Hickson 76 is a relatively loose group of seven galaxies, all with similar red shifts, meaning that all are probably close together in space. Dr. Paul Hickson's Atlas of Compact Groups of Galaxies contains 100 galaxy groups that may be in the process of colliding or even combining into a single galaxy. This group lies at the core of the large and rich Galaxy Cluster Abell 2085.

This is one of the parts of the sky where various catalogs disagree on the identifications of objects. Hickson 76 includes NGC 5944, NGC 5942, and NGC 5941. Unfortunately, there is much confusion over exactly which is which. These are three of a group of four nebulae discovered by Lewis Swift on April 19th 1887. Bigourdan observed these galaxies two years later, but disagreed with Swift's positions versus his descriptions. The MCG and CGCG also differ on the identification, and the RNGC reversed Swift's designations and used Bigourdan's. There have been several recent attempts at determining exactly which of these galaxies Swift observed. The Kopernik image and the table below use the identifications suggested by Dr. HG Corwin and currently used in the NASA Extra-Galactic Database.