IC 5341: very faint, extremely small, round.

CGCG 476-090: very faint, extremely small, round. A mag 11 star is 2.1' E. This is the central galaxy in a very tight trio 3' S of NGC 7720.

IC 5342: very faint, small, round, bright core. Located 2' N of a mag 11 star and 2.4' SE of NGC 7720.

PGC 85575: extremely faint and small, round, <5" diameter. Located just 0.9' E of the center of NGC 7720.

PGC 71991: extremely faint and small, slightly elongated N-S. A mag 14 star is 30" WSW.

William Herschel discovered NGC 7720 = H III-146 = h2259 on 10 Sep 1784 (sweep 264) and recorded "vF, E, small stars with nebulosity between." There is nothing at his position, but 36 seconds of time west is UGC 12716. JH described this galaxy as "pF; R; bM; 20"." and measured an accurate RA. Herbert Howe reported in his 1900 paper on NGC/IC observations that "there seems to be a small nest of nebulae clustered about this one. I have measured two, and suspected some others. An examination with a large telescope might be fruitful. 7720 is described as "lE, bM." It looks like a nebulous double star of mag 12-13.5, angle 10° [NNE], and distance 10"." So Howe clearly resolved the two components of NGC 7720.

400/500mm - 17.5" (8/10/91): located at the center of the rich cluster AGC 2634. Fairly faint, small, small bright core, elongated SSW-NNE. Forms a double system with a companion (NGC 7720A) attached at the north side. The system appears visually as overlapping galaxies with double nuclei. A dense swarm of galaxies are nearby to the south and east; IC 5341 2.8' SSW, CGCG 476-090 3.2' S, CGCG 476-092 3.3' SSE, IC 5342 2.4' SE, PGC 85575 0.9' E and PGC 71991 1.5' E! A mag 15.5 star is 1.5' SW and two mag 11 stars lie 4' SSE and 7' SSE.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb