Andrew Cooper
Aug 6, 2021    Waikoloa, HI (map)
46cm f/4.5 Newtonian, Deep Violet @ 95x
Seeing: 5 Transparency: 6 Moon: 0%

Small, faint, 2' diameter, round with no notable core, NGC 7130 is visible 18' west

Harold Corwin

IC 5136 is probably NGC 7135. Swift picked up IC 5136 on 15 September 1897, during his penultimate summer of observing. His positions from that time are notoriously bad (see IC 5003 for more on this). This one is no exception; there is nothing at all near his nominal position.

However, NGC 7135 is about 55 seconds following and 1 degree, 14 arcminutes south (this is not sounding good at all, is it). But Swift's description fits, particularly that of the star field around the galaxy. Here is what he had to say, in full: "eeF, S, R; wide D* points to it, sev pB sts sf and np." The wide double is a few arcminutes to the southeast and is among the "sev pB sts sf".

Were it not for the really bad position, off in both RA and Dec, I'd have little hesitation in declaring this a solid identification. As it is, I've put a question mark on it.

Swift apparently saw NGC 7135 again just two nights later. It appears in his big 11th list as number 209 which Howe (and Dreyer after him) applied to NGC 7135. In any case, it is positively identified by Swift's note "3 B sts [p] form a triangle". The "p" comes from Swift's fourth list of Lowe Observatory "novae" published in Popular Astronomy, Monthly Notices, and PASP; that single letter did not make it into the eleventh list in AN, but the stars are so striking on the southern sky survey that anyone with just the eleventh list would know instantly which galaxy Swift had seen.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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