"Historic GC" - Explanation
Dr. Wolfgang Steinicke
25 June 2024
The "Historic GC" contains John Herschel's "General Catalogue" (GC) of 1864 and its Supplement by J. L. E. Dreyer (GCS), published 1878. The GC-numbers were continued in the GCS. Alltogether we have 6251 entries.
General Catalogue (GC): Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars; Phil. Trans. 154, 1-137
GC-Supplement (GCS): Supplement to Sir John Herschel's "General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars"; Trans. Royal Irish Acad. XXVI, 381-426
The objects in my file are sorted by GC-number (see explanation of columns below). Click here for download (zipped xls-File). All information presented here is part of my scientific research. My book "Obervation and Cataloguing Nebulae and Star Clusters - from Herschel to Dreyer's New General Catalogue" contains more information about these data. It has been published in August 2010 (see here; a german version is on the market since January 2009).
All data are copyright by the author and, if used in a publication or in other datasets, must be credited properly (please inform me in any case). Please inform the author about any errors found in the dataset.
Columns in the "Historic GC"
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|
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| GC | John Hershel's catalogue number (starting in the GC and continued by Dreyer in the GCS) |
| Cat | Catalogue: 1 = GC (GC 1...GC 5057), 2 = GCS (GC 5080...GC 6250); additional objects: 1a = added in GC appendix (GC 5058...GC 5079), 2a = added in the GCS appendix (GC 6246...GC 6251) |
| Identity | Identity with other GC-number (inside GC and GCS or between them) |
| N | N = NGC, I = IC |
| NI | No. in NGC or IC |
| M | No. in Messier catalogue |
| Class | Designation in W. Herschel's catalogues (class and no.) |
| h | No. in J. Herschel's Slough and Cape catalogues |
| Au | No. in Auwer's list of new nebulae |
| Other | Other identification by John Herschel (sometimes wrong) |
| Discoverer | Name of discoverer |
| Y, M, D | Date of discovery |
| Ap | Aperture of discovery telescope (inch) |
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T
|
Type of discovery instrument: Rl = Reflector, Rr = Refractor, E = naked eye |
|
Observer1 & 2
|
Independent (later) discoverers |
|
RH ... DS
|
Rect. & Decl. for 2000.0 (from Revised NGC/IC) |
|
Vmag
|
Visual magnitude (from Revised NGC/IC) |
|
Con
|
Constellation (from Revised NGC/IC) |
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Type
|
Object type (from Revised NGC/IC) |
|
S
|
Object status: 1 = galaxy, 2 = galactic nebula, 3 = planetary nebula, 4 = open cluster, 5 = globular cluster, 6 = part of nebula, 7 = NGC dublicate, 9 = star(s), 10 = not found |
| ID1, ID2, ID3 | double identifications in NGC or IC |