NGC 2787 is a barred lenticular galaxy approximately 24 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. It was discovered on December 3, 1788 by German-born astronomer William Herschel. J. L. E. Dreyer described it as, "bright, pretty large, a little extended 90°, much brighter middle, mottled but not resolved, very small (faint) star involved to the southeast". The visible galaxy has an angular size of 2′.5 × 1′.5 and an apparent visual magnitude of 11.8.

This galaxy is small and isolated with a morphological classification of SB(r)0⁺, which indicates a barred spiral (SB) with a ring around the bar (r). Being a lenticular galaxy, it has the large halo of an elliptical galaxy. The disk is inclined at an angle of 58°±3° to the line of sight from the Earth, with the major axis aligned along a position angle of 110°±3°. The galaxy has an unusually high mass-to-light ratio, much greater than for a typical spiral galaxy. The distribution of the galaxy's neutral hydrogen forms a clumpy ring with a radius of 10.3 kpc, double that of the visible galaxy, with a mass of 5.5×10⁸ M_☉. This ring appears misaligned with the central disk.

NGC 2787 contains a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) at its core, which is a type of region that is characterized by its spectral line emission from weakly ionized atoms. LINERs are very common within lenticular galaxies, with approximately one-fifth of nearby lenticular galaxies containing LINERs. The supermassive black hole at the center has a mass of 4.1+0.4
−0.5×10⁷ M_☉. The central region of the galaxy contains dust rings that are tilted with respect to the disk, which may be the result of an encounter with another galaxy.