Harold Corwin

IC 507 is probably NGC 2590. Steve Gottlieb has just (June 2021) pointed out my own error in dealing with this object (you can dig an earlier copy of this file out of the Internet Archive if you are seriously interested in all I had to say). My old copy of Swift's 8th list has a lot of photocopy scruff over it, one bit of which landed on the "tail" of the "9" in Swift's RA, making it look like a "0". The ADS PDF scan of Swift's list has an unobscured "9", and the copy that Gary Kronk used as the List 8 source for his book on Swift was also correct; Gary's table has the correct position.

In any case, using this correct position, I am led back to NGC 2590. While Swift's declination is about 9 arcminutes off (perhaps a 10 arcminute trascription error?), his description -- "eeF, pS, vlE; bet 2 sts; sev pB sts nr; driving clock failed" -- is a fair match for the NGC object as seen through a long-focus refractor. It isn't clear to me, though, looking at the DSS images, which two stars the galaxy is between; there are many stars in the field. Swift's "sev pB sts nr" are southwest of the galaxy. I should also note that Dreyer apparently did make a thirty second error in precessing Swift's 1890 position to 1860 for the NGC.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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