NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 6845. JH's position (from a single night, 7 July 1834) falls nearest the second-brightest of the galaxies in this well-known quadruple system; this galaxy also has the highest surface brightness of the four. JH's descriptions, however, from this night ("eF, lE, glbM, 30[arcsec]") and one other ("vF, R, bM, 15[arcsec]; found and viewed by the place of [7 July]" on 5 September 1836) are consistent with either of the two brightest objects. Both are near the limit of his telescope, and both are within his nominal position errors of his measured place, so he could well have seen either. If I had to make an informed guess, I would take the second-brightest object with the higher surface brightness. Since JH mentions no other nearby objects -- in particular, no faint nearby stars as the second-brightest might have been seen -- this is perhaps the galaxy he saw. But that is still a guess. Hence, the colons and question marks.

===== NGC 6845 18" (7/10/02 - Magellan Observatory, Australia): this is the brightest component of a compact interacting quartet. At 128x it appeared fairly faint, fairly small, oval 3:2 SSW-NNE, 1.0'x0.7', very weak concentration. Two companions are resolved - NGC 6845B at 1.4' NE (at the end of a long tidal tail) and NGC 6845C at 0.8' SW. NGC 6845B required averted vision and appeared extremely faint and small, round, 0.3' diameter, very low surface brightness. NGC 6845C appeared very faint, small, very elongated 4:1 NW-SE, 0.6'x0.15'. On the DSS image, faint tidal plumes appear to connect NGC 6845A with this companion. The catalogued B mag in RC3 (B = 16.3) is probably in error as the galaxy was not difficult.