William Herschel discovered NGC 3901 = H III-970 on 2 Apr 1801 (sweep 1096) and logged ""vF, pL, r." This is one of 15 far northern galaxies with large systematic errors. A corrected position matching UGC 6675 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. See NGC 2938 for more on sweep 1096 or Harold Corwin's full story in his notes for NGC 3752.

400/500mm - 18" (3/5/05): very faint, moderately large, low surface brightness, very weak concentration, elongated roughly 4:3 though it was difficult to pin down an orientation as the halo increased with averted vision.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb