NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 7455. Is this perhaps Comet 2P/Encke during its 1885 appearance? Swift claims that he found the nebula while searching for the comet. There is nothing near his place, and the galaxy usually taken as N7455, Markarian 523, does not have a "pS * nr p" as Swift notes. As Howe first noted, the star is 10th magnitude and 6 arcmin northeast of the galaxy, not west as Swift would have it. Also, Swift's brief description (eF, cE) might fit a faint, slow-moving comet quite well. Still, if Swift did see the galaxy, his RA is off in the same direction, and by about the same amount, as are those for N7452 and N7459 (both of which see). ----- JPL's "Small Body Identifier" has only Comet 1948/L1 Honda-Bernasconi in the area on 14 October 1884 when Swift found his object. However, it was about 1.5 degrees northwest of Swift's position, and probably would have been much too faint to see (though no magnitude estimate is available). So, Howe's object is still the main candidate. ----- Gary Kronk, searching through correspondence from Swift to Barnard, has found that Swift's published date for this object is probably wrong by a month and a day -- Swift's letter, dated 14 November 1884, to Barnard has the observation date as 13 November 1884. On this date, Comet 2P/Encke was just three quarters of a degree from Swift's nominal position for the nebula. However, the nuclear magnitude of the comet was approximately 21 according to the model used by JPL's Small Body Identification Tool. Unless the model is seriously wrong, or the total magnitude of the comet much brighter, Swift could not have seen it. It is also probably too far away from Swift's nominal position to suggest that he saw the comet rather than the nebula. Interestingly, Swift's position for his nebula, as noted in his letter to Barnard is about an arcminute north of his published position. This is still within his usual error bars, but the fact that he changed the position before publication suggests that he either reobserved the object, or altered his initial measurement for some reason.

===== NGC 7455 17.5" (8/21/87): faint, very small, round, small, brighter core. A mag 11 star is 1.1' NNE of center. Located 29' E of mag 6.3 SAO 127874. The NGC identification is not certain.