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Who Discovered IC443 - The Jellyfish Nebula?


PhotoGav

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As the title suggests, my question is simple: who discovered IC443, The Jellyfish Nebula? I've looked everywhere I can think of, but can't find anyone attributed as it's discoverer.

Any ideas anyone?

 

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Found the original catalogue online here.

ic_0415-0454_grey.jpg

According to this it was discovered by J. Not terribly helpful you might think, but one of the intro pages explains that...

ic_intro_page242_grey.jpg

J is Monsieur Javelle working at the Nice observatory, using a 30" refractor, who I'd never heard of before. (1431 objects from his lists were added to the IC catalogue, it's not completely clear whether he carried out all the observations himself but his obituary suggests that he did.)

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18 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Ahem! Great detective work but doesn't it say J against IC433? It gives (Maximillian) Wolf and (Edward) Barnard against IC443.

Wikipedia describes them as colleagues, competitors and collaborators :-)

<Sorry!>

Sorry, yes, I got the right page of the catalogue but read 433 instead of 443. It makes sense given the nature of the Jellyfish (large size and low surface brightness) that it would have been discovered photographically rather than with a large reflector, whereas IC433 is a small mag 14 galaxy.

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52 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

This forum really is the best! Knight Of Clear Skies, that is an excellent piece of work, thank you very much. If you are at SGL XII in October, I will buy you a drink!

 

You're welcome, it can be interesting to do a bit of detective work like this. Shame i failed at the hurdle of reading a 3 digit number. ;)

No plans to be at SGL XII I'm afraid, but fingers crossed on clear skies for you all.

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Some of Dreyer's NGC/IC attributions and other data have been amended in the light of subsequent research. The present leading authority on the subject is Wolfgang Steinicke, whose "Historic NGC/IC" can be downloaded from his website. It gives IC443 as having been discovered photographically by Wolf on 30 September 1892, then independently by Barnard on 2 January 1894. There are biographies of both astronomers at Steinicke's website.

http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/index_e.htm

 

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5 minutes ago, acey said:

Some of Dreyer's NGC/IC attributions and other data have been amended in the light of subsequent research. The present leading authority on the subject is Wolfgang Steinicke, whose "Historic NGC/IC" can be downloaded from his website. It gives IC443 as having been discovered photographically by Wolf on 30 September 1892, then independently by Barnard on 2 January 1894. There are biographies of both astronomers at Steinicke's website.

http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/index_e.htm

 

Thank you Acey, that's even better.

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