William Herschel discovered NGC 982 = H III-573 = h236, along with NGC 980 = H III-572, on 17 Oct 1786 (sweep 614) describing them together as "Two. Both vF, vS, er, dist 4', the place between them. As WH did not provide individual positions, Dreyer used John Herschel's positions for h235 and h236. Unfortunately, JH measured the position of h236 accurately, but reversed the sign of the declination offset to NGC 982, placing it 5.5' too far south. This resulted in h235 (later GC 565) being placed southwest of h236 (later GC 566). Dreyer copied the GC positions into the NGC, and noted the orientation as SW-NE, instead of NW-SE as they appear on the sky.

Because of this error, RNGC, CGCG, UGC and RC3 reverse the identifications of NGC 980 and 982, which should be NGC 980 = UGC 2063 = PGC 9831 and NGC 982 = UGC 2066 = PGC 9838. MCG has the correct identifications. This summary is based on Malcolm Thomson's Catalogue Corrections and Harold Corwin's NGC identification notes.

400/500mm - 17.5" (11/27/92): fairly faint, fairly small, very elongated 3:1 NW-SE, small bright core, stellar nucleus. Located 2' NE of a mag 10 star. Brighter of a striking pair with NGC 980 3.5' NNW. Identifications of NGC 980 and NGC 982 are reversed in the RNGC, UGC, CGCG.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb