NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 3119 is perhaps the same galaxy as NGC 3121. There is no doubt about the identification of N3121. This was found by William Lassell in 1848 (see AN 635; my thanks to Courtney Seligman for sending along a copy of the original paper) with one of his smaller telescopes. It was reobserved by Arthur Auwers, who noted the 9th magnitude star 4 arcmin north and 14-15 seconds of time preceding. The position listed by Auwers (1862) is very good. N3119 was found by Albert Marth in 1863 with Lassell's 48-inch reflector. He describes it only as "vF." His position, from one observation, falls about an arcmin southwest of NGC 3121; it is also 2.4 arcmin north of the galaxy that RNGC chose as N3119: CGCG 093-045. This is considerably fainter and smaller than N3121. Wolfgang also favors CGCG 093-045 and reports that it is visible in his 50-cm reflector as a slightly non-stellar patch. So, Marth almost certainly could have seen CGCG 093-045. However, since his position is closer to N3121, and since that galaxy is the brightest in the area, I think it more likely that Marth's observation refers to it. Wolfgang and RNGC could be right, of course -- but then, why didn't Marth mention reobserving the galaxy that his mentor had found 15 years before? Would he even know about it? We don't have answers to these questions.

===== NGC 3119 17.5" (1/23/88): extremely faint, very small, round. Located 4' SSW of NGC 3121. Forms the SE vertex of an equilateral triangle with NGC 3121 3.7' NNE and a mag 13.5 star 3.8' NW. The identification of NGC 3119 is uncertain and it may be a duplicate observation of brighter NGC 3121 instead.