New General Catalogue

New General Catalogue

The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated as NGC) is a well-known catalogue of deep sky objects in astronomy compiled by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888, as a new version of John Herschel's Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. The NGC contains 7,840 objects, known as the NGC objects. It is one of the largest comprehensive catalogues, as it includes all types of deep space objects and is not confined to, for example, galaxies. Dreyer published two supplements to the NGC, knowns as the Index Catalogues (abbreviated as IC). The first was published in 1895 and contained 1,520 objects, while the second was published in 1908 and contained 3,866 objects, for a total of 5,386 IC objects.

Objects in the sky of the southern hemisphere are catalogued somewhat less thoroughly, but many were observed by John Herschel or James Dunlop. The NGC had many errors, but a serious if not complete attempt to eliminate them has been initiated by the NGC/IC Project, after partial attempts with the Revised New General Catalogue (RNGC) by Sulentic and Tifft in 1973, and NGC2000.0 by Sinnott in 1988.