Quote:
Originally Posted by Rigel003
Having said that, I'd personally be happy if the Caldwell numbers would just die a quick death. What arrogance to add your name and new set of numbers to well known objects with perfectly good pre-existing NGC numbers - to the general confusion of all. That C number on my Nexstar handcontroller never gets punched, on principle.
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I totally concurr, however the pre-existing ngc numbers were, themselves compiled by Dryer from pre-existing catalogues from Herschal etc.
see:
http://www.ngcic.org/steinicke/HNGC/Historic_NGC.htm
This lists the discoverer and the year discovered for all ngc objects.
Dryer doesn't get too many against his name as discoverer. His catalogue is a comprehensive collection of non-stellar objects known up to that time (c 1880). As such, it is the source that should be quoted. There are some subsequent original catalogues (Trumpler, Collinder, P-K..) but the Caldwell is merely a list of "my favourite objects". As such it will never cover a lot of the good stuff that are observational favourites.
I think we need a counter-revolution and insist that the Hartung numbers be quoted for all deep sky objects when referring to them.
