John Herschel discovered NGC 1496 = h310 on 8 Nov 1831 (sweep 384) and recorded a "curious knot of stars forming a cluster in form the segment of an elliptic ring." His position and and description accurates describes this cluster.

400/500mm - 17.5" (12/28/94): 20 stars mag 12-15 in a 5' region elongated E-W. The stars are mainly arranged in a semicircle open to the east with several nice close pairs! The brightest mag 11 star is on the NE end of the semicircle and the SE end is a very close double. An isolated mag 10 star is 4' SW and 0.8' NE of this star is an evenly matched mag 14 pair at 7" separation.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb