NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 4069. This is one of the galaxies found by John Herschel during the problematic Sweep 423 of 29 April 1832 (see NGC 4055 for a list of the nebulae found during the sweep). Unfortunately, Herschel saw it only during that one sweep, so its position is not well-determined. Also, it is in the midst of a group of nebulae found by William Herschel, and later reobserved by Heinrich d'Arrest. Making reasonable assumptions about the six objects found by Sir William (he measured positions only for the northern three of those he saw, saying only that the other three were 10-12 arcmin south) leads to the conclusion that d'Arrest got the same six. NGC 4069 (= h1070) is not among them, in spite of the identity with H III 392 given in NGC. The three measured by Herschel are N4066, N4070, and N4074; and his other three to the south must be N4061, N4065, and N4076. These are the six brightest objects in the group. There are four other NGC objects scattered through the group. Unfortunately, only one can be pinned down with any certainty. That one is NGC 4072, discovered by Ralph Copeland with Lord Rosse's Leviathan. His description (dated 3 April 1872) also makes it clear that he saw the fainter galaxy two minutes north-following N4076. The confusion in the positions, though, led Dreyer to not assign an NGC number to this galaxy. In any case, N4069 is one of the remaining three (the other two are N4056 and N4060, found by Marth; see the discussion of these). RNGC makes N4069 the faint galaxy just north-preceding a star (both are in GSC), but the nearby RNGC 4060 is considerably brighter. Herschel's description, however, "vF, R, 4th of 5; has another on same meridian, north" doesn't support the identity with RNGC 4060. There is the possibility, however, that the star just south-following RNGC 4069 was "blended" with the galaxy so that the two objects together would appear as a single brighter nebula. This would save the description of "another on the same meridian, north," and would be relatively close to Sir John's position. Lacking any better hypothesis at the moment, we'll adopt the RNGC identification.

===== NGC 4069 24" (3/22/14): faint, very small, round, 15" diameter. Located 1.7' SSE of NGC 4066. NGC 4060 lies 1.5' NW and an extremely faint galaxy (possibly NGC 4056) lies 2.0' SW. Either I missed the mag 16 star just off the southeast edge (~10" from center) or the galaxy and star were merged together 17.5" (5/14/88): extremely faint and small, round. Located 1.7' SSW of NGC 4066. Forms an equilateral triangle with NGC 4060 and NGC 4066 within the NGC 4065 cluster. The NGC identification of this number is not certain.