Proper noun
New General Catalogue
(astronomy) A catalogue of deep sky objects compiled in the 1880s by J. L. E. Dreyer using observations mostly from William Herschel. It contains nearly 8,000 objects, known as the NGC objects. Objects in the catalogue are numbered, and the letters NGC are prepended to these numbers, as in NGC 224 (the Andromeda Galaxy) or NGC 6205 (the globular cluster in Hercules).
This led to the publication of the New General Catalogue in the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1888. Source: Internet
The Revised New General Catalogue and Index Catalogue was compiled in 2009 by Wolfgang Steinicke. Source: Internet
This catalogue was later edited by John Dreyer, supplemented with discoveries by many other 19th century astronomers, and published in 1888 as the New General Catalogue (abbreviated NGC) of 7840 deep sky objects. Source: Internet