This image, of John FW Herschel as an eminent grey haired Victorian (he would have been in his 70s), was originally produced as the frontispiece to John FW Herschel's Catalogue of nebulae and clusters of stars (1864), an updated version of his father's work, with plates by M. & N. Hanhart. The image was subsequently used (in 1882) by the journal, the Quarterly Journal of Science No. 19.

The NMM has four copies of this image, only one of which (PAH6064) appears to be from the Quarterly Journal of Science. The rest may have been extra prints made at the same time as the frontispiece, or they could have come from disgarded copies of the original book. Sometimes extra prints of book illustrations were made to sell separately. Occasionally, when books did not appear to have any ready second hand market, book sellers and print dealers have been known to dismantle books to sell the prints.