Albert Marth discovered NGC 6765 = m 398 = Sf 42 = St II-27 on 28 Jun 1864 with Lassell's 48-inch on Malta and noted "F, S, mE or ray." His position is accurate. Truman Safford independently rediscovered this object on 12 Jul 1866 using the 18.5-inch Clark refractor at Dearborn Observatory in Chicago (he also found the planetary NGC 6842 in Vulpecula the same night!) and again by Édouard Stephan on 20 Jul 1870 with the 31-inch reflector at Marseilles. Dreyer credited Stephan with the discovery in the GC Supplement (GCS 5941), but both Marth and Stephan are listed in the NGC. Minkowski entered it as the 68th object in his first discovery list (M 1-68) of "New Emission Nebulae" (1946), based on objective prism plates taken with the 10-inch Bruce Astrograph at Mount Wilson, and missed the equivalence with NGC 6765.

300/350mm - 13" (6/18/85): faint, elongated SSW-NNE, appears similar to a diffuse galaxy. A faint mag 14.5 star is at the NE tip. Located 20' NW of ∑2483 = 7.9/9.0 at 10".

400/500mm - 17.5" (9/5/99): picked up at 100x as a small, irregular glow in a rich star field by moving 20' NW of ∑2483 = 7.9/9.0 at 10". At 220x, the PN is clearly elongated ~2:1 SW-NE. The appearance is odd with a much brighter NE end and a fainter extension to the SW end. A mag 14.5-15 star is just off the NE end in the direction of the elongation. At 380x, a very faint star was intermittently glimpsed within the NE end. If this is the central star it is very eccentrically placed.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb