NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 6953 may be the group of five or six faint stars noted by Howe and Bigourdan 17 seconds west of Swift's place; Dreyer copied the correction into the IC2 Notes. Since this group has some historical value, I've given the positions of the four brightest stars, presumeably the same four that Howe saw (he measured the position of only the western star). The position of the asterism that I've adopted is a simple mean of the positions of these four stars. Or Swift's object may be the similar grouping of 12-15 stars three minutes of time east of Swift's position, but this is further away and therefore perhaps less likely. There is no galaxy near Swift's position in any event. Swift found his object the same night as he found NGC 6951 (see NGC 6952 = NGC 6951 for another observation in the area), so we might expect that the same relative offsets might apply to both objects and hopefully lead us to the correct object for N6953. When we do this, however, we find that N6951 is east of Swift's position, while the group of 5-6 stars is west. So, I'm not even sure that the Howe/Bigourdan group is the correct identification. The number is flagged with a colon in the main table.