NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 1899. The usual object taken as NGC 1899 is a very faint nebulosity, perhaps a reflection nebula, surrounding two brighter stars and several fainter ones. However, it is very faint, and is southeast of JH's position by about two arcminutes, further off than most of his LMC positions. My hesitation over this has led me to a group of faint stars near JH's place. But these are probably not sufficiently concentrated to appear nebulous at the eyepiece. JH's observation book has this as number 34 in Sweep 759 on 30 December 1836. It fits comfortably within the bounds of the sweep -- only a degree wide, and there is no suggestion of anything wrong with the position. The description is correctly copied into the CGH monograph as is the position. The one thing that might offer an additional clue is a little sketch showing what is apparently a nebula with three stars preceding. JH says "three stars 10[prime] m precede" (where the [prime] perhaps means "approximately"). Unfortunately, I cannot relate that little sketch to what I see on the DSS2 red image of the area -- there are two relatively bright stars preceding JH's position with four or five others in the area, but they do not match the right triangle JH has drawn. I've also checked at reasonable positions that could result from a digit error in JH's position, but there is nothing that matches his description, or his note about the three stars. So, by default, the faint nebulosity may indeed be JH's object, and my misgivings about its faintness unfounded. But, when I checked Jenni Kay's LMC observations, I found that she did not see the object at either 110X or 150X in her 12.5-inch F5 Newtonian, simply noting, "Too faint." We clearly need an observation with a 15- to 20-inch telescope.

===== NGC 1899 30" (10/15/15 - OzSky): at 303x and 394x; no cluster or nebulous object was in the field at the nominal position, which included three mag 11 stars and the rest mag 13 and fainter. I see nothing that would have caught John Herschel's attention in the field.