William Herschel discovered NGC 3917 = H II-824 = h994 on 17 Mar 1790 (sweep 946) and recorded "'B, mE, about 6' l and 2' br." CH's reduced position is 5' north of UGC 6815 and the description matches perfectly. JH made a single observation and logged "F; vmE; vgbM; 150" l, 30" br." Although he equated h994 with II-824 in the Slough Catalogue, he assigned a separate GC designation to II-824 and placed it 1° too far north. The two GC designations were combined by Dreyer in the NGC.

The RA in the RNGC is 0.7 min of RA too far east. There is a similar offset for NGC 3921 located 3° north. Listed in my RNGC Corrections #3.

400/500mm - 17.5" (3/19/88): moderately bright, large, very elongated 4:1 WSW-ENE, broad concentration without a distinct nucleus. Two stars are off the south edge; a mag 13.5 star 1.3' S and a mag 14 star 1.3' SE of center. I missed the 16th magnitude flat galaxy UGC 6802 6.2' WNW. NGC 3917 is a member of the NGC 3992 (M109) group = LGG 258.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb