Abstract
A NEW NEBULA.—Dr. Tempel, of the Observatory of Arcetri, Florence, notifies his discovery of a nebula on March 14 in a part of the heavens which has been most rigorously scrutinised in searching for these objects. For this reason it was at first supposed to be a faint comet, and was compared with the seventh magnitude following, W.B. XI. 305; but on March 16 its place was found to be unchanged. Dr. Tempel says it is properly a double nebula, with two small but distinct nuclei, distant from 15″to 20″, and he adds the nebula Herschel II. 32, which is in the vicinity, was on both evenings much smaller and fainter than the new one. Herschel's nebula is caught at once in slow sweeping with a 6 or 7-inch refractor, so that an object to be very decidedly more conspicuous, must be within reach of ordinary telescopes, and it is hardly credible that its appearance can have long been as Dr. Tempel now describes it, without its being previously detected. Mr. Lassell's Catalogue of 600 new nebulae discovered at Malta contains several in the immediate neighbourhood, so that the observer, Mr. Marth, could hardly have failed to have his attention called to the object in question, if then as visible as at present. Dr. Tempel's nebula is obviously worthy of immediate and continued observation; its position for 1879 is in R.A. nh. 18m. 53., N.P.D. 86° 1′4; or it precedes the seventh magnitude above named im. 273., nearly on the parallel. Chacornac, in his Chart No. 34, has a star 12.13 mag. within about 3′ from the above position, but shows no nebulosity; this circumstance is of itself sufficient proof that the nebula was not visible twenty-five years since. We would suggest that the position of this object relatively to the stars near it should be determined with all possible accuracy; it will be remembered that the centre of condensation in the variable nebula in Taurus has appeared to oscillate about the point where it was first remarked in October, 1852; or, to speak perhaps more correctly, nebulosity has at times been quite imperceptible in the original place, though apparent at a very short distance from it.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 20, 37 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/020037a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/020037a0