William Herschel discovered NGC 2428 = H VIII-47, along with NGC 2430, on 31 Dec 1785 (sweep 503), and noted "A very much scattered and vL cl or stars; or rather the milky way very much crowded with stars not differing much in size and colour." His position is 10' south of H VIII-46 = NGC 2430 and corresponds with a fairly rich star field on the DSS. RNGC classifies this number as nonexistent.

400/500mm - 18" (2/4/08): at 175x, roughly 40 stars in 10' barely stand out as a group within a rich Milky Way field. Most eye-catching is a small trapezoidal group with a double star at the NW vertex and a wide pair at the SE vertex. A string of 3 stars oriented SW-NE is within the trapezoid. Off the SE vertex an oval chain of stars extends south and west before looping back towards the trapezoid. There are no dense regions and this appears to be an asterism. An even weaker concentration of stars about 10' NNE may be NGC 2430. Listed as nonexistent in the RNGC.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb