NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 4056 and NGC 4060. Albert Marth found these two objects in the area of the N4065 group during his Malta observations of March 1865 with William Lassell's 48-inch reflector (these are m229 = N4056 and m230 = N4060; their data are transcribed correctly into NGC). These do not have good positions (neither was "verified" by Marth), and the descriptions are vague enough to make identifications unsure. One possibility is N4060 = RNGC 4056; Marth's position is close to that galaxy. However, that leaves the question of N4056. Marth's position is near a very faint galaxy that I doubt could be dug out visually even with the 48-inch -- is N4056 perhaps the star preceding Marth's position by about two arcmin? Another possibility is that N4060 = RNGC 4069 and N4056 = RNGC 4056; this would require a systematic offset of about 10 sec in RA and 1 min in dec for Marth's positions. (Another object, m227 = N4042, which see, found by him the same night, could then be identified with a faint galaxy in the GSC with the same declination offset, but would require an RA offset of 26 seconds.) Even with the offsets, however, the positions would not be good matches for the positions of the galaxies in the group. Finally, there is the RNGC "brute force" solution: ignore the positions and simply assign the numbers to the two relatively bright galaxies in the area that do not have other NGC numbers. If we accept this idea, N4060 is at least north-following N4056, though the difference in RA is about one-third of the difference given by Marth. Still, this could be the correct interpretation, so we'll go with it for the time being. See NGC 4069 for more on this confused field.

===== NGC 4056 24" (3/22/14): extremely faint and small, round, 6"-8" diameter. At 375x, I could repeatedly glimpse this galaxy, though would not have picked it up without knowing the exact location. Located 3.5' SW of NGC 4066 in the NGC 4065 cluster.