index

2000+

The Advanced Amateur Astronomer's

Field Guide to Deep Sky Observing

Database & Sky Atlas

Two thousand and ninety-two (2092) listings describing nearly three thousand "Deep Sky Objects" for naked-eye, binocular, and telescope observation &mdash colorful stars and star-combos, asterisms, double and multiple stars, variable stars, galactic and globular star clusters, galaxies, galaxy clusters, emission and reflection nebulae, dark nebulae &mdash each a mote of the immense, rich treasure of the night sky well beyond the solar system. Coverage includes the entire night sky, from pole to pole.*

compiled and presented by

Tomm Lorenzin

and

Unauthorized reproduction of any of this web site's content is prohibited. Ask, and you shall (probably) receive.

Please see IMPORTANT DISPLAY NOTE below.

The R.A. table below presents links to each of the 48 catalog pages. Each page contains all of the objects in the catalog that have the Right Ascension range specified from 00:00.0 to 23:59.9. All of the sky's 24 hours are represented in 1/2-hour segments; ergo - there are 48 pages. For instance, all objects - from pole to pole - with a range from R.A. 13:00 to R.A. 13:30 are contained in R.A. 13:00 to 13:30. The catalog lists the R.A. and declination for each object, then the primary designation under "Object," then the "Type" of object that it is, then the constellation in which the object is found: "Const." If there is a secondary designation for the object, it will be found under "Other Name."

The final two categories are Map(s) and "Binoc.?" Map designations are for the The 2000+ Sky Atlas which more-or-less follows the star atlas convention of 8 maps covering the entire sky with generous overlap as follows:

NCP = North Circum Polar: +90 degrees declination to +50 degrees, all 24 hours of Right Ascension

0Hr = -60 degrees to +60 degrees, R.A. 21:30 to R.A. 02:30

4Hr = -60 degrees to +60 degrees, R.A. 01:30 to R.A. 06:30

8Hr = -60 degrees to +60 degrees, R.A. 05:30 to R.A. 10:30

12Hr = -60 degrees to +60 degrees, R.A. 09:30 to R.A. 14:30

16Hr = -60 degrees to +60 degrees, R.A. 13:30 to R.A. 18:30

20Hr = -60 degrees to +60 degrees, R.A. 17:30 to R.A. 22:30

SCP = South Circum Polar: -90 degrees declination to -50 degrees, all 24 hours of Right Ascension

PLEASE NOTE: By convention and to avoid confusion with stars, the decimal points are omitted from the vMag numbers on the following two charts.

NCP-LM = Visual magnitudes (decimal points omitted) of stars to 7.1 vMag in the North Circumpolar area of the sky; use this to determine the limiting magnitude of stars near the North Celestial Pole that you can see with the unaided eye

SCP-LM = Visual magnitudes (decimal points omitted) of stars to 7.1 vMag in the South Circumpolar area of the sky; use this to determine the limiting magnitude of stars near the South Celestial Pole that you can see with the unaided eye

(NOTE: The 2000+ Sky Atlas pages are Adobe PDF (portable document format) files of between 240Kb and 450Kb size, so they will take just a bit of time to download depending upon the speed of your Internet connection. You must have at least the free Adobe Reader installed on your system to display and utilize these 2000+ Sky Atlas pages. Be sure to turn on the Adobe Reader toolbar, if it’s not already present. Use the Scroll Bars and Zoom (+ or -) toolbar buttons to navigate to and enlarge specific regions of the 2000+ Sky Atlas pages. These are high-resolution (600dpi) PDFs, and should display just fine on almost any system as soon as you zoom in a bit.

"Binoc.?" field will contain the symbol "OO" if the object is observable profitably with binoculars. (Think of the double-O as the "business end" of a pair of binoculars.) Usually, binocular observation of DSOs requires 7 ´ 50 minimum. (10 ´ 50, 10 ´ 70, 14 ´ 70, 11 ´ 80, and 20 ´ 80 are common larger sizes suitable for astronomical observations.)

Using the Indices: The indices, which appear directly below the data table, should be very useful in helping you find an object about which you know only a common name or a catalog number.

The data is indexed in three ways: by Common Name in the Index and Cross-Reference of Names in Common Use, formal Object name, and Other Name. Clicking on the R.A. link jumps directly to the appropriate database page and location of the object. NOTE: There are many items - mostly constellations, asterisms, or solitary bright stars - in the Index and Cross-Reference of Names in Common Use for which the R.A. is not linked intentionally. These objects are plotted on the 2000+ Sky Atlas, but do not appear in the 2000+ Catalog.

While I have done my best to proof the data and the links, errors are certain to have eluded me. If you discover an error or broken link, please let me know so that I can correct it. Send comments and corrections to me via e-mail: Tomm@1000plus.com

R.A. 00:00 to 00:30	R.A. 00:30 to 01:00	R.A. 01:00 to 01:30	R.A. 01:30 to 02:00
R.A. 02:00 to 02:30	R.A. 02:30 to 03:00	R.A. 03:00 to 03:30	R.A. 03:30 to 04:00
R.A. 04:00 to 04:30	R.A. 04:30 to 05:00	R.A. 05:00 to 05:30	R.A. 05:30 to 06:00
R.A. 06:00 to 06:30	R.A. 06:30 to 07:00	R.A. 07:00 to 07:30	R.A. 07:30 to 08:00
R.A. 08:00 to 08:30	R.A. 08:30 to 09:00	R.A. 09:00 to 09:30	R.A. 09:30 to 10:00
R.A. 10:00 to 10:30	R.A. 10:30 to 11:00	R.A. 11:00 to 11:30	R.A. 11:30 to 12:00
R.A. 12:00 to 12:30	R.A. 12:30 to 13:00	R.A. 13:00 to 13:30	R.A. 13:30 to 14:00
R.A. 14:00 to 14:30	R.A. 14:30 to 15:00	R.A. 15:00 to 15:30	R.A. 15:30 to 16:00
R.A. 16:00 to 16:30	R.A. 16:30 to 17:00	R.A. 17:00 to 17:30	R.A. 17:30 to 18:00
R.A. 18:00 to 18:30	R.A. 18:30 to 19:00	R.A. 19:00 to 19:30	R.A. 19:30 to 20:00
R.A. 20:00 to 20:30	R.A. 20:30 to 21:00	R.A. 21:00 to 21:30	R.A. 21:30 to 22:00
R.A. 22:00 to 22:30	R.A. 22:30 to 23:00	R.A. 23:00 to 23:30	R.A. 23:30 to 00:00

Index and Cross-reference of Names in Common Use:

#-A B C D E F G H I J-K L M N O P Q-R S T U V W X-Y-Z

Index of Object names:

# A B C-D-E F-G-H I J-K-L M N₁ N₂ N₃ N₄ O-P Q-R S T-U V-W-X-Y-Z

Index of Other Names:

# A B-C-D-E-F-G H₁ H₂ I-J-K-L-M N-O-P-Q-R S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z

Many star designations use Bayer Letters – i.e., lower-case Greek Letters

* Some portion of the night sky may not be available to be seen at all from a particular observer's latitude north or south of the Equator. As a consequence of the observer's location on the Earth, a portion of the sky surrounding one pole or the other may never rise above the observer's horizon to be explored.

IMPORTANT DISPLAY NOTE: The catalog pages obtained from the link table above must be viewed with Windows95 or Macintosh-compatible browsers Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x or later, or Netscape 3.x or later. MOZILLA FIREFOX, in present versions, will not render the special characters used in the descriptions correctly. The system fonts must include Times New Roman, Arial, and Symbol (all default Windows installation fonts) in order to properly view the special symbols employed. Some older or other browsers (e.g., Mozilla and/or Firefox), Unix, or other platforms/operating systems, or systems on which the above fonts are not present will not display the data properly. Also, a screen resolution 800x600 or greater will present the data more readably than 640x480.

The conversion and presentation of all of this data on the World Wide Web was made possible by the web publishing capabilities of Microsoft Word for Windows v. 8.0 (Word97). What little tweaking of the HTML was necessitated, I did in good ol' Notepad.