John Herschel discovered NGC 7010 = h2100 on 6 Aug 1823 (sweep 48). This galaxy was the first deep sky object Herschel discovered during his early "practice" sweeps. He recorded it as "a round, excessively faint nebula, 1' in diameter, resolvable, scarcely (?) perceptible, bM, found in looking vainly for M72."

His practice sweep, along with 6 others in May to September of 1823, were mislaid and later found after he started numbering his sweeps. For completeness, he sequenced these initial sweeps as numbers 43 to 49. His position for NGC 7010 was 10' too far south but Herbert Howe measured an accurate position at the turn of the century. Herschel's first astronomical notebook entries date back to Nov 1816 and include some double stars as well as M31, M32 and M36.

Harold Corwin writes that Guillaume Bigourdan misidentified NGC 7010 with a star and rediscovered the galaxy (at the correct position). Dreyer didn't realize the equivalence, so NGC 7010 was catalogued again as IC 5082. MCG (-02-53-024) labels this galaxy as IC 5082.

400/500mm - 17.5" (7/1/89): fairly faint, fairly small, elongated 2:1 SW-NE, weakly concentrated.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb