William Herschel discovered NGC 6940 = H VII-8 on 17 Jul 1784 (sweep 239) and recorded "a vL cl of scattered stars, very rich and most of the stars nearly of a size and pretty small. About 20' in diameter." His position is close to mag 8.3 HD 196244 on the northeast side of the cluster. On 18 Oct 1786 (sweep 615) he logged it as "a beautiful cl of scattered large stars, extremely rich, taking up near 1/2°."

300/350mm - 13.1" (7/27/84): beautiful rich star field although not dense. About 100 stars mag 9-14 resolved including the orange semii-regular variable star FG Vulpeculae near the center. The double star ∑2698 = 8.8/9.7 at 4.5" is off the southwest edge.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb