Abell and Hickson all sky map

[Martin Meredith]

In case it is of use to anyone else in planning a night's sensor-assisted viewing, here's a simple map I created showing the locations of all Hickson compact galaxy groups and the brighter Abell galaxy clusters (specifically, all those whose red magnitude of the 10th brightest member is < 16). The plot also shows all stars mag <= 6.

abells_and_hicksons.pdf

Now I've got the software written it is relatively simple to plot any of the catalogues indexed by RA/Dec so if you have any request, just let me know (and any improvements/errors, likewise).

Thanks to the excellent VizierR data server at http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr for the raw data.

cheers

Martin

[Dave In Vermont]

Nice work there, Martin! Thank you for sharing.

Clear & Dark Skies,

Dave

[Martin Meredith]

Thanks Dave. Here's an improved version which plots the RA axis inverted, adds a faint grid at 1 deg intervals, labels the larger grid with RA/Dec at intersections, and adds the Messiers. Plotting the NGCs/ICs is also possible but tends to overwhelm things...

AbellHicksonMessier.pdf

Martin

[Paul81]

Thanks for the really useful map Martin - I'll definitely be using that next time I am out! 

[Martin Meredith]

Thanks for the really useful map Martin - I'll definitely be using that next time I am out! 

Cheers Paul. Some of the very faint stuff that we can nowadays reach in under a minute with relatively small scopes just doesn't appear on the planetarium software I have. This is also the case for stars, making it more difficult to check the field. I plan to add further classes of object as I come across the appropriate catalogues, probably at the level of individual constellations so as to pack more in… Just need to work a bit on automatic label placement.

Martin