220 Deep Sky Objects (DSO)
Listed by Glen Cozens
The Messier catalogue was made by Charles Messier (1730-1817) and Pierre Méchain (1744-1804) in Paris between 1758 and 1781. It contains 40 galaxies, 29 globular clusters, 26 open clusters, 8 nebulae and 4 planetary nebulae. All of them are north of declination minus 35 degrees.
This is an attempt to improve on the Messier catalogue. The attached catalogue covers the whole sky and has equal numbers of clusters and nebulae. It contains 60 galaxies, 40 globular clusters, 40 open clusters, 40 nebulae and 40 planetary nebulae.
The open clusters were chosen using Project Pluto’s
Guide Star Charts set to show stars to magnitude 15. The nebulae were chosen by examining images with
Aladin. Globular clusters, planetary nebulae and galaxies were chosen using Dr Wolfgang Steinicke’s NGC and IC database. Objects were listed by magnitude then by size and the best were chosen each time. M45 and the LMC were added, they are not in the NGC catalogue.
I observe with a 30cm Dobsonian telescope from NE NSW and have been making DSO lists for more than 40 years. My PhD was on the first three catalogues of southern DSO.
References
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/s...ier-catalogue/
https://www.projectpluto.com/
https://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinLite/
http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/ngcic_e.htm