Section
Messier's hundred, the New General Catalogue, modern data releases, the calligraphy of a 19th-century observing notebook.
Catalogues
Patrick Moore published his list of 109 deep-sky objects for amateur observers in December 1995, intending it as a companion to Messier. Three decades later, the list is still in print, still used, and still a little controversial.
Catalogues
The Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg has been quietly assembling the world's working catalogue archive since 1972. A visit to the small staff that keeps it running.
Catalogues
Between 1911 and 1924, a small team at Harvard College Observatory classified the spectra of two hundred and twenty-five thousand stars. The catalogue still anchors stellar spectroscopy, and the work remains attributed, correctly, to Annie Jump Cannon.
Catalogues
Caroline Furness kept her observing logs at Vassar's small dome between 1894 and 1936. The notebooks survive, and their calligraphy is a small lesson in what scientific record-keeping used to be.
Catalogues
Released in June 2022 and now four years into its working life, Gaia DR3 has reshaped what professional and amateur astronomers expect from a catalogue. A small audit of what it has actually changed.
Catalogues
John Louis Emil Dreyer compiled the NGC in 1888 from observations by three generations of the Herschel family and a small army of correspondents. What he left behind still anchors the field.
Catalogues
A retired schoolteacher in upstate New York spent three winters working through Charles Messier's hundred and ten, one entry at a time, and kept a notebook every night.
Catalogues
On the night of March 27, 2026, fourteen observers from across Texas attempted to observe all 110 Messier objects in a single night from a high site in the Davis Mountains. Eleven succeeded.