nights, and that d'Arrest missed the sp star, just as Bigourdan did. Swift notes 6 nebulae in the area. He probably also saw the one labeled RNGC 5070 (it's possible that he saw the otherwise unnoticed object np N5088; this is brighter than RN5070), but it is clear that his description is for N5072. So, the obvious conclusion for these two is that N5072 = N5070 (not = RN5070) which is the galaxy 15 arcsec north-following the star seen by Howe and Swift. There is a bit more discussion under NGC 5070.

===== NGC 5077 17.5" (6/11/88): second of three and brightest in a group with NGC 5079 3.0' SSE and NGC 5076 5.0' S. Fairly bright, fairly small, oval ~N-S, bright core, stellar nucleus. A mag 14 star is 0.9' SE and an extremely faint mag 15 "star" is at the southeast end. The mag 15 "star" mentioned above is actually a very faint companion in contact.