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New General Catalogue




  Name New General Catalogue (NGC)
  Caption 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 68 million light years from Earth and can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Ursa Major
  Organization William Herschel , Dunsink Observatory , Royal Astronomical Society , revised by Sulentic and Tifft
  Source William Herschel , Birr Castle telescope and Dunsink Observatory
  Goals Survey of non-stellar objects
  Products NGC Catalogue
  Website The Revised New General Catalogue


The New General Catalogue ('''NGC''') is the best-known Catalogue of Deep Sky Objects in Amateur Astronomy . It contains nearly 8,000 objects, known as the '''NGC objects'''. The NGC is one of the largest comprehensive catalogues, as it includes all types of deep sky objects (not specialised to just Galaxies for instance).

The catalogue was compiled in the 1880s by J. L. E. Dreyer using observations mostly from William Herschel , and then subsequently expanded with two Index Catalogue s (IC I & IC II), adding nearly 5,000 objects.

Objects in the Southern Hemisphere Sky are somewhat less thoroughly catalogued, but many were observed by John Herschel . The NGC contained many errors which have for the most part been eliminated by The NGC/IC Project www.ngcic.org .