Édouard Stephan discovered NGC 2163 = St IX-6 on 6 Feb 1874 with the 31-inch reflector at the Marseille Observatory and recorded "eF, E, dif, *11 attached south." He observed it again on 6 Jan 1878. In compiling the NGC, Dreyer accidentally copied the declination of NGC 1741 (Stephan's previous entry, IX-5). Dreyer later caught and corrected his error in the IC 2 Notes/Corrections section (Dreyer added the comment "my mistake"). The correction was missed by most later cataloguers though Esmiol's 1916 re-reduction of Stephan's positions also gives the accurate position. As an example, in 1922 Edwin Hubble called it "A bright, uncatalogued nebula similar to NGC 2245" and Sven Cederblad listed it as "anonymous" object (#62). So, both were obviously thrown off by Dreyer's mistake. I uncovered that E.E. Barnard independently discovered it on 2 Sep 1888, though initially mistook it for Faye's Comet, which he was searching for.

Skiff recomputed Stephan's original position using precise coordinates for his offset star HD 41787 as 06 04 53.62 +18 40 08.7 (1950). At this exact location is the reflection nebula Cederblad 62 at 06 04 53.17 +18 39 55.0 just 0.45 tsec of RA and 13".7 in declination from Stephan's original coordinates. Besides the excellent positional match, Stephan described NGC 2163 as "elongated with *11 attached south" and visually this nebula appears to extend more prominently north of the mag 11.5 (central) star. On the POSS, Ced 62 is an interesting bipolar nebula with two symmetrical funnel-shaped jets extending north-south from the central star.

More recently, Cederblad 62 wasn't referenced as a NGC object in the first edition of the Uranometria 2000.0, Sky Atlas 2000.0 or the Sky Catalogue 2000. The RNGC identifies this object as nonexistent and furthermore reverses the sign of the declination. In addition, a poor RA was given for Ced 62 in Sky Catalogue 2000 and it was misplotted on the Uranometria 2000 (first edition) too far east, though the position was corrected in the second edition. The Millenium Star Atlas labels this object Ced 62 at the wrong position.

400/500mm - 17.5" (1/9/98): moderately bright reflection nebula surrounding a young mag 11 star (HBC 193). The brightest portion of the nebula is noticeably elongated N-S from the central star and 2'-3' in length tapering towards the star. The northern extension has a slightly higher surface brightness. Located 3' W of a mag 9 star. Observed at 220x without filtration.

17.5" (12/23/92): faint, fairly small, elongated 5:2 N-S, ~2.5'x1.0', fairly high surface brightness. A mag 11 star is at the south tip of the bright portion and a small very faint extension appears south of this star. Located 3' W of mag 9 HD 41787. Two mag 13 stars are 1' NE and 1' N and a mag 10 star is 5' S. An evenly matched mag 10.5/10.5 double at 12" separation lies 8' WSW. This reflection nebula doesn't respond to a Daystar 300 or OIII filter. Listed as nonexistent in the RNGC due to an error in declination in the NGC. Plotted as Ced 62 in U2000.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb