Harold Corwin

This is usually taken as the northeastern of a close pair of galaxies, because that galaxy is brighter and has a higher surface brightness. However, I'd like to be sure that this is the case as the differences between the two galaxies are not large. I am hoping that Pechule's discovery paper will tell us which of the two nebulae he found, but am not hopeful -- nebulae were definitely not Pechule's main interest (see e.g. NGC 4239).

In any event, we have not yet tracked down Pechule's paper (and Dreyer does not give us any more reference than Pechule's name), but it must have appeared between 1864 and 1879, the publication dates for the GC and the GC Supplement. The object is listed only in the Supplement. (Wolfgang is looking for the paper, too; November 2005).

Note added in February 2017: Wolfgang, in his 2010 book "Observing and Cataloguing Nebulae and Star Clusters", states that Pechule did not in fact publish this discovery. So, it must have been brought to Dreyer's attention in a letter or other private communication.

While I was adding Gaia DR2 positions in November 2018, I changed the names for these two galaxies to "NGC 0078" (the northeastern component) and "NGC 0078 comp" (the southwestern component) to match the more usual naming conventions that I've adopted for the objects. I apologize for any confusion that this might cause.

― NGC Notes by Harold Corwin

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