William Herschel discovered NGC 4660 = H II-71 = h1417 on 15 Mar 1784 (sweep 174) and simply noted as "S". There is nothing at CH's reduced position, but 40 sec of RA following and 3' south is UGC 7914. There are no other galaxies in the vicinity he might have picked up and several objects in the sweep have a poor RA. JH listed h1417 as a Nova in the Slough catalogue and described "vB; S; vsvmbM almost to a star." His position matches UGC 7914.

300/350mm - 13.1" (4/16/83): fairly bright, small, slightly elongated E-W, very small bright core. Located 25' SSE of M60.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb