I first became aware of the Caldwell Catalogue a few months ago. It is not as popular as the Messier Objects or the NGC but I feel it should be. Charles Messier was a comet hunter and he disliked the fact that some objects in the sky were easily confused with comets. He generated his list to help avoid the confusion. For all intents and purposes, the Messier Catalogue order is based chronologically on the discovery date and can all be viewed from the latitude of his observatory -- Paris, France.
The Caldwell Catalogue was created in 1995 by the famous British astronomer Patrick Moore as a companion to the Messier Catalogue. I personally love the Caldwell Catalogue as it contains, in my opinion, the most beautiful sights you can see through a backyard telescope. The image below is borrowed from Wikipedia and shows off the amazing objects.
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| Caldwell Catalogue |
The catalogue is ordered by increasing declination with 1 being the northernmost and 109 being the southernmost. Unfortunately for northern observers we would have to travel south to see some of the objects of southerly declination. Caldwell 109 is located less than 10° from the South Celestial Pole.
I have seen some of these sights through my telescope and had the opportunity to take a picture of one. You've seen this image just yesterday as it was the keynote image for the NGC catalogue. The blinking nebula is Caldwell 15 approximately 30° from the North Celestial Pole in the constellation Cygnus.
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| Caldwell 15 |
I hope you have the opportunity to join some public astronomy nights this year to see one of these incredible objects!
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