Caroline Herschel probably discovered NGC 189 = h36 on 27 Sep 1783 although William mistakenly attributed her with the discovery of NGC 381. This is unlikely as the object she found preceded Gamma Cas, while NGC 381 follows. Although William made no observations, John Herschel independently discovered the cluster on 27 Oct 1829. He logged, "Cl, L; p rich; irreg R; 8' diam; straggling; *s 11...15m."

200/250mm - 8" (11/13/82): about two dozen stars, moderately large, irregular shape, scattered, haze.

400/500mm - 17.5" (11/27/92): 30 stars mag 10-14 in 6' diameter, weakly compressed, no dense areas but appears to have some unresolved background haze. Elongated E-W due to a couple of strings extending to the west. A 6'x5' parallelogram of four mag 9 stars in the field to the south. Not an impressive cluster.

600/800mm - 24" (1/4/14): well detached, roundish group of stars at 125x. Using 260x, ~40 stars are resolved in a 5'-6' group. There are several pairs and tight groupings. Many of the stars are in a richer 3' inner group, generally arranged in a ring and including h 1043 = 11.6/12.7 pair at 12" (oriented N-S). A few of the brighter stars, though, form the 6' outline. A distinctive quadrilateral of stars is ~6' NW.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb