History

In 1956 the German-American astronomer Erika Böhm-Vitense discovered three new planetary nebulae during a study of extragalactic nebulae at Lick Observatory. This nebula here was the first listed in table V of her publication, hence the designations Böhm Vitense 5-2, BV 5-2, or also sometimes just BV 2. The other ones on this list were BV 5-1 and BV 5-3. ^[548]

In the late 1950-ies the American astronomer Stewart Sharpless discovered this nebula on the 48 inch Schmidt telescope photo plates of the «Palomar Observatory Sky Survey». He misidentified it as H-II region and listed it as number 179 (official designation Sh2-179) in his 1959 published catalogue of 313 H-II regions. ^[310]