Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille discovered IC 2395 = Lac. III-3 between 1751-1752 during his expedition to the Cape of Good Hope. He recorded "Star of 6th magnitude, connected to another more southern one by a nebulous trail." Solon Bailey independently discovered the cluster photographically in 1896 with a 1" Cook lens at the Arequipa station in Peru. The discovery was published in his 1908 paper "A Catalogue of Bright Clusters and Nebulae, Annals of Harvard Observatory, Vol LX, No. VIII. Dreyer missed Lacaille earlier discovery and Bailey is credited in the IC.

Brent Archinal noted the equivalence of this cluster with vdB-Ha 47. The Lynga position for IC 2395 is incorrect but OK for vdB-Ha 47. Brian Skiff gives a centroid position of 08 42 31 -48 06.5 (2000).

300/350mm - 13.1" (2/18/04 - Costa Rica): this bright naked-eye group includes mag 5.5 HX Velorum on the west side. Resolved in the 9x50 finder. In the 13.1", roughly three dozen stars are visible in a 10' field. The bright stars are scattered mostly on the following side of the group in an elongated arrangement extending to the southeast. There is also a fairly rich gathering of stars within 4' of HX Vel. NGC 2660 is located 48' S.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb