William Herschel discovered NGC 3500 = H III-968, along with H III-967, on 2 Apr 1801 (sweep 1096). He noted "Two, the 1st [NGC 3465] vF, vS. The 2nd [NGC 3500] eF and smaller than the first. It is a little more north and following, but very near to it." This is one of 15 far northern galaxies with large systematic errors A corrected position matching UGC 6090 was published in 1911 using plates taken at the Greenwich Observatory with the 30-inch reflector. Dreyer repeated this position in the notes to his 1912 edition of WH's catalogues. John Herschel assigned two GC designations to III-967 and III-968, but in the NGC Dreyer mistakenly assigned both to NGC 3500, calling it a "double nebula, very near." See NGC 2938 for more on this sweep. UGC 6090 is not labeled as NGC 3500 in any modern catalogue including RC3. RNGC classifies NGC 3500 nonexistent. CGCG, UGC and PGC equate [NGC 3465 = NGC 3500" (following Karl Reinmuth and Dorothy Carlson). See Harold Corwin's identification notes.

400/500mm - 17.5" (4/25/98): extremely faint, small, elongated 2:1 SW-NE, 30"x20". Faintest of trio with NGC 3465 9' W and NGC 3523 7' SE. A pair of mag 12 stars [30" separation] is 6' preceding. Observation difficult due to very poor transparency.

600/800mm - 24" (5/25/14): at 280x appeared faint or fairly faint, fairly small, elongated 2:1 SW-NE, 0.6'x0.3', very small brighter core. Second of three in the KTG 34 triplet, with NGC 3465 9.0' W and NGC 3523 7.0' SE. This galaxy's redshift-based distance is ~150 million l.y., while the other two lie at 325 million l.y.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb