30 replies to this topic

[Olivier Biot]

Collinder Catalog of Open Star Clusters (updated)

[desertstars]

In the two years since the Collinder Catalog was posted on Cloudy Nights several errors involving positions and magnitudes came to light. In this version, those errors have been corrected.

My thanks to readers who took the trouble to point out these mistakes. The continued interest in this article is most gratifying.

My thanks as well to Olivier for fixing the Greek character problem, and for creating the hyperlink to the Notes section.

[Lightning]

Many thanks, this is such a great catalog!

[rookie]

Thank you for the catalog and the time taken to improve its accuracy.

[Feidb]

Thank you so much! I am doing the list based on your original list. Now I can go in and update the errors from the older list. I've logged 230 of them so far. A great goal when the skies are subpar, as most of these clusters cut through lousy transparency.

[bdawg6381]

Thank you! Very enjoyable viewing these with my 4" refractor.

[Olivier Biot]

You're welcome Tom

[lunar]

Thank you for posting this! It's a great catalogue!

[cliff mygatt]

Tom,

I sent a PM about this article. Great catalog!

[mwedel]

Tom, many thanks for the updated version of the list. As before, I took the liberty of creating a PDF, posted here. Please let me know if you have any reservations about this or see anything that I inadvertently messed up.

Thanks again and clear skies!

[rboe]

Wow! Very late to the party but one heck of job there Tom.

[desertstars]

Thanks.

[simpleisbetter]

Ver much appreciated Tom, especially as OC's are my favorite DSO. Very nice work.

I hope you don't mind since you've done all the hard work here, but as I wanted the ability to search and sort I exported your data and notes to an Excel spreadsheet. I've also cross-referenced and sort of updated (hopefully correctly) some of the other names in the "NGC/Other Cat" section against AstroPlanner 2.0 and briefly a few items gainst SIMBAD; I plan to check against SkyTools 3 and more thoroughly in SIMBAD - one of these days...

Just unzip the attached file to use. One note, I originally generated this list as an Excel 2010 .xlsx file; during the export to a standard .xls file Excel seemed to indicate there might be some cell or display errors. I don't see any at the moment, but I'm not going to guaranty anything.

I hope this was okay, if not I'll take it back down.

Attached Files

•  4711688-Collinder Catalogue of Open Clusters.zip   40.48KB   441 downloads

[desertstars]

It didn't give me any errors when I openned it.

It's fine posting that, as far as I'm concerned. I know for a fact you're not the first person to adapt the catalog in such a fashion. If it makes it easier to use, it suits my purpose in posting it in the first place. Thanks for sharing this.

[Durval Menezes]

Hello Tom,

Just found your article when I was searching for more information on Harvard20 (aka Cr.4018), an open cluster I observed last night.

This must be the definitive annotated reference on the Collinder catalog; many thanks and congratulations on an job very well done. BTW, did you know you are being linked from the Wikipedia article on the Collinder catalog? See section "External Links" on http://en.wikipedia....llinder_catalog .

Slightly off-topic, I did not manage to find much information about the Harvard catalog; can you provide me with any references?

Cheers,

[roccodm]

thanks oli -it will take me until the snow flies up here just too get thru const. cas ciao rocco

[desertstars]

Hello Tom,

Just found your article when I was searching for more information on Harvard20 (aka Cr.4018), an open cluster I observed last night.

This must be the definitive annotated reference on the Collinder catalog; many thanks and congratulations on an job very well done. BTW, did you know you are being linked from the Wikipedia article on the Collinder catalog? See section "External Links" on http://en.wikipedia....llinder_catalog .

Slightly off-topic, I did not manage to find much information about the Harvard catalog; can you provide me with any references?

Cheers,

Apologies... I somehow missed that there was a question here! Unfortunately, the answer is that I have no references on hand regarding the Harvard catalog. I have not looked into that one for myself.

And yes, I know about the Wikipedia link. No idea who did it, but if whoever is responsible reads this... Thanks!

[Larry Mc]

hi all,

Back in the Dec 2012 'Sky & Tel', there was a neat article about odd-named star clusters. (see page 36).
After reading thru it, I got to thinking that I had already observed a number of these clusters - Stock, Trumpler, and Collinder.
I followed the link in the magazine article to this article on 'cloudy nights' about the Collinder Catalog, and that perked my interest in creating a new webpage.
Here it is: the 'Collinder Cluster Tour': http://home.comcast....linder-tour.htm
This is my personal observations, either visual sketches or video capture, of the 'Collinder Objects' over a 25 year period using various telescopes or cameras. Of the 471 star clusters & asterisms listed in the catalog, I have a total of 268 out of a possible 353 CR objects visible from +40 latitude. (the other 118 objects are not visible from my location).
You'll find a number of your favorite objects, such as CR399 - the Coathanger, CR42 - Pleiades, CR50 -Hyades, CR70 - Orion's Belt, CR256 - Melotte-111(Coma Cluster), and even CR285 - the Big Dipper!
In addition to the above link, you can find this new 'tour' listed on my website.
Enjoy!!!

Larry
Astronomical Webportal: http://home.comcast.net/~lsmch/

[captjwj]

Larry,

Thanks so much for posting the link to your web-page of the Collinder Cluster Tour. I too read the Dec. 2012 Sky & Tel article and was especially interested in the Collinder clusters part of the article. In my interest is such that I am planning on preparing a talk on Per Collinder and his open cluster catalog to present at the Mid-States Astronomical League Convention this year in May.

John Johnson

[PhilH]

Very nice, Larry! That's a great resource, one that I know I will return to time and again to reference as I research my monthly Binocular Universe e-column here on CN.

Thanks for a job well done!

[Durval Menezes]

Hi Larry,

Great job: I specially liked your sketches! Thanks for taking the time to publish it all.

On a related note, for you and any other folks interested, some googling returned this other page, with astrophotos and designation data for each cluster: http://www.cristorau...b/Collinder.htm

Cheers,

[Swamp Fox]

Very nice site!! I am also interested in observing these clusters and will revisit this often. Thanks for sharing all of your hard work!!

[droid]

My only problem, with the Cr catalogs and listings is , and this is only a example, Cassiopeia, there are what 20? objects in it. The Owl ( ET ) cluster aside, one could look there with a wide angle ep, and loose all hope of figuring which knot of stars is which.
Charts with telrad bulls eyes circles would be lovly.
That said Toms catalogue is still the best Ive found, and yes I have it in my referance library, highly recommended.

[desertstars]

hi all,

Back in the Dec 2012 'Sky & Tel', there was a neat article about odd-named star clusters. (see page 36).
After reading thru it, I got to thinking that I had already observed a number of these clusters - Stock, Trumpler, and Collinder.
I followed the link in the magazine article to this article on 'cloudy nights' about the Collinder Catalog, and that perked my interest in creating a new webpage.
Here it is: the 'Collinder Cluster Tour': http://home.comcast....linder-tour.htm
This is my personal observations, either visual sketches or video capture, of the 'Collinder Objects' over a 25 year period using various telescopes or cameras. Of the 471 star clusters & asterisms listed in the catalog, I have a total of 268 out of a possible 353 CR objects visible from +40 latitude. (the other 118 objects are not visible from my location).
You'll find a number of your favorite objects, such as CR399 - the Coathanger, CR42 - Pleiades, CR50 -Hyades, CR70 - Orion's Belt, CR256 - Melotte-111(Coma Cluster), and even CR285 - the Big Dipper!
In addition to the above link, you can find this new 'tour' listed on my website.
Enjoy!!!

Larry
Astronomical Webportal: http://home.comcast.net/~lsmch/

Wow! Very nicely done, sir! Just the sort of thing I was hoping to enable!

[JAC8]

Just found this today, as it finally showed up via search engine.

Been looking for an updated version for many years, at least since 2005 or so.

I put my own together based on visual observations - especially emphasing the numbers of stars and magnitudes.

I'm comparing my visual findings with this one now.

 

Still amazes me how many object lists do NOT have visual magnitude.

Probably a legacy from decades ago, though it is slowly changing.

Still, a person with experience can create the magnitude values for objects - with certain preparation and requirements.

 

This Collinder file is really great !

Thanks MUCH to the OP (long, long ago).....