NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 5404. We used to believe that this is a double star with the two components separated by 23 arcseconds. However, it was found by Sidney Coolidge, one of the early Harvard observers, with the Merz 15-inch refractor. A telescope that large was capable of easily resolving a 23-arcsecond double star on even nights with the most dreadful seeing. Coolidge was making routine observations for the Harvard Zone Catalogue, measuring accurate positions for the stars. His position, listed both in the paper collecting nebulae discovered at Harvard (in AN 1453) and in the Harvard Zones (HA 6, 30-31, 1872, where it is No. 172 in the sequence) has an internal mean error of 2-3 arcseconds. That position pinpoints the object that Coolidge called a "nebulous star" as the northern of the two stars. For historical honesty, I've retained the positions that Wolfgang and I gave earlier for the double. But this is clearly not Coolidge's object; he measured only the northern of the two stars.