William Herschel discovered NGC 2347 = H III-746 on 1 Nov 1788 (sweep 879) and recorded, "vF, S, R lbM." His position, based on Auwers' reduction, is 3.3' N of UGC 3759. The GC/NGC position (from John Herschel) is 5.7' NNE of UGC 3759. Finally, Harold Corwin reduced the offsets given in Dreyer's 1912 revision of Herschel's catalogues and that position is 18' NNE of UGC 3759 -- and 9' NE of UGC 3750, the galaxy generally identified as IC 2179.

Bigourdan later observed this field in 1894 and 1900. His position for B. 267 = IC 2179 in Comptes Rendus is 07 15 33 +64 57 (2000), which is an excellent match for UGC 3750. CGCG, UGC, MOL, DSFG, RC3, PGC and U2000 all label this galaxy as IC 2179. But, Bigourdan's listing in his complete Observations, etc. for B. 267 corresponds with UGC 3759, the galaxy identified as NGC 2347 in modern catalogues and his listing for NGC 2347 matches UGC 3750 (Corwin notes an error in his identification of the reference star). So, Bigourdan reverses the modern identifications.

The question still remains - which of these two galaxies is WH's III-746? See Corwin's identification notes for more on this story (also analyzed by Malcolm Thomson).

300/350mm - 13.1" (1/11/86): fairly faint, fairly small, bright core, slightly elongated N-S, diffuse. Located 4' S of mag 7.3 SAO 14129. A mag 10 star lies 5.2' NE. Forms a wide pair with IC 2179 = UGC 3750 13' N.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb