Caldwell Catalogue

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The Caldwell Catalogue is an astronomical catalogue of bright star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies for observation by amateur astronomers. The list was compiled by Sir Patrick Caldwell-Moore, better known as Patrick Moore, as a complement to the Messier Catalogue.

The Messier Catalogue is used frequently by amateur astronomers as a list of interesting deep-sky objects for observations, but Moore noted that the list did not include many of the sky’s brightest deep-sky objects. Moreover, Moore observed that the Messier Catalogue, which was compiled based on observations in the Northern Hemisphere, excluded bright deep-sky objects visible in the Southern Hemisphere. He compiled a list of 109 objects and published it in Sky & Telescope in December 1995.

Since its publication, the catalogue has grown in popularity and usage within the amateur astronomical community. Small compilation errors in the original 1995 version of the list have since been corrected. Moore used one of his surnames to name the list to avoid confusion with the well known “M” objects, and the catalogue adopts “C” numbers to rename objects with more common designations.

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