The General Catalogue

[glenc (Glen)]

Sir John Herschel published the General Catalogue in 1864. It contained all the clusters and nebulae known at the time. The New General Catalogue, the NGC, replaced it in 1888.

Twelve people found most (98.5%) of the clusters and nebulae in the General Catalogue.
They were, and the number of General Catalogue objects they found;
William Herschel 2432, John Herschel 1580, James Dunlop 269, Heinrich Louis d'Arrest 93,
R J Mitchell 72, Bindon Blood Stoney 59, George Johnstone Stoney 43,
Charles Messier 38, Pierre Mechain 27, Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille 21,
Giovanni Battista Hodierna 12 and Caroline Herschel 10.

The following abbreviations are used below;
Galaxy Gx, Nebula Nb, Planetary nebula PN, Open cluster OC, Globular cluster GC

In about 1654 G B Hodierna found 10 OC, the Gx M33 and the Nb M8, from Sicily.
In 1751 and 1752 N-L de Lacaille found 14 OC, 4 GC, 2 Nb and the Gx M83 from Cape Town with a 0.5” refractor. He also catalogued 9766 southern stars and was the first to search the southern deep sky.

In 17 years between 1764 and 1781 Charles Messier found 15 GC, 10 Gx, 10 OC, 2 PN and the Nb M20.
Pierre Mechain found 18 Gx, 4 GC, 2 PN, the Nb M78 and the OC M103 between 1779 and 1782.
These two also searched for comets with 3.5” and 3” refractors from Paris.

In 23 years between 1779 and 1802 Sir William Herschel found an amazing 2175 Gx, 151 OC, 40 GC, 34 PN and 32 Nb. He used an 18.5” aperture speculum (an alloy of copper and tin) reflector, mostly at Slough, 35 km west of London.
His sister Caroline Herschel found 9 OC and the Gx NGC 253 with a 4.2” reflector between 1783 and 1787. Caroline also helped her brother William record his objects and sort his catalogues.

In just 7 months in 1826 James Dunlop found 151 OC, 47 Gx, 39 Nb, 28 GC and 4 PN with a 9” speculum reflector from Parramatta, NSW. He was the second man to search the southern deep sky.
In 15 years between 1823 and 1838 John Herschel found 1203 Gx, 310 OC, 37 Nb, 18 PN and 12 GC with his father’s 18.5” reflector; 423 objects from Slough and 1157 from Cape Town.
Dunlop and John Herschel found a large number of OC, GC and Nb in the Magellan Clouds, LMC and SMC.

J Stoney found 43 Gx between 1848 and 1850.
His younger brother B Stoney found 58 Gx and a Nb between 1850 and 1852.
R J Mitchell found 72 Gx between 1854 and 1858.
The last 3 men used the Leviathan of Parsonstown, a 72” aperture reflector at Birr Castle in Ireland.

Finally the German H L d’Arrest, found 92 Gx and a Nb between 1855 and 1863 with an excellent 11” refractor. He also helped discover Neptune.

The General Catalogue lists 4725 objects; 3749 Gx (79%), 672 OC, 123 Nb, 117 GC and 64 PN.
The NGC and IC catalogues added many more objects.

Refr http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/n...pl_Hist_GC.htm

[Startrek (Martin)]

Thanks Glen,
We certainly owe a debt of gratitude to these early pioneers of Astronomy spending countless hours scouring the night sky with primitive optics by today’s standards.
I still have yet to visit James Dunlops final resting place at St Paul’s Church Kincumber on the Central Coast NSW.
On my next trip north.

Martin

[glenc (Glen)]

The NGC was published in 1888
The 30 people in the attached file found 10 or more NGC objects.

Columns
Rank
The total number of objects found
Name of the Discoverer
Number of galaxies found
Number of nebulae found
Number of planetary nebulae found
Number of open clusters found
Number of globular clusters found
The apertures of the telescopes used in inches
The years when they found the objects
s means found with a spectroscope

Refr http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/n...Hist_NGCIC.htm

[glenc (Glen)]

Thanks Martin