William Herschel discovered NGC 2426 = H II-822 = h460 on 17 Mar 1790 (sweep 945) and wrote, "pF, R, resolvable, vgbM." His position (based on Auwers reduction) is less than 1' SW of UGC 3977 = PGC 21648. The RNGC declination is 30' too far north and because of this error, the galaxy was misplotted on the first edition of the Uranometria 2000 atlas.

400/500mm - 17.5" (2/8/91): fairly faint, small, round, small bright core, stellar nucleus. Located 2.7' NNW of a mag 10 star. Forms a pair with NGC 2429 5' NE. Misplotted on the U2000 due to a typo in declination (30' too far N) in the RNGC.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb