William Herschel discovered NGC 841 = H III-604 = St XIII-16 on 17 Jan 1787 (sweep 692) and commented "vF, stellar, confirmed 240x." His position (reduced by Caroline Herschel and Arthur Auwers) is just 4 seconds of RA west of UGC 1676 = PGC 8372. John Herschel assumed his father's discovery was the same as his h204, and so he equated H III-604 = h204 in the GC (501) and Dreyer equated H III-604 = h204 = GC 501 in the entry for NGC 841.

Édouard Stephan independently discovered NGC 841 on 24 Nov 1883 (he observed all 3 NGC galaxies here) with the 31" reflector at the Marseille Observatory and his position matches UGC 1676. Dreyer assumed this was new, so Stephan is credited with the discovery of NGC 841 in the NGC instead of WH. Malcolm Thomson discussed the identifications in Q. Jl R. astr. Soc. (1991), 32, 17-24. See Corwin's identification notes.

400/500mm - 17.5" (11/14/87): moderately bright, fairly small, slightly elongated NW-SE, very bright core, stellar nucleus. NGC 834 lies 11' NNW and UGC 1695 = (R)NGC 845 12' E. This galaxy is identified as NGC 841 in the RNGC, UGC, CGCG, MCG.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb