Lewis Swift discovered NGC 801 = Sw. II-18 on 20 Sep 1885 and recorded "eF; pS; iR; D * close f; v difficult." UGC 1550, an edge-on spiral, is 19 seconds of RA west of Swift's position, though there is no obvious double star close following. NGC 801 was discovered on the same evening with NGCs 19, 21, 7831 and 7836. All of these galaxies have offsets of -1.2 min in RA and -8' in declination from their correct positions, but there is nothing at this offset to NGC 801. So, this identification is somewhat uncertain, though there are no other obvious candidates. See Corwin's notes.

400/500mm - 17.5" (11/14/87): fairly faint, very elongated NNW-SSE, fairly small, weak concentration. Forms a pair with NGC 797 9' SW.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb