William Herschel discovered the nebula on February 7, 1785, and catalogued it as H IV.27.

John Herschel observed it from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, in the 1830s, and numbered it as h 3248, and included it in the 1864 General Catalogue as GC 2102; this became NGC 3242 in J. L. E. Dreyer's New General Catalogue of 1888.

This planetary nebula is most frequently called the Ghost of Jupiter, or Jupiter's Ghost due to its similar shape to the planet, but it is also sometimes referred to as the Eye Nebula.

[4] The two ends of the nebula are marked by FLIERs, lobes of fast moving gas often tinted red in false-color pictures.

[6] At the center of NGC 3242 is an O-type star with a spectral type of O(H).