William Herschel discovered NGC 29 = H II-853 = h6 on 26 Nov 1790 (sweep 981) and noted "F, S, E nearly in the meridian." JH called it "pB; pL; irr figure." Swift independently found the galaxy on 20 Sep 1885 and recorded it in list II-5. His position was offset 1m 10 sec of RA too far west and 8' in declination, and Dreyer, assuming it was a different object, also catalogued this galaxy again as NGC 21. But Swift's position for NGC 19, 7831 and 7836, all discovered on the same night, carry this same offset. So, NGC 21 is a duplicate observation of NGC 29, with the discovery priority going to Herschel. NGC 29 was observed 8 times using Lord Rosse's 72" and recorded on 16 Oct 1854 as "Elongated on and s, * at on end of neb inv, and another rather fainter s of center."

400/500mm - 17.5" (10/17/87): fairly faint, fairly small, oval NNW-SSE, weak concentration. A mag 15 star is at the north edge. Located 13' N of mag 6.8 SAO 53694. Third of three with NGC 13 and NGC 20.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb