Complement to VII/239A

IC 2115

and IC 2116 are both described in the IC as "Planetary, stellar." Like IC 2114 and IC 2117, both were found on Harvard objective prism plates by Wilhelmina Fleming. Also like those two, the positions are not very good, falling on blank areas of the LMC north and east of NGC 1763 (ESO's contention that the IC objects are both identical to N1763 can't be true. The descriptions rule out the identities since N1763 is a large complex of HII regions and star clusters in the LMC).

I suspect that one of her objects is the bright nebulous star at 04 57 09.8, -66 27 52 – but which one? While Fleming's declination for IC 2115 matches, the RA for the object falls exactly between her RA's for the two IC objects. In that case, we would expect to find another object about 30 seconds east and an arcminute south – there is nothing there.

There are two fainter stars in the neighborhood besides those I've listed in the main table (both B1950.0):

04 57 15.92 -66 28 57.2 04 57 19.98 -66 27 55.8

Neither of these seems likely to me.

If the nebulous star is IC 2116, and since N1763 is about 30 seconds preceding that object, that might make a knot in JH's object I2115. But N1736 is south of I2116, not north as the relative position would make it. So this seems unlikely, too.

In the end, only examining the original Harvard plate will tell us what is going on here.