mcoren
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 01/11/06
Posts: 1175
Loc: Northern Virginia, USA
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Thanks, Tom, for the tenacity and thoroughness in following through on this, and, of course, for sharing it with us! 
My first "run-in" with Collinder wasn't the coat hanger, but Cr21 in Triangulum. I came across it about two years ago during an otherwise pointless search for NGC 672 and IC 1727 from my suburban backyard. It's not shown in the S&T Pocket Sky Atlas, so I had to check Sky Atlas 2000 in order to find out what it was.
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Mike
Orion SkyQuest XT10
Suburban Washington DC
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arpruss
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 05/23/08
Posts: 858
Loc: Waco, TX
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I noticed that plotting these (orange dots) gives a rather nice picture of the galactic plane:
 
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Coulter Odyssey 13.1" split-tube
Coulter Odyssey 8"
Home-made 7.8" F/4 dobsonian travel scope
Home-made 68mm F/5.3 achro (typically used as finder on 13.1")
Skymaster 15x70
BPTs4 8x30
32mm Plossl, 30mm Rini, 27mm Kellner, 13mm Hyperion, 6mm TMB/BO Planetary, Owl 2X Barlow
Palm TX with AstroInfo and RescoViewer
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gjg
member
Reged: 05/22/06
Posts: 81
Loc: Altadena, CA
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Great job, Tom.
Thanks
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stevecoe
"Astronomical Tourist"
Reged: 04/24/04
Posts: 2645
Loc: Arizona, USA
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arpruss;
I would say that Per Collinder did a darn good job of surveying a set of open clusters along the Milky Way. Fun map, thanks.
Steve Coe
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TeleVue 102 refractor on CGEM mount
10 inch f/4.7 Newtonian
Author "Deep Sky Observing" Springer-Verlag
Author "Nebulae and How to Observe Them" Springer
Canon Xt astrocamera with Hutech modification
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rookie
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 01/14/06
Posts: 878
Loc: St. Petersburg, FL
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Great writing and a wonderful story.
Thanks for all your hard work and for sharing it with the rest of us! 
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SV
Scope: Celestron CPC8
Binoculars: Garrett GT80~45, Fujinon 16x70, Regals 10x42, Ultima 9x63, Nikon AE 8x40
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cildarith
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 08/26/04
Posts: 2357
Loc: San Diego, CA
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Nice work Tom! 
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Eric
6" f/6 Parks Newtonian
10x50 Bushnell Binocs
CN Sketch Gallery||MinDat Mineral Gallery
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Rick Woods
Postmaster
Reged: 01/27/05
Posts: 5684
Loc: Inner Solar System
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I've been reading through it, and the notes at the end. Man! That's a lot of looking stuff up in various references! Very nice work, and really good of you to just make it available to all of us.
It seems like a lot of the strange, obscure, trippy clusters across the sky are known primarily - or only - by their Collinder numbers. I suspect this will become a favorite catalog of mine!
Thanks again for doing this.
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- Rick
14" LX200GPS
Dyslexics Untie!
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desertstars
Please stand by...
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 34586
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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Quote:
That's a lot of looking stuff up in various references!
Thanks. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started! It quickly developed a life of its own.
There's an old say, something like "It ain't work if yer havin' fun." Certainly applied in this case. 
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Tom W.
Collinder's Catalog
Jewels in Dark Settings
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Starman1
Vendor - Scope City
Reged: 06/24/03
Posts: 12223
Loc: Los Angeles
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As an aside, I discovered that there are a host of catalogs of objects visible in fairly small scopes:
Tombaugh, Trumpler, King, Stock, Dolidze, DoDz, Ruprecht, Czernik, etc. And Collinder, of course.
Yet, almost none of these are in the databases on computerized scopes, while hundreds or thousands of ultrafaint UGC, MCG, and PGC galaxies are.
Why?
Because the data wasn't immediately available in digital format.
As Thomas discovered, sometimes it takes blood, sweat, and tears to complie a list of objects, and the telescope companies didn't have anyone working for them who cared enough to add the objects that could be seen when long lists of objects that couldn't be seen would pad the size of the list for advertising purposes.
Thanks to Thomas for this "observer's gift". 
Oh, and if you'd like some of those other catalogs, try the Saguaro Astronomy Club's database at:
http://www.saguaroastro.org/content/downloads.htm
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Don Pensack
12.5" Truss Dob, 5" Maksutov, Fujinon Binos
Sustaining Lifetime IDA member
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blb
sage
Reged: 11/25/05
Posts: 215
Loc: Piedmont NC
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This is a great list, Thanks for the hard work. I was having some difficulty with the classfications though.
I think the "Glob" means looks like a globular cluster but
does "Neb" mean it looks nebular or is it imbeded in a nebula? But What dose 1 1/4 Norm, Plei and Praes mean?
Thanks for any help.
Buddy 
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C-11, C-6, XT10i Dob, ETX125PE, TV102, & AT66
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mcoren
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 01/11/06
Posts: 1175
Loc: Northern Virginia, USA
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Tom, could you elaborate a bit about Collinder's classification system? I see from the description you say the practice was to compare them to "typical and well known clusters as examples." So, I assume "Plei" means like the Pleiades, "Praes" means like the Praespe, but what about things like "chain", "nl", and "μ Norm"? Thanks!
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Mike
Orion SkyQuest XT10
Suburban Washington DC
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basel10
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 07/15/05
Posts: 805
Loc: TN
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Thanks for the research and posting of the excellent info. That is one of the reasons I encourage people to choose their astronomy software carefully. Few programs do not plot collinder clusters or king, melotte, basel and dark nebula. This was much worse years ago but some programs exist that plot ngc/ic only today. Be careful about the program you choose and be sure it plots all objects you can see and the NGC/IC isn't it. That is one of the main reasons why I don't think Microsoft's World Wide Telescope is suitable for field use. Though it is excellent for public outreach and education.
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www.knoxvilleobservers.org
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arpruss
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 05/23/08
Posts: 858
Loc: Waco, TX
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I am guessing that "nl" is what is put in when a numerical value is not available. The mysterious "??Norm" is your browser's mangling of "muNorm", where "mu" is the Greek letter--what it means, I don't know.
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Coulter Odyssey 13.1" split-tube
Coulter Odyssey 8"
Home-made 7.8" F/4 dobsonian travel scope
Home-made 68mm F/5.3 achro (typically used as finder on 13.1")
Skymaster 15x70
BPTs4 8x30
32mm Plossl, 30mm Rini, 27mm Kellner, 13mm Hyperion, 6mm TMB/BO Planetary, Owl 2X Barlow
Palm TX with AstroInfo and RescoViewer
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desertstars
Please stand by...
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 34586
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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Quote:
Tom, could you elaborate a bit about Collinder's classification system? I see from the description you say the practice was to compare them to "typical and well known clusters as examples." So, I assume "Plei" means like the Pleiades, "Praes" means like the Praespe, but what about things like "chain", "nl", and "μ Norm"? Thanks!
"nl" means I could not find any information on the matter listed. (nl = not listed.)
I assume that when Collinder and his advisor refered to something as a "chain" they mean't a linear arrangement of stars. From what I recall off the top of my head from the dissertation and Collinder's notes, the word was used as if it was safe to assume everyone would know what they meant. Seventy years ago that may have been the case.
Neb means the cluster is associated with a nebula in some way, which as I understand it led to some of the confusion with NGC/IC numbers. Whether the nebulosity is visible to visual observers in any given case is hard to say. Keep in mind that he used photographic plates to compile this catalog for his study.
The oddity you see with Norm after it is indeed, as arpruss suspects, mu Normae, an open cluster in the constellation Norma.
Edited by desertstars (08/16/08 12:58 PM)
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mcoren
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 01/11/06
Posts: 1175
Loc: Northern Virginia, USA
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Thanks for the clarification on the classification. I use MacOS X and the "mu Norm" strangeness happens in three different browsers - Firefox, Safari, and IE 5.1. It must be the way OS X renders that character. 
Thanks again!
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Mike
Orion SkyQuest XT10
Suburban Washington DC
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Special Ed
Post Laureate
Reged: 05/18/03
Posts: 4302
Loc: Greenbrier Co., WV 38N, 80W
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Tom,
Excellent work--well researched, well organized, and well written. The effort you put in is apparent 
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Michael Rosolina
8" f/10 Orange Tube SCT
4.25" f/4.2 Astroscan Reflector
SVP 3.6" f/13.6 CA Reflector
40mm PST f/10
APM Germany HD 15x70 binoculars
Canon 12x36 IS II binoculars
Mark I Eyeball
My CN Gallery
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desertstars
Please stand by...
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 34586
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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Thanks. 
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Tom W.
Collinder's Catalog
Jewels in Dark Settings
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Ante Perkovic
newbie
Reged: 12/23/08
Posts: 1
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Could you please check Collinder 458? You list it as =Harvard 21 (in Cassiopeia), but here and here it is listed as Dolidze 21 (in Orion). 
Ante
http://deepskypedia.com
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desertstars
Please stand by...
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 34586
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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Curious. In the second of the links you provide I find a record that lists Cr 458 as both Harvard 21 and Dolidze 21.
There has apparently been a considerable amount of confusion in the compilation of star cluster catalogs over the decades. Quite a bit of the text of the book Star Clusters by Brent A. Archinal and Steven J. Hynes involves their effort to straighten things up. (The research Archinal and Hynes have done in this regard is part of the reason I relied so heavily on their book.) Whether or not Collinder 458 aka Harvard 21 aka Dolidze 21 has run afoul of such confusion, leading to the listings you've found, I can't say until I can check my references at home, which I will do later today.
If we're lucky, I just miss-typed something.
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Tom W.
Collinder's Catalog
Jewels in Dark Settings
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desertstars
Please stand by...
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 34586
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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According to Archinal & Hynes (Star Clusters page 133) Dolidze 21 was listed incorrectly as being an alias of Collinder 458 in one part of the Lund Catalog. Collinder 458 is Harvard 21 - and probably an asterism, not a true cluster, as it happens. Apparently the error has been repeated when others have used the Lund Catalog as a resource.
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Tom W.
Collinder's Catalog
Jewels in Dark Settings
Edited by desertstars (12/23/08 11:47 PM)
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