Deep Sky collections and catalogs

Deep Sky collections and catalogs similar to Messier’s

This list is also available in a slightly more

systematically organized format

Besides the more comprehensive professional catalogs which came into use

after Messier’s list, several similar

lists have been compiled, first because Messier had not captured all

showpieces even in the Northern skies (he simply cataloged what came into

his field of view, more or less by chance, and what he could measure),

and he never went to the Southern hemisphere (not even to latitudes south

of Paris, which is at about 49 degrees Northern latitude).

This lack of completeness, connected with a certain arbitrariness, gave rise

to several people to fill in with similar object collections, although these

are not of the same importance in

history.

Some of these catalogs are available online and listed below:

Objects, especially those which are fainter and less suited for amateur

observations, are often designated by catalog numbers from professional catalogs;

look at a list of some common deep sky catalogs.

If you know of further collections of Deep Sky objects suited for amateur

observing (or “work-thru”) please email me.


Hartmut Frommert

([email protected])

Christine Kronberg

([email protected])

[SEDS]

[MAA]

[Home]

[Indexes]

Last Modification: 8 Feb 1998, 20:00 MET

Scroll to Top