Friedrich August Winnecke discovered NGC 6704 = Au 43 on 23 Jul 1854 at age 19 with his personal 3-inch Metrz comet seeker at Gottingen. In AN 1072 he reported "In July 1854 I discovered a faint nebula in Scutum with the comet-seeker. In the Berlin refractor [9.6-inch Fraunhofer] it appears as a faint star cluster, but the place might be interesting, because it looks cometary in a small scope." Arthur Auwers measured an accurate position with the Konigsberg Heliometer (AN 1392) and described the cluster as elongated in the meridian (N-S), 3'x2'. He included it in his 1862 list of new nebulae.

400/500mm - 17.5" (7/1/89): at 220x, 40 stars mag 12-15 are visible over unresolved haze, elongated N-S. Three collinear mag 12.5 stars oriented NNW-SSE are equally spaced near the center. Located 55' N of M11.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb