I noticed Sky Safari displays NGC 4667 instead of the more common designation NGC 4638. All the other charts and programs I have list NGC 4638 with no reference to NGC 4667. A google search seems to turn up that NGC 4667 is probably a mistake and really just NGC 4638. It seems to me NGC 4638 should be displayed next to the DSO. In fact when I go to "Description" NGC 4638 is the only designation. Both NGC numbers are listed in "object info" but NGC 4667 is listed first as if it's the more common name. Seems confusing to me.
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3 comments
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Bill Tschumy What version of Skysafari are you using? In SS6 I see 4638 listed when the object is selected. 4667 is another valid designation for it.
It does look like SkySafari 5 is preferentially showing the 4667 designation. It would take some investigating to figure out how the change came about. In any case they are both valid designations.
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John S Thanks for getting back to me. I am using 5 Pro. Glad to hear it has been changed in 6. I'll be updating soon. 4667 seemed like an odd name to be the main designation. Not the norm even though it would be considered correct. Further research seems to show it was an error and a duplicate entry of NGC 4638 in the New General Catalog but it must be in the data so I understand how it would be picked up in SS.
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Bill Tschumy Note that we don't hand pick what designation to display. These databases are large and everything is machine generated. I believe we us Wolfgang Steinicke's revised list of NGC and IC objects for all the NGC data. It could be the the order in the source catalogs has been reversed between SS5 and SS6.
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