Harold Corwin

IC 884 and IC 887 were included in an appendix to the NGC, written after the main body of the catalogue had gone to press. Swift had somehow not included their positions and descriptions in the letters that he sent to Dreyer that Dreyer adopted for Swift's sixth list, finally published in its entirety while the NGC was in press. IC 887, but not IC 884, also appeared in Swift's seventh list.

The positions for IC 887 in the appendix and in the sixth list agree. But those for IC 884 do not: the appendix -- and the first IC -- make the RA 1m larger than Swift's sixth list. Unfortunately, there are no galaxies at either position. Nor is there one at the position of IC 887 which is claimed to be "vF, vS; nearly bet 2 sts; [GC] 3517 [N5119] nr np." There are no galaxies near southeast of N5119 that Swift could have seen. I suspect he misidentified the NGC object, but I've not yet galaxies in the area that might be Swift's pair.

Swift found three other galaxies the same night: NGC 3443, NGC 3474, and NGC 5122. With the exception of the declination for NGC 3443 (8.3 arcmin too small), the positions for these three are not too bad. They average 7 seconds of time preceding and 0.3 arcmin south of the true positions, so give us no indication of a systematic offset. Even if we include the large declination error for NGC 3443, we still have no real clues as to where Swift's other two objects might be.

I personally think that he found two nebulae in the fairly rich area around NGC 5070 and NGC 5072, but I've been unable to find two reasonable candidates. So, two more of Swift's "novae" have to be declared lost, at least for now.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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