NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 4164 and 4165. There is no doubt concerning the identifications of these two galaxies, yet UGC missed the NGC number for N4164. This is probably just an oversight. However, one comment: Tempel expresses some surprise that d'Arrest should have missed N4164; Tempel seems to think that the two galaxies are nearly equal in brightness. However, N4164 is a full magnitude fainter, and much smaller than N4165. There is a 15th magnitude star about 30 arcsec south-following that may have provided the illusion of a brighter nebula in Tempel's relatively small 11-inch refractor. Still, I'm not at all surprised that d'Arrest picked up N4165 alone. N4165 itself is identical to IC 3035, which is from Schwassmann's list of photographically discovered nebulae in the Virgo Cluster. There can be no doubt about this as Schwassmann included other NGC objects, and his position falls much closer to N4165 than to the tiny companion just north-preceding. Nilson realized this, too, and corrected the mistaken entry in CGCG where the north-preceding galaxy is called I3035. Since Schwassmann was working on a plate taken with a telescope of 6-inches aperture, it's doubtful that the fainter galaxy is on the plate at all (the plate, by the way, has been lost. Wayne Johnson requested a print of it from Heidelberg along with the other prints of the discovery plates for many of Wolf's IC objects, but Schwassmann's plate could not be found).

===== NGC 4164 17.5" (1/23/88): extremely faint, very small, round, only visible with averted vision. Faintest in a trio and located 3' SSW of NGC 4165 and 2.9' W of NGC 4168.