NGC 4889 was not included by the astronomer Charles Messier in his famous Messier catalogue despite being an intrinsically bright object quite close to some Messier objects.
In 1888 the astronomer John Louis Emil Dreyer published the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (NGC), with a total of 7,840 objects, but he erroneously duplicated the galaxy in two designations, NGC 4884 and NGC 4889.