Charles Messier made his famous catalog of 110 deep sky objects (DSO) from Paris in France. Most of these DSO were discovered by other observers but Messier found 41 objects himself between 1762 and 1781.
Unfortunately Messier’s catalog is not complete. The most southerly object is the cluster M7 with declination -34d 48m. The rich sky south of that was not visible from Paris and hence is missing from his catalog.
He also missed many objects north of declination -34d including: the open clusters (OC) NGC 869-884 and NGC 6633, the globular clusters (GC) NGC 6401 and NGC 6544, the nebulae (Neb) NGCs 281, 2174, 2237, 6992 and 7000, the planetary nebulae (PN) NGCs 1360, 2392, 3242 and 7293 and the galaxies (Gxy) NGCs 253, 2403, 2903, 3115, 3521 and 6946.
Messier’s 8” speculum mirror telescope was roughly equivalent to a modern 6” Newtonian telescope. If Messier had searched the whole sky carefully with a modern 6” Newtonian telescope he would have seen about 365 objects including the 110 in his own catalog.
The attached file contains an ALL SKY MESSIER CATALOG.
Again, a great resource.
I like the number, one for each day of the year!
Is this an extension of your Messier Like Objects i.e. intended to replace it?
Yes it replaces the Messier Like Objects, the main difference is the open clusters. I selected them again to make sure they were good.
Also I have spent years looking at nebulae with telescopes from California and Australia and picked the best ones.
The attached SkyMapPro map shows that congested area around RA 12.5 dec 12.5 at 7pm next new moon. North is down.
I usually start from rho Vir and move down to M60 then glide across to M98 via seven M galaxies.
The pages in the attached spreadsheet (see post #1) are:
Notes includes author, source, criteria, object counts and discoverer counts.
Intro, several pages explaining the reason for the catalog and its contents.
Messier Catalog, 109 objects
ASMC, An All Sky Messier Catalog, 364 objects
Map, a rough color coded map divides the sky into 24 parts.
OC, 80 open clusters were selected from this list of 187 OC using the magnitude 14 colour images of Desktop Universe.
GC, 78 globular clusters were selected from this list of 81 GC.
Neb, 40 nebulae were selected from this list of 164 nebulae. The author has observed nearly all of these nebulae from California and Australia.
PN, 35 Planetary nebulae were selected from this list of 48 PN. Small PN were not included.
Gxy, 131 galaxies were selected from this list of 137 galaxies. Galaxies with low surface brightness were not included.
RA dec, this page was used to make the "map"
The magnitude 9 globular cluster NGC 6355 lies just north of a long line of dark nebulae. (Barnard 59, 65, 66, 67, 78). Part of the dark nebula is visible in the attached wikisky.org image. The cluster is 22,200 light years away and 85' south of the magnitude 3.3 star theta Oph. It is one of the GC in the All Sky Messier Catalog.
Magnitude 10 NGC 4216 in Virgo is an edge on galaxy from the All Sky M Cat. It is one of 2109 galaxies discovered by William Herschel.
Its two companions NGC4206 and NGC 4222 are also edge on galaxies. The attached wikisky.org image is 56' x 56'.
Last night was magnificent, perfectly clear. I spent ages looking at the Milky Way with the naked eye, 20x80 binoculars and a 12" scope.
I estimate the brightest part of the Milky Way, in Sgr, to be magnitude 3. Our Galaxy is one of the objects in the All Sky M Cat.
This http://picasaweb.google.com/dunlop18...essierCatalog# has been updated with the addition of the PNs NGC 2440 and NGC 6302.
