Harold Corwin

The skeptic in me has been overly active of late. Here's a case: the galaxy that is obvious to take as IC 833 is within an arcminute of Swift's position, and is a dead ringer for his description, "vF, S, R". On the face of it, there is no problem at all.

However, just five arcmin south of the faint, little galaxy that is so "obviously" the one that Swift saw, there is another nearly 2.5 magnitudes brighter, NGC 4813. Swift makes no mention of this in his very brief description, yet this would have been an outstanding object in his 32-arcmin field were it centered on the fainter galaxy. As Malcolm has pointed out, a five-arcminute separation often appears elsewhere in Swift's observations described as "near" or "close".

So, I wonder, is NGC 4813 actually the object that Swift saw? But that's all I can really do -- wonder. What there is to go on, the entry in Swift's 8th list, points directly at the little guy. Maybe Swift really did see it, and I'm just being stroppy. But maybe, just maybe ... So, I've sprinkled some colons and question marks around.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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