Our speaker on March 26 will be Steve Gottlieb who is working on improving
the NGC and IC databases. The talk starts at 8 p.m. and all are welcome.
There is no charge and the talks are held at Hogue Park.
In 1864, a General Catalog of nebulae was published which included around
2500 objects cataloged by William Herschel and an equal number from his son,
John. Work from other observers was added creating a 7800 entry database
called the New General Catalog (NGC) of Nebulae and published by J. Dreyer.
Updates came in the form of Index Catalogs (IC). Between the NGC and IC
there are more than 13,000 objects of which 90% are actually galaxies. (The
distinction between "spiral nebulae" and galaxies was not made clear until
Hubble's discoveries in 1923). Some items in the NGC are also known as
Messier objects. For example, M31 = NGC 224.
Steve Gottlieb's 25 years as an astronomer includes working on catalogues
and is an active member of SFAA. He has written a number of deep-sky
observing articles including articles for Sky & Telescope and Astronomy
magazines. He has a deep-sky website with Jim Shields called Adventures in
Deep space.
Those of you that want to attend the board meeting, please note it will
begin at 6PM instead of 6:30.
Rob Hawley
Received on Sun Mar 20 02:32:43 2005