John Herschel discovered NGC 5045 = h3475 on 16 Jun 1835 and reported "A great cluster or a surprisingly rich portion of the milky way. It contains 34 stars 11m, and perhaps 150 or 200 of less magnitudes in the field." At his position (given here) is a rich milky way field, but no distinct cluster. The RNGC description is "NOCL?". SIMBAD gives a position 3 min of RA further west, though there is no cluster there either. Harold Corwin suggests NGC 5045 might be a duplicate observation of NGC 5155, nearly 10 min of RA following. JH's descriptions are quite similar, however both objects were recorded on the same sweep, so this would require some kind of mix-up on his part.

300/350mm - 14" (4/5/16 - Coonabarabran, 73x, 145x 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.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb