Harold Corwin

IC 1782 = NGC 823. Swift's description, "vF; D* of = mag in nebulosity," is almost identical to John Herschel'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!

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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