Harold Corwin

Swift's position falls near CGCG 426-060, a faint, low surface brightness spiral. There are several stars near to the west, but Swift's "F * near f" is nowhere to be seen. His full description reads "eeF, vS, F * near f; not 7068."

This lack of the nearby eastern star, combined with the fact that Steve Gottlieb could not dig out this galaxy with his 24-inch reflector on two very good nights, has led him to suggest in an email of July 2019 that this particular CGCG object is not the one that Swift saw. Steve instead suggests CGCG 426-062, a considerably brighter galaxy that his 24-inch picked up with no trouble. Again, there is no star to the east, but there is one 0.85 arcminutes west.

I'm going to second Steve's suggestion, and note that there are other cases where Swift has confused directions of nearby stars in his descriptions. CGCG 426-062 still deserves a colon for the larger position discrepancy, and the probable confused direction of the nearby star. CGCG 426-060 remains in the position table -- though with a query -- to reflect its status as the canonical, though probably misidentified, IC 5115.

Steve points to one other mystery: Swift's mention of NGC 7068. This galaxy is 1.3 degrees from CGCG 426-062, well outside even Swift's 32-arcminute eyepiece field were it centered on the CGCG galaxy. Perhaps Swift mentioned it because it is the nearest NGC object to his own, and Marth (NGC 7068's discoverer) describes it as "vF, close to a S *". This is similar enough to Swift's own brief description that perhaps he feared that others might think he simply rediscovered Marth's object.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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