New_General_Catalogue New_General_Catalogue

New General Catalogue - Definition and Overview

The New General Catalogue (NGC) is the most well-known catalogue of deep sky objects in amateur astronomy. It contains nearly 8,000 objects, known as the NGC objects. The NGC is one of the largest comprehensive catalogues, as it includes all types of deep sky objects (not specialised to just galaxies for instance).

 displays numerous spiral arms filled with bright stars, blue star clusters, and dark dust lanes. It spans about 30,000 light years, lies about 60 million light years from Earth and can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Ursa Major.
Enlarge
Spiral Galaxy NGC 3982 displays numerous spiral arms filled with bright stars, blue star clusters, and dark dust lanes. It spans about 30,000 light years, lies about 60 million light years from Earth and can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Ursa Major.

The catalogue was compiled in the 1880s by J. L. E. Dreyer using observations mostly from William Herschel, and then subsequently expanded with two Index Catalogues (IC I & IC II), adding nearly 5,000 objects.

Objects in the southern sky are somewhat less well catalogued but many were observed by John Herschel. The NGC contained many errors which have for the most part been eliminated by the Revised NGC.

Objects in the NGC with articles in Wikipedia

See also

External links

Copyright 2009 WordIQ.com - Privacy Policy  :: Terms of Use  :: Contact Us  :: About Us
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the this Wikipedia article.