Sherburne Burnham discovered NGC 1363 = Sw. V-54 with the 18.5-inch Clark refractor at Dearborn Observatory on 31 Dec 1877 (Memoirs of the Royal Astr Soc, Vol 44, p169). At Burnham's offset from a nearby mag 6 star is PGC 13245. Wilhelm Tempel independently discovered this galaxy around 1880 as well as Lewis Swift on 21 Oct 1886, who noted "forms triangle with 2 stars, one vB". NGC 1364, a fainter companion 2.3' E, was discovered by Frank Muller (LM II-371) in 1886 with the 26-inch refractor at the Leander McCormick Observatory. Muller noted the equivalence with Burnham's object in a Sidereal Messenger article (Feb 1887) that listed nebulae from Swift's 5th catalogue which had been discovered previously (acknowledged by Swift in the errata to his 6th list). Only Burnham was credited in the NGC.

400/500mm - 17.5" (11/17/01): fairly faint, fairly small, irregularly round, 0.7'x0.6', very weak concentration. Forms a close pair with NGC 1364 2.3' following. Forms the NE vertex of an equilateral triangle with mag 6.2 SAO 149047 3.3' WSW and mag 9.3 SAO 149051 3.7' S!

Notes by Steve Gottlieb