Harold Corwin

There is a galaxy within 0.4 arcminutes of Swift's position for one of two objects that he found on 23 June 1890.

However, Steve Gottlieb pointed out in an email in July 2017 some problems with the object:

I was also surprised with the appearance of Swift's IC 1250. Although his position is a good match with 2MASX J17142919+5724597, his description "pF, S, cE" doesn't seem appropriate to me. This galaxy is again quite faint (V ~15 [in Steve's 24-inch reflector]), so I would expect Swift to call it "eeF" or "eeeF", instead of "pF". Also visually, only the 12 [arcsecond] core was seen, yet his description calls it "cE". In addition, the same night, he discovered IC 1237, which he called "eF". Yet IC 1237 appeared much brighter visually (at least a magnitude) to me than IC 1250. Unfortunately, I don't see another good candidate for the identification of IC 1250, unless his observation refers to NGC 6338, which is roughly a minute of RA east.

So there's the problem. Swift's description does not match the object at his position.

As Steve mentions, Swift's only other new object from that June 1890 night is IC 1237 for which there is most likely no identification problem. Swift describes it as "eF, pL, lE; * nr p"; the only possible problem is the brighter part of the galaxy -- it is actually "cE", rather then "lE". Still, Swift's position for IC 1237 is 1.4 arcminutes north of the galaxy -- quite good for him -- and the "* nr p" that he mentions is on the sky.

I wonder if it is possible that Swift somehow switched parts of the descriptions of the two objects. I'm not at all sure that NGC 6338 is a candidate -- it, too, is "lE" rather than "cE". I checked at positions that are digit errors away from Swift's position, but found nothing.

So, I have to agree with Steve: There are no good candidates for Swift's object. And given the brightness and elongation discrepancies, I'm putting colons on the number in the position table.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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