NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 7071. JH says of this, "A very poor and small cluster of an oblong figure. It is followed by a loosely scattered mass of stars." JH's cluster itself is obvious -- an elongated group of about a dozen stars, just 3.3 by 1.0 arcminutes in size, at his position. His "loosely scattered mass of stars", however, could refer to any of the clouds of stars in this pretty rich Milky Way field. Reinmuth suggested that this might be another observation of NGC 7067 (which see), an idea picked up by RNGC. However, JH's descriptions preclude this -- they are too different to refer to the same object. In any event, both positions have "clusters" that match JH's admittedly scanty descriptions. Finally, I think this is simply an asterism. As with all these, we need to get into the astrophysics to determine its true nature. Also see NGC 7011 where this has some bearing on the identification of that object.

===== NGC 7071 18" (10/8/05): this "nonexistent cluster" is located in a glorious low power Milky Way field. Several groupings (both large and small) caught my eye at 73x (67' field), but I was mostly drawn to a fairly distinctive 4' string of stars oriented NW-SE. At 225x, ~15 stars were packed into the string, most stars being mag 13-14 with a few fainter stars, and possibly over unresolved Milky Way background glow. This group would have likely caught John Herschel's eye as he swept the region, though it may be an asterism (not in Lynga).