Max Wolf discovered IC 2657 = Wolf VII-33, along with IC 2661, on a plate taken 27 Mar 1906. His position is an exact match with this distant galaxy and he noted "between *11 np and *14 sf, difficult".

900/1200mm - 48" (5/1/19): at 545x; between faint and fairly faint, small, slightly elongated, 15"x12". At 813x the galaxy was clearly elongated at least 3:2 and nearly 2:1 NW-SE. A mag 12.9 star is 1' NW and a very faint mag 17.5 star is 20" S. Located 3.4' S of a mag 10.3 star. IC 2661 lies 7' SE. The SQM reading was 21.87 during the observation. IC 2657 has the second highest known redshift for an IC galaxy at a distance of 2.1 billion light years!

Notes by Steve Gottlieb