Harold Corwin

IC 1217 is lost. Swift found it the same night, 2 August 1888, as several other nebulae (IC 1200, IC 1201, and IC 1216 are among them), and like most of them, it is one of his "eeeF, S, R, eee diff" nebulae. Unlike the others, there is no trace of it near his position.

IC 1216 is, in Swift's 7th list, 30 seconds preceding, and 1deg 19.5 arcmin south of his position for IC 1217. Since that galaxy is close to his nominal position (just 10 seconds off in RA, not a large error at the quite northern declination), we would expect IC 1217 to be within 10 seconds of its position, too. But there is nothing there aside from a few single stars. I suppose it is possible that IC 1217 is one of these, but there is no way to tell which; Swift's description has no notes about neighboring stars that would help pin it down.

Finally, a search of the area on the POSS1 prints turned up no other galaxies in the area that might be IC 1217 with digit errors in their positions. So, another of Swift's nebulae is lost.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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