Jeff got onto mentioning the RNGC, which is a realm of danger, with
Randy picking up the point, thankfully. Don't use a database that
refers to this sad project. Harold Corwin of the NGC/IC project puts
that dog to rest:
http://www.ngcic.com/history.htm
RNGC (Revised New General Catalogue) appeared in the same year as
UGC, 1973. This attempt at bringing modern positions and data to the
old catalogue failed largely because of the intense time pressure to
finish the project in just three summers. As a consequence, RNGC not
only did not correct most of the problems not already fixed in
earlier correction lists, but it actually introduced many problems by
ignoring the historical record, and by relying almost exclusively on
the NGC positions for inspection of the PSS. NGC numbers were often
arbitrarily assigned to nearby objects without regard to the
descriptions or to the known problems in the original observations.
Many errors corrected by Dreyer himself were perpetuated in the RNGC,
and several plate defects on the PSS now have RNGC numbers!
Warn your children!
-- Jamie Dillon <*> speech pathologist jamie_dillon@pvusd.net " ... " - Harpo MarxReceived on Fri Nov 19 14:52:57 2004