New General Catalogue

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

The NGC was compiled in the 1880s by Dreyer[?] using observations mostly from William Herschel, and then subsequently expanded with two Index Catalogues (ICs). Objects in the southern sky are somewhat less well catalogued but many were observed by John Herschel. Together with nearly 5,000 objects in the two ICs, the NGC naturally contained many errors which have for the most part been eliminated by the Revised NGC[?].

Objects in the NGC with articles

• NGC 224 - M31, the Andromeda Galaxy
• NGC 598 - M33, the Triangulum Galaxy
• NGC 604 - a large H II Region within the Triangulum Galaxy
• NGC 1952 - M1, the Crab Nebula
• NGC 1976 - M42, the Orion Nebula
• NGC 2264 - a young open cluster in the Monoceros constellation
• NGC 2346 - a planetary nebula in the Monoceros constellation
• NGC 3034 - M82, a starbust galaxy in the Ursa Major constellation
• NGC 4321 - M100, a spiral galaxy in the Virgo cluster
• NGC 4486 - M87, a giant elliptical galaxy dominating the Virgo cluster
• NGC 6171 - M107, a very loose globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus
• NGC 6240 - the Starfish Galaxy.
• NGC 6537 - the Red Spider Nebula
• NGC 6543 - the Cat's Eye Nebula
• NGC 6720 - M57, the Ring Nebula
• NGC 7742 - a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy in the constellation Pegasus.

Links:

• The Interactive NGC Catalog (http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc), SEDS