NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 6724 is described by JH simply as "A cluster discovered with the 7-feet (sic) equatorial, Sept 5, 1828." He puts a plus/minus sign on the RA which he lists to only a full minute of time, though the NPD is given to his usual precision of an arcsec. Checking the Herschel Archive material, however, shows that both RA and NPD are marked with plus/minus signs. This is recorded in his observing "Journal No. 1" as number 45 in Sweep 172 where he copies an entry from his "Equatorial Book": "Discd a Cluster VIII. Cl VIII nova. Vide Equatorial Book No. 201 -- RA 18 49+- PD 79 51 30 +-." (For reference, this is page 110 of 120 in file "J0001-0002-0002.pdf" on the first DVD of the three in the Herschel Archives.) Unfortunately, the Equatorial Book from Slough seems to not be included in the Archives, so checking that will have to wait until it can be located. The crude position is confirmed, at least in RA, in JH's "Register of Objects observed in Sweeps ..." (J0001-0004-0001.pdf, page 117), where this is the only entry under 18h 49m. However, the NPD looses its +- sign. The remainder of entry there reads "Cl VIII Discd. with Equatorial Sep. 5 1828. See Eql. Papers. No 201", confirming the information from the observing Journal. About five arcmin northwest of his place is a small (5 arcmin by 3 arcmin) clump of stars, a dozen of which are bright enough to be in GSC. Given the paucity of information, though, the object could also be NGC 6709, a much richer cluster 10 minutes west at the same declination. Pending a study of the Slough Equatorial Book, I am going to adopt the poorer clump of stars for this number -- though with a colon to flag the uncertainty inherent in the observation. Finally, I note that Brent Archinal reports two observations of an obvious group of stars at JH's position in his Webb Society monograph. Archinal and Hynes have a very long note about this object, collecting observations by several different veteran observers. In the end, they somewhat reluctantly adopt the same clump of stars that I note here.

===== NGC 6724 17.5" (7/24/95): at 100x appears as a small indistinct group in a rich Milky Way field. Stands out better at 220x which increases the number of stars to 15 in a 2.5'x2.0' region (slightly elongated E-W). There are five brighter mag 12-13 stars and 10 faint stars in this group and visually it appears to be an asterism.