NGC 4004 = NGC 4004A. The secondary designation comes from Holmberg's 1937 monograph and catalogue of multiple galaxies. He always called the brightest galaxy of a multiplet "a", the second "b", and so on. In this case, "NGC 4004B" is IC 2982 (which see). ===== NGC 4005 = NGC 4007, which see. ===== NGC 4006 is not IC 2983, which see. ===== NGC 4007 = NGC 4005. First found by WH in 1785, this object was recovered by LdR and his observers, and by Otto Struve. Dreyer caught the identity when he revisited the area during preparation of WH's Scientific Papers. In GC, JH has the galaxy two degrees too far south, either because of a transcription error by him or a reduction error by CH. See NGC 3997 for more on this group. ===== NGC 4008. See NGC 3927. ===== NGC 4009 is a star identified exactly by LdR's micrometric measurements referred to a brighter star. It is often taken as the fainter galaxy 3.5 arcmin further northeast, but the measurements leave no doubt as to its correct identity. ===== NGC 4014 = NGC 4028, which see. ===== NGC 4019 = IC 755. Though JH's position is 2 min 16 sec and 6 arcmin off the true position of I755, the IC object is the only galaxy in the area to have a 9th magnitude star 5 arcmin southeast, matching JH's note. Other possibilities include NGC 3996 (but seen in the same sweep as N4019), NGC 4037 (this has an 8th magnitude star following by 6-7 arcmin, but the star is a bit north, not south), and CGCG 069-010 (but that has a pretty low surface brightness and no bright star near). There is nothing at JH's position, so I'm pretty sure that I755 is the correct object. Malcolm notes, however, that there is a 9th magnitude star southeast of JH's (empty) position. This throws a little doubt on the I755 identity, but requires that JH's object be a comet. This is a possibility, but I think that the equality with I755 is more likely. ===== NGC 4028 = NGC 4014, in spite of what JH had to say in a note in GC (repeated by Dreyer in the NGC Notes). This is one of WH's early discoveries (30 Dec 1783). As with other objects found during the fall and winter of 1783-1784, the position is not very good. However, WH's full record is published by Dreyer in the 1912 Scientific Papers. There, we find the note, "... It forms an isosceles triangle with two small stars {Dreyer's note:} [by a diagram, these are about 6 arcmin sp.]. ..." The stars precede N4014 by the correct amount, so I am pretty sure that it is WH's nebula. This requires WH to have made two 2 min errors in his RA offsets from two different stars on two different nights. While it is highly unlikely that he would make two such errors leading to much the same position -- this is what prompted JH's comment -- this is apparently exactly what happened. The configuration on the sky is too outstanding to be mistaken. ===== NGC 4032 is probably not NGC 4042, which see. Also see NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4037. See NGC 4019. ===== NGC 4042 is Marth 227, found the same night in March 1865 as N4056 (which see) and N4060. If the offsets (about 10 seconds of time, and 1 arcmin) suggested for those other two galaxies are even roughly correct, then N4042 can be tentatively identified with a galaxy in GSC at 12 00 13.2 +20 26 31. The declination offset would be the same as for the other objects, but the RA offset would be considerably larger at 26 seconds. Still, there are no other galaxies even remotely close to Marth's position that would match his description. Another possibility is that N4042 is a star somewhere in the area. RC1 raises the possiblility that it is identical to NGC 4032, but that would lead to an error of over 2 minutes of time and 5 arcmin, making it unique amoung Marth's objects of that night. In the end, I'm not sure what Marth really saw, but the galaxy 26 seconds off his position seems the best choice. ===== NGC 4045 (is also NGC 4046, which see), discovered by WH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (13b). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4046 = NGC 4045. D'Arrest himself first suggested this identity, and Dreyer repeated the suggestion in an NGC note. Unfortunately, the Mt. Wilson observers (probably Hubble) took another, fainter galaxy on to the east (CGCG 013-049). This appeared as a "correction" to the NGC position in Table 3 of Dorothy Carlson's 1940 ApJ paper. However, reading d'A's full description makes it clear that he did in fact see NGC 4045 (a joint translation from his Latin by James Bryan and me): "Makes a triangle with two stars 13 and 16, southward and following the nebula 6.6 seconds." While the Mt. Wilson object does make a triangle with two stars, they are nearly of equal brightness, and they are north and west of the galaxy, not east and south. The stars near NGC 4045 are close to where d'A says they are -- though it is just possible that his southern star is actually CGCG 013-045 (sometimes called "NGC 4045A"). This fainter galaxy has a faint star just southwest that d'A might have seen. Eyepiece work is called for here. D'A's eastern star, the brighter of the two, is closer to 5.5 seconds east rather than his 6.6 seconds. Is this perhaps a typographical error of some sort? It seems more likely to me to be simply a rough observation. So, the bottom line is that d'A certainly made a 15 arcminute error in his declination. The identity is therefore sure. ===== NGC 4052. There is nothing at JH's place, but 1 minute of time west is a cluster, about 9 arcmin by 9 arcmin, that fits his description ("Cluster VII class; loose and scattered, but pretty rich."). I have no doubt that this is his intended object. ===== NGC 4055 = NGC 4061, NGC 4057 = NGC 4065, and NGC 4059 = NGC 4070. John Herschel found these three nebulae during his Sweep 423 on 29 April 1832. They have not been positively identified in any published catalogue since, though Reinmuth and PGC have made suggestions. Here is the story. Steve Gottlieb started the case by noting that Reinmuth's identifications were unlikely. Bob Erdmann followed up with the suggestion that these might be identical to some of the galaxies in the NGC 4065 group 0.8 deg south. Then, Brent Archinal suggested a check of the other objects seen by Herschel in the same sweep. Here is what is in his 1833 catalog credited to Sweep 423 (there may be one or two others lurking in the list, but I haven't found them in two reasonably careful searches): NGC h RA (1830) NPD Desc 3937 1003 11 43 56 68 25.1 vF, S, R 4032 1049 11 51 49 68 58.2 pB, R, gbM, 40" [N.B. Seen in 5 other sweeps where the brightness ranges from "B" to "eF"; the positions agree] 4055 1062 11 55 00: 68+- pB 4057 1063 11 55 04: 68+- pB 4059 1064 11 55 08: 68+- pB. On merid[ian] with two more [I presume the other two are N4055 and N4057] 4066 1068 11 55 26 68 41.9 No description [Seen in 3 other sweeps; the positions agree. Those descriptions are "Not vF. Another seen", "pB", and "The third of 5"] 4095 1079 11 57 13 68 28.1 eF [seen in one other sweep; position agrees, but no description] 4098 1082 11 57 22 68 25.5 No description [two other sweeps: positions agree; "vF, R, bM" and "No description"] Looking at this table, I was struck by a couple of things. First, the north polar distances of the three questionable objects have been assigned the same number of degrees as the other five objects. This suggests to me that the minutes of NPD should be similar to the others -- say 68 30 to 68 50 -- since Herschel's sweeps were pretty limited in declination. This would make the NPD's roughly equivalent to the other bright objects in the core of the NGC 4065 group where the NPD's range from 68 38 to 68 53. Second, the descriptions suggest that the objects are not faint, and that they are aligned pretty closely along the same meridian of RA. The NGC 4065 group has four bright objects: N4061, N4065, N4066, and N4070. Since Sir John saw N4066 during the sweep in question, this leaves N4061, N4065, and N4070 as the possible candidates. Interestingly, his more exact positions for N4055, 57, and 59 given in GC (from "a most careful consideration of all the observations and records in the sweeping books" [note in GC], and copied into NGC by Dreyer) are roughly coincident with these three galaxies if a systematic offset of about -0.88 degrees in Dec and +20 seconds in RA is applied. Putting all this together, Occam's Razor (the simplest hypothesis that fits the facts) suggests that NGC 4055 = NGC 4061 NGC 4057 = NGC 4065 NGC 4059 = NGC 4070 I'm not sure about this, of course. But this is certainly a reasonable solution to the problem. There is more discussion of the identities in the group under NGC 4056 and NGC 4069. ===== 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 = RN4056; 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 = RN4069 and N4056 = RN4056; 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 4057 = NGC 4065. See NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4059 = NGC 4070. See NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4060. See NGC 4042, NGC 4056, and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4061. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4063, discovered by Stephan, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (12d). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4065 = NGC 4057. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4066. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4067. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4068 = IC 757, which see. Bigourdan misidentified a star as NGC 4068 on two nights, apparently misled by the NGC description "stellar." This led him to rediscover the galaxy and claim it as a "nova." WH's own description "A pS star involved in nebulosity of no great extent; the star does not seem to belong to it" matches the galaxy and its brightest superposed star very well. I suspect that JH condensed the description while preparing the GC. See IC 757 for more. ===== 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 RN4060 is considerably brighter. Herschel's description, however, "vF, R, 4th of 5; has another on same meridian, north" doesn't support the identity with RN4060. There is the possibility, however, that the star just south-following RN4069 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 4070 = NGC 4059. See NGC 4055 and NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4072. See NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4073, discovered by WH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (12a). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4074. See NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4075, creditted in the NGC to JH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (11). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4076. See NGC 4069. ===== NGC 4077 is also NGC 4140. See NGC 4139 for more. ===== NGC 4078 = NGC 4107, which see. ===== NGC 4082. See NGC 4107. ===== NGC 4083. See NGC 4107. ===== NGC 4086. See NGC 4090 and IC 759. ===== NGC 4090 is not IC 2997 (which see). Both were seen on the same night by Bigourdan, though he included only his observations for I2997 in his big table. The observations for N4090 are in his appendix of complementary observations. Another curiosity with this object is its NGC right ascension from d'Arrest's observation. D'A found both this and NGC 4086 on the same night, and mentions this object in his note for N4086. However, while his RA for N4086 is about right, he puts this object about 10 seconds of time following its true position 1.5 seconds preceding N4086. Since both are visible in the same eyepiece field, I suspect that this is a simple digit error somewhere in d'A's reduction. ===== NGC 4092, not NGC 4093, is almost certainly H III 382. WH saw three galaxies in this group, most plausibly the brightest three. So, Dreyer's supposition that the first of the three is N4093 is probably wrong, just as JH's idea that III 382 is NGC 4095 (note, too, that JH has a misprint in his list making his father's object "II 382"). N4092 is a magnitude brighter and considerably larger than N4093, so is probably WH's object. His other two are NGC 4095 and NGC 4098 = NGC 4099, both of which see. ===== NGC 4093 is probably not H III 382. See NGC 4092 for more. ===== NGC 4095. The RC3 position is from MCG. GSC has 12 03 21.05 +20 51 03.6 (1950) for this galaxy. The relatively small difference in position normally wouldn't matter to the identification, but the galaxy is in a fairly compact group with five other NGC objects. Four of the six galaxies are in RC3, and as far as I can tell with a quick check of MCG, UGC, and CGCG, the data for each have been assigned correctly. This is also the second of the three objects that WH found (III 383). The first is NGC 4092 (which see), and the third is NGC 4098 = NGC 4099 (also which see). Dreyer reassigned WH's numbers in the 1912 Scientific Papers, getting this one and III 384 correct. Also see NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4098 = NGC 4099, which see. Also see NGC 4055. ===== NGC 4099 = NGC 4098. WH found three nebulae in this group. It's reasonable to suppose that he saw the three brightest (two of these were seen by JH, and the others were found by d'A); these are NGC 4092, 4095, and 4098. As Dreyer realized in 1912, this would make the number 4099 = GC 2714 irrelevant as it was added (by JH) explicitly for H III 384, the third of his father's three. On the DSS image, this looks like an interacting double galaxy (it may be a triple -- there is a broad plume extending on to the southeast that may be a third component). The two are well merged, so the early observers would not have seen them as separate objects. So that won't save the extra NGC number (nor IC 2998, which see). ===== NGC 4107 = NGC 4078 with a 2 minute error in d'A's RA. The object is positively identified by the "star 10-11 30.2 seconds following, 1 arcmin south." Just north of this star is a line of three faint galaxies, two (N4082 and N4083) seen by Marth with William Lassel's 48-inch reflector, the third found by Frost on a Harvard plate. All are faint enough that d'A could not have seen them with his 11-inch refractor. There is a curious footnote to this: Burnham claims to have seen the nebula in 1891 with the Lick 36-inch, and also says that the star is north-preceding, not south-following as d'A has it. Since I haven't yet seen Burnham's notes, I can't say anything about this except to speculate that Burnham saw a different object. We can also speculate that he would have noticed the RA error had he picked up N4078. ----- Since I wrote that previous paragraph, Wolfgang has kindly sent me a copy of Burnham's note which appears in Publ. Lick Obs. 2, 163, 1894 (his discoveries of IC 258 and IC 259, which see, are at the end of this paper). It reads in full: No. 4107 R.A. 11 59 35 Decl. +11 23 Not planetary, but it is brighter in the middle, and extended in the direction of 115 deg. In Dreyer, it is described as having a star 10-11m south following. There is nothing in that place, but there is a star of that magnitude north preceding. Wolfgang points out that there is a fainter star very near to the west of the galaxy. Since Burnham does not mention a distance to his star, and since d'A's star is a considerable distance away, it's possible that Burnham did not notice d'A's star. It is also possible that he simply got his directions confused. Whatever happened, it's clear that Burnham got the right galaxy -- his position angle is accurate for NGC 4107. ===== NGC 4108. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4113 = NGC 4122. JH has only one observation of N4113, calling it only "eF." His position is exactly 1 degree north of N4122, and his brief description is appropriate. ===== NGC 4115 is perhaps the 14th magnitude star near JH's position. There are no nebulae nearby, or at digit errors from his nominal position, that he could have picked up while sweeping. He also notes it as "A suspected nebula, extremely faint" which the star would have been were it seen on a less than perfect night. ===== NGC 4119 = IC 3011 (which see) is also probably NGC 4124 as suggested by Dreyer in WH's Scientific Papers. WH's final position is just 50 arcmin south of N4124, and there are no other bright galaxies nearby that he might have picked up. It is worth noting, too, that this is one of his early discoveries (18 Jan 1784). Many other of his nebulae and clusters found during the winter of 1783-84 (his first season of sweeping) have relatively poor positions (see e.g. NGC 4153 and NGC 6533). Dreyer notes that N4124 already has two certain numbers in WH's lists, I 33 and II 60. The positions for these observations are better, but are still enough different -- along with the differing descriptions "B, L, ..." and "F, S" -- that WH listed them separately. ===== NGC 4122 = NGC 4113, which see. ===== NGC 4124 = NGC 4119 = IC 3011, both of which see. ===== NGC 4139 = IC 2989. The RA's of this and its companion NGC 4140 are 5 minutes of time too large. When corrected by this amount, the positions agree closely with those for IC 2989 and NGC 4077, respectively. The descriptions clinch the identities, and RC3 is correct. This pair was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans- Neptunian planet." It is his numbers (14a) and (14b), as well as (16a) and (16b). See NGC 3604 for more about David Todd and his search. ===== NGC 4140 = NGC 4077. See NGC 4139. ===== NGC 4147. See NGC 4153. ===== NGC 4149 = NGC 4154. The two NGC numbers are due to WH having swept this galaxy up twice in succesive years, 1789 and 1790. JH has only one observation of it with no description which he put on his father's 1789 observation. Dreyer noted that Bigourdan did not find NGC 4154 (the 1790 observation), but WH's position for this is actually closer to the galaxy than his position for N4149 which Bigourdan did observe. In any event, there is no doubt that the two numbers apply to the same galaxy. Steve Gottlieb (who called my attention to this) and Wolfgang Steinicke were apparently the first to notice the identity. Though I have the correct position for each object, they are just far enough apart in my working table (separated by many good positions for NGC 4151) that I did not see the identity. Good catch, guys! ===== NGC 4152. See IC 765. ===== NGC 4153 is probably NGC 4147. This was found by WH on 15 Feb 1784, only two months after he started observing with his first "20-feet" telescope. He put the nebula 1m 30s preceding, 2d 11m south of 5 Comae. This gives 12 08.1 +18 38 (1950) for the nebula. Herschel described it as "B, pL, lE, bM, m[ilky]." It has not been seen since at this position. The closest reasonable object that might be the missing nebula is another early discovery of WH's, NGC 4147 = H I 19, the bright globular northwest of the Virgo Cluster. Herschel found this just a month after N4153 (14 March 1784), and placed it at 10m 30s preceding, 0d 46m north of 11 Comae. This becomes 12 07.7, +18 50 (1950), in pretty good agreement with modern positions for the cluster. WH's description is very much the same as that for N4153: "vB, pL, gbM." At the time WH found N4153, he was still improving his method of determining positions. So, I suspect that the February observation, earlier on the "learning curve," actually refers to NGC 4147. I also recall a Sky and Telescope article on this mystery object. It appeared many years ago, perhaps in the late 50s or early 60s. Someone whose S&T's are not buried in the storeroom might want to dig it out. It is not a "Deep Sky Wonders" article, since Walter Scott Houston's article -- at least as printed in the book edited by Stephen James O'Meara -- that mentions N4153 calls it a "true faint external galaxy ... about 13' south and about 8' east of NGC 4147." The declination would be close to WH's, but the RA is well off. And there is nothing in this position, either. ===== NGC 4154 = NGC 4149, which see. ===== NGC 4160. Bigourdan has two accordant observations of this object on 27 May 1886 which place it 12.87 seconds east and 1 arcmin 24.8 arcsec north of "AG Bonn 8386" = SAO 044068. However, there is nothing there. A quick glance at the POSS1 shows another star about 35 seconds following and 40 arcsec north with a faint double star north following. The DSS gives the position of the double as 12 09 31.0, +44 00 49. Assuming that this is Bigourdan's object, and that he misidentified his comparison star, I reduced his observation. The resulting position is 12 09 41.0, +44 00 59. The 10 second and 10 arcsec differences are striking, but are difficult to understand given that Bigourdan read his micrometer in terms of position angle and distance and later reduced them to RA and Dec offsets. Since there is still nothing at Bigourdan's place (assuming the mistaken identity for the comparison star), I'm tempted to assume some kind of error in his observation leading to the digit errors. But so far, I've not been able to find it. ===== NGC 4163 = NGC 4167, which see. ===== 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 4165. See NGC 4164. ===== NGC 4167 = NGC 4163. JH first suggested the identity -- it is clinched by the existence of the bright double star (SAO 62887/8) 10 arcmin southwest of the galaxy. JH's position is exactly 20 arcmin off. ===== NGC 4169. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4170 and 4171. Found by d'Arrest near the group of four galaxies NGC 4169, 4173, 4174, and 4175, these two objects are probably stars picked up on a night of below-average seeing. D'A's entire observation (translated to colloquial English by a Latin teacher, and relayed courtesy of Steven Dick and Brent Archinal at USNO) reads in full: "In addition, I think I see two other nebulae very close to this one [NGC 4169]; a clearer sky would help." His note for the night (10 May 1864) reads: "Wind; not perfectly clear." The approximate positions in the NGC apparently come from Dreyer. And that is the extent of the original "data." There are no other nebulae near the quartet found by the Herschels. Given d'A's scanty observation, we can safely conclude that these two objects do not exist. An interesting side note: Yann Pothier brought these objects back to my attention. His mother, also fluent in Latin, commented -- based on the sentence describing these nebulae -- that d'A's Latin was not very good. Here is the complete sentence for those of you who would be able to read my PhD diploma: "Praeterea visus sum mihi videre duas alias nebulas huic valde vicinas, quae Astronomis, Coelo adjutis sereniore, relinquuntur." ===== NGC 4171. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4173. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4174. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4175. See NGC 4170. ===== NGC 4179, discovered by WH, was also seen by David Todd during his search for "the trans-Neptunian planet" in 1877. It is Todd's number (15). See NGC 3604 for more. ===== NGC 4180 is perhaps NGC 4182, which see. ===== NGC 4182 may be NGC 4180, or it may simply be a star at Peters's position. That position is 3 degrees south and 17 seconds following NGC 4180. Arguing for the identity is his observation of NGC 4191. Both it and NGC 4180 are about 13th magnitude, and close enough together on the sky that it is difficult to understand how an observer could see one but miss the other. On the other hand, Peters's position for NGC 4191 is only 4 seconds following the true position -- his measured separation for the objects (assuming only a 3 deg error in declination) does not match their separation on the sky. And the star at his quoted position is faint enough that it could have been mistaken for a nebula. In the end, we would need to re-examine Peters's charts to find the objects that he thought were nebulae. Until then, I slightly favor the NGC 4182 = NGC 4180 idea, though not by much. ===== NGC 4184 is a group of faint stars just where JH says it is. The object was rediscovered over a century later by Ruprecht (it is his number 102), but the NGC number was not attached. Thus, the "non-existent" status in RNGC. ===== NGC 4185 may also be NGC 4209, which see. ===== NGC 4186. Tempel mentions this object in two of his papers (AN 2212 and AN 2439). In the earlier paper, the offset from M98 (= N4192 = GC2786) is given as -10s and -10', leading to a position listed as 12 06 15 +15 32 (1855) [12 06 30 +15 30 (1860)] which is 10s off the NGC place (12 06 20 +15 31). However, the later paper lists the offset as +20s, -9.5m which gives 12 07 00 +15 31 (1860). This position agrees with that from Zwicky for an Sa galaxy with mp = 14.9; this was also earlier mentioned by Carlson (1940). The mistake seems to have been Dreyer's: he applied the right ascension offset (from Tempel's later paper) with the wrong sign. Carlson and RC2 are correct; RNGC, UGC, and VCC are incorrect. ===== NGC 4189 = IC 3050, which see. ===== NGC 4191. See NGC 4182. ===== NGC 4192. See NGC 4186. ===== NGC 4193 = IC 3051. See IC 3050. ===== NGC 4198 = IC 778, which see. ===== NGC 4202. David Todd's published article has a sketch of the field of this galaxy that unambiguously identifies it with UGC 7337. It is his number (18). The RC3 is correct; RNGC is not. See NGC 3604 for more about Todd's search for "the trans-Neptunian planet." ===== NGC 4206 = IC 3064. See IC 3050. ===== NGC 4208 = NGC 4212. This one requires a coincidence of errors by both WH and JH. Though both nebulae were seen by WH in a single sweep, Dreyer has shown (in the Scientific Papers) that the objects could be identical if WH reset his telescope after fixing on a star. In his NGC note, Dreyer suggests that JH made a simple digit error in the RA of h1142 = N4208 -- it was seen only once in a different sweep than h1144 = N4212 (which has four accordant observations). This placed h1142 close enough to H II 107 that JH assumed the identity. Though remarkable, such a coincidence is almost sure to happen at least once in the crowded area of the Supergalactic equator. Since there are plausible explanations for both errors, I'm willing to accept Dreyer's identity of the "two" nebulae. ===== NGC 4209 may be NGC 4185. Or it may be a star about 2 arcmin south-southwest of WH's position. The problem with equating N4209 and N4185 (which is about 2 minutes west of N4209) is that WH found them both during the same sweep. Dreyer's note in the Scientific Papers tells us that WH's position of N4209 was recorded to the nearest minute of time only, so may be "doubtful" as it then rests on WH's note that it follows N4196 by 1 minute 18 seconds. Dreyer has also shown us (see NGC 4208) that WH, at least once, probably unknowingly observed the same galaxy twice in the same sweep. Could this have happened here? Wolfgang Steinicke has chosen the star noted above as being N4209. This is certainly possible, too, but WH's description "F, pS" does not give us very much to go on. So, we are left with questions and only suggestions of answers. ===== NGC 4210. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4212 = NGC 4208, which see. ===== NGC 4214 = NGC 4228, which see. ===== NGC 4221. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4222 is not IC 3087, which see. ===== NGC 4223 = IC 3102 and NGC 4241 = IC 3115. There are several curious things going on here, the least of which are the equalities with the IC numbers! Here are two galaxies, both seen by both Herschels, yet Dreyer has all but insisted on dropping the NGC number 4223. I'm not really in favor of this at the end of the story -- but we need the story first. WH found the brightest (H II 137) of the two galaxies on 13 April 1784, placing it "f 11 Virginis 7 min 18 sec, 0 deg 55 arcmin north." As Dreyer noted, these offsets reduce to 12 15 13, +06 58.6 (B1950). WH's second observation, from 28 Dec 1784, reduces to 12 14 49, +07 00.1, which is close to the actual position of the brighter galaxy of the pair. That these observations refer to the same nebula is obvious from WH's note about III 480 (seen only on the second night): "L, vF, would not have been seen if it had not been for the preceding [II 137]." WH's position for the fainter object is also very close to the true position, too. JH also has two observations of the brighter galaxy -- his positions are accordant with each other, and with his father's second position. However -- and here is where the confusion sets in -- he calls this brighter galaxy III 480. On his second sweep, he also has an observation of an object which he calls II 137, but of it he says, "pB, R, RA estimated from III 480, which it precedes on the same parallel." All that is true. But the position he gives for this brighter object is a minute of time earlier than it should be -- there is no nebula there. Somehow, JH has got his absolute positions about a minute of time west of the true positions. JH, of course, used his own positions in GC, and Dreyer copied them into the NGC noting that d'A never saw the preceding of the pair. However, while working on the Scientific Papers, Dreyer looked again at the problem, this time finding that H III 480 is = IC 3115, and that II 137 = NGC 4241 (apparently not noticing that N4241 would also be = IC 3102). This leaves the number 4223 without a galaxy -- yet WH's observations are very clear that his II 137 applies to the brighter, western object. This would be N4223. This makes the fainter eastern object III 480 = N4241. All this is in accordance with the numbers in the GC and the NGC itself. The only incorrect data are the RA's which are about a minute of time (N4223) and 30 seconds (N4241) too far west. This leads me to suggest that the simplest solution is to adopt WH's positions, descriptions, and numbers. The only problem is that the number N4241 has been applied to the brighter galaxy for so long that confusion will undoubtedly result. My feeling is, "So be it." The IC numbers are unambiguous as Schwassmann's positions are very good. The question of why he did not assign the NGC numbers is pretty clear from the mess above. I would have thought, however, that either he or Dreyer would have caught the equality of the positions for I3102 and N4241 (as published in NGC); apparently, neither checked carefully enough, perhaps thrown off by the RA problems. An addendum: The mess with these two NGC numbers may not be the reason that Schwassmann did not assign them in his list -- he may simply have missed them. There are at least two other NGC/IC equalities in his list: NGC 4235 = IC 3098, and NGC 4246 = IC 3113. There are no big problems with the NGC positions in these cases, yet he has not put the NGC numbers into his list. So, the galaxies also went into the IC. See the IC numbers for a bit more discussion. ===== NGC 4228 = NGC 4214. The equality was first implied by d'A, and later taken up at Lick, by Reinmuth, Carlson, and in RC1 and RNGC. The problem is simply an error of 1 minute of time in JH's position for the galaxy the first time he saw it (Sweep 72). He got it right the second time (Sweep 331). ===== NGC 4230 was misidentified in ESO and by Brian Skiff (and perhaps by others as well). Their positions point at an apparently real cluster roughly 12 arcmin southeast of JH's position. There is a bright star, HD 106826, superposed on the cluster just northwest of the core, a star that JH surely would not have called "12th magnitude" as he did the star near the center of his object. Brian took the position of the HD star as that of the cluster, while Andris Lauberts measure the position of the core itself. JH' object is a much more scattered grouping and may not be a real cluster. It is centered about an arcminute northeast of a 12th magnitude star which JH measured and took as the position of his cluster. I make the object 7 arcmin by 5 arcmin in diameter on the DSS cutout, in good agreement with JH's estimate of 6 arcmin. ===== NGC 4235 = IC 3098, which see. Also see NGC 4223 = IC 3102. ===== NGC 4236. While there is no question about the identification of this large, low surface brightness galaxy, its accurate position is not easily determined. There is no nucleus visible at any wavelength, so the published positions are all either estimates, or refer to various other features within the galaxy. The position that I've adopted is an estimated center of the outer isophotes visible on the POSS I prints. Because the galaxy is reasonably symmetrical -- unlike many other late-type galaxies which also have no nucleus -- this position pretty closely corresponds to the center of the bar, and is within a few arcsec of a superposed star. ===== NGC 4239 is the only one of Pechule's five nebulae listed in AN 2710 to have been listed in the NGC with a credit to him. In spite of his being a careful observer with access to micrometers (he regularly measured planets, asteroids, and comets at with the 11-inch Merz refractor at Copenhagen through the latter part of the 19th century), he gave only crude positions for the nebulae (0.1 min of time and 0.1 deg), estimated from the BD charts. That for N4239 is nevertheless within two arcmin of the modern position. Dreyer credited two of Pechule's nebulae only to Borelly (NGC 3933 and 3934); this is probably a good thing as Borelly's positions are much better. And the remaining two nebulae in Pechule's paper are not in NGC at all. They did not enter the catalogues again until they were picked up for CGCG and MCG: CGCG 098-033 = MCG +03-31-025 and CGCG 098-035 = MCG +03-31-027 = UGC 07032. Pechule has only a single position for these two along with a comment that they are possibly no more than stars. I suspect that this is why Dreyer skipped them. ===== NGC 4240 = NGC 4243, which see. ===== NGC 4241 = IC 3115. See NGC 4223 = IC 3102. ===== NGC 4243 = NGC 4240. Swift's declination is 1 deg 22 arcmin too far south, but his description makes it entirely clear which object he saw. There are no other galaxies in the area with a similarly bright star just 30 arcsec west. Tempel and Common described the galaxy/star pair the same way. Tempel actually saw the object on four different nights, finally measuring it on 24 May 1881. This is position that Dreyer adopted for the NGC 4240 entry. ===== NGC 4246 = IC 3113 (which also see). In a note in the NGC, Dreyer defends the use of the declination from a Harvard observation by G. M. Searle rather than from WH's single observation. As it happens, Searle is correct. The RA is only five seconds out, so the identity with IC 3113 is solid. Since there are other NGC objects in the area that Schwassmann did not identify as such (see e.g. NGC 4223 = IC 3102), I am beginning to think that he had a reason to omit the numbers from his table. Perhaps the confusion explained in the note about N4223 above had something to do with it. I'll have to dig into Schwassmann's text a bit to see if anything obvious falls out. ===== NGC 4263 = NGC 4265, which see. ===== NGC 4265 = NGC 4263. WH looked for his galaxy a second time, but could not find it. JH suggested that it might have been a comet. I doubt that Swift was aware of this -- his position is so close to WH's in the GC that he almost certainly just overlooked the GC entry. Howe settled the matter when he wrote in his second Monthly Notices paper, "I saw only one nebula here." Dreyer took this to heart and set the two numbers equal to one another in the IC2 Notes, in his 1912 Monthly Notices list of NGC corrections, and in a note in his edition of WH's Scientific Papers. Curiously, Dreyer seems to suggest that we use NGC 4265 instead of NGC 4263. I don't see why we should -- this is Swift's error, not WH's. Finally, I note that Bigourdan also looked for two galaxies here, but found only one. Unlike Dreyer, he adopts the number derived from WH's observation. ===== NGC 4279. See NGC 4280. ===== NGC 4280 may be the short line of three stars between N4279 and N4285. Swift has it as the "2nd of 3," but there are only two galaxies here. Howe calls them N4280 and N4285, but modern catalogs (including ESGC) have made them the two outer objects of the triple Swift claimed to have seen. Unfortunately, he has no notes about stars in the area, so we are left only with his poor positions and inconsistent descriptions of brightness (he calls the last of the three the brightest; Howe noted correctly that it is actually fainter than the preceding galaxy). There are also no systematic offsets in the positions of the other galaxies he found the same night (see also N6059), so we can't recover the missing nebula that way. So, the only faintly reasonable explanation is that Swift's middle "nebula" is the line of stars, but this is little more than a guess. ===== NGC 4284 may also be IC 3166, which see. ===== NGC 4285. See NGC 4280. ===== NGC 4286 = IC 3181, which see. ===== NGC 4290 may also be IC 3180. See IC 3166 for the story. ===== NGC 4292. See NGC 4301. ===== NGC 4294. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4296. See NGC 4297. ===== NGC 4297. Though noted as not found by d'A and Reinmuth, this galaxy is indeed where WH found it: "... close by ..." N4296. It is actually north, and just a bit preceding the larger, brighter galaxy. It is very faint, though, and very small, so I'm not surprised that d'A did not see it. It probably appears stellar on the Bruce plates that Reinmuth examined. ===== NGC 4301 is one of the "classic" cases of a problem NGC object. People have been puzzling over it since LdR found it on 1 March 1851 with the Parsonstown Leviathan. Sue French just (May 2006) asked about it, so I am finally digging into the records to find out what I can about it. I must mention, too, that Malcolm Thomson has made valuable contributions to this puzzle. More on that as we go along. Here is the story: In his 1861 paper, LdR has NGC 4292 and NGC 4303 listed together as having been observed five times. He continues, Sketched 4 times. March 1, 1851. [h]1196 [= N4292] is bM and has a vF comp.; [h]1202 [= N4303 = M61] is a spiral, B. centre, and 2 knots. There is another neb. 10' nf. Here's the first bit of confusion. Is the nebula 10 arcmin northeast of N4292 or N4303? LdR's note can be read either way. I'll lay out some arguments below suggesting that it is northeast of N4303 and not N4292 as many, including Dreyer himself, have supposed. A second bit of confusion follows immediately, still apparently in the same observation of N4292 and N4303: About 84[deg] 34' N.P.D., and 12h 25m AR. There is a scarlet * 10m. and a F. E. neb. 10' s. of it, with *s in it. See fig. 21, Plate XXVII. This comment turns out to be totally unrelated to N4292 or N4303; it applies instead to NGC 4480. But LdR finishes up this section of his Description by with his note about the figure. I should note here that LdR misidentifies the figure, calling it "h1196" while it is really M61. Finally, he finishes the comments on N4292/N4303 with April 9, 1852. Last year's observations confirmed. So, LdR gives us two new nebulae in his 1861 monograph: a very faint companion for NGC 4292, and another nebula 10 arcmin north-following either N4292 or N4303. And he initiated a chain of confusion with his two errors and the one ambiguous statement. JH received the monograph soon after it was published, in time for him to scan it thoroughly for the GC which he was then preparing. His note in the GC shows that he took LdR's published description at face value: [GC]2884 1202,a. Under h. 1196 and 1202, two nebulae, unidentifiable, are described as companions, but there must be some great error in Lord Rosse's account of them, as the place of one is referred to a scarlet star "10' south of a scarlet star R.A. 12h 25'[sic]." Now h. 1202 is in R.A. 12h 14m. To afford a fair chance of reobserving them, the companion 10' nf h. 1202 is entered here as 1202,a, and that south of the scarlet star, under No. 3060 as 1196, a." His entries in GC are credited as "R. nova?" and "R. nova", respectively, so he apparently placed greater reliance on the observation of the nebula south of the scarlet star. The next observers trying to find nebulae here were d'A and Schultz. Neither were successful. d'A's note is in Latin, and is available elsewhere on the Project's web site; Schultz merely says "GC.[sic] 2884. Not a trace of it discernible." The next mention of the field comes from Dreyer himself in two notes in his 1878 Supplement to the GC. The first is for GC 2884 which became NGC 4301 itself: Not found by D'Arrest (Query, did he search "10' ad austrum" instead of 10' nf?). Not seen by Schultz. There is not any "great error in Lord Rosse's account." The Nebula south of the scarlet star ([GC] 3060 was seen after h. 1196 and 1202 had been observed, probably while the telescope was being moved back to the meridian. He is arguing that LdR's description is not at all misleading and that JH simply misread it. I'm siding with JH on this one; the comment about NGC 4480 is just out of place, and is too easy to read as JH did, and as I first did. It clearly needed its own entry in the 1861 monograph. However one reads the note, Dreyer continues with another in the GC Supplement that gives some further details on the interpolated observation: [GC] 3060. To be struck out, = h. 1299 ([GC] 3032) [= NGC 4480], the star is B. W. 12h 378 (Sch. red star 148). JH and I would have appreciated having this information in the 1861 monograph. The next information comes just two years later in LdR's 1880 monograph, prepared, of course, by Dreyer himself. Four observations are assigned to NGC 4292 (GC 2870 = h 1196; in what follows, the square brackets enclose comments by Dreyer, and appear just as I have typed them in here): 1851, Mar. 1. bM and has a vF companion [2' n by a diagr]. 1851, Apr. 21. Another neb 10' nf. [Entered as a nova (2884) nf h 1202 in the G.C., but nothing was found there by d'A. and Schultz. The place 10' nf h 1196 does not appear to have been examined by anyone yet.] 1861, Mar. 17. (F Moonlight.) About 15' p and 8' n is a F neb with a * or Nucl in centre and a * 8m close on its np side. 1878, Mar. 28. F, S, R, vglbM. *9m Pos. 333[deg].7, Dist. 72".3. 16'+- n and 9'+- p is a vF object, sbM, most probably only a F *, it has a * 8.9m np v nr. (IV. obs.) Let's take these one by one. The 1 March 1851 observation is correct as far as I can tell -- the vF companion is 2.4 arcmin north of NGC 4292. This is the first of LdR's "novae" in this field that should have been in GC and NGC. The 21 April observation probably applies to NGC 4303. While there is a galaxy (UGC 7411, m_B = 14.9) north-northeast of NGC 4292, the actual distance is 11.9 arcmin. This compares with UGC 7439 (m_B = 14.1) at 9.6 arcmin north- east of NGC 4303. On 17 March 1861, LdR says nothing about the galaxy itself, but notes another faint nebula 15 arcmin west and 8 arcmin north. There is nothing at all at those offsets; in particular, there is no star 8 in the area. The north-south distance between N4303 and N4292 is 7.5 arcmin, so I wonder if this is an observation of N4303 with a slightly erroneous description of N4292 -- which does indeed have a brighter star "close on its np side." Finally, Dreyer's own observation on 28 March 1878 is pretty clearly of N4292 -- except that again there is no object 16 arcmin north and 9 arcmin west with a star 8-9 magnitude "np v nr." Is this yet another garbled observation of N4303, but this time mixed in with a real measurement of N4292 and its nearby star (I measure a separation of 71 arcsec at a position angle of 335 degrees, very close to Dreyers more precise measures). The note "(IV. obs.)", by the way, is just the total number of observations of the object. This raises an interesting point about NGC 4303 (= GC 2878): Dreyer has the note "(VII. obs.)", but only lists three of them: 1851, Mar. 1. Spiral, 2 knots, centre B. 1851, Mar. 7. Drawn [P.T. 1861, pl. XXVII., fig. 21, both on the plate and in the G. C., p. 42, this figure is erroneously stated to represent h 1196]. 1878, Mar. 28. Neby E ns, branch from s end turning p towards a * 13.14m in Pos. 254[deg].3, Dist. 70".9. (VII. obs.) All of these, including the correction to the figure captions, clearly point to NGC 4303. But where are the other three observations? I've not been able to find them in the published monograph. If the observing notes of the third and fourth Earls of Rosse are still extant, we might be able to dig them out to do a search. (Just to cover all the objects thoroughly, here are the 1880 monograph descriptions on NGC 4480 = GC 3032 = h1299 = H II 531: 1851, Apr. 21. At 84[deg] 34'+- and 12h 25m+- I found a scarlet * 10m. and a F, E neb. 10' s of it, with st[s] in it. 1852, Apr. 9. About 12h 23m and NPD 84[deg] 43' there is a ruddy (not scarlet) * 10m. and a F neb. 10' s of it. [As already pointed out by d'A, this neb is = h 1299 and the * = B.W. 12h, 378, Schj. red stars No. 148. G.C. 3060 is to be struck out.] (II. obs.) This is a fair description of NGC 4480 and HIP 61022, V_Tycho2 = 8.33, (B-V)_Tycho2 = 1.43, indeed a red star. So, here at last is the information that JH needed to have in the 1861 monograph to correctly identify the object inserted willy-nilly into the descriptions for N4292 and N4303.) At last we come to the NGC where Dreyer's note reads 4301. The place of 2884 is wrong in G.C., as the nova is 10' nf of h 1196 and not of h 1202. It was therefore not found by d'A and Schultz. Dreyer adjusted the position of NGC 4301 appropriately, and most people have taken the entry to point to UGC 7411. I certainly did this for years until Malcolm pointed out the inconsistencies and errors in LdR's two monographs. So, I now think that the evidence points to UGC 7439 as the correct object. It is twice as bright and considerably larger than U7411, as well as closer to N4303 than U7411 is to N4292 -- and therefore more likely to be noticed. As for d'A and Schultz not being able to find it -- they were using 11-inch and 9.6-inch refractors, respectively. These would allow them to dig out the Herschel's objects, but -- with all due respect -- not objects discovered with a 72-inch reflector. So, to summarize. I think it is likely that Lord Rosse's garbled observations point to UGC 7439 (sometimes called NGC 4303A in modern catalogues) as NGC 4301. I've put colons on this object. However, it is just possible that Lord Rosse saw UGC 7411. Even though this is 0.8 magnitudes fainter, and half the size of UGC 7439, he could still have run across it -- many of his discoveries are considerably fainter, including the tiny galaxy just north of NGC 4292. So, I've put U7411 into the position table with question marks as a caution that this case is not entirely closed. ===== NGC 4303 = M 61 = h1202 = H I 139 is one of the few Messier objects to also carry a number in WH's lists. It also figures in the identification of NGC 4301, which see. ===== NGC 4305. The position given for this by Schwassmann in his list of Virgo Cluster galaxies is about an arcmin off to the south of the true position. Since Schwassmann was a pioneer in the measurement of accurate positions on photographic plates, this -- and a few other buggy numbers in his list -- are a bit of a puzzle. They most likely come from numerical errors in the reduction of the measured rectangular coordinates to RA and Dec. In our present age of electronic computers, we often forget that the calculations at the turn of the century were all done by hand. Accidental errors were thus more likely. My guess is that this is one. See also NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4306. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4310 = NGC 4338, which see. Also see NGC 4311 and NGC 4317. ===== NGC 4311. JH has only one observation of this, calling it "Faint; the south-following of two." The "north-preceding" of the two is N4310 which JH called "Very bright." There is only one galaxy here, N4310, and that was also seen by WH, as well as by JH during the sweep previous to the one during which he saw two objects in this place. It is possible that JH misidentified another pair -- but there is no other pair near his place, nor at any reasonable digit error from his place. In addition, his measured position for N4311 is less than 20 arcsec from the single galaxy here. This is would be a remarkable coincidence if the position actually applies to another object. So, we are confronted with another lost NGC object. ===== NGC 4313. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4314. See NGC 4317. ===== NGC 4315 may be one of the two 13th magnitude stars south of NGC 4316. Tempel mentioned the object in his descriptive note that accompanies his micrometric position for NGC 4316 in his fifth paper including new nebulae. In that list, he places N4315 at 2 seconds preceding and 1.5 arcmin south of NGC 4316 -- there isn't anything there. The brighter star is at the required declination offset, but its RA is about 3 seconds larger than N4316's. This would require that Tempel made a mistake in the sign of his RA offset. This isn't unknown -- see NGC 4186 for another example. The fainter star is another candidate. The RA offset is in the right direction (it is 3 seconds preceding the RA of the galaxy), however, it is nearly 3 arcmin south of N4316, not 1.5 as Tempel made it. So, I feel that this is less likely to be his object (though it is the one that I chose the first time I went over the field without Tempel's paper at hand). In either case, Tempel has mistaken other stars near other galaxies as nebulous (see e.g. N577, N4322, N4327, and N4768/9), so having one near N4316 is no surprise. ===== NGC 4316. See NGC 4315. ===== NGC 4317 is lost. WH's observation (this is II 324) fits in order with the rest of the nebulae he found the same night 13 March 1785, many of which were compared with 13 CVn (= 37 Comae = SAO 63288). II 324 has the same RA offset as I 76 = N4314, though is supposed to be 1 deg 9 arcmin north of that galaxy. There is nothing at WH's position. A possibility for WH's object is NGC 4310 = NGC 4338 (which see). It is at roughly the correct RA (17 seconds preceding WH's), but is 1 deg 50 arcmin south of WH's Dec. This makes it unlikely that this is the object he saw. Finally, Reinmuth, RNGC, and Steinicke have called N4317 a star. I think this is unlikely as WH would have probably noted the object "very small" or "extremely small" rather than simply "small." ===== NGC 4319 = NGC 4345, which see. ===== NGC 4320. Is this possibly also NGC 4368? See that for the speculation. ===== NGC 4321. See NGC 4322, NGC 4323, and NGC 4327. ===== NGC 4322 is probably a star. It, NGC 4323, and NGC 4327 were all found by Tempel while he was observing NGC 4321 (M 100) and NGC 4328. He only gives descriptive places for them with respect to the brighter objects, so the NGC positions are only approximate. His entire note for the three objects reads (translation by me), "... on my drawing, there are three other very faint nebulae in the vicinity, two north of and close to 2890 [N4321], and the third south of 2894 [N4328]." Given Tempel's propensity for seeing nebulae where only stars exist, I think that the star northwest of M100, and one of the stars southeast, along with the galaxy to the northeast, are Tempel's three objects. It's certainly possible to argue with this since Tempel gives no details about the appearance of his objects, but this is a reasonable hypothesis under the circumstances. The galaxy to the northeast has been called "NGC 4322 = NGC 4323" by many observers. Since Tempel's description is very clear about his having seen two "nebulae" north of M100, the identity cannot be true. This has the unfortunate consequence that the number 4322 is put onto a star, but I prefer this to inverting the RA order. ===== NGC 4323 is the galaxy northeast of M100 (= NGC 4321) that has been called "NGC 4322 = NGC 4323" in many catalogues and lists. See NGC 4322 for the story on this. ===== NGC 4325 is probably also NGC 4368, which see. ===== NGC 4327 is perhaps one of the two stars near NGC 4321 and NGC 4328 listed in the table. I don't see anything else "south of [N4328]" that Tempel might have included in his sketch. See NGC 4322 for more details. There is what appears to be an asterism of four stars on the POSS1 version of DSS near the nominal position for N4327. This is in fact a single star with a group of four plate defects superposed. Malcolm noticed this, and I'm grateful that he called my attention to it. ===== NGC 4328. See NGC 4322, NGC 4323, and NGC 4327. ===== NGC 4332. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4336 = IC 3254, which see. Frost must have thought that IC 3254 was a new object as he measured its position to be over 2.5 arcmin away from that for NGC 4336. The GC/NGC position itself, from JH's two observations, is even further. (D'Arrest's position is within a few arcsec of the modern position, but JH did not get a copy of d'A's monograph in time to cross-check the GC positions.) In any case, as I explain in the story for I3254, the identity seems likely, so I've adopted it for the main table. ===== NGC 4338 = NGC 4310. d'A's RA is just one minute following NGC 4310, and his description is apt. Also, he measured N4310 on three nights (his numbers 80, 164, and 380), and N4338 on one other night (night 110). ===== NGC 4341 = IC 3260, NGC 4342 = IC 3256, and NGC 4343. There is a group of five galaxies here to which three NGC numbers and four IC numbers apply. Needless to say, the identifications are pretty thoroughly scrambled in the literature. Here is the story: William Herschel (1786) saw three objects (III. 94-96) here, but gave only one position for the them. John Herschel included only one of the objects in his 1833 catalogue, calling it "III. 94," the first of the three numbers assigned by his father. When he prepared the GC, he used his position for this brightest object, but his father's position for the other two, thus giving the lowest of WH's numbers to the object with the largest right ascension. Dreyer used a mean value of JH's position and one from d'Arrest (1867) for the brightest object, but still had only WH's positions for the remaining two. Thus, the inverted order of WH's numbers remains in NGC, with the largest NGC number (4343) receiving the smallest WH number (III. 94). In sorting out the NGC numbers, I've simply assumed that WH saw the brightest three galaxies here, and that JH and d'Arrest measured the brightest one of these. These three galaxies also have the highest surface brightnesses of the five objects in question, so this is an entirely reasonable assumption to make (see RC3 for the data). This means, however, that the brightest object, NGC 4343, has the smallest right ascension on the sky, but the largest RA in NGC. Also, I've followed RC1 (and most other modern catalogues) by assigning N4342 to the middle of the three galaxies, and N4341 to the remaining (following) object, thus retaining the reverse order. Bigourdan's observations of 1895 and 1907 of all five objects here yielded four numbers in the second IC. Schwassmann measured four of the five objects on a Heidelberg plate (the fifth object that he did not measure probably appears stellar on the plate). Dreyer used these four accurate positions in IC2; this has led Herzog (1967 and CGCG) to suggest dropping the questionable NGC numbers altogether, and simply use the unambiguous IC numbers instead. RC2 and RC3 adopted this solution. However, this discards two NGC numbers which we can now assign based on modern photometric data. So, I have adopted the identifications suggested here. Appendix 6 in RC3 is a table of most known identifications for all five of the galaxies. The curious are referred to it for cross-references into the modern literature and catalogues. You should also see NED for the new names added to these galaxies since 1991. ===== NGC 4342 = IC 3256. See NGC 4341. ===== NGC 4343. See NGC 4341. ===== NGC 4345 = NGC 4319. This was found by J. G. Lohse with Mr. Wigglesworth's 15-inch refractor. Lohse's position (which has nothing in it) is just a minute of time following N4319, and his description fits the galaxy. Since Lohse does not mention N4319 in the observation, this is almost certainly identical to it. Carlson called N4345 a star, an identification picked up by RNGC. I think it very unlikely that a star would be mistaken for a "F, pL, gbM" nebula in a 15-inch telescope. The more likely explanation is simply a 1 minute error in the RA. ===== NGC 4347 may be NGC 4348, or it may be the star noted in the position list. There is another fainter star to the southwest of the brighter one that may play a role in this object, too. This was found by Peters, included on his charts, and published as a "nova" in his first list of positions. He notes there that the object "... hardly can be G.C. 2911 [N4348] ...; but upon my chart I find no nebula drawn in this place." At the end of his second list, he appends this note, "The note to Nova 12h 16m42s; -2d 27.7m [1860.0] should be cancelled, as on 1881, May 5, I have seen and drawn upon my chart also the nebula G.C. 2911." It is still possible that the N4347 = N4348 -- Peters never says that he saw both nebulae at the same time. Nevertheless, that is his clear implication, so the equality is a possibility, no more. I'm slightly more inclined to the notion that he somehow mistook the two stars as a nebula. Whether this is true or not may never be known as both objects must be shown on his charts. Whatever the case, there is certainly no nebula at the position Peters gives for NGC 4347. ===== NGC 4348 may also be NGC 4347, which see. ===== NGC 4351 = NGC 4354, which see. See also NGC 4367. ===== NGC 4352. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4353 = IC 3266. Peter's position is not very good. That led Schwassmann to miss the NGC number when he picked up the galaxy on three of his 6-inch plates from Heidelburg. Still, Adelaide Ames caught the identity when she prepared her Virgo Cluster catalogue in 1930. However, CGCG muddied the picture again by calling the galaxy "I3265 = I3266 (= N4353?)". IC 3265, which see, is a star north-northwest of the galaxy. ===== NGC 4354 = NGC 4351. Swift's position is only 5 seconds of time following N4351, and his note "in vacancy" makes the identity virtually certain. Had there been another galaxy nearby, Swift would have noted that instead. The identity was first suggested in one of the Harvard papers (Dreyer has an IC2 Note that Frost did not find the object on a 4-hour plate), and was copied into Carlson's 1940 paper. RC1 and RNGC picked it up from there. ===== NGC 4355 = NGC 4418. This is one of the 30-odd nebulae that David Todd ran across during his search for "the trans-neptunian" planet in 1877 and 1878. He estimated very crude positions for most of them using the setting circles on the USNO's 26-inch refractor. Fortunately, he also gave us sketches of the star fields around each of the objects and, often, measurements of RA differences between the stars and the nebulae. Unfortunately, these were not enough to allow Dreyer to identify the objects. Dreyer included in the NGC some objects that he thought might be "novae", but he skipped others that seem, to me, just as likely to be included -- and that were, in fact, new nebulae. In any event, Dreyer did include Todd's 17th nebula as NGC 4355. Using the sketch of that nebula's field, it's easy to see on the Sky Survey prints/films (even in a DSS field at least 15 arcmin on a side) that it clearly refers to NGC 4418. See NGC 3604 for more about Todd's search. ===== NGC 4356 = IC 3273, which see. ===== NGC 4357 = NGC 4381, which see. ===== NGC 4358, and NGC 4362 = NGC 4364. All three numbers are credited to WH, who recorded them as follows on 17 April 1789: WH delta RA delta Dec Star Desc III 799 1m 12s p 1d 36m n 71 UMa vF, vS III 800 1m 09s p 1d 37m n 71 UMa } } Two, both cF, cS, R. III 801 " " " " } The "lE" notation in NGC comes from John Herschel, who observed only two of these on 1 May 1831: JH WH RA (1830) NPD Desc 1230 III 799 12 15 42.1 30 40 32 F, lE, the p of 2 1233 III 800 12 15 50.1 30 41 32 eF, the last of 2 (the other was III 799; III 801 not seen). Note the relative positions, "p of 2" and "last of 2." These notes about the positions should take precedence over any comments about shape since apparent axis ratios depend on the limiting isophote of a galaxy (the deeper the isophote, the rounder a galaxy appears). This is how matters stood when JH put together the GC. There he assigned three numbers (GC 2914, 18, 20) assuming that all three objects existed, and added a comment about the RA of the first possibly being a minute later than listed. I've not been able to track the source of this comment, as all the positions measured up to that time are pretty much in agreement. The other pre-NGC observation was by d'Arrest, who also saw only two objects here (on 4 Oct 1866): h H RA (1860) Dec 1230 III 799 12 17 28.1 +59 09 38 1233 III 800 12 17 32.1 +59 08 02 d'Arrest's descriptions and comments are all in Latin which I don't read. I can make out the comment "III 800 is south-following" in the description for III 799, and there is a four-line note about III 801 in the description for III 800 (which also mentions the star just to the south). Unfortunately, Lord Rosse and his observers did not look at these galaxies. Based on JH's work on the GC, Dreyer again assigned three numbers. Later (WH's Scientific Papers, and MN 73, 37, 1912), he noted: "Very probably the word `two' refers to III 799 and III 800, as nobody seems to have seen three nebulae in the place." Both Bigourdan and Reinmuth also only saw two of the three -- though Bigourdan claimed to have missed N4362 while Reinmuth could not find N4364 -- so that has added to the confusion. As Glen (Deen) noted, there are indeed three galaxies here; all are mentioned in CGCG (only two entries, but the north-preceding is a pair), MCG (all three), and UGC (the brightest is UGC 7479; the other two are in the Notes). RNGC, of course, assigns one number to each galaxy (but not the ones you might expect; more below). Modern data for the three galaxies are as follows: RA (B1950.0) Dec D d m(p) CGCG MCG Other 12 21 34.56 +58 39 27.5 0.3 x 0.2 16.9 293-017w +10-18-037 NPM1G +58.0113 12 21 39.15 +58 39 43.7 0.9 x 0.7 14.4 293-017e +10-18-038 UGC 7479 12 21 48.45 +58 38 15.6 0.7 x 0.4 15.2 293-018 +10-18-039 --- Positions are from GSC, diameters are my own measured on POSS, and are roughly at the 25th mag/sq arcsec isophote. Magnitudes are from the CGCG. For 293-017 which has a combined magnitude of 14.3, I've assumed that the surface brightnesses of the two components are equal, and have simply apportioned the combined magnitude according to the ratio of the areas of the galaxies (the first covers 9% of the total area covered by both, so has 9% of the total light, etc.). In short, these numbers support Dreyer's contention that WH actually saw only two galaxies -- the third is most likely much too faint for WH to have seen (JH, d'Arrest, and Bigourdan, using similar-sized telescopes, certainly did not see it; it was also apparently not recorded on the plate which Reinmuth examined). Therefore, only the two brighter galaxies get NGC numbers. Since it is clear that the relative orientation seen by everyone (except WH) is nw-se, the nw object must be h1230 and the se must be h1233. Since Dreyer has assigned these to N4358 and N4362, respectively, the last number (N4364) is left by itself. This one comes only from WH's description ("Two"). Since it is the last number in the sequence of three, I propose that it be put on the 2nd galaxy. Finally, RNGC did its usual hatchet job on the field, leaving a mess behind. It put one number on each of the three galaxies, managing only one correct out of the three: N4358 = CGCG 293-017w -- wrong. N4362 = CGCG 293-018 -- right. N4364 = CGCG 293-017e -- wrong. ===== NGC 4362 = NGC 4364. See NGC 4358. ===== NGC 4364 = NGC 4362. See NGC 4358. ===== NGC 4365. There is just the slightest whisper of a possibility that this may also be IC 3281 (which see) -- but I did not write it loudly enough for you to hear. ===== NGC 4367 is probably the double star near d'A's position. In his description, d'A has this 35 seconds following a brighter nebula also found by him. That nebula is NGC 4351, and the separation is correct. Also, d'A has two accordant observations of N4367, so it is reasonably clear that he saw a real object, nebulous or not. The second of the two stars is quite faint, though. This may account for Frost's not finding any nebulosity at d'A's position on a 4-hour Bruce plate. Dreyer, in an IC2 note, has this nebula among several that Frost did not find. ===== NGC 4368 is probably NGC 4325. Dreyer notes that the "... RA is possibly 1 min too great (see under II 64 [= N4352]). Not found by Bigourdan." The note for N4352 reads, "RA is 1 min too great. The same is the case with several other nebulae observed this night (Sw 174, March 15, 1784) ..." The actual differences between WH's RA's and the true RA's varies from about 40 sec to well over a minute for the seven objects mentioned by Dreyer (N3810, N4067, N4294, N4313, N4352, N4371, and N4429). If N4368 is indeed N4325 (discovered by d'A), its difference is 1 min 28 sec, not an unreasonable value considering the other errors. The declination is 1.5 arcmin different, well within WH's usual observing errors. I can only speculate about the source of WH's error, since it does not affect every object observed in Sweep 174. Thus, it could be a correction due to a mistimed comparison star -- but different affected objects have different comparison stars. Or it could be that WH forgot to make the correction to the center of the field for the objects -- but since his field was only 15 arcmin across, the largest correction could only be half that value, or a bit less than 30 seconds of time at a declination of +10 deg. Also, this is a necessary correction for every object which does not sweep across the field center -- which is almost every object observed. I can't see WH forgetting such an obvious correction for a few objects in a sweep, but not for most others. Whatever caused the errors, the fact that they exist is clear, and N4368 seems to be affected. Finally, there is also the faint possibility that N4368 is N4320 (also found by d'A). However, that is fainter and smaller than N4325, and WH's Dec would be off by 3.0 arcmin rather than the 1.5 arcmin to N4325. The RA would also be further off, too, 1 min 40 sec, so overall, I do not think this is a strong possibility at all. ===== NGC 4371. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4374. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4381 = NGC 4357. The equality was suggested by Dreyer, and confirmed by Bigourdan who did not find N4381, but who did discover N4357 and made eight observations of it on two different nights. Dreyer suggests a simple 1 minute error in WH's RA. Since the descriptions match, the identity is almost certain. ===== NGC 4387. See NGC 4407 = NGC 4413, and NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4388. See NGC 4407 = NGC 4413, and NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4390 = IC 3320, which is probably also = IC 3319 (which see). WH's position is enough off that the identity of the nebula was questioned by d'A (he got it right). Dreyer adopted d'A's position. See N4398 for more on this field. ===== NGC 4393 is identical to neither IC 3323 (a foreground star) nor to IC 3329 (a knot in the galaxy). See the IC numbers for a bit more. ===== NGC 4394. See NGC 4397. ===== NGC 4395. See NGC 4399 which, along with NGC 4400 and NGC 4401, are HII regions in NGC 4395. ===== NGC 4397 is an asterism of four stars (or perhaps three stars and a galaxy). It is located where Tempel saw it, "... 5 sec following, 6 arcmin north of II 55 [N4394]." Another apparent asterism exists another three arcmin to the north -- but only on the POSS1 red plate and, therefore, on the DSS. It looked real enough to fool me, but Malcolm caught it. My thanks to him for letting me know about my mistake. ===== NGC 4398 is a star. d'A has only one observation of this, found while he was looking for N4390 (which see). His description for N4398 includes mention of two stars to the southwest: an 11th magnitude star 16.35 seconds preceding, and a 13th magnitude star 11.60 seconds preceding his "nebula." Both stars are there (the separations for 1950 are 16.58 seconds and 11.18 seconds, both well within the error bounds of the expected values). So, the identification is secure. ===== NGC 4399, NGC 4400, and NGC 4401 are bright HII regions in NGC 4395. WH found N4395 and N4401, the main body of the galaxy and the brightest HII region, recording them as two nebulae under one number. Thus, the NGC has the WH numbers given rather awkwardly as "V 29.1" and "V 29.2." Lord Rosse (or his observers) found the other two objects, but did not measure their offsets from nearby stars or the nucleus. Instead, they printed a diagram which can be pretty easily related to the sky, in spite of some distortion. The lack of offsets also allowed Dreyer to give only approximate positions for N4399 and N4400. Lord Rosse's sketch of the field, however, makes the identifications clear. ===== NGC 4400. See NGC 4399. ===== NGC 4401. See NGC 4399. ===== NGC 4402. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4405 = IC 788, which see. ===== NGC 4406. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4407 = NGC 4413. This came about because JH has two observations of this (and NGC 4388 in the same sweeps) which he did not equate. N4407 comes from the second observation and is described only as "The following of 2." His description for N4388 reads, "vF, E, the p of 2, dist about 30 sec in RA." He marks the RA of N4407 with two colons (very uncertain), and the declination with a plus/minus sign. So, it is clear that he measured only N4388, and simply estimated the position of N4407 from the preceding galaxy. The only galaxy that JH could have seen roughly 30 sec following N4388 is N4413, so the identity of N4407 is almost certain. The identity with N4413 was suggested at both Lick and Harvard. Both are quoted in Carlson's 1940 list. As a result of JH's observations, N4388 has two separate GC numbers (2949 and 2956). Curiously, Dreyer caught the identity of the GC numbers for N4388, but not for N4407 (= GC 2968) and N4413 (= GC 2974). Perhaps he was a bit confused by WH's observations here which (correctly) call N4388 the south- following of a pair (with N4387) rather than the preceding of a pair with N4413 as noted -- also correctly -- by JH. ===== NGC 4409 = NGC 4420. WH found NGC 4409 (= III 17) on 23 Feb 1784; he has only the one observation of it. He found NGC 4420 (= II 23) a month earlier on 24 January, and made a second observation of it sometime later. JH found N4420, but not N4409, so speculated that "This (N4420) may possibly be identical with III 17." Since there is nothing at all in either of WH's positions (that for N4409 precedes the galaxy by 33 seconds and is 2.5 arcmin north; and that for N4420 follows the true position by 14 seconds and is 3.8 arcmin south), and since there are no other galaxies in the area that WH could have seen, JH's suggestion is probably correct. Dreyer carried it over into the NGC description, and from there, it was adopted by Reinmuth, Harvard, Carlson, and RC1. ===== NGC 4411 = IC 3339 (which see) and "NGC 4411B." We know now that there are a pair of low-surface-brightness spirals here, one at the position of NGC 4411 = IC 3339, and the other at the position of Bigourdan 298 noted by Dreyer in an IC2 Note for N4411. Dreyer, however, assumed the two positions to apply to just a single galaxy, so there has been some confusion in the modern catalogues as to which galaxy bears the number NGC 4411. The solution I've adopted is to follow the historical positions -- Peters's and Schwassmann's clearly apply to the preceding of the pair of galaxies -- as well as to give a bit of credit to Bigourdan for finding the second galaxy. The slightly awkward numbering that apparently started with Holmberg in his 1958 monograph on galaxy photometry puts the numbers "N4411A" and "N4411B" on the galaxies. This was adopted by the de Vaucouleurs for RC1, and persisted through RC3 -- so we're probably stuck with it. Still, as I said, it gives some credit to Bigourdan for digging out the eastern galaxy. It is actually about half a magnitude brighter than the western, though I think that the star superposed on the western might shield the galaxy from sight in some circumstances or enhance it in others. ===== NGC 4413 = NGC 4407, which see. ===== NGC 4417 is not NGC 4437 = NGC 4517. A typo in Dorothy Carlson's list of NGC corrections of 1940 is responsible for the confusion in some mid-20th century catalogues. See NGC 4437 for more. ===== NGC 4418 = NGC 4355, which see. N4418 itself has notes in the GC and NGC. There is enough slop in the original position from WH, and enough of a difference between his description and JH's, that JH was not convinced of the identity between his nebula and his father's. In the event, he sorted it out correctly, and Dreyer -- citing additional observations by Lord Rosse and d'Arrest -- confirmed the identity. The NGC 4355 label comes from an observation by David Todd. See the brief discussion under that number, and under NGC 3604, for additional identification adventures in Todd's list. ===== NGC 4420 = NGC 4409, which see. See also NGC 4910. ===== NGC 4424. See IC 793 and IC 3366. ===== NGC 4425. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4426 = NGC 4427 is a double star. This is one of the very few objects which shows a bit of haste on Dreyer's part in his final work on assembling the NGC. D'Arrest's and Bigourdan's positions and descriptions are clearly pointing at the same object, and the two objects are adjacent in the NGC, yet not until he saw the proofs did Dreyer add the note "These are evidently identical (note added in press)." In IC2, he has an additional note: "According to M. Wolf (list IV.) only two stars 36 arcsec apart, n and s." The stars are actually separated by only 13-14 arcsec, and Wolf's southern position points to empty sky -- this may be a defect on his plate. In any event, there is no doubting the identification as both d'A and Bigourdan have two observations of the double, and both describe it as a small cluster, perhaps with nebulosity involved (there is none). There is a mistake in Bigourdan's notes, though his published position (in his first Comptes Rendus list) is correct. He chose an anonymous comparison star, noting that it is "+1m 31s, -7 arcmin" from BD +28 deg 2116. The correct distance in RA is -29.8s, so Bigourdan may have meant to write -31s. ===== NGC 4427 = NGC 4426 (which see) is a double star. ===== NGC 4429. See NGC 4368. ===== NGC 4430. See NGC 4453. ===== NGC 4435. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4437 = NGC 4517 with a 5 minute error in the RA. Reinmuth first suggested the identity, but when Dorothy Carlson picked it up, a typo in her list made N4437 = N4417. This was copied into RC1 where it hung on until I fixed it for RC2. JH's description leaves no room for uncertainty about the identification; he describes the galaxy and the nearby star perfectly. His father's position and description are also appropriate for the galaxy and star. Interestingly, WH lists it as the 5th of his class of "planetary" nebulae, apparently because of the supposed interaction with the nearby star. This shows that his classification system had not yet settled down early in 1784 when he first saw the galaxy. WH's reference to "Fig. 6", by the way, points back to his 1784 paper, "Account of some Observations tending to investigate the Construction of the Heavens," where he first discussed the "stratum" of nebulae that we now call the Local Supercluster. This paper has sketches of 15 of his nebulae and clusters, unfortunately poorly reproduced in the 2003 reprinting of the Scientific Papers. Michael Hoskin's 1963 book "William Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens" has a far better reproduction of WH's sketches as its Plate 1. ===== NGC 4438. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4441. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4442. See IC 793. ===== NGC 4443 has usually been taken as a star following NGC 4435 and NGC 4438. Exactly which star, I'm not sure as there is nothing at the NGC position aside from a 19th or 20th magnitude object. In any event, the only evidence we have for this comes from one observation in 1849 when LdR sketched this as the last of 11 nebulae. The sketch is fairly crude and the distances between the objects does not correspond well to what we see on the sky. Indeed, LdR himself says, "Found the objects as in sketch, positions being put down very rudely." Nevertheless, we -- and Dreyer who identified the objects for LdR's 1880 monograph -- can recognize the brightest galaxies in an east-west swath of sky through the center of the Virgo Cluster. His objects are as follows (in his order): alpha = NGC 4305 beta = NGC 4306 gamma = NGC 4374 delta = NGC 4387 epsilon = NGC 4388 zeta = NGC 4406 eta = NGC 4402 lambda = NGC 4425 theta = NGC 4435 iota = NGC 4438 kappa = NGC 4443 As I noted above, there is nothing in the exact position of LdR's "kappa", but NGC 4461 is not too far away. It is certainly not a big stretch to this galaxy, and its description is a relative fit to the other galaxies. The objection to this is that only one galaxy is shown in the sketch, whereas there are, of course, two on the sky: NGC 4458 is not too far northwest of N4461. Given the hurried nature of the observations, though, it may be that LdR thought N4458 to be a star. It is considerably smaller and fainter than its companion, so this is a possibility. So, I'm going to take N4443 to be a duplicate discovery of N4461, but with some uncertainty. ===== NGC 4445 = IC 793, which see. ===== NGC 4451. See IC 793. ===== NGC 4453. While there is no problem with the identity of JH's object (h 1283), there is a problem with WH's (H II 26). Dreyer notes in the Scientific Papers that the observations in Sweep 131 are "very unsatisfactory" (a criticism that extends to Sweep 132 as well; see NGC 4577 for more). This was the only nebula found in Sweep 131, so there is little to compare it with aside from the "unsatisfactory" observations of the stars. The galaxy that JH found is "eF" in his catalogue, while WH's is "pB, pL, brighter toward the following side." Dreyer notes that NGC 4430 is 20 arcmin in Dec off the position of N4453 -- it is also 30 seconds off in RA. He also has a note from WH that there is a "very large star" 9 minutes, 6 seconds preceding and 22 arcmin south of the nebula. Assuming that N4430 is indeed WH's object, the description fits. But there is no star at WH's offsets. The one that Dreyer suggests (BD +6 deg 2588) is 7 minutes, 29 seconds preceding, and 13 arcmin south. A somewhat brighter star (BD +xx deg xxxx) is at 12 17 22.13, +05 56 56.7 -- 7 minutes, 31 seconds preceding, and 35 arcmin south. Neither is a good match for WH's offsets. JH's much fainter galaxy (the one that we adopt as NGC 4453), however, is 9 min 0 sec following, and 28 minutes north of BD +6 deg 2588, a better -- though not prefect -- match to WH's observation. But the galaxy can hardly be the one WH saw; it is far too faint, too small, and is not at all brighter toward the east. At the end of all this, I'm leaning toward adopting NGC 4430 as II 26, though with considerable uncertainty. At this point, you are probably asking "Why bother? We know where NGC 4453 is." Knowing which galaxy is II 26 will help with the puzzle of NGC 4577 = H III 13, found the same night, and supposedly referred to the same star. See NGC 4577 for more. ===== NGC 4458. See NGC 4443. ===== NGC 4461 is probably also NGC 4443, which see. ===== NGC 4464. See NGC 4471. ===== NGC 4470 = NGC 4610, which see. This may also be IC 3281 (which also see), but that is extremely unlikely. It is certainly not IC 3417 (which finally see) -- that is a star 2.3 arcmin north of the galaxy. ===== NGC 4471 is apparently one of the two stars flanking Schmidt's estimated position given in AN 64, 1, 1865 (my thanks to Wolfgang for digging out this paper). This is one of four "very faint and small objects" in the vicinity of M 49 that Schmidt found and measured in the summer of 1861, and remeasured a year later. D'Arrest points out (less than two months later in AN 64, 125, 1865) that three of the nebulae (N4464, N4470, and N4492) were observed by WH and JH, and suggests that the fourth -- this one, N4471 -- is perhaps H II 498 (but that is NGC 4470; this was a confused field until LdR sorted it out -- see Dreyer's note for M 49 in the NGC). D'A goes on with his own observations of the field, noting that he could find neither II 498 nor Schmidt's object at their published discovery positions. There is a considerably fainter compact galaxy about 1.5 arcmin on to the northwest from the stars, but Schmidt has no other objects in his list that are that faint. I doubt that he could have seen it with the 11-inch refractor that he was using in Athens. Finally, this is the only object without a micrometric measurement in Schmidt's table of 27 stars and nebulae around M 49 (he also did not measure a declination for one of the stars, but gives an RA). Precessing his positions for the other nebulae, I found that the declinations are very good, but the RAs are systematically too large by 0.6 to 0.7 seconds of time compared to modern positions (the RA for his comparison star is perhaps affected by proper motion). Unfortunately, this does not help us decide which star (if either) Schmidt mistook for the nebula, as both are much further from his position than this. ===== NGC 4472 = M 49. See NGC 4471. ===== NGC 4480. See NGC 4301. ===== NGC 4482 = IC 3427. WH's RA's for many of the objects in Sweep 174 on 15 March 1784 are too large by up to a minute of time. In this case, the error is only 30 seconds. See IC 3427 for more. ===== NGC 4492 = IC 3438, which see; and NGC 4471. ===== NGC 4496. There are three galaxies in the printed edition of RC3 bearing this number. One of these, VCC 1364 at 12 28 56.4 +04 14 54, has nothing to do with the real NGC 4496 at 12 29 06.6 +04 12 54. This is the brighter of a double galaxy, so is usually called NGC 4496A. Delete the NGC number from the listing for PGC 41450 in RC3. Also delete T, L, B(T), and m'(25). Also see NGC 4505 for a genuine NGC mystery related to this galaxy, rather than simple modern bungling. ===== NGC 4497 is also IC 3452, which see. ===== NGC 4505 is probably NGC 4496. Originally found by William Herschel on 23 February 1784, there is no trace of this on the sky. Yet John Herschel claims to have observed it, too, and it is listed in Reinmuth's photographic reobservation of the Herschel's nebulae. After that, however, it disappears from the catalogues except to appear in errata lists. RC1, for example, considers it to be identical to NGC 4496. Sir William has only one observation of it, and that is referred to a different star than his discovery observation of the nearby NGC 4496, of which he has 3 observations altogether. His description of NGC 4505 -- "vF, cL, r" is brief and could just be construed as a hurried observation of NGC 4496. The positions are not that much different, either. Sir John's single observation places NGC 4505 close to his father's position. His description is even briefer: "eF; the f of 2 in the field." His right ascension is marked "+-", so it is likely that we shall never know exactly what he saw, but there are several faint stars near his place that he could have mistaken for an "eF" nebula. Reinmuth's extended description, "eeF, eS, R; = neb * or *14; *8 sp 7', *11.8 sp 2'; NGC 4505, *11.8, *8 in line" pinpoints a 14th magnitude star near Sir John's place. This may be the star that Sir John himself saw and mistook for a nebula. We are left, then, with Sir William's lone discovery observation to explain. Arguing against the equality with NGC 4496 are the different positions, and the fact that both nebulae were found the same night. However, since different comparison stars were used, it is indeed possible that the two observations that night refer to the same object -- NGC 4496. Until Sir William's original observing notes can be scrutinized, I'll adopt the identity as a working hypothesis. ===== NGC 4508 is a double star at JH's position. He describes it as "vS, R, a * 13 with a burr." This is just how it appears on the POSS1 as the two images are merged. ===== NGC 4510. See NGC 4512. ===== NGC 4512 is probably NGC 4521. Steve Gottlieb has questioned the identity of NGC 4512 as given in the modern catalogues. CGCG, UGC, and MCG all point to the galaxy at 12 30 17.9 +64 09 20 as N4512. However, this object is a pretty faint, low surface brightness spiral, and does not at all match JH's description, "pB, R, psbM; 20'' ". Reinmuth (1926) suggested that this may be the same as NGC 4521. I looked at the field, and at all the objects which John Herschel found in Sweep 412 (N2909, 3231, 3392, 3394, 3622, 3682, 4108, 4210, 4221, 4332, and 4441, as well as 4512; there are no significant systematic offsets in Sir John's positions from the true positions), and only see one other possible candidate for N4512: N4510 (curiously, d'Arrest calls this a very small cluster; his position is accurately on the galaxy, though). This is just 30 arcmin north of JH's position, and a bit preceding. However, JH calls the object "pB", the same as N4521 which is 1.2 mag brighter than N4510. Aside from that, though, JH's description fits N4510 pretty well. But the magnitude difference makes me cautious about accepting the identity. In addition, N4521 is closer to JH's position for N4512. Everything considered, N4521 is the better match, so is the object that we've adopted as N4512. ===== NGC 4517 is also NGC 4437, which see. ===== NGC 4520 = IC 799, which see. ===== NGC 4521 is probably = NGC 4512 (which see). ===== NGC 4526 is probably also NGC 4560, which see. ===== NGC 4529 may be UGC 7697, but the evidence is not very good. Here are my comments in response to a question about this object from Steve Gottlieb in October 1999. Though WH has two observations, neither of his positions fall near any galaxy he could have seen. His earlier position (which JH and Dreyer discount in notes in the GC and NGC; more below) is 1m 20s east and 4.9 arcmin north of UGC 7697, and 2m 39s east and 12.0 arcmin south of CGCG 129-006. His second position is 1m 14s east and 20.5 arcmin north of U7697, and 2m 23s east and 2.4 arcmin north of C129-006. None of this inspires much confidence in WH's positions, especially given that Dreyer quotes his first observation in the Papers: "Suspected a L, eF neb, but tho' I looked at it a good while, I could not verify the suspicion, nor could I convince myself that it was a deception." Dreyer than adds "P.D. apparently only approximate," but the offset in the table is not marked with a colon. U7697 is somewhat larger and brighter than C129-006, and has a slightly higher surface brightness. So, if WH actually saw a galaxy in this area, I think it is more likely that he saw U7697. All in all, however, the situation for making a clear identification for N4529 does not look good, hence the several question marks in the main table. Some additional comments: The NGC note is a slightly reworded version of JH's GC note with the "erratum" in WH's published list merged in. Fortunately, Dreyer decided to give WH's original data in the main table of his 1912 reprinting of WH's first list. Along with the second observation from 6 years later in Dreyer's notes, we apparently have all the data WH collected. Bigourdan's position, which Dreyer sites in support of WH's second observation, is about 20 arcsec off a faint star that Bigourdan must have just barely seen, if, in fact, he saw anything at all. Wolfgang's position makes his galaxy = MCG +04-30-003 = C129-006. I do not know where the PGC's separate entry for N4529 comes from, but the position is closer to PGC 41463 = C129-006 than to anything else, so that probably means that P41482 = P41463. ===== NGC 4530 = 8 Canum Venaticorum (Beta CVn) is a star, though JH recorded a "nebulous atmosphere" around it on four different nights. Dreyer notes in the NGC that of the late 19th century observers, only Tempel suspected the nebulosity, and even he was unsure about its existence. There is no trace of nebulosity on modern photographs, and the star's spectrum shows it to be a normal G0 V main sequence star with no strong emission lines. Thus, it was probably just JH's bad luck to have seen the star on four poor nights. Or his imagination may have been triggered three times by one poor night. In any event, there is only a star here. ===== NGC 4536. Note that the galaxy with this name included in UGC is actually an incorrect reference to IC 3556, which is not NGC 4563. See both the other NGC number and the IC number for more discussion. ===== NGC 4537 is probably the same galaxy as NGC 4542. John Herschel's place for N4542 is good, but Swift's place for N4537 is 49 seconds off in RA (his declination is good, however). Swift's description fits the galaxy nicely, including his note "nearly between two stars." In addition, this galaxy is the brightest of the three in the area. However, south-preceding N4542 is MCG +09-21-019 = CGCG 270-010. It, too, could easily fit Swift's description: "eeF, S, R." It is also "nearly between two stars." However, if this identification is correct, then Swift made errors in both RA (30 seconds of time) and Dec (8.6 arcmin). The galaxy is also considerably smaller and fainter than N4542, and would have been more difficult to dig out. Thus, I'm sticking with the idea, suggested by Steve Gottlieb, that N4537 is most likely the same galaxy as N4542. The RNGC suggestion that it is MCG +09-21-022 is very unlikely as this is the faintest galaxy in the group. ===== NGC 4542. See NGC 4537. ===== NGC 4544. See NGC 4740. ===== NGC 4547 and 4549. These two galaxies are differently identified in CGCG and MCG. William Herschel found both, measured the brighter south-preceding galaxy twice, but the fainter north-following one just once. His positions reduce to (equinox 1950) N4547 12 32 32 +59 11 N4549 12 33 04 +59 15 These are not the positions used in the NGC, however. Those come from John Herschel. Precessing his measurements gives (again for 1950.0) N4547 12 32 26 +59 10.8 N4549 12 32 33 +59 12.4 At least his relative orientation of the objects is the same as his father's, even though he places the two objects much closer together. Checking the GSC and the Sky Survey shows five galaxies in the area. MCG labels MCG +10-18-068 as N4547 and the preceding of the pair MCG +10-18-069 and -070 as N4549, while CGCG labels the pair as NGC 4547/9. The GSC positions of these and the other two in the area are MCG +10-18-068 12 32 16.24 +59 13 35.7 MCG +10-18-069 12 32 34.39 +59 11 31.4 = CGCG 293-030w = N4547 MCG +10-18-070 12 32 37.27 +59 11 16.6 = CGCG 293-030e MCG +10-18-071 12 32 54.48 +59 19 23.4 = VII Zw 473 MCG +10-18-072 12 33 04.01 +59 13 29.4 = N4549 There is also a faint star very close to JH's differential position from the brightest of these five galaxies. It's my guess that this is the object he mistook for the second of the two nebulae. Looking at the descriptions that WH gave the objects, it seems likely to me that the preceding of his two is identical with the brightest object in the area, namely MCG +10-18-069. If so, then WH's relative and absolute positions for the second object point exactly at MCG +10-18-072, making it N4549. The galaxy is faint enough, however, that it ought to be checked at the eyepiece. ===== NGC 4549. See NGC 4547. ===== NGC 4554 is another of Tempel's lost nebulae. He has only a brief note about it in his fifth paper, calling it a very faint nebula 50 seconds preceding, 2.5 arcmin south of NGC 4567/8. This position is in the middle of an extraordinarily empty field with nothing brighter than 19th magnitude for 2-3 arcmin in all directions. Checking the signs of Tempel's offsets turned up nothing that matched in any of the other three possible positions. There is a double star (noted in the position table) that might be his object. It has a faint double galaxy about an arcmin to the northwest, and an even fainter double star a bit further away to the southeast -- these may have enhanced a nebulous appearance a bit. However, adopting the brighter double as Tempel's object would require not only changing the sign of the declination offset, but its size and the size of the RA offset as well. So, I doubt very much that the double is Tempel's intended object. Until Tempel's original observing records can be examined for possible errors, this object will have to remain "lost." ===== NGC 4555 = IC 3545. Here is another case where Wolf made a mistake in identifying an NGC object on one of his plates. He put the NGC number on a faint object (this one about 2 arcmin south of the brighter galaxy) that could not have been seen by the Herschels, and recorded the correct brighter object as a new nebula. This could have been a simple blunder, but I suspect that Wolf simply put too much faith in the NGC position without thinking too much about the relative visibility of the objects. In any case, his positions are good and make the identity clear. ===== NGC 4556. See NGC 4563. ===== NGC 4557 is a triple star. Bigourdan did not provide a precise micrometric offset for this object, but his approximate offset with respect to NGC 4558 (-3 seconds of time, +2.8 arcmin), combined with his description ("Trace of nebulosity which may be accompanied by a star...") clearly identifies the triple as the object which he saw. The MCG and PGC identifications are wrong. Wolf's identification in the Konigstuhl Nebel-List No. 4 is correct, where he calls it stellar and places it between two stars (he obviously resolved the triple while Bigourdan did not). The GSC includes 2 of the three stars, one being the central one measured by Wolf. The position that I've adopted for N4557 is for this central star. ===== NGC 4558. Discovered by John Herschel north-following NGC 4556 (found by his father), and given a position 6 seconds following and two arcmin south of the true position, its identification is nonetheless clear as Dreyer gave d'Arrest's micrometrically measured position more weight than Herschel's. The NGC position is only 2 seconds and 0.8 arcmin from the true position. This has not prevented its misidentification in MCG and PGC. MCG gives the name NGC 4557 (which see) to it; PGC follows suit, and tries to save the number 4558 by applying it to IC 3556. Both catalogues are wrong. Wolf's identification in the Konigstuhl Nebel-List No. 4 is correct. ===== NGC 4559. IC 3550, 51, 52, 55, and 63 are HII regions in the arms of this galaxy, found on a Heidelberg plate by Max Wolf. IC 3554 and 3564 are stars superposed on the galaxy. See the IC numbers for a bit more information. ===== NGC 4560 is probably NGC 4526 with a 2 minute error in the RA. Discovered by WH, it was also observed by JH who gave a similar description. JH marked the RA uncertain, however -- I wonder if he simply adopted the RA measured by his father. The declinations of N4526 and N4560 are the same, and the 2.0 minute RA difference is exact to within the errors. In any event, there is nothing in the Herschel's position. The description agrees with the appearance of NGC 4526 with one exception -- N4526 is quite extended, while N4560 is described by both Herschel's as "round." This is the main problem with the notion of the identity, but I find the exact RA difference, combined with identical declinations, arguing pretty compellingly for the identity. ===== NGC 4561 = IC 3569. Found by WH on 27 April 1785, observed again by JH in two sweeps, and rediscovered by Frost on a Harvard plate, there are no other galaxies in the area as bright or as large as this. It is a peculiar Magellanic irregular with two bright knots; one of these may be a superimposed companion. These would have led to JH's seeing the object as mottled, and Frost's description of two "stars" involved also fits. Curiously, JH's mean position from his two observations is within a few arcsec of the modern position from GSC, while Frost's photographic -- and presumeably more accurate -- place is further off. It may be this that led both Frost and Dreyer to include the galaxy in the second IC. ===== NGC 4563. This was found by d'Arrest whose two micrometrically measured positions are very good; the average is used in the NGC. CGCG still applied the number to the wrong galaxy (IC 3556). Nilson copied this identification into the UGC notes for NGC 4556 (= UGC 7765), but transposed two numbers so that his identification is doubly incorrect: "N4536"! Wolf's identification in the Konigstuhl Nebel-List No. 4 is correct. ===== NGC 4567. See NGC 4554. ===== NGC 4568. See NGC 4554. ===== NGC 4571 = IC 3588. Found by WH, and reobserved by JH and d'A, the galaxy's NGC position is pretty well determined. Nevertheless, Schwassmann measured the 14th magnitude star superposed about an arcmin west of the nucleus and called it N4571 in his 1902 survey of the Virgo Cluster. He also picked up the galaxy itself at its correct position, and included it in his list as a new nebula. Thus, the equality of the numbers. N4571 has also occasionally been mentioned as a possible candidate for the Messier number 91. However, M91 has been convincingly shown to be a reobservation of M58 with the declination offset from Messier's comparison star applied with the wrong sign. In addition, N4571 is too faint to have been seen by Messier. ===== NGC 4572 = CGCG 352-037 is a galaxy northwest of NGC 4589. It was seen by both WH and JH, but Bigourdan's observation under "NGC 4572" actually refers to a star a few arcmin southeast of the galaxy. The galaxy has also been taken by some to be identical to IC 802 (which see). But Bigourdan found that (also a star) the same night as his observation of "NGC 4572", and his precise measurements of both show that they cannot be the same. ===== NGC 4577 is possibly WH's first observation of NGC 4591. He saw H III 13 (N4577) only once, and has this to say about it, "A minute before [the transit of 24 Vir], I suspected a S. neb., but while I took out another piece to examine it, I lost it again." Dreyer added the comment about the transit of 24 Virginis, and also noted, "P.D. not taken, clouds. Not seen with certainty by Bigourdan." N4591 is not the only galaxy in the area that WH might have seen, but given his position, and the uncertainty in it, it is perhaps the most likely. There are some other problems with the observation that deserve mention, though. First, the star name, 24 Virginis, is no longer used in the catalogues, and I asked Brent Archinal to dig out the current identification. The star is actually a duplicate entry for 5 Boo (apparently due to a reduction error on Flamsteed's part), so does not exist in Virgo at all. That being the case, there seem to me to be three explanations for Dreyer's comment about the star: 1) the number is a typo; 2) Dreyer misread WH's observation; or 3) WH misidentified the star. I think that a typo is unlikely -- the only stars likely to be seen about the time that WH made the observations are R Vir or 31 Vir. Getting a typo out of either of those would be difficult. I also think that an error on Dreyer's part is unlikely -- his work on the NGC and ICs is clear proof that he rarely made transcription errors. This leaves the most likely explanation of an identification error by WH. In any event, the comment about "24 Vir" does not help us much in pinning down NGC 4577. Other relevant thoughts and comments: WH's sweep covered a 2 degree wide strip roughly between +5 deg and +7 deg (1950). The value of the polar distance in the NGC comes from the GC, but JH does not indicate how he arrived at it (or the description, "vF, vS"). If we take the polar distance to be the same as WH's comparison star (11 Vir) for the RA, then the declination would be 15 arcmin south of the GC and NGC value. Unfortunately, WH has only one other nebula found the same night, II 26 (which is probably = NGC 4430 and is discussed under NGC 4453). That is plagued by similar problems, so offers little help in resolving the case of NGC 4577. There are no galaxies in any of the places that come from WH's observations, from GC/NGC, or from attempting to correct WH's RAs using the idea that H II 26 = NGC 4453 (which see) is actually NGC 4430. However, the approximate RA that we do have, along with the constraints on the declination, point to either NGC 4580 or NGC 4591 as probably being the object that WH saw. Since N4580 is H I 124, and N4591 is III 504, the sparce description of N4577 strongly suggests that it is N4591. Pending a different identification of "24 Vir," I'm going to take N4591 as the second nebula that WH found on the night of 28 Jan 1784. ===== NGC 4580. See NGC 4577. ===== NGC 4582 is a star found by Sidney Coolidge with the Harvard 15-inch refractor. He has a micrometrically measured position that agrees well with the modern positions. In common with many of the other "nebulae" discovered in the 1850s and 1860s with this telescope, there is no nebulosity associated with the star. ===== NGC 4589. See NGC 4572. ===== NGC 4591 may also be NGC 4577, which see. ===== NGC 4593. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4600 is probably not also NGC 4624, which see. ===== NGC 4602. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4604. ESGC is the source of this identification. However, since I have not seen Peters's Copernicus articles, I cannot be sure that this is the correct object. Since the NGC position is just 10 arcmin out (another digit error), however, this identification is a good guess for the time being. Let the RC3 stand as is for now. ===== NGC 4610 = NGC 4470. Dreyer, in his notes in the Scientific Papers, shows convincingly that H II 19 = N4610 is the same galaxy as NGC 4470, and that WH himself was at least aware that he had made a mistake in identifying one of Messier's nebulae in the Virgo Cluster. Dreyer reproduces one of WH's sketches of the I 7 and II 19 field -- it matches the appearance of M49, an accompanying star, and NGC 4470 perfectly. ===== NGC 4611 = IC 805, which see. ===== NGC 4618 = IC 3667, which see. ===== NGC 4624 = NGC 4665 = NGC 4664 (which also see). JH notes that the "RA [is] ill-observed," but did not mark it uncertain. During the same sweep, he made a one-degree error in the polar distance for NGC 4636, an error that he himself suggested, and that Dreyer finally rectified for the NGC. Thus, NGC 4624 cannot be NGC 4636 as suggested by Reinmuth and adopted by RNGC. Instead, it is most likely NGC 4665 which JH described as "B, pL" in two other sweeps. This, and the appearance of the bright bar of the galaxy, matches his terse description for N4624, "B, E." In addition, his declination is correct for all three observations. There is a faint possibility that N4624 is N4600, but JH's two observations of that make it "F, S" in contrast to his note on N4624. In addition, the declination of N4600 is off JH's measured dec for N4624. ===== NGC 4625 = IC 3675, which see. ===== NGC 4633 = IC 3688, which see. Also see NGC 4740. ===== NGC 4634. See IC 3688 = NGC 4633. ===== NGC 4636 is not NGC 4624, which see. ===== NGC 4637 and NGC 4638. The brighter of the two galaxies now carrying these numbers was found by WH (he actually found it twice, so it has two entries in his catalogue). The fainter, a much smaller spiral of fairly low surface brightness with a faint star superposed west of the nucleus, was seen only once in 1854 by Lord Rosse (or his observer), who noted only a "Double nebula; faint nebulosity connects them." Given this sparce description, Dreyer assigned an approximate position to the fainter and called it NGC 4637, giving NGC 4638 to WH's brighter object. He also added a note in the NGC suggesting that Lord Rosse had actually seen M60 (NGC 4649) and NGC 4647, which are just 12 arcmin northeast. This would explain why no other observers (aside from LdR and Herman Schultz) recorded the object as a double nebula. Schultz's observation is an interesting one. He has an extensive note in which he claims that the nebula is clearly double (in spite of relatively poor seeing on the night of observation), nearly on the parallel, and with a star of 10th magnitude north-preceding (which there indeed is; there is no such star north-preceding N4647 and M60). Like LdR, he says nothing about the relative brightness of the objects, but records his surprise that neither of the Herschel's noticed that the object was double and extended. Curiously, he gives measurements (on two different nights) of only one of the nebulae, though he specifically mentions that the micrometer wire, aligned with the equator, nearly bisected both objects. His reduced position is that of NGC 4638, the brighter object. In his Virgo Cluster survey, Schwassmann listed only one object here and assigned it the first NGC number of the pair. His description fits the brighter object, however, and he noted that the identity was uncertain and that the object could be NGC 4638 instead. His position is peculiar, too: the RA is that of the fainter eastern galaxy, while the declination is that of the brighter western object. Remembering that Schwassmann's plate was taken with a 6-inch lens, I suspect that the plate recorded only the brighter object and that Schwassmann made a measurement or reduction error in his RA. Dreyer, however, had only Schwassmann's entry to go on, not a modern sky survey. So, he could not know about the potential problems in the Heidelberg observation. Thus, he adopted Schwassmann's observation as applying to the fainter object, and put a note in IC2 to that effect. My own guess, without Schultz's confirmation of the duplicity of the object, would have been that Dreyer was correct in his supposition about LdR having misidentified the objects he observed in 1854. If this is the case, then NGC 4637 is a reobservation of NGC 4647 (found by JH) rather than the very faint companion to NGC 4638. However, Schultz's observation seems to clearly point not to M60 and its companion, but to N4638 and its companion. Still, LdR and Schultz could have seen the fainter object -- both have others just as faint in their lists -- especially since it is enhanced by the superposed star, so the "classic" numbering for this pair of galaxies is still a possibility. I should note, too, that there has been some confusion in the modern catalogues as to which number applies to which object. Dreyer unfortunately confused the issue a bit with his IC2 note, and also with his original numbering: JH had the fainter companion coming second in the GC. Nevertheless, Dreyer clearly meant NGC 4638 to apply to WH's object, so that is the identification I've adopted, leaving NGC 4637 as probably applying to the faint companion -- or possibly to NGC 4647. ===== NGC 4638 is probably also NGC 4667, which see. Also see NGC 4637. ===== NGC 4647. Is NGC 4637 (which see) possibly an observation of this object? ===== NGC 4648. See NGC 4972 = NGC 4954. ===== NGC 4649 = M 60. See NGC 4637. ===== NGC 4652. There is no doubt about the identity of the galaxy that JH found; his position and description "Not vF, pL, gbM. It is almost 6' dist np two B sts 8 and 10m" are accurate. The NGC comment "2 B sts 6' np" comes from LdR via Dreyer. Lord Rosse has the position angles of the two stars 180 deg out. He also comments at the beginning of the observation "Front view." This may have inverted the field of the 72-inch from its normal orientation, leading LdR to the wrong PAs. ===== NGC 4661 has often been referred to in the literature as "NGC 4650B". At first glance, we might think this alternate designation comes from deV's "Stromlo 13" monograph on the southern Shapley-Ames galaxies. But there is no trace of it there. "NGC 4650B" does appear, however, in RC2. Tracing it back from there leads to a paper in Astrophysics and Space Science (volume 19, page 387, 1972) by J. L. Sersic and E. L. Aguero -- who refer to it only as "G7" in a southern chain of galaxies. So, the awkward notation does indeed originate in RC2 (sigh). My guess is that Antoinette noticed that it and "G5" are near NGC 4650 and, following Gerard's example, put "NGC 4650A" on "G5", and "NGC 4650B" on "G7". So how did everyone miss the original NGC number? The NGC declination is 17 arcmin in error, but is not marked as uncertain, nor is it truncated as many of the NGC positions are. The only indication in GC that something is amiss is the number of observations used: "1::". Otherwise, that, too, is given to the usual full precision that JH adopted. Going on back to the CGH observations, though, we find that JH has only one observation of the galaxy in June of 1834, just a few months after his arrival at the Cape. And the position there is given only to a full minute of time in RA, and an arcminute in NPD. Both are marked with plus-minus signs, and JH has no notes of explanation. Given that, and the fact that "NGC 4650B" is the only galaxy around that JH could have reasonably seen -- his object nearly identifies itself in spite of the crude position. ===== NGC 4663 = IC 811, which see. ===== NGC 4664 = NGC 4665 (which is also = NGC 4624, but that's another story). This is another of WH's early discoveries with a large error in the position. There is nothing at WH's given position. However, in this case, it is a simple digit error in WH's recording or reduction. Dreyer correctly convinced himself that it explains the missing NGC 4664 as a prediscovery observation of N4665 (= H I 142). The star 4.8 seconds preceding (mentioned in both of WH's observations, according to Dreyer) is the clincher here, even if the exact 10 arcmin error in Dec was not in itself enough. ===== NGC 4665 = NGC 4624 = NGC 4664, both of which see. ===== NGC 4667 is probably = NGC 4638 with a 2 minute 30 second error in RA. The Dec's and descriptions are accordant, and there is nothing else in the area that JH might have described as "B, S, R, psbM; 15 arcsec." So, while the identity is a guess on my part, I think it is reasonable one. ===== NGC 4676 = IC 819 and IC 820. WH has his object "much extended [in the] meridian", while JH says "query if not bicentral". Both are correct. When Rudolf Spitaler found the pair again in 1892, he saw and measured both galaxies, so they have two IC numbers rather than just one as the NGC does. Unfortunately, Spitaler has the pair only a minute-plus of time preceding his comparison star -- the actual offsets are 2 minutes-plus. The identity, however, is obvious. It was first suggested by Reinmuth, then was picked up for RC1 and MCG. ===== NGC 4678 = IC 824, which see. ===== NGC 4686 is in the field of IC 3791 = NGC 4695. See the story under the IC number for more. ===== NGC 4689. See NGC 4752. ===== NGC 4692 = NGC 4702, which see. Also see IC 823 for a different confusion. ===== NGC 4695 = IC 3791, which see. ===== NGC 4697. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4702 = NGC 4692. D'Arrest has just one observation of NGC 4702 on 4 March 1867, calling it "Doubtless a very small, very much compressed cluster." There is nothing at all in his place. Exactly a minute of time preceding, though, is NGC 4692 which d'A has on two other nights, 16 March 1864 and 3 March 1867. Given the three or four nearby field stars around the galaxy, it is possible that d'A could have believed that he had found a small cluster. While the identity is not certain, I'm confident enough of it to have included it in the position table without colons or question marks. My thanks to Wolfgang who asked about this object. ===== NGC 4705. See IC 825. ===== NGC 4711 = IC 3804, which see. ===== NGC 4714. See NGC 4722 and 4723, and NGC 4802, below. ===== NGC 4718 may be IC 825 (which see), but is probably not. ===== NGC 4722 and 4723. These are two nebulae found by Tempel, described in his fifth paper simply as "Following [GC] 3244 [NGC 4714] are two more small class III nebulae which I have sketched, but have still not been able to measure" (my translation of his note in German). Dreyer adopted the north polar distance of N4714 and added a bit to its RA (with a plus-minus sign to indicate the uncertainty) to arrive at an approximate position for Tempel's two nebulae. Bigourdan was the next to look for them, but his two measurements of "NGC 4722" fall in a blank region of the sky east of NGC 4714. His table is pretty well scrambled at this point, with the declination of his comparison star given only as "+27" and the footnote "Position deduced from that of the nebula, given in the NGC." He has no errata, so just what his comparison object actually is is still a mystery. He's a bit better for N4723 (N4714 is the comparison object), but he only estimates the offset. The nearest object to his estimated position for that is a faint star. In the end, he's no help here. (One other curiosity: he claims, in the "Other Observer's" column that N4722 was seen at Leander McCormick. But the object is not listed in any of the LM papers.) He also found his 302nd new object, which became IC 3833, in the area. He gave no indication, though, that it might be one of the NGC objects (see the IC number for a bit more information about this). That was left to Herbert Howe, who independently discovered and measured the same galaxy that Bigourdan picked up. Howe suggested, in a roundabout way, that it might be one of NGC 4722 or 4723. Howe's comment made it into the IC2 Notes, but Dreyer did not notice that Howe's position was identical to that from Bigourdan for IC 3833. It was probably for this reason that MCG adopted the identity "N4722 = I3833", a reasonable choice under the circumstances. Finally, working on ESGC, I also adopted the MGC's identifications, though without much thought. I did translate Tempel's note at that time, but of course found it to be little help. It's clear, though, that we do not (yet) know which nebulae Tempel found. There are actually four galaxies following NGC 4714 that he might have seen. The two brightest are IC 3833 and NGC 4748, the two closest to NGC 4714 are MCG -02-33-024 and -026. It is tempting to simply put the NGC numbers on the two closest and be done with it. But ... We need to find out if Tempel's sketches still exist. These would clear up questions about not just these two, but several other of his discoveries, too. ===== NGC 4723. See NGC 4722. ===== NGC 4724 is the fainter of a double galaxy seen by both Herschels. It figures in the identification of NGC 4726, NGC 4740 = NGC 4727, and IC 3834, all of which see. ===== NGC 4726. There has been confusion over this number ever since Howe's first note appeared in Volume 58 of the Monthly Notices for 1898 (page 515): The NGC place of this nebula of Tempel's seems to be considerably out, both in R.A. and declination. The correct position is 12h46m18s, -13d40.6m. This precesses to 12 48 55, -13 56.9 for B1950.0, and refers to IC 3834 (which see). The confusion is understandable as Tempel's original note reads simply, "Near the fine double nebula [GC] 3250-51 [NGC 4724-27], 4 arcmin further north, is a fainter companion." Dreyer just took the average of the positions for NGC 4724 and 4727, adopted the RA and subtracted 4 arcmin for the north polar distance. This makes the declination very close to correct, but the RA is off by about 9 seconds. Tempel's nebula is a spindle galaxy; this is probably why Howe missed it. In any case, he took the only other galaxy he could find in the area, the one we now call IC 3834 (which is probably not NGC 4740, by the way; see the other numbers for notes). ===== NGC 4727 is almost certainly identical to NGC 4740. This is the brightest of a group of galaxies, and the brighter of a close pair (NGC 4724 is the fainter of the pair). It was seen by both Herschels, as well as by Tempel, Swift, Bigourdan, and Howe. Considerable confusion in the NGC and IC numbers has resulted. See NGC 4740 for the story, and also see NGC 4726 for one of Tempel's nebulae that almost got away. ===== NGC 4729 and NGC 4730. This problem arose because John Herschel's original observations of 8 June 1834 yielded only very rough estimates of the positions of the two galaxies (see his Results of Observations...at the Cape of Good Hope... of 1847 for more information.) Inasmuch as the two galaxies were not observed again until 1920, Dreyer had no choice but to use Herschel's rough places when the NGC was prepared for publication in 1888. Ron Buta came across this same problem some years ago during his classification of galaxies on the Whiteoak PSS extension. In a letter of 3 Aug 1977, he suggested that the galaxies at 12 49 00.2 -40 51 33 (= ESO 323-G16, 1950 positions) and 12 49 14.0 -40 52 32 (= EU 323-G17) are N4729 and N4730, respectively. Andris Lauberts came to the same conclusion at about the same time when he was preparing ESO/Upps List VI. I entirely agree with their suggestions as these are the two brightest and most easily seen objects south-preceding NGC 4744 where Herschel noticed them. The two galaxies are Vidal and Wickramasinghe's B and C, respectively. (By the way, VW's D = N4744 and E = N4743). Jack Sulentic's incorrect RNGC identifications refer to VW's "N3" and "N4", and Dawe et al are also wrong: in their list (1970 positions), 12 50 24 -40 59 54 = N4729 and 12 50 38, -41 00 46 = N4730. More confusion: under the designation HB 288 (more on that in a moment), Sandage (Ap. J. 202, 563, 1975) gives the position of N4729, but the velocity of N4730 (compare VW and Dawe et al). Unfortunately, the de Vaucouleurs and I directly copied this mismatch into the Second Reference Catalogue (where the data are under the single listing for "A1248-40") and Sandage simply repeated his data in his redshift list in A.J. 83, 904, 1978. Finally, the "HB" designations come from a series of papers by Knox-Shaw, Gregory, and Madwar in the Helwan (formerly Khedivial) Observatory Bulletins Nos. 9, 15, 21, 22, 30, and 38. N4729 - 30 were noted by Gregory in Bulletin No. 22 as "Not found". However, among the (mostly!) new nebulae noted on the Helwan plates, Gregory suggested that Helwan Bulletin nebulae Nos. 281, 282, or 283 might be N4729 or N4730. De Vaucouleurs (in Commonwealth Obs. Memoirs No. 13, his southern Shapley-Ames revision) concurs, but adds No. 288 as a possibility. (He also confuses the nomenclature problem even further by using "HB" for Harvard Bulletin! What a mess.) Actually, N4729 = Helwan Bulletin 288 and N4730 = HB 289. ===== NGC 4730. See NGC 4729. ===== NGC 4732. See IC 3791 = NGC 4695 where this number figures in one of Swift's many mistaken identities. ===== NGC 4736 = M94. Wolf includes a good position for this in his fifth list, but cites neither the Messier nor NGC numbers. He does have a footnote, though, identifying the object as "A.G. Bonn 8688." The galaxy's nucleus is indeed bright enough and small enough that it could be measured precisely and included in the star catalogue. ===== NGC 4740 = NGC 4727. Swift found this during his fourth year (1887 April 27) of chasing down faint, "new" nebulae. He gives a position that is about 50 seconds of time west but only half an arcmin south of that for NGC 4727, the brightest galaxy in the area. His description "pF, pS, R, mbM" fits N4727 better than any of the other three galaxies here, including IC 3834, taken by nearly everyone (including me during my sweeping for ESGC) as NGC 4740. Howe suggested that NGC 4740 is actually NGC 4726. He also published a short note from Swift in one of his 1899 Monthly Notices in which Swift seems to agree. But Tempel's observation of N4726 (which see) clearly rules this out -- he places N4726 just four arcmin north of N4724 and N4727, a close pair found by the Herschel's. With IC 3834 being another 45 seconds of time east, it's extremely unlikely to be Tempel's galaxy. Bigourdan did not find NGC 4740 at its NGC place, of course. I checked the other nebulae found by Swift that night -- there were none, at least found by LEWIS Swift. His son Edward, then a teenager, actually found four new nebulae on the 27th: NGC 4544, 4633, 4969, and 5309. With the exception of N5309 (which see), these all follow the nominal positions by about 18 seconds of time, and are south by about 30 arcsec (N5309, assuming we have the correct galaxy, follows by 29 seconds, but has a 10 arcmin digit error putting it south by 9 arcmin 10 arcsec). NGC 4727 precedes the nominal position by 50 seconds, so does not agree with the mean RA offset of Edward's nebulae. However, it is indeed 30 arcsec south of Swift's position. (Did Lewis or Edward determine the positions for Edward's discoveries? Lewis does not say in his papers, but because these positions are no improvement over his father's, I would guess that Lewis did them.) I don't think we can make much of this comparison with the mean offsets, though, because N5309 also breaks the pattern, and because N4740 was the only galaxy which Lewis Swift himself found that night. However, of the four galaxies in the area, NGC 4727 -- by far -- comes closest to fitting Swift's description. Thus, in spite of a few misgivings, I am pretty well convinced that NGC 4740 is just another observation of N4727. ===== NGC 4743. See NGC 4729. ===== NGC 4744. See NGC 4729. ===== NGC 4748. See NGC 4722 and 4723, and NGC 4802. ===== NGC 4752 may be CGCG 071-058. WH's description "vF, S, E, r" fits very well -- but his position is 38 seconds off in RA, and 15 arcmin off in Dec. Dreyer notes that Bigourdan did not find the galaxy, and gives an additional offset from II 128 = N4689. That leads to a position that is within WH's observational error of the one in his table, so there is apparently no large error in his data collecting and reduction. The fact that his description fits the CGCG galaxy so well, however, suggests that there is an error somewhere in WH's position. But it is not apparent from the information we have on the object, so I've put a question mark on the identity. ===== NGC 4759. See NGC 4776. ===== NGC 4761. See NGC 4776. ===== NGC 4764. See NGC 4776. ===== NGC 4768 and NGC 4769 are a star and a close double star, respectively. They were found by Tempel while he was examining the field around NGC 4770, and his only description of them is copied correctly into the NGC. He gives no accurate positions, but the stars are a striking triplet just where he claims to have seen them "preceding III 525 (N4770) on the parallel." There are no galaxies or other stars that might fit, so the identities are pretty sure. ===== NGC 4769. See NGC 4768. ===== NGC 4770. See NGC 4768. ===== NGC 4772. See NGC 4910. ===== NGC 4776 = NGC 4759nw. This is one of a double galaxy that also has two companions. However, there are three NGC numbers for the double: N4759, N4776, and N4778, the latter two from J. Herschel, the former due to WH, d'A, and Tempel. The descriptions make the identifications clear, however: N4759 is noted "double", so N4759nw = N4776, and N4759se = N4778 with a 1 minute RA error for N4776 and 78. The companion 1.0' east-northeast N4778 is almost certainly N4761, and -- with somewhat more doubt as Tempel's positions are often coarse -- the companion 4' south of N4776 is N4764. All this means that RC3 needs to be corrected as follows: PGC 43757 = NGC 4778 = NGC 4759se, PGC 43760 = NGC 4764, and PGC 43768 = NGC 4761. PGC 43754 = NGC 4776 = NGC 4759nw is OK. ===== NGC 4778 = NGC 4759se. See NGC 4776. ===== NGC 4782 and NGC 4783 are together 3C 278. Thus, they have attracted considerable attention over the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, as a close pair with the NGC positions implying a different relative orientation than the objects themselves, there have been several blunders in the various catalogues. The GC and NGC themselves say that NGC 4782 is the "p of D neb", with N4783 obviously being the "f of D neb". The positions are slightly mysterious as WH has only one listed for the pair in his published catalogue. Yet JH has them clearly separated in GC, and Dreyer follows right along in the NGC. In both catalogues, N4782 is one second of time preceding and an arcminute north of N4783. Perhaps WH has separate positions in his second observation, or perhaps JH simply took his father's comment "Dist[ance] 1' near[ly in the] mer[idian]" literally and placed the two objects straddling the single measured position. Whatever happened has led to much confusion about the names of the galaxies. JH, by the way, did not sweep them up, nor did anyone else observe them before he assembled the GC, so he must have relied on his father's observations. Among the post-NGC observers, Bigourdan and Reinmuth put N4782 on the south- southwestern galaxy, and N4783 on the north-northeastern. The three Reference Catalogues, PGC, and NED, also number the galaxies in RA order. Other papers have not been as careful, sometimes giving the earlier number to the later galaxy. This has led to the Reference Catalogues, PGC, and NED (until June 2006) all switching the redshifts for the galaxies. The lower redshift actually applies to the north-northwestern galaxy, NGC 4783. There may well be similar problems in the diameters and photometry, but I've not investigated those thoroughly yet. All this simply points to the importance of using positions as well as names when publishing data. Also see NGC 4802 where these figure in the identification of that and NGC 4804. ===== NGC 4794. See NGC 4802. ===== NGC 4795. See NGC 4796. ===== NGC 4796. In an earlier list, I called this a star. It is not. It is a compact galaxy superposed on, and interacting with, the eastern arm of NGC 4795. There is no doubt about the identification (Marth places it close following NGC 4795), and though the object looks pretty stellar on the blue POSS1, it is clearly elongated on the red plate (hence on the DSS). My apologies for the confusion. ===== NGC 4797 is almost certainly NGC 4798. D'Arrest saw the two nebulae on different nights. His positions are also close enough (same RA, 5 arcmin difference in Dec) that the two would make a striking pair that surely would have merited a comment from him -- he does not mention other nebulae near the one he saw. So, the identity seems pretty clear. ===== NGC 4798 = NGC 4797, which see. ===== NGC 4802 is most likely also NGC 4804. But that is not absolutely certain. Here is the story. N4802 is just where Tempel placed it in his observation of 20 April 1882. Herbert Howe, however, says "This was searched for in vain one night. Its description is so similar to that of 4804 that they may be identical, if the declination of 4802 is just 1 degree in error." Dreyer adds to this in an IC2 Note, "Tempel says it is 8 seconds following Lamont 1234 (10 mag), but this identification may be wrong." I have not yet been able to find the Lamont list, but Tempel's observation, as I said, is exactly right: the galaxy is just where he measured it to be, and his description is apt, so I have no reason to doubt his identification of the star. So, I wonder if Howe somehow confused N4802 with N4804 -- the latter galaxy is NOT in its nominal position. It was found by WH on 27 Mar 1786 in Sweep 548. His published list has it 30m 45s preceding and 18 arcmin south of 68 Virginis. Checking the Herschel Archives, however, shows that these offsets were calculated later from times and north polar distances recorded during the sweep. If WH's recorded north polar distance were 100 deg 56 min rather than 101 deg 56 min as in CH's copy of the sweeps, then the calculated offset would become 42 arcmin north of 68 Virginis, and the object is certainly the same one Tempel saw. However, WH's description reads, "Suspected a pB star, with a seeming brush to the np may be a small nebula close to it, but there was no time to verify it." Just about an arcminute north of WH's position is a double star whose orientation is northwest-southeast, and whose components have virtually identical magnitudes (13.85 in GSC; probably around 13.3 or 13.4 in V, depending on the stars' colors). It is just possible that WH saw the double star and in his hurry, mistook it for a star and a nebula. Also arguing for taking WH's 101 degrees at face value is the fact that none of the other nebulae that he found during the sweep have serious errors in their positions (these are NGC 4714, 4748, 4782/83, 4794, 4825, and 5094). I think it's more likely, though, that he simply made a 1-degree error in his north polar distance. This would, of course, explain Bigourdan's not finding the object at the NGC position; Dreyer mentioned this negative observation in his Notes in the Scientific Papers. So, in the end, the most likely explanation is that WH saw the same object that Tempel did nearly a century later. But given the double star, I've kept the colons, just in case. ===== NGC 4804 is almost certainly identical to NGC 4802, which see. ===== NGC 4805 is a star positively identified by Bigourdan's two observations. In spite of the accuracy of his measurements, he comments that "... near it is a star 13.4-13.5, but it's impossible to tell which direction it is from the nebula's center." This must be the object itself as there is nothing else in the area that he could have seen. Bigourdan also comments, "This whole region is rich in vF nebulae." Since the Coma Cluster is near, it isn't surprising that he saw many nebulae here. ===== NGC 4808. See NGC 5242. ===== NGC 4813 may also be IC 833 (which see). ===== NGC 4817. The NGC position, and that in the Comptes Rendus list, are wrong; while the offsets in Bigourdan's big table, and the position reduced from them, are correct. I have not found a correction in any of Bigourdan's errata lists, so I assume that he did not catch the error, or chose to not mention it. In any case, the reduced position falls exactly on a faint galaxy. Bigourdan's note about the star northeast is correct, so the identification is not in doubt. ===== NGC 4820. See NGC 4823. ===== NGC 4823 is one of three galaxies discovered by Wilhelm Tempel south of N4825. His paper in AN 2439 announcing the discovery (of these and many others) is not very helpful. It says only "Quite close to the south [of N4825] are three more faint nebulae." The NGC positions must have been among those that he sent privately to Dreyer (cf. Dreyer's comment on page 11 of the NGC) -- and they seem to be only approximate (N4823's NGC position is actually quite close to N4825). Here are the data (all for 1950): NGC Skiff NGC RA Dec Object RA Dec 4820 12 54 23 -13 27.3 1 12 54 22.9 -13 26 57 4823 12 54 29 -13 24.3 3 12 54 48.0 -13 25 44 4825 12 54 33 -13 23.9 --- 12 54 34.6 -13 23 42 4829 12 54 45 -13 28.3 2 12 54 46.8 -13 28 04 So, we have three galaxies and three NGC numbers that obviously refer to the galaxies (there are no others nearby). Matching things up by position alone -- Tempel's descriptions are the same for all the galaxies -- leads to the identifications that I suggest in the table. These are different from my initial identifications for ESGC. They require only that the RA of N4823 be out by 20 seconds, whereas my first guesses demand declination changes for both N4823 and N4829. I've adopted these for the final version of ESGC. ===== NGC 4824 = Big. 61, found by Bigourdan while he was measuring positions in the Coma Cluster area, is a star. Bigourdan's measured offsets from his then unnamed comparison star (GSC 01995-01009) are exact, and refer unambigously to another star (GSC 01995-01329). The GSC position is identical, within the errors, to Bigourdan's. ===== NGC 4825. See NGC 4823. ===== NGC 4829. See NGC 4823. ===== NGC 4833. See NGC 6634. ===== NGC 4837 was found by John Herschel who described it only as "A rather doubtful object; haze." There is nothing at the position he gives (12 54 30, +49 04.4), but exactly 30' south is a peculiar double system that he could have seen (m_B = 14.4) during his sweep. The CGCG gives this object the NGC number, and I see no reason not to do likewise. The MCG gives it two numbers, MCG +08-24-011 (the brighter south-preceding object), and +08-24-012, but did not label either one N4837. UGC only gives one number to the pair, and also did not adopt the NGC number. ===== NGC 4838. See NGC 4844. ===== NGC 4844 is probably the star listed in the position list, fingered by both Wolfgang and myself. Tempel gives no position for it, merely saying "... on the parallel with the nebula [NGC 4838], another faint, small one follows..." If the NGC position -- presumeably one that he sent to Dreyer -- is good, then the listed star is the likely candidate. Another possibility is one that I noted in ESGC: the star superposed southwest of the nucleus of NGC 4838. I think now that this is less likely as Tempel probably would have mentioned the proximity to N4838. Other possible stars in the area that he could have seen are at 12 55 37.32, -12 49 09.4 and 12 55 33.08, -12 47 28.3. There is a very faint galaxy near his position, too, but he could not have seen it with his 11-inch refractor. ===== NGC 4845 may also possibly be NGC 4910, which see. ===== NGC 4849 = IC 3935, which see. ===== NGC 4851 is not = IC 839 (which see) which is about 2 arcmin south-preceding. Bigourdan observed both on the same night, and his accurate positions fall within a few arcsec of each object. NGC 4851 does have a faint companion just north-following. Bigourdan may have glimpsed this as his description mentions that N4851 may be "a very small [star] cluster." ===== NGC 4861 = IC 3961. Both of these numbers certainly apply to the galaxy itself and not, as supposed by CGCG, the first to the bright HII region, and the second to the galaxy. William Herschel's and Lord Rosse's (on three nights) descriptions leave no doubt that they saw the galaxy clearly. Not only are Wolf's position and description very accurate, he has also marked the correct object on his plate (though one of the "stars" which he notes as flanking it is actually the HII region). However, the NGC position (from Sir William's observation) is a bit off, and this may have misled both Wolf and Dreyer into believing that Wolf's object was new. I had the pleasure of seeing the galaxy at the 1992 Texas Star Party through Tom Polakis's superb 13", and it exactly matched the descriptions left by the earlier observers. The HII region was quite stellar until I viewed it with a nebular filter: it took on a bit of fuzz then, and the foreground star at the other end of the galaxy faded quite a bit (the galaxy itself faded not quite as much; it must have diffuse oxygen and hydrogen emission spread through it). Modern visual observers do have some advantages over Lord Rosse -- though none of us can yet beat him for sheer aperture! ===== NGC 4862 (which is probably also IC 3999) and NGC 4863 were found by Frank Leavenworth at Leander McCormick in 1886. Both galaxies are off their nominal RA's and are just faint enough that Bigourdan could not find them. He also searched in the wrong direction from his comparison star on one night. I think it was this confusion that led him to rediscover NGC 4862 (see IC 3999 for that story). Both objects are positively identified by the sketches that Leavenworth made of them. Herbert Howe did locate NGC 4862 and gave a corrected position for it, copied into the IC Notes. He states that "Another was suspected perhaps 5 arcmin south of this one." That is about the correct distance north to NGC 4863. Did Howe get his directions reversed, just as Bigourdan did when he was looking for NGC 4862 in this field? ===== NGC 4863. See NGC 4862. ===== NGC 4878, NGC 4879, and NGC 4888. Alister Ling pointed out that my original "short story" on N4878, N4879, and N4888 is confusing. Indeed it was. It is also obviously one of the cases that needs more attention. So, here is a revision. All three NGC objects were found by WH on 23 March 1789, and all are referred to 26 Virginis. Here are his observations: N4878,9 III 758,9 20m 55s f, 1d 53m n Two nebulae, both vF, vS. N4888 II 778 21m 12s f, 1d 54m n F, S, sf a double star. JH recorded only II 778 (h1505): 12 51 46.9, -05 09 16 pF, vS, E, psbM (1830 position) D'Arrest has, like WH, one position for N4878,9, and another for N4888. As always, I'm stuck on his Latin descriptions, but I can make out that there is an 11th magnitude star 5.5s preceding, 1.5m north of his observed place (12 53 09, -05 21.3; 1861) for N4878,9. He also mentions WH's double star near N4888; his 1861 position for that is 12 53 26, -05 19.6. Note that his difference in positions between the objects is close to WH's: 17s in RA and 1.7m in Dec. That is it for the pre-NGC observations. Post-NGC, I've found the following. 1) Bigourdan has eight observations each for N4878 and N4888, but could not identify N4879 with certainty. 2) Ormond Stone also lists N4878 and N4888 as nebulae in the 1893 Leander McCormick list (the novae here are in IC1), but has nothing about N4879. 3) Reinmuth has N4878 as an eF, eS stellar object or star (it is a star) 1.7' south-preceding N4879, the galaxy. 4) MCG has -01-33-064 as N4878, -064a as "4879?" (but this is a defect on the blue POSS1), and -066 as 4888. 5) the first "edition" of ESGC put N4878 at 12 57.8 -05 50 (1950.0), and N4879 = N4888 at 12 58.0 -05 48. When Brian Skiff measured the ESGC positions, he followed my ESGC identifications; the second is clearly wrong since (as I now know; ahem) WH claimed to have seen all three on the same night. So, it is clear that there are only two bright galaxies here. GSC has only one (which I'll call "NGC 4878:"; note the colon), and also misses the bright double star (which WH mentioned) just preceding N4888. There is a star in GSC about 1.5 arcmin southeast of N4878 that I suspect is WH's second "nebula." It is a bit closer to the galaxy than is Reinmuth's star. Here are some positions, either from GSC, or measured by me on POSS1: Object RA (1950.0) Dec Source Adopted identifications (source) Star 12 57 38.9 -05 50 59 HC NGC 4878? (Reinmuth) Galaxy 44.58 04.9 GSC NGC 4878: (Big, Stone, MCG, HC) Star 50.06 31.3 GSC NGC 4879: (HC) Galaxy 58 00.7 48 22 HC NGC 4888 (All) The adopted identifications are based on the assumption that Herschel recorded one of the stars south of the preceding galaxy, thinking it was a second nebula. If he saw the preceding star, then it should be N4878, and N4879 is clearly the galaxy. If he saw the following star -- as I believe he did (it is brighter and nearer the galaxy than the preceding star) -- then the numbers should be reversed: N4878 becomes the galaxy, and N4879 is the star. There is no question about NGC 4888. ===== NGC 4879. See NGC 4878. ===== NGC 4882 = NGC 4886. These two NGC numbers are both credited to d'A, so at first glance, it seems a bit strange to equate them. But looking into his big monograph, we see that he has just a single observation for N4882 on a different night than the two nights on which he observed N4886. Furthermore, the RA offset (six seconds of time west) is the same as for another discovery of his on the same troubled night, NGC 4884, which is identical to NGC 4889. Other than the RA offset, d'A's observation would appear to fit NGC 4886 very well. He says, freely translated from his Latin, "Very faint, very small. Others, too many to count, near." Sitting in the middle of the Coma Cluster, this is an accurate assessment given that he was sweeping through. ===== NGC 4884 = NGC 4889. As with NGC 4882 = NGC 4886 (which see), the only problem with d'A's observation is the RA offset on one night. Otherwise, his observation is appropriate: "Brightest of a multiple nebula ..." In this case, he has seven other observations which he attributes to this galaxy. Among these are two made on the two nights previous to his NGC 4884 observation, 20 and 21 April 1865. So, I'm amazed that he did not immediately recognize the field that he had swept over twice on the previous nights -- this is a strikingly rich field, and his observations of the galaxies in the Coma Cluster are liberally sprinkled with comments to that effect. I would have expected his visual memory to kick into overdrive, but if it did, he chose to ignore it. Well, for whatever reason, he entered the observation as if for a separate object, so it ended up in the NGC as number 4884. ===== NGC 4886 = NGC 4882, which see. ===== NGC 4888. See NGC 4878. ===== NGC 4889 = NGC 4884, which see. ===== NGC 4891 (a star) and NGC 4897 (a galaxy) are two different objects. This is an error that goes back to Shapley-Ames: they called the galaxy NGC 4891 when it is in fact NGC 4897. Consequently, just about everybody has used the wrong number since. RC3, however, is correct, and so is DSFG, Megastar, and HyperSky. Both objects were found by Wilhelm Tempel on 21 April 1882, and are described in the same observation, so cannot be identical. Tempel has a micrometrically measured position for the big galaxy which precesses to 12 58 13.7, -13 10 58. Considering the relatively low surface brightness of the galaxy, this is not too far off a good modern position (I measured 12 58 15.04, -13 10 50.3 on the DSS). This is the object to which Dreyer assigned the number NGC 4897. NGC 4891 is mentioned only in Tempel's description of 4897: "2-3' nordlich geht ein feiner Nebelstern voran." A free translation would be, "There is a faint nebulous star 2-3 arcmin north-preceding." The star is in fact not nebulous, and the 17th magnitude galaxy about 30 arcsec north of it cannot be Tempel's object since he was observing with an 11-inch refractor. Many other of his faint "nebulae" have turned out to be nothing more than stars or asterisms, so the identification of N4891 as the star is certain. ===== NGC 4893 = IC 4015 + IC 4016, an interacting system. Wolf's object under this NGC number in his fifth list is a plate defect. ===== NGC 4894. See NGC 4908. ===== NGC 4897 is the big Sc galaxy incorrectly called "NGC 4891" in Shapley-Ames, RC1, RC2, RNGC, and RSA. See NGC 4891 for more. ===== NGC 4908. Malcolm has pointed out that this number and IC 4051 may have been switched by most observers and in most cataloguers. Only Bigourdan and Vorontsov-Velyaminov in MCG put the NGC number on the brighter, larger, south-southeastern object. d'Arrest's position, copied correctly into the NGC, actually falls a bit closer to the smaller, fainter north-northwestern galaxy of the pair. And the IC position, adopted from Kobold's micrometric observation, lands almost exactly on the brighter object because he was apparently the first observer to put the NGC identification on the fainter object. Bigourdan did the opposite, but Dreyer apparently went with Kobold's position simply because, as published, it is has more precision. Bigourdan is still credited as a co-discoverer of the IC galaxy, though. I suspect that Dreyer did not make much of a fuss about the discrepancy between Kobold and Bigourdan because he was distracted by an identification problem involving H III 363 -- JH incorrectly put this number on h 1510 = NGC 4894. Again, Malcolm and I think that WH, like d'Arrest, must have seen the brighter of the two galaxies. So, Dreyer's identification of WH's object as IC 4051 is as misleading as the NGC and IC positions. In any event, because of Kobold's assumption that the NGC position is for the fainter galaxy, just about everyone has the identifications reversed. This probably includes Milton Humason who found a supernova near "IC 4051" in 1950. Unfortunately, Humason does not give a position or a finding chart for the SN and galaxy in his PASP note, but I am pretty sure that it is the brighter, southern object. All this stands on d'Arrest's having actually seen the brighter galaxy. If he actually saw the fainter -- and it is only a tenth of a magnitude or so fainter -- then the NGC and IC have exactly the correct identifications. And so does everyone except Bigourdan and MCG. ===== NGC 4910 may possibly be NGC 4845. There is nothing in WH's place, and Dreyer quotes WH's note in the Scientific Papers: "The place of this neb. is not determined with accuracy." Dreyer adds, "No modern observations known." WH referred two other nebulae -- NGC 4420 and NGC 4772 -- to the same comparison star (75 Leo). For N4772, Dreyer notes, "RA 40 seconds too great." This suggests that WH's RA for N4910 might also be too large. In that case, NGC 4845 would be a candidate for WH's object. It is a large galaxy at about the right declination. However, WH describes his nebula as "eF, vL, er, R. 7 or 8 arcmin d[iameter]." N4845 is not quite that large, nor is it round. It is, however, the only reasonable candidate, so I've adopted the identity, though with a query. ===== NGC 4912, 4913, 4914, 4916. Of these galaxies, only one -- NGC 4914 -- can now be identified. That one was found by WH and reobserved by JH; neither found any other nebulae in the area. The other three were seen only once by Lord Rosse, in 1865. He has a sketch showing their relationship with the surrounding star field, so it ought to be easy to identify them. His sketch, however, bears no relationship to the sky around NGC 4914, so it seems likely that he misidentified the main galaxy. Dreyer took this possibility into account by questioning the identification of the main galaxy in the descriptions of N4912, 4913, and 4916. A search of the four POSS1 fields around N4914 also turned up nothing that matches the sketch. Another possibility is that LdR made a 10 deg error in his position, and actually observed several galaxies in the Coma Cluster. But that is about 10 deg 25+- arcmin south, and there are no galaxies/stars in the cluster area that match his sketch. One hour errors are also possible, but I've not yet looked closely at those. The next thing to do will be to look into the lists of nebulae that Lord Rosse had at his disposal at the time (e.g. JH's 1833 observations, the GC, d'Arrest, Auwers) to see if any objects listed near NGC 4914 might be the one that he observed. Since the pattern in his sketch is clear (3 of the objects in a north-south line with a 4th following the southern most), it should jump out at us when we see it. I hope. Wolf claimed to have found and measured NGC 4912 and NGC 4916 on his plate with the IC objects from his fifth list. The object he took as N4912, however, is a star, and his N4916 is a defect (which he did not mark) on the plate. There is nothing in its position on POSS1. ===== NGC 4913 is probably lost. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4914. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4916 is probably lost. See NGC 4912. ===== NGC 4920 = IC 4134, which see. ===== NGC 4933. This has two components, the brighter one to the northeast. Bigourdan misidentified his comparison star one of the two nights he observed this, so the two components have IC numbers, I4173 and I4176, as well. The misidentified star led Bigourdan to believe that he had found a third "nova" in the field, too. See IC 4134 = NGC 4920 for the details. ===== NGC 4937 is a small asterism of 6 or 7 stars about 2 arcmin northwest of NGC 4940. Both were found by JH who adds a note to the description of N4937 not copied into GC or NGC: "... a * 7m, just at northern edge of field." The star is there, and JH's relative position of the two -- though not exact -- is nevertheless close enough to insure the identity. ===== NGC 4940. See NGC 4937. ===== NGC 4941. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4942 may also be IC 4136, which see. ===== NGC 4947 = IC 3974, which see. ===== NGC 4948 may also be IC 4156. See IC 4136 for the story. ===== NGC 4952 = NGC 4962, which see. ===== NGC 4954 = NGC 4972, which see. ===== NGC 4960 is probably NGC 4961 with a 15 arcmin error in the declination. D'A saw N4960 only once, on a night when he did not record N4961 (he observed that on four other nights). The descriptions and RA's match, too. D'A also leaves us a brief note: "Nebula indubie visa, etiamsi locus confirmatione adhuc indigebit." This seems to be saying that while the nebula was certainly seen, there could be some doubt about its position. Since there is nothing else obvious nearby that might be N4960, I'm going with N4961 for the time being. ===== NGC 4961. See NGC 4960. ===== NGC 4962 = NGC 4952. Dreyer was skeptical about NGC 4962, the first of two nebulae that WH found southeast of 13 CVn (= 37 Com). The second is NGC 4966 which WH noted as "Just nf a * 8 or 9 m." This comment allowed both JH in GC and Dreyer in NGC to correctly assign N4966 = h1531 to WH's observation of III 304. But JH has no observation of the preceding nebula, III 303, and Max Wolf could not find it on a Heidelberg plate -- hence Dreyer's note in the Scientific Papers. (Dreyer also notes here some of Max Wolf's speculation on the identity of N4962, but dismisses two of Wolf's suggested identifications on the basis of WH's relative positions, and a third by noting that a 1 degree error in declination would have put the object beyond the limits of WH's sweep.) Given that WH's RA for N4966 is about half a minute off, and that his Dec is also off (but only by two minutes, within WH's standard deviation), can such an offset be used to identify an object that might be N4962? The answer is "Yes," if we are willing to accept that WH's position for it has yet another 30 seconds of RA error. The total RA error of 1 minute, combined with the 2 arcmin Dec offset, point right at NGC 4952. WH's similar descriptions are consistent with the similar magnitudes and sizes for the galaxies, and though he also found N4952, it was during a sweep nearly a month later. ===== NGC 4966. See NGC 4962 = NGC 4952. ===== NGC 4967, NGC 4973 = IC 847, and NGC 4974. Discovered by William Herschel on the night of 14 April 1789, these are presumably the brightest in the group of six or seven galaxies in the area. Herschel's positions, though, are roughly a minute of time too large, and he gives only one position for N4973 and N4974. Dreyer recognized the problem with the positions in this sweep (921) and another (1001) which, unfortunately, did not cover these objects. In a note to WH's second catalogue, Dreyer gives "modern" positions from JH (N4967), Rumker (N4973 and 4974), and Howe (N4973). If we accept these positions (and I'm inclined to as they refer to the brightest three galaxies in the group, and do not disagree with WH's relative positions of N4967 and N4973/4), then WH's description of the relative positions of N4973 and N4974 needs to be changed. He claims that his "place is that of the 2nd, the other is 3' or 4' south-preceding." This should read "... 3' or 4' north- preceding." CGCG, MCG, and RNGC all have the identifications of N4973 and N4974 garbled. (MCG, in addition, gets the identification of IC 847 wrong; it is actually the same galaxy as N4973 if we trust Swift's position.) Here are the correct identifications: N4973 = I847 = CGCG 1303.4+5357 = CGCG 270-049 = CGCG 271-005 = = MCG +09-22-006 and N4974 = CGCG 1303.8+5356 = CGCG 270-051 = CGCG 271-007 = MCG +09-22-009 ===== NGC 4969. See NGC 4740. ===== NGC 4970 = IC 4196, which see. ===== NGC 4972 = NGC 4954. WH has only one observation of this, and Dreyer has this to say in the Scientific Papers: "In the sweep (1064), the observation of I. 274 [= NGC 4648, to which WH refers N4972 in his table] seems to be inaccurate, but III. 937 [= N4972] is between two well-determined stars (Kasan 2331 and 2388)." Dreyer goes on to work out the position of N4972, and it turns out to be the same -- within the errors -- as that for N4954 (observed by JH). Neither WH nor JH saw more than one nebula in the area. This verified JH's speculation in GC (copied verbatim into NGC) that N4954 and N4972 could be the same object, and Dreyer commented in the 1912 Monthly Notices list, "4972 to be struck out (= 4954)." ===== NGC 4973 = IC 847, which see. Also see NGC 4967. ===== NGC 4974. See NGC 4967. ===== NGC 4979 = IC 4198, which see. ===== NGC 4982 is probably the asterism of four stars just southwest of the NGC position. Though Dreyer credits this to Tempel's fifth paper, I can find no mention of the object there (still to be done is a search through the other papers to see if it occurs there). Until we can track down the original observation, though, the identification has to be taken as uncertain. ===== NGC 4989. See NGC 3679. ===== NGC 4993 = NGC 4994. I do not know where JH's incorrect declination for this observation of N4494 came from, but it is 50 arcmin too far north (his father got the right position for the galaxy). Whatever happened, JH's observation fits exactly in RA and in its description of the galaxy, so I am confident of the identity. There is nothing at JH's position. LEDA has picked up a galaxy too faint and small for JH to have seen, and it is well off his position by non-digit amounts (21 seconds of time and 4.3 arcmin). ===== NGC 4995. See IC 4136. =====