Lewis Swift discovered IC 1279 = Sw. VII-95 on 18 Oct 1887 and recorded "eeeF; pS; R; in a semicircle of st.; eee diff." His position is 2.5' NW of UGC 11143 = PGC 61518 with the semicircle of stars mostly to the east. He "discovered" this galaxy a second time on 28 May 1889 and recorded Sw. VIII-96 (later IC 1281) as "eeF S; cE; semicircle of several stars near following." His published RA was 21 seconds too large, but again the description applies. Dreyer catalogued the second observation as IC 1281, but queried "? = 1279". Howe took a look at the field with the 20" refractor at Denver in 1899 and reported "I see only one nebula in the vicinity and call it 'vF, pS."

But Swift's second position happens to fall close to CGCG 200-010 = PGC 61527, a close pair of extremely small and faint galaxies, and Zwicky and Herzog identified this pair as IC 1279 in the CGCG (Volume III). But Swift's description doesn't match this close pair as the "semicircle of several stars" is preceding (west), not following the pair. PGC, as well as all online databases (NED, HyperLeda, SIMBAD) repeat the CGCG misidentification. Harold Corwin recovered the identification IC 1279 = IC 1281 (first given by Dreyer in the IC 2 Notes). See his notes.

600/800mm - 24" (9/28/19): at 260x; pretty edge-on at least 3:1 NNW-SSE, broad concentration to a brighter, elongated core region. The galaxy precedes three mag 11-12 stars in a N-S string with the southern star an uncatalogued double stars (separation less than 5").

24" (6/29/16): at 200x; fairly faint, moderately large, nice edge-on 7:2 NNW-SSE, 1.2'x0.35', broad concentration to a bulging core. Three mag 11.0-11.8 stars in a shallow arc follow by 3' and two mag 11.4/12.4 stars ~3' N are collinear with the galaxy.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb