Harold Corwin

IC 1664 is only two stars, roughly equal in magnitude, oriented southwest- northeast, and separated by about 30 arcsec. They are not "... inv in eeF neb" as Stewart describes them, unless he is talking about the SMC background on which the stars are superposed. This is the outskirts of the SMC, though, not the rich inner region, so I suspect a plate defect was involved as well.

Andris Lauberts picked a faint galaxy some distance from the nominal position for the ESO catalogue, while Wolfgang Steinicke has only the southwestern star in his earlier lists. This star does have a faint companion less than 2 seconds of time preceding, so Wolfgang may have thought that these were the two stars that Stewart described. Perhaps the fainter star added to the impression of nebulosity on Stewart's plate.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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