E.E. Barnard discovered IC 1287 on a plate taken with the 12" Willard lens on 29 Jun 1892. He noted (AN 3111) "the 5.5 mag star BD -10° 4713 is shown to be nebulous. The star is surrounded by a large diffused nebulosity, somewhat extended in a direction nf and sp. A telescopic examination [probably with the 12" refractor] with a very low power confirms the photograph." Base on photographs at the Helwan observatory in Egypt in 1919-20, it was described as "a very large patch of faint, diffuse nebulosity around Boss 4687 extending chiefly to the south of it.

400/500mm - 18" (8/12/07): this was a difficult observation to confirm as this large, very faint reflection nebula is illuminated by mag 5.7 HD 170740 (unequal double ∑2325 = 5.9/9.2 at 12") and the bright star naturally has some surrounding scattered light. Adding a wide bandpass Deep Sky filter the glow definitely brightened and increased in size. The contrast improvement was easy to see by blinking with the filter. It was difficult to estimate a size as the haze faded into the background, but appeared ~15'-20' in size. Open cluster NGC 6649 lies 38' NE.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb