It is located 250 million light years from Earth[2] and was discovered by Royal Harwood Frost on August 1, 1904, who described the object "as brighter middle with magnitude of 14.

[5] Through it has an energy output dominated by its star formation, the galaxy has a weak active galactic nucleus.

[6] The regions of IC 4687 are also known to contain high amounts of molecular gas surface densities of log ΣH2 (MΘ pc−2) = 2.9 ± 0.2.

[8] Both of these galaxies are located ~ 10 and ~ 20 kiloparsecs away from IC 4687 and are classified as spiral-like with their velocity fields influenced by kinematic and rotation centers.

The Hubble images shows the galaxy has a distorted morphology with interstellar dust and gas apparently obscuring its companion.