Hi Reiner,

Like you, my regular observing site rarely has excellent seeing, so I have only "detected" IC 349 myself, and seeing structure was out of the question! I think it might be easier to see if an occulting bar is used, and I plan on trying this next time out.

There are not many realistic photos of this object because it is usually very overexposed in most pictures, but this one is close...

http://innerberg-astro.lima-city.de/...ebel/IC349.jpg