sponsored by psychohistorian.org
IC 1782 = NGC 823. Swift's description, "vF; D* of = mag in nebulosity," is almost identical to JH's, "A vF double * involved in a vF nebula." Given that the positions are just over two arcmin apart, we can only wonder how the identity escaped both Swift and Dreyer.
Swift, in addition, was especially taken with the object and added to his description, "Curious object. Note." I find his note revealing of the thinking of observers at the time. It reads in full,
This appears like a nebulous double star, but I think it is simply a double star in a nebula. There is a vast difference between a nebulous star, and a star in a nebula.
It is the note which strikes us as curious, knowing as we now do that the object is nothing more than a galaxy with a star superposed about 10 arcsec away from the nucleus. But this was obviously an interesting sight to a 19th century observer with only the vaguest ideas of the nature and distances of the nebulae. Curious indeed!
Paturel, G., Petit, C., Kogoshvili, N. et al. (1991) An extragalactic data base. IV. Errors and misprints in catalogues of galaxies. Astrophys.J.Suppl.Ser., 91(3), 371.
NGC 823 = IC 1782
Lacaille's catalogue
The Messier objects
Dunlop's catalogue
The Bennett objects
The Caldwell list
Named DSOs
DOCdb is still in beta-release.
Known issues, feature requests, and updates on bug fixes, are here:
Found a bug? Have a comment or suggestion to improve DOCdb? Please let us know!
DOCdb is a free online resource that exists to promote deep sky observing.
You could help by sharing your observations, writing an article, digitizing and proof-reading historical material, and more.
Everything on DOCdb.net is © 2004-2010 by Auke Slotegraaf, unless stated otherwise or if you can prove you have divine permission to use it. Before using material published here, please consult the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. Some material on DOCdb is copyright the individual authors. If in doubt, don't reproduce. And that goes for having children, too. Please note that the recommended browser for DOCdb is Firefox 3.x. You may also get good results with K-Meleon. Good luck if you're using IE. A successful experience with other browsers, including Opera and Safari, may vary.