Lewis Swift discovered NGC 4081 = Sw. I-20 on 18 Jun 1884 and recorded "F; S; vE; D * nr; preceding nearest bright star east 20 sec." His position was 18 seconds of RA too large and 1' too far north, but his description matches.

Philip Keenan rediscovered NGC 4081 on a Yerkes Observatory plate and assumed it was new. He labeled it NGC 4125A in a list of new nebulae in the 1935 paper "Studies of Extra-Galactic Nebulae, Part I: Determination of Magnitudes" (ApJ, 82, 62). All objects were assigned NGC + letter designations based on the nearest NGC object on the plate. His description reads, "13.8m; 1.2'x0.3' in PA 132°; Sa."

400/500mm - 17.5" (3/20/93): fairly faint, fairly small, elongated 5:2 NW-SE, 1.2'x0.5'. A nice evenly matched mag 10 double star (STI 739) is 4.7' NW.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb