Guillaume Bigourdan found IC 2609 = Big. 403, a rediscovery of NGC 3404, on 19 Apr 1898. He was searching for Andrew Common's NGC 3404, which had a poor position (off by 15') and reasonably assumed Big. 403 was new. Harold Knox-Shaw suggested the equivalence in his 1915 table of observations of nebulae made at the Helwan Observatory. MCG labeled this galaxy as IC 2609. See Corwin's notes for more.

400/500mm - 18" (3/29/03): fairly faint, edge-on 4:1 ~E-W, 1.4'x0.3', bright core. NGC 3421 lies 23' SW and NGC 3422.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb