NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 6591 may be the galaxy that I've flagged with a question mark in the table. That matches Marth's description ("eeF, vS, stell") and is not too far off his position (the RA is 12 seconds too large). However, it may not be the object that Marth saw. That object was found the same night as NGC 6586 which has offsets from Marth's position of -2 seconds of time and -14 arcsec in declination. At similar offsets (-3 seconds and -32 arcsec) is a faint galaxy with two foreground stars just to the southwest, the brighter star superposed on the galaxy itself. This group of objects more or less matches Marth's description -- in particular, the brighter superposed star might well have made the entire ensemble of galaxy plus two stars appear stellar -- and its positional coincidence within Marth's usual observational errors is fairly compelling. Still, I'm keeping open the possibility that the somewhat brighter, isolated galaxy is Marth's object. I had earlier suggested that an asterism of five stars 2.5 arcminutes northwest of the triplet (galaxy plus two stars) could be the object that Marth saw. But I've discarded that option because its brightest star is nearly of the 10th magnitude, far too bright to match Marth's description. It's approximate position is 18 13 55.4, +21 05 22 (J2000 from source HCds) should you wish to check it out yourself.

===== NGC 6591 17.5" (7/16/88): extremely faint, small, possibly elongated. A mag 15 star is at the south edge and a wide mag 13.5 pair is 1' NW. Located 5' SE of NGC 6586 in the NGC 6579/80 group.