Harold Corwin

NGC 723 = NGC 724. John Herschel missed this one when he was putting his GC together. In his 1833 PT catalogue he notes for h167 (N724): "It is barely possible [those two words in John Herschel's italics] that this may be III.460 [N723] with a mistake in reading the PD." When he swept this up at the Cape a few years later, he specifically noted "No other neb within 15' all around." When he published his Cape Observations, he added in parentheses, "(N.B. This remark shows that the nebula No. 167 of my former Catalogue is really identical (as there suspected) with III.460.)"

Nevertheless, his two objects are entered separately in GC without a note, so it was left to Dreyer to add a query in the NGC description: "[? = h166]".

John Herschel and Dreyer were both right -- the two numbers do indeed refer to the same galaxy. RNGC, ESO, and SGC all carried along the equality.

― NGC Notes by Harold Corwin

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