| New General Catalogue (NGC) | |
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 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 68 million light years from Earth and can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Ursa Major.
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| Organization | William Herschel at the Dunsink Observatory of the Royal Astronomical Society |
| Data sources | William Herschel Birr Castle telescope Dunsink Observatory (revised by Sulentic and Tifft) |
| Goals | Survey of non-stellar objects |
| Data products | NGC Catalogue |
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Website
Revised New General Catalogue |
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The New General Catalogue (NGC) is a well-known catalogue of deep sky objects in astronomy. It contains 7,840 objects, known as the NGC objects. The NGC is one of the largest comprehensive catalogues, as it includes all types of deep space objects and is not confined to, for example, galaxies.
The catalogue was compiled in the 1880s by J. L. E. Dreyer using observations mostly from William Herschel and his son John, for total of 7,840 objects. Dreyer had already published an update to the Herschel's Catalogue of Nebulae, but a new update was turned down by the Royal Astronomical Society, who asked Dreyer to compile a New General Catalogue.
The NGC was later expanded with two Index Catalogues (IC I in 1896 & IC II in 1905), adding a further 5,326 objects. Most of these later discoveries had been made possible by the advent of photography.
Objects in the southern hemisphere sky are somewhat less thoroughly catalogued, but many were observed by John Herschel or James Dunlop. The NGC contained many errors, but a serious if not complete attempt to eliminate them has been undertaken by The NGC/IC Project www.ngcicproject.org, after partial attempts with the Revised New General Catalog (RNGC) by Sulentic and Tifft in 1973, and NGC2000.0 by Sinnott in 1988.
The NGC was published in the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society as "A New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, being the Catalogue of the late Sir John F.W. Herschel, Bart., revised, corrected, and enlarged." (Dreyer J. L. E., 1888, Mem. R. Astron. Soc., 49, 1-237).[1]
See also
- List of NGC objects
- General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters
- Index Catalogue
- Revised New General Catalogue
- Revised Index Catalogue
- Category:NGC objects
- Category:IC objects
External links
The NGC is referred to several times in various versions of Star Trek. See [1]
References
- ^ Dreyer, J. L. E. (1888). "A New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars,being the Catalogue of the late Sir John F.W. Herschel, Bart., revised, corrected, and enlarged.". Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society 49: 1–237. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1888MmRAS..49....1D.
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