William Herschel discovered NGC 925 = H III-177 = h222 on 13 Sep 1784 (sweep 271) and reported "vF, cL, iR, r, 2 or 3' diameter." On 11 Nov 1827 (sweep 100), John Herschel logged "pB; L; E; vgbM; among stars." Bindon Stoney, using the 72" on 14 Sep 1850, recorded "3' by 50", rather F dash of light; a conspicuous star nf the middle outside edge". The NGC position is accurate.

200/250mm - 8" (11/8/80): faint, fairly large, diffuse, irregular, elongated 2:1 NW-SE, even surface brightness. A mag 10 star is 3.5' S.

400/500mm - 17.5" (11/26/94): fairly bright, large, about 5' diameter although the halo is irregular. The core appears as a bright bar running through the center and elongated WNW-ESE with a fainter halo north and south of the bar. The bar is moderately concentrated and has a mottled texture. There is a strong impression of very faint extensions or arms that begin to hook north on the WNW end and south on the ESE ends of the bar. An extremely faint knot is just visible off the west side 3.3' from the center. This knot is an HII complex and association near the edge of a spiral arm and is catalogued as #120 in Hodge-Kennicutt's 1983 "An Atlas of H II regions in 125 galaxies". Several stars are near; a mag 10.5 star lies 3.4' S of center, two mag 12 stars are just north of the core 1.0' and 1.5' from the center and a wide pair of mag 12.5 star are 5' W. Member of the NGC 1023 Group.

600/800mm - 24" (1/25/14): on this observation I used 375x and focused on the HII regions in the spiral arms of NGC 925. [HK83] 120/121 was seen as an extremely faint, very small HII knot on the west end of NGC 925, 3.2' from center. This HII complex is near the western tip of the southern spiral arm, though I couldn't trace the arm itself as far this knot but a mag 14 star was identified 0.9' SSE.

[HK83] 44, a very faint 6" knot, was barely detached off the east end of the central bar. A second fainter and even smaller knot, [HK83] 46/49, was occasionally seen ~20" WNW, right at the tip of the bar. [HK83] 42, a faint 6" knot, was seen along the weak southern arm, 1.5' SE of center. The location was pinpointed just north of the midpoint of two mag 13.5/14.5 stars oriented E-W at 1.6' separation.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb