Asterisms of the NGC

[Daniel_Sp]

Hi everyone,
I do not really know in which board to post... Asterisms are not "standard object" that we target, so I decided to post my question here...

The NGC contains asterisms, double/multiple stars and even single stars. Are they official objects of the complete 7840 objects?

Thanks for "enlightment"

best regards + CS
Daniel

[Steve Gottlieb]

They're official in the sense that they will always carry NGC designations. In fact, they're actually incorporated into NED. So, if you search NGC 8 in NED, you'll see its a double star and get the position.

But they were only assigned NGC numbers because they were incorrectly assumed to be either nebulae or clusters. So, in that sense they are simply mistakes. Also, except in the case of asterisms that might be real physical clusters, professionals completely ignore these objects. So, I just think of them as the dregs of the NGC.