NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 5045 may be NGC 5155, but is more likely the cloud of stars, 20 arcmin by 11 arcmin, centered just west of his position. JH describes this as "A great cluster, or a surprisingly rich portion of the milky way. It contains 34 stars 11m, and perhaps 150 or 200 more of less magnitudes in the field." Earlier, I had written, "There is nothing at his position matching this description, but 10 minutes of time following is NGC 5155, a large Milky Way star cloud, nearly a degree across, that could well have been seen by JH. [However,] he picked this up in the same sweep as NGC 5155 (which see), so I'm not convinced that he in fact made a 10 minute error." Looking again at the original DSS V image, and the DSS2 R image, the cloud of stars near JH's position for NGC 5045 is backed up by a rich star field that obscures the brighter stars to some extent. Counting those brighter stars gives close to the same number that JH has in his note, so I am going to take this as his object.

===== NGC 5045 14" (4/5/16 - Coonabarabran, 71x, 142x and 230x): at the NGC position is a very rich Milky Way collection of stars; at least 150 stars were counted in a 15' to 18' region, including mag 6.8 HD 115400 at the southeast edge. The other stars are mag 10 and fainter, except for a mag 9.4 star on the southwest side. At lowest power, another 15'x5' (elongated NW-SE) bright, scattered group also caught my attention. It is situated to the southwest of the NGC star cloud and contains many more brighter stars. Mag 7 HD 114886 is on its southeast end, along with at least a half-dozen additional mag 8-9 stars.