Caroline Herschel discovered NGC 2360 = H VII-12 = h440 = h3076 on 26 Feb 1783. NGC 2360 was her first deep sky discovery and occurred before William had begun his sweeps for nebulae. Perhaps this discovery, along with M93, which she discovered independently earlier that night (and assumed it was new), inspired her brother to search for nebulae starting the next month.

On 4 Feb 1785 (sweep 366) William recorded "a large cluster of pretty compressed scattered stars, near 1/2° in diam, considerably rich, most of the stars of the same size." On 31 Dec 1785 (sweep 503) he wrote, "A beautiful cluster of pretty compressed stars, very large." John Herschel recorded it from the Cape of Good Hope on 12 Feb 1836 as the "Middle of a fine large, rich cluster, not compressed to the middle. Stars 9..12th mag; fills field."

300/350mm - 13.1" (1/28/84): includes about 40 fainter stars in an elongated, arrowhead shape with mag 9 SAO 152691 at the east edge (probably a foreground star). Appears rich with fairly uniform magnitudes.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb