The Amateur Astronomer's Guide to the Deep-Sky Catalogs

387 Pages·2012·2.25 MB·English

by  Jerry D. Cavin (auth.)

Patrick Moore’s Practical Astronomy Series
For further volumes:
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The Amateur
Astronomer’s
Guide to the
Deep-Sky
Catalogs
Jerry D. Cavin
Jerry D. Cavin
Austin, TX, USA
[email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4614-0655-6 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-0656-3
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0656-3
Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011936008
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
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Cover illustrations:
Top left: Johann Elert Bode, German astronomer.
Top right: John Louis Emil Dreyer.
Bottom left: Sir William Herschel, , as depicted in the book Sir William Herschel, His Life and Works
by Edward Singleton Holden (W. H. Allen & Co, 13 Waterloo Place, S W, London, (1881), Frontispiece.
Bottom right: Tycho Brahe, illustration from J. L. E. Dreyer biography of his fellow countryman Tycho
Brahe – A Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century (1890).
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
This book provides an introduction to a few of the historical deep space sky
catalogs. It is intended to provide amateur astronomers with historical information
and the catalog entries with coordinates. In some cases, the information recorded in
the original catalog have been omitted to allow the contents to be formatted prop-
erly on the page. To this end, I have chosen to keep the data that will allow the
amateur the enjoyment of observing the objects of each catalog.
Almost 2,000 years of historical catalogs are covered in this book. Chapter One
describes Ptolemy’s Almagest created in a. d. 140, and Chapter Twelve describes the
Caldwell Catalog created in 1995. In choosing the set of catalogs used in this book,
I provided what I thought the most interesting historic catalogs. I apologize if I have
omitted to list and describe your favorite. The history of astronomy is rich with many
catalogs that equally deserve to be noted, and it is nearly impossible to include all here.
I would like to thank the many people who helped during the preparation of this
book. The idea for writing this book came in part from the many research papers
I wrote in earning my Master of Science in Astronomy at the Swinburne University
of Technology Astronomy Online Program. My sincere thank you goes out to the
many Swinburne professors and astronomers who taught me over the years. I would
like to the thank the many people who provided the information used to compile
the catalogs documented in these chapters, including Joerg Schlimmer, Carol
Huston, Neda Mobara, Brenda Branchett and Carol Iorg, of the Astronomy League;
Dennis Duke, Professor of Physics at the Florida State University; Dennis J Webb,
co-author of the book The Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, and Robert Erdmann of
the NGC/IC Project. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Halima, my daughter
Sheila, and my son Zachariah for understanding and accepting the private time
I needed to compile and write this book.
Jerry D. Cavin
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About the Author
Jerry Cavin first turned to amateur astronomy while growing up under the dark
skies of Iowa. After leaving the farm, he completed a BS in Computer Science with
a minor in Electrical Engineering at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He
worked for 10 years as the Lead Software Engineer at the Control Data Corporation
specializing in real time control systems. After getting married he moved to Austin,
Texas and spent over 15 years at the University of Texas at Austin working as
a Research Scientist Associate on electronic warfare systems and 6 years at
Overwatch Systems.
He is currently working as a Quality Engineer at Bridge360 on a wide variety of
software projects. He has recently completed his second MSc degree in Astronomy
at the Swinburne Astronomy Online, via the Swinburne University of Technology
located in Melbourne, Australia.
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Contents
1 Claudius Ptolemy and the Almagest ....................................................... 1
Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 200–126 bc) ...................................................... 1
Claudius Ptolemaeus (ad 90–ad 160) ....................................................... 2
2 The Abd-Al-Rahman Al-Sufi Catalog .................................................... 43
3 Ulugh Beg .................................................................................................. 51
4 The Tycho Brahe Catalog (1598) ............................................................ 55
5 The Johannes Hevelius Catalog .............................................................. 83
6 The Charles Messier Catalog .................................................................. 123
7 The Johann Elert Bode Catalog .............................................................. 131
8 Christian Mayer Catalog ......................................................................... 137
9 The Herschel Catalogs ............................................................................. 143
William Herschel ....................................................................................... 143
Caroline Herschel ....................................................................................... 146
John Herschel ............................................................................................. 147
Alexander Herschel .................................................................................... 148
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