The history of NGC celestial bodies

The catalogue was compiled by John Louis Emile Derel in 1880 using the data of William Herschel, his son John and other observers. Dreier originally wanted to print Herschel's updated catalog of nebulae, but the Royal Astronomical Society rejected the updated version and asked Dreier to edit the new catalog, which was published in 1888. Later, NGC expanded two index catalogs (IC I in 1896 and IC II in 1905), adding 5386 celestial bodies. Most of these celestial bodies discovered later were obtained from photography.

There is no complete survey of celestial bodies in the southern hemisphere in the catalogue, and most of them are just observations by John Herschel or James Dunlop. There are many mistakes in NGC, but the more serious and obvious mistakes were eliminated in the subsequent NGC/IC plan. Sulentic and Tifft are available in 1973, and NGC2000.0 of Sinnott is available in 1988.

A catalogue of nebulae and clusters is published in the commemorative collection of the Royal Astronomical Society (Dreier J.L.E, 1888, Mem. R. Astron Soc, 49, 1-237) under the name of "Catalogue of Nova Clouds and Stars Reviewed, Revised and Expanded by John Herschel and Bath".