Haha, scooped again! I was going to post this as my OOTW in late December; now I've to think of something else. Howard I am amazed you managed to detect the presence of HH1/2 in an 8" scope!
I observed HH1 and HH2 at the Okie-Tex Star Party in October 2021, after having failed my previous attempt. I think I understand why I failed earlier -- at least in my 18", the visual extent on NGC 1999 is much smaller than the photographic extent, as is typical of many objects. So HH2 is further out from the notch of NGC 1999 than a POSS image would lead me to believe. I instead use the few faint stars in the vicinity of HH2 to locate it. Once HH2 is located, I was able to find HH1.
Here is my report (copy-pasted from the Okie-Tex post I made earlier):
HH2 was significantly easier than HH1, with about 50% holding averted. I roughly estimated its magnitude to be fainter than 14.3mag by defocusing the nearby star Parenago 2402.
HH1 was way fainter, a threshold object of which I got about 4 flashes.
It did not even occur to me to put a filter on these objects.
I thought I had very dark skies on that night at Okie-Tex when I observed these two objects, but I did have a hard time seeing HH1. These objects are supposed to variable on the timescale of a few days or so, but looking at Peter's report, perhaps HH1 is simply a lot fainter most of the time.
Clear Skies
Akarsh
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