Lewis Swift discovered IC 5226 = Sw. XII-39 on 6 Oct 1897 and reported, "eeeF, pL, R, no * nr, trapezium, nf of 2 [with IC 5225 = NGC 7294]. There is nothing at his position, but his RA for IC 5225 was 36 seconds of time too small (not an unusual error at the end of his career at age 77). It's reasonable to assume a similar offset for IC 5226, though there is nothing near this offset position. But Harold Corwin found that if Swift made another error of exactly 1° in declination (too far north), this corrected position matches ESO 533-045. Furthermore, the nearest star is about 4' away ("no * nr") and there are 4 stars to the southeast (including two 9th magnitude) matching his comment "trapezium". ESO, MCG and PGC don't assign IC 5226 to ESO 533-045, but NED and HyperLeda follow Corwin.

ESO 533-045 was discovered again on a plate taken between 1914-1916 with the 30" Reynolds reflector at the Helwan Observatory. It was reported as #248 in a list of 256 new nebulae published in 1921 and described as "F, pS, star surr. by atmosphere, another star 12 mag follows 40", edge of plate."

600/800mm - 24" (7/29/16): at 200x; fairly faint to moderately bright, moderately large, slightly elongated, 1.2'x1.0', sharply concentrated with a very small brighter nucleus, low surface brightness halo. With careful viewing the core extended into a bar, elongated 2:1 SW-NE. A mag 14.3 star is at the northeast edge. NGC 7294 lies 16.6' NNW.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb