History

In 1877 the French astronomer Jerome Eugene Coggia pointed the 7.2 inch f/11.5 comet finder refractor of the observatory in Marseille to the constellation Cepheus and discovered a nebula which he described as «fairly bright, oval, diffuse, star 15th magnitude east». Unfortunately he had gotten its position wrong by 20 arc minutes too far north. The following year, the American astronomer Lewis Swift encountered the same nebula with his 4.5 inch refractor, which he described as «fairly bright, fairly large, somewhat elongated» and whose position was correct measured The different positions led to John L. E. Dreyer listing Coggia's discovery as NGC 6952 and Swift's as NGC 6951 in his 1888 «New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars» ^[313]. Already in the appendix of the first «Index Catalogue» ^[314], published in 1895, reference was made to the double entry following a reference by William Denning. In the appendix to the «Second Index Catalogue» ^[315] published in 1910, the position of NGC 6951 was stated to be correct and that NGC 6952 should be deleted. ^{[196, 277]}