William Herschel discovered NGC 2245 = H IV-3 = h393 on 16 Jan 1784 (sweep 81) and reported "A nebula. It is fan shaped, and appears like a star with a faint, electric brush at one side of it." On 18 Jan 1828 (sweep 120), John Herschel called it "a *11 with a milky neb surrounding it, but chiefly on the sp side. The star is not sharp - not stellar, and the neb fades gradually away from the star; 70" or 80" diam; has a * 7m 30° nf."

The account by Lord Rosse (or assistant George Stoney) on Feb 28 1850 is remarkable: "...this neb is part of an enormous neby, which I traced following and north to a great distance, some degrees. It narrows at times to a band across the finding eyepiece of about 6' or 8'. I fancied the number of bright stars was greater in it than in the neighborhood; I am certain the number of small stars is much less..." A sketch made was included in Lord Rosse's 1861 publication (plate XXVII, fig 11).

400/500mm - 17.5" (1/19/91): bright, fairly large, about 3' diameter, elongated SW-NE. Fans out to the southwest from a fairly bright mag 11 star at the northeast end. Fades smoothly into background. Located 2' WSW of mag 8.0 SAO 95816. Reflection nebula NGC 2247 lies 12' NNE.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb