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 Quarterly Journal of Science, later simply the Journal of Science was an academic journal produced in Edinburgh and edited first by J. Samuelson and later (including issue No. 19) by W. Crooke.

The NMM has four copies of this image and only one of which (PAH6064) appears to be from the Quarterly Journal of Science. The others 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.