John Herschel discovered NGC 1688 = h2671 on 4 Dec 1834 and recorded "vF; pL; R; gbM; 50"." On later sweeps he called this nebula "B" and "pB". His position is accurate.

Joseph Turner made a sketch on 5 Dec 1876 with the 48" Great Melbourne Telescope with the object shown as a narrow streak NW-SE, so he noticed noticed the full length of the central bar (page 121 of logbook). There was some mistake in preparing the lithograph (unpublished plate II, figure 17) which shows two elongated streaks along with additional stars.

300/350mm - 13.1" (2/19/04 - Costa Rica): fairly faint to moderately bright, elongated 3:2 NNW-SSE, 1.5'x1.0', broad weak concentration but no other details were evident. This barred spiral is located 38' SE of NGC 1672 38' NW with NGC 1703 34' E. Located 30' ESE of mag 5.3 Kappa Doradus.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb