William Herschel discovered NGC 1802 = H VIII-41 on 7 Dec 1785 (sweep 485) and recorded "a coarse cluster of star or projecting point of the milky way." Karl Reinmuth, in his 1926 survey based on Heidelberg plates, adds "many st, v sc, no distinct cl." RNGC classifies the number as nonexistent but WEBDA has a listing for NGC 1802.

400/500mm - 18" (11/18/06): at 115x this Milky Way field appears as a bright, large, scattered group including a couple of dozen mag 10-11 stars. Most distinctive is a fairly rich 5' string of mag 10 to 13 stars oriented N-S. The rest of the group is scattered and extends east and southeast ~10' in size.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb