https://github.com/DeepskyLog/DeepskyLog/wiki/Deep-sky-Catalogues
[/url]Deep sky Catalogues Deep sky objects are identified by their index number in one or more astronomical catalogues. Classic catalogues like those from Charles Messier (M) or Dreyer's New General Catalogue (NGC) were based on visual observation and list a variety of object types, including some of the most famous objects in the sky.
Now, many more astronomical catalogues exist that usually are the result of an astronomical survey dedicated to specific types of objects. These surveys were no longer made by visual observation and some of these surveys may list objects that cannot even be detected with optical telescopes. DeepskyLog aims to identify objects for visual observation by their index number in the catalogues most commonly used in amateur astronomy.
In addition to astronomical catalogues, DeepskyLog includes some popular observing programs like Caldwell or the Herschel 400 as 'catalogues', as well as objects named after their discoverer.
Alphabetical Listing | Popular Catalogues | Visual Catalogues | Non-visual Catalogues |
Galactic Nebula | Dark Nebula | Open Clusters | Planetary Nebula | Stars | Globular Clusters | Galaxies | Galaxy Clusters
Alphabetical Listing CatalogueFull NamePrimary type of objectsObjectsPublished | Abell | Abell Catalog of planetary nebula | planetary nebulae | 86 | 1966 | | ADS | Aitken New General Catalogue of double stars | double stars | 17.180 | 1932 | | AG | Astronomische Gesellschaft Katalog | stars | 183.145 | 1890, 1951, 1975 | | AGC | Abell Catalog of Rich Clusters of Galaxies | galaxy clusters | 4.073 | 1958, 1989 | | Alessi |
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| | Arp | Arp Atlas of peculiar galaxies | galaxies | 338 | 1966 | | ASCC | All-Sky Compiled Catalogue | open clusters | 130 | 2005 | | B | Barnard Catalogue of 369 Dark Objects in the Sky | dark nebulae | 369 | 1927 | | Bark | Barkhatova | open clusters |
| 1927 | | Basel | Basel Astronomical Institute catalogue | open clusters | 20 | 1971 | | Berk | Berkeley Open Cluster Catalogue | open clusters | 104 | 1958 | | Biur | Biurakan Astrophysical Observatory Catalogue | open clusters | 13 | 1959 - 1960 | | Bl | Blanco | open clusters |
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| | Bo | Bochum | open clusters |
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| | C | Caldwell list | various | 109 | 1995 | | Ced | Cederblad catalogue of bright diffuse nebula | galactic nebulae |
| 1946 | | CGCG | Catalogue of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies | galaxies, galaxy clusters | 29.418 | 1961-1968 | | Cr | Per Collinder's catalogue of open clusters | open clusters | 471 | 1931 | | Cz | Czernik | open clusters | 45 | 1966 | | Do | Dolidze | open clusters | 57 | 1966 | | DoDz | Dolidze/Dzimselejsvili | open clusters | 11 |
| | DWB | Dickel, Wendker, Bieritz: The Cygnus X region | galactic nebulae | 193 | 1969 | | ESO | ESO / Uppsala survey of the ESO (B) Atlas | galaxies, planetary nebulae, clusters | 18.000 | 1974 - 1981 | | Fr | Frolov | open clusters |
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| | G | Globular Clusters from the Atlas of the Andromeda Galaxy | globular clusters | 355 | 1981 - 1983 | | H | Harvard | open clusters |
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| | H400 | Herschel 400 observing program | various | 400 | 1980 | | HCG | Hickson's Compact Groups of Galaxies | galaxy groups | 463 | 1982 | | HII | Herschel II observing program | various | 400 | 1997 | | IC | Index Catalogue | various | 5.386 | 1895 - 1908 | | King | King | open clusters |
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| | LBN | Lynds' catalogue of Bright Nebula | galactic nebulae |
| 1965 | | LDN | Lynds' catalogue of Dark Nebula | dark nebulae | 1.802 | 1962 | | LEDA | Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database: see PGC | galaxies | 73.197 | 1983 | | M | Messier | various | 110 | 1774 - 1781 | | Mel | Melotte | open and globular clusters | 245 | 1915 | | Mi | Minkowski's bright and planetary nebula | galactic nebulae |
| 1946 - 1948 | | Mrk | Markarian | open clusters |
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| | NGC | New General Catalogue | various | 7.480 | 1888 | | Pal | Palomar Globular Clusters | globular clusters | 15 |
| | PGC | Principal Galaxies Catalogue | galaxies | 983.261 | 1989, 2003 | | Pismis | Pismis | open clusters |
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| | Rose | Rose catalogue of southern clusters of galaxies | galaxy clusters | 124 | 1976 | | Roslund | Roslund | open clusters | 7 | 1930 | | Ru | Ruprecht | open clusters | 116 | 1966 | | Sh2 | Sharpless list of H-II regions | galactic nebulae | 313 | 1959 | | Simeis | Simeis observatory catalogue of emission nebula | emission nebulae | 306 | 1955 | | Stock | Stock | open clusters | 24 | 1956 - 1970 | | Ter | Terzan | globular clusters | 11 | 1966 - 1971 | | Tom | Tombaugh | open clusters | 5 | 1938 | | Tr | Trümpler | open clusters | 37 | 1930 | | UGC | Uppsala General Catalogue of galaxies | galaxies | 12.921 | 1973 | | vdBC | van den Bergh | stars with nebulosity | 158 | 1966 | | 2MASX |
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Popular Catalogues M: Messier List Charles Messier (26 June 1730 – 12 April 1817) was a French astronomer and comet hunter. Using a 100mm refractor in Paris, his discovered 13 comets, but he is more famous today for the catalogue he compiled of fixed diffuse objects that could be mistaken for comets. The first edition of Messier's catalogue was published in 1774 and contained 45 objects, including 28 objects that were previously observed by other astronomers (like M45: the Pleiades). His final version was published in 1781 and included 103 objects. However, in the 20th century observation of seven more objects was attributed to Messier or his assistant Pierrre Méchain, so these objects were added to the now-used Messier list of 110 objects.
C: Caldwell List The Caldwell Catalogue is a popular summary list of 109 deep sky objects, copyrighted by Sir Patrick Moore and Sky and Telescope in 1995. The list was compiled as a complement to the Messier Catalogue, specifically intented for observation by amateur astronomers. It includes objects from both northern and southern hemisphere.
NGC: New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars The NGC is the direct successor to William Herschel's Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (CN), first published in 1786, and his son John Herschel's General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (GC), published in 1864. The NGC was compiled by John Dreyer on request of the Royal Astronomical Society as a revised, corrected and enlarged version of these then-famous catalogs and was first published in 1888. It lists 7840 objects assembled from numerous reports of observations made with many and very different telescopes. Despite Dreyer's meticulous work, the original NGC had several errors, which were reviewed and corrected by the NGC/IC Project and published as the Revised NGC/IR (RNGC, RIC)
IC: Index Catalogue The first Index Catalogue summarised all new 'nebulae' of which locations and descriptions had been published from 1887 to 1894. The second Index Catalogue contained objects found in the years 1895 to 1907. Both Catalogues were published by John Dreyer as supplements to his NGC, adding an additional 5386 objects.
H400: the Herschel 400 program In 1980, the Ancient City Astronomy Club in St. Augustine, Florida, selected 400 Objects from William Herschel's catalogues of the late 1700's as an observing project after completion of the Messier List. The program is meant to be an advanced project for amateurs who already have a fair degree of deep-sky experience. The program has a few Messier objects in the listings, along with most of the brighter deep-sky objects that did not find their way into Messier's Catalog. However, beyond these few bright ones, the rest of the Herschel Program objects are faint and inconspicuous. Under good dark skies, you should be able to complete the program with a 6" telescope.
HII: the Herschel II program This is an observing program created by the Astronomical League in 1997, and is considered to be the next level observing project after the Herschel 400 program. The 400 objects in this program are selected from William Herschel's catalogues and consist of 323 galaxies, 41 open clusters, 21 nebulae, 9 planetary nebula, 3 cluster-nebula, and 3 globular clusters. Most of the objects are between magnitude 11 and 13. While an 8" aperture scope under good dark skies will be able to do a good portion of the list, a 10" aperture scope or larger is generally needed to complete the whole program.
Visual Catalogues Galactic Nebula Ced: Cederblad A Catalogue of bright diffuse Galactic nebulae compiled when investigating the spatial distribution and the geometrical properties of bright diffuse Galactic nebulae. It is a mostly complete compilation of the knowledge about bright galactic nebulae around 1945.
DWB: Dickel, Wendker, Bieritz: The Cygnus X Region A catalogue published in 1969 of 193 H� emission nebula in the western half of the Cygnus X region. It contains positions, shapes and surface brightnesses in H� of these nebulae. [Cygnus-X is one of the richest known regions of star formation in the Galaxy, located around Gamma Cygni (Sadr). Currently as many as 800 distinct H II regions are identified]
LBN: Lynds, Catalogue of Bright Nebula A Catalogue of bright nebulae compiled in 1965 from a study of the red and blue, 48-inch Palomar Sky Survey prints. The catalogue contains all bright diffuse objects which presumably belong to our Galaxy (as of 1965). An effort was made to exclude all known planetary nebula. The catalogue contains known supernova remnants, reflection nebula, and the standard H II emission nebula.
Mi: Minkowski Rudolph Minkowski headed the National Geographic Society – Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, a photographic atlas of the entire northern sky (and down to declination -22°) up to magnitude 22. Starting in 1946, he published several lists of bright and planetary nebula. So Mi 1-92 ('Minkowski's footprint', a protoplanetary nebula) is the 92nd object in his first list.
Sh2: Sharpless A catalogue of 313 H II regions north of declination -27°, based on the National Geographic-Palomar Sky Atlas made with the 48-inch Schmidt telescope. The catalogue attempted to be complete and to exclude reflection nebulae on the basis of a comparison of the red and blue photographs. The original list of 1953 had 142 objects, which are also included in the final list of 1959.
Simeis: Simeis observatory catalogue of emission nebula This is a catalogue of emission nebula, compiled in 1955 by the Ukrainian astronomers V.F. Gaze and G.A. Shajn at the Simeis observatory on the Krim. The catalogue was published in the bulletin of the Krim Astrophysical Observatory and lists 306 diffuse objects, mainly in the northern hemisphere. Notable objects that are still regularly indicated by their entry in this catalogue are Simeis 147 (Spaghetti Nebula) and Simeis 57 ( the Propeller Nebula).
vdB: van den Bergh A Catalogue of 158 stars north of -33° which are surrounded by reflection nebulosity visible on both the blue and red prints of the Palomar Sky Survey.
Dark Nebula B: Barnard, catalogue of 369 Dark Objects in the Sky Edward Emerson Barnard (1857 - 1923) was a gifted observational astronomer who discovered 15 comets. He was a pioneering astrophotographer, using amoung others the Yerkes 40" refractor. In 1916 he was the first to measure the high proper motion of a red-dwarf star that was subsequently named 'barnard star' in his honour. Following an early version published in 1919 with 182 objects, Barnard's final list of dark nebula was published in 1927, 4 years after his death.
LDN: Lynds, Catalogue of Dark Nebula In 1962, Beverly T. Lynds published a catalogue of 1802 dark nebula using the National Geographic-Palomar Sky Atlas, located north of -33°. Lynds remarks that in some instances, it was very difficult to be certain that the density fluctuations of an emission nebula were actually caused by an absorbing cloud. Dark cloud catalogues don't fully compare.
Open clusters Alessi: ASCC: Galactic open clusters from the All-Sky Compiled Catalogue List of 130 open clusters, found in the All-Sky Compiled Catalogue of 2.5 million stars (ASCC-2.5). The lists contains 109 new open clusters, and confirmed 21 others.
Bark: Barkhatova During his investigation of other open clusters, Russian astronomer Barkhatova identified additional clusters.
Basel: Basel Catalogue of 20 open clusters discovered at the Basel Astronomical Institute. Basel 1, 2, 3: Grubissich, C., 1965; Basel 4: Svolopoulos, S.N., 1965; Basel 5-20: Becker, W. and Fenkart, R., 1971. Basel 11 is divided into 2 clusters A and B. The institute itself uses the abbreviation Ba.
Berk: Berkeley Open Cluster Catalogue This Catalogue consists of 104 open star clusters, 88 of which were originally published in 1958 by Gosta Lynga of the university of California in Berkeley. Only 21 of these clusters are also included in other catalogues, including 5 NGC and 1 IC object. Berk 42 (= NGC 6749) is now classified as a globular cluster, one of the most difficult NGC globulars in the sky.
Biur: Biurakan Catalogue of 13 open clusters listed in 1959 - 1960 by the Biurakan Astrophysical Observatory in Armenia. B.E. Markarian is amoung this institute's most famous astronomers. Biur 6 seems to be unrecorded.
Cr: Collinder Is a catalogue of 471 objects published in 1931 by Per Collinder in the annals of the Observatory of Lund (Sweden). The intention was to list, classify, describe and give their index in preceding catalogues (NGC, Tr, Hol, Mel, ..) of open clusters known to that date.
Cz: Czernik In 1966, Mieczyslaw Czernik of the astronomical observatory of the Warsaw University published a list of 45 open clusters not registered in the catalogue of Star Clusters and Associations. The clusters were found on the charts of the Palomar Sky Atlas.
Do: Dolidze In 1966, Russian astronomer Madona V. Dolidze of the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory (Georgia) listed 57 open star clusters based on emission-line spectral surveys done with a 70cm f/3 Maksutov astrograph. Later, he and G. N. Dzhimshelejshvili published a follow-up list of 11 additional clusters (see DoDz). Only a few of the Do / DoDz objects are physical clusters.
DoDz: Dolidze/Dzhimshelejshvili Follow-up list to the Dolidze list (see Do), made by russian astronomers Madona V. Dolidze and G. N. Dzhimshelejshvili It contains 11 additional clusters.
King: In 1949, the Americal astronomer Ivan King found several new galactic clusters during examination of photographs made with the Great Metcalf Refractor (16") of Harvard College Observatory. He identified 12 clusters as "certain physical clusters" and another 9 as "suspected clusters".
Mel: Melotte Catalogue of Star Clusters The English amateur astronomer John Franklin-Adams (1843–1912) created an early photographic atlas of the sky, based on plates taken at Johannesburg, South Africa, and Godalming, England. It was published posthumously in 1913–1914 and contains 206 charts covering the whole sky, each 15° square, and showing stars as faint as 17th magnitude. Philibert Jacques Melotte scanned the Franklin-Adams chart plates for star clusters and published his catalogue of 245 objects in 1915. The Melotte catalogue contains both open clusters and globular clusters. (from DeepskyPedia)
Roslund As a by-product of a survey of stars of high luminosity in the northern Milky Way, Curt Roslund of the Warner and Swasey Observatory published a list of 7 new clusters, all located in a small region in Cygnus, Sagittarius and Vulpecula.
Ru: Ruprecht Czech astronomer Jaroslav Ruprecht was appointed by the International Astronomical Union to gather all available information about OB associations and publish a definitive list. He gathered information from several observatories, classified all known clusters in the Trumpler's system and concluded that 852 objects were very probably real open clusters, while doubting the reality of 116 other objects. Within this catalogue there are 176 new open clusters: the majority being unique objects, not listed before his publication.
Stock: Stock In the 1950's, Jürgen Stock gave papers on photographic photometry of open clusters, photometry of stars in the North Polar Sequence, and the discovery of 21 sparse clusters in the northern Milky Way, well known since as the Stock clusters. Stock subsequently played a key role in establishing mayor observatories in South Amerika. In the early 1960's, he was asked by the university of Chicago to test sites in Chile to put up a 1.5 m telescope in the southern hemisphere. The result was a three-year trip, and ultimately the world's largest collection of astronomical instruments now being in Chile.
Tom: Tombaugh Best known for his discovery of Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh identified 5 new open clusters when examining the photographic plates of the 13" Lawrence Lowell astrograph. Later, Tombaugh 3 later prooved to be a re-observation of IC 166.
Tr: Trümpler Robert Julius Trumpler was a Swiss-American astronomer, who worked at both Allegheny and Lick observatory. He is best known for his observation that the brightness of distant open clusters was lower than expected, caused by absorption of light through interstellar dust. In that same year, 1930, he published an analysis of 334 open star clusters in which he included 37 clusters that were not yet formally listed at that time. These are now identief as Trümpler clusters.
Planetary Nebula Abell: Abell Catalog of Planetary Nebulae This is a list of 86 planetary nebula identified by George Abell on the plates of the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. Abell 11, 32, 76, 85 were later not confirmed as planetary nebula. Notable entries include the Medusa Nebula (Abell 21) and Abell 39. This list is not to be confused with the Abell catalogue of rich clusters of galaxies (acronym AGC or AGO).
Stars ADS: Aitken, New general catalogue of Double Stars Catalogue of 17.180 double stars north of declination -30°, compiled by Robert Grant Aitken in 1932. It was a successor to the Burnham Double Star Catalogue.
Globular Clusters G: Globular Clusters in M31, from the Atlas of the Andromeda Galaxy Edwin Hubble was the first to provisionally identify 140 nebulous objects in M31 as globular clusters, using the 100" Mount Wilson telescope (bibcode 1932ApJ....76...44H). As of 2012, 245 globular clusters have been confirmed, but many more candidates are listed. Among amateur astronomers, the most-used reference is the Atlas of the Andromeda Galaxy by Paul W. Hodge published in 1981. It indicates the location of 355 globular clusters on plates of the 4m Kitt Peak telescope, preceded by the letter 'G'.
Pal: Palomar Globular Clusters The Palomar Clusters were discovered on the plates of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. They were catalogued by George Abell but naming them Palomar should probably be credited to Helen Sawyer Hogg. The initial list included just 13 clusters with Pal 14 and Pal 15 added later.
Galaxies Arp : Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies In 1959, Vorontsov and Velyaminov catalogued 355 peculiar galaxies based on the first Palomar Sky Survey. Halton Arp had the opportuniy to turn the 200-inch individually on the most interesting objects. In 1966 he compiled this atlas of 338 objects with the aim to present a number of examples of various kinds of peculiar galaxies. The atlas displays them in groupings that appear roughly similar, thereby furnishing also a rough, initial classification. Mr. Arp's hope was to clarify the workings of galaxies themselves, to reveal physical processes and how they operate in galaxies, and ultimately to furnish a better understanding of the workings of the universe as a whole.
The original Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is reproduced on Caltech's Level 5.
CGCG : Catalogue of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies Also known as the Zwicky Galaxy Catalog (ZWG) or "The Red Book". This catalogue was compiled by the swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky and his team, published in 6 volumes between 1961 and 1968. The full catalogue contains 29.418 Galaxies and 9.134 Clusters recorded on plates of the Palomar sky survey. The purpose was to cover all galaxies brighter than 15.5mag north of declination -30°.
ESO : ESO / Uppsala survey of the ESO (B) Atlas of the southern sky In the1970's, two new large Schmidt telescopes had been installed in the southern hemispere: the ESO 1m Schmidt telescope in La Silla (Chili), and the SRC (UK) 48" Schmidt telescope in Siding Spring (Australia). These covered the part of the sky not researched by the Palomar Schmidt telescope. In a joint program with ESO, the Uppsala Observatory (Sweden) performed a systematic research of 606 deep photographic plates for NGC+IC galaxies, all galaxies larger than 1,0', all disturbed galaxies, all star clusters in the Budapest Catalogue and all listed planetary nebula. The numbering first indicates the photographic plate number, then the object number on that plate. The nine lists of the ESO/Uppsala survey comprise about 18.000 objects.
PGC: Principal Galaxy Catalogue The original version of this catalogue was published by Georges Paturel (Observatory of Lyon), Lucie Bottinelli, Lucienne Gouguenheim and Pascal Fouqué (Observatory of Parijs). It contained detailed data on 73.197 objects and was the basis for the LEDA (Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic DAtabase). In 2003, the PGC was extended to include 983.261 confirmed galaxies brighter than a blue magnitude of 18 and now constitutes the framework of the HYPERLEDA database. The PGC is a primary resource for current data on galaxies, including galaxy designations from 50 catalogues.
UGC: Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies A survey of 12.921 galaxies completed by Peter Nilson of the Swedish Uppsala observatory in 1973, mainly based on Palomar Sky Survey prints. It was designed to be essentially complete to the limiting diameter 1'.0 on the blue prints; it also includes all galaxies to the limiting apparent magnitude 14.5 (even those smaller than 1`.0) in the Catalogue of Galaxies and of Clusters of Galaxies (CGCG) and covers the northern hemisphere (above declination -2,5°).
Galaxy Groups and Clusters AGC: Abell Catalog of rich clusters of galaxies This catalogue is the best known work of George O. Abell. The original catalogue of 1958 listed 2712 rich clusters of at galaxies, found during the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey on plates taken with the 48" Schmidt telescope. The catalog was subsequently extended to include clusters at the southern hemisphere, collected from a survey of UK 1.2m Schmidt telescope and now includes 4073 galaxy clusters with at least 30 members.
HCG: Hickson's Compact Groups of Galaxies Paul Hickson published data on 463 galaxies in 100 compact groups of galaxies that were identified by a systematic search of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey red prints. Each group contains four or more galaxies, has an estimated mean surface brightness brighter than 26.0 magnitude per arcsec^2 and are isolated from other galaxies.
The full atlas of compact groups can be found in Bibcode 1993ApL....29....1H. Other original references are:
R: Rose catalogue of southern clusters of galaxies In 1976, J.A. Rose from Yale University Observatory published a catalogue of 124 probable rich clusters of galaxies in selected areas around the south galactic pole? The clusters were found on the blue plates of the Yale-Colombia proper motion programme, and was part of a programme to locate southern peculiar and interacting galaxies and compact groups of galaxies in addition to rich clusters of galaxies.
Non-visual Catalogues [url=https://github.com/DeepskyLog/DeepskyLog/wiki/Deep-sky-Catalogues#ter-terzan-]Ter: Terzan French Astronomer Agop Terzan discovered 11 globular clusters in the infrared. They are all heavily obscured and situated near the Galactic Center. The original Terzan 11 was a rediscovery of Terzan 5; newer lists therefore renumber the original Terzan 12 as Terzan 11. Terzan 7 and 8 are probably members of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy.
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