NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 6895 is described by WH as "A cluster of scattered stars, above 15 arcmin diameter, pretty rich and joining to the Milky Way, or a projecting part of it." This was the only deep sky object found by WH on 30 September 1790. At the beginning of the sweep, WH comments that "The heavens [are] extremely rich in S stars", and about 20 minutes after his observation of the cluster, he notes "The Aurora borealis is so bright that it eclipses the small stars in the field." When I went over the field before, I found "Centered close to his position (I put the center about 2 arcmin northeast) is a large cloud of stars, about 20 by 18 arcminutes, most likely a random clump in the Milky Way. Four SAO stars, and dozens of fainter stars are included." The cloud that I see now is about a minute of time west of WH's position and is more or less centered on HD 192983. The size I estimated earlier is about right, so I wonder if I too made an error of one minute in RA. Whatever happened, the current "cluster" fits WH's description nicely, and is just a minute of time off his position, a common digit error. So, I've taken this as WH's object, correcting my earlier position by a minute of time.

===== NGC 6895 24" (7/29/16): at 124x (49' field): this Milky Way field includes mag 6.4 HD 192983. A 4' circular group with over a dozen mag 11-12.5 stars is ~5' W. An elongated group of mag 11-13 stars is 5' SE of the bright star. A larger "U" shaped group of stars (open to the north), including mag 8.2 HD 193216 and three additional mag 9-10 stars is ~12' NE. The overall field is fairly rich, but unimpressive with nothing that resembles a cluster.