E.E. Barnard discovered NGC 1798 in Nov 1885 with the 6-inch Cooke Refractor at Vanderbilt University. In Sidereal Messenger, vol. 5 (page 25) he described a "small hazy spot, with high power (120) seems to be some faint stars mixed up with nebulosity, a small star involved f[ollowing]. It is followed some little distance by a 9th magnitude star." His position corresponds with a 5' group of stars, also catalogued as Berkeley 16. The RNGC misclassifies this number as nonexistent.

This cluster is located in the direction of the anti-galactic center at a distance of 4.2 kpc and an estimated age of 1.4 billion years.

400/500mm - 18" (11/18/06): at 115x I was surprised to find a fairly rich group of perhaps 20 stars peppered over a 5' region of extensive haze. The low power Milky Way field is rich in bright and faint stars with glowing regions of unresolved stars. Listed as nonexistent in the RNGC and not plotted on the first edition of the Uranometria 2000.0.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb