NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 6866. WH found this cluster on 11 Sept 1790 and described it as "A very rich cl of L stars considerably compressed; above 15' diam. By the size of the stars, it is situated among the milky way towards us." This matches the cluster that we find at his position. I'm not quite sure how to take his second sentence, however. My guess is that he means to suggest that the cluster is superposed on the Milky Way. So far, so good. JH looked for his father's object in just one sweep and found "A coarse rough cluster. Taken for VII. 59, but the place does not agree." In the sweep, he says the same thing, but notes that the position is that of a double star. His RA is close to that of his father, but he places the double -- and the cluster -- ten arcminutes further south. There is no mistake in his reduction, and the cluster is close to neither the northern or southern limits of the sweep, so he somehow simply missed the cluster. Another curiosity is that when it came time to assemble the GC, he adopted his own position, but his father's description for the cluster. Dreyer copied this faithfully into the NGC, so we have had the wrong declination attached to the cluster for a well over a century. As far as I know, Brian Skiff was the first to notice this, but I have not checked all of the cluster catalogues.

===== NGC 6866 17.5" (9/7/91): about 100 stars in a 20'x10' region are visible at 100x. Appears rich and very appealing. The main string is very elongated roughly E-W and contains a brighter intersecting subgroup 8'x2' NW-SE of about 45 stars with a close triple star on the NW end consisting of a mag 10 star and two very faint companions. Two mag 10-10.5 stars are at the SE end of this string. The western end of the main string curves north into a nice semi-circle.