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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.


Spiral galaxy NGC 3982 displays numerous spiral arms filled with bright stars, blue star clusters, and dark dust lanes. It spans about 30,000 light years, lies about 60 million light years from Earth and can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Ursa Major.

The NGC was compiled in the 1880s by Dreyer using observations mostly from William Herschel, and then subsequently expanded with two Index Catalogues (ICs), adding nearly 5,000 objects.

Objects in the southern sky are somewhat less well catalogued but many were observed by John Herschel. The NGC contained many errors which have for the most part been eliminated by the Revised NGC.

Objects in the NGC with articles in Wikipedia

External links