Caroline Herschel discovered NGC 225 = H VIII-78 = h52 on 27 Sep 1783 (and seen again on 30 Oct 1783 and 23 Feb 1784) with her 4.2" comet seeker reflector. The cluster was first seen by William on 11 Mar 1784 before he began the evening's sweeps. On 26 Nov 1788 (sweep 887), he recorded, "a good many coarsely scattered L stars of an equal size, they take up a space of 15 or 20'."

200/250mm - 8" two dozen stars in a cluster, fairly bright but scattered, no dense spots.

400/500mm - 17.5" (11/2/91): about two dozen stars at 100x in a 12' diameter. Bright but scattered. Outline forms an isosceles triangle with the vertex at west edge and the long base on the east side. Most stars are mag 10-11 and evenly spaced. The cluster appears completely resolved. Only one fairly close double star in group. Just ENE of the main group is a line of five mag 9 stars oriented N-S.

600/800mm - 24" (1/4/14): bright, large, scattered group of ~50 stars in 10' group. Includes 15-18 brighter stars that stand out (mag 9.5-11). A ragged N-S string of stars defines the eastern border of the cluster. There are no rich subgroups and a lack of faint stars.

A detached group of stars is off the north side, but these stars do not appear to be part of the cluster. vdB 4, a very faint reflection nebula, is involved with these stars though it was not noticed.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb