Ultimate printed DSO list

[acey]

The "Master List of Nonstellar Optical Astronomical Objects" (otherwise known as MOL) was published in 1980 and was an attempt to bring together in a single volume all DSO catalogues from NGC onwards (about 270 catalogues). The hardback book is over 800 pages long and contains roughly 185,000 entries. I saw an ex-library copy going cheap and couldn't resist.

The objects are arranged by right ascension, with multiple entries where an object has lots of designations. Each listing gives name, position, size, magnitude and type, nothing else - it's a bit like a telephone directory of DSOs.

It's very much a relic of a bygone age: the positions are Epoch 1950.0, and although the book includes NGC/IC, MCG, UGC, and Zwicky catalogues, it predated the 1989 PGC, which to some extent rendered it obsolete. Nowadays all the data is freely available online at Vizier (http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/), or in Cartes du Ciel etc. Still, this big book of DSOs is nice to have, even if I don't expect to be taking it off the shelf all that often.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1981BICDS..21Q..50D

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice. I frequently use the ex-library "Revised Shapley-Ames Catalogue of Bright Galaxies", much prefer that to using Stellarium or CdC.

[Mr Q]

I use this list because it is listed by magnitude and constellation and does not list above 14th mag, which is about the limit of my 10" newt.http://www.deepskywa...0-const-mag.pdf

And because I don't trust computers, I printed out the list (109 pages)

[acey]

That's a nice list, though the danger with any magnitude-limited list is that it doesn't take account of surface brightness, so there's no guarantee that those objects would be visible in a scope with a stellar limiting magnitude of 14.

As an example, number 14 in the list is given as MCG +08-01 (the name has been truncated by the column width). A quick search by position at NED (http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/) brings up the object MCG +08-01-016 = IC 1525. According to Steinicke's NGC/IC (http://www.klima-luf...cke/index_e.htm) that object was discovered by Lewis Swift in 1887 using a 16" refractor. I've seen quite a lot of Swift's discoveries with a 12" at a dark site and many of them are pretty tough in that, so I think this particular galaxy would be a real stretch with a 10" - well done if you've managed it.

You can generate your own list to any desired magnitude limit, and from any source catalogue, by using Vizier (http://vizier.u-stra.../viz-bin/VizieR), but there's no guarantee that the objects will be visible. If you're seriously taking on a 7000-object list with a 10-inch then my suggestion would be the NGC itself (7840 listed objects), since these were all discovered visually and are certainly do-able with 12 inches (Guillaume Bigourdain did them all down to his horizon limit - 6380 objects). Steinicke's website is the place to download it.

The observing list I use at my scope is the complete NGC, printed in bold with abbreviated data and cross-referencing so I can read it easily, and ordered according to the charts of my atlas, the Great Atlas Of The Sky (http://www.greatskyatlas.com/). The list fills 245 pages in a ring binder. On any given night I pick a chart to observe from, take out the relevant pages of my list, and work from that. If I want to see a photograph of the object I look it up in the NGC/IC Photographic Catalogue (http://skywatch.jp/ngc/) which contains DSS images of all of them. Again, it's all available free online (e.g. at http://www.ngcicproject.org/), but I'd rather take a book with me. Though not MOL, which stays at home on the shelf.

[Mr Q]

Acey - I use this list due to only moderate to good sky transparency at the dark sky site I often observe from. Darker, more transparent skies would require a more extensive list as the one you mentioned (the complete NGC catalog).

As for surface brightness, I first look up the visual mag. of an object, then its SB which is probably more important than the intergrated magnitude. Yea, SB can make an object excell or bomb out. I won't even consider any list without a SB listing.