NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 7054. Here is what I wrote about the object in August of 2000: NGC 7054 is another lost object. Found by Stephan, its position is the same in both the AN and MNRAS lists in which it appears. The comparison star also has the same position in both lists; that position is about an arcsecond off the GSC position. But no nebulosity or asterism exists at Stephan's position, or at the positions implied by sign errors in the offset. Furthermore, a search of the POSS1 prints shows no nearby star with an obvious nebula at the correct offset. Jim Caplan finds no trace of NGC 7054 in Esmiol's 1916 monograph, so this object has to be listed simply as "not found." Since that time, two things have happened. First, I have obtained a complete copy of Esmiol's monograph in which he reduces all of Stephan's data (this is available on the web now, thanks to ADS and Jim Caplan's interest in the matter). Second, Jeff Corder went over the nominal area with his 17.5-inch reflector, searching for something that might be Stephan's object. He wrote in July 2009 that he had found a double star at 21 20 29.0, +39 12 58 (J2000.0) that might fit Stephan's description. However, it certainly does not fit the micrometric position. There is no comparison star 1m 45.05s west, 22.1 arcsec north, so this cannot be Stephan's object. This led me back to Esmiol's monograph. There I found an "Anon" object at +1m 45.08s, -0' 22.1" from a star which he called "12518 AG Camb. Eng." (m = 9.1), measured on 31 August 1872. This is just the offset implied from Stephan's positions published in his 4th list in 1873, so must be the observation that came to be called NGC 7054. But reducing this with respect to a modern position for the "correct" comparison star again led to an empty field ... But about 25 seconds on east and 2.8 arcmin south, is NGC 7080. Is there perhaps a star at the right offsets from this galaxy? Indeed there is: BD +26 4171. Using a modern position for this with Stephan's micrometric measurements gives a position within 4-5 arcsec of the modern position for NGC 7080. So, NGC 7054 turns out to be a duplicate pre-discovery (31 August 1872) observation of N7080 with not one, but two misidentified comparison stars. See UGC 3840 in the "notngc" files for more on Stephan's observations.

===== NGC 7054 See observing notes for NGC 7080.