New General Catalog (NGC)

New General Catalogue (NGC) is the most famous catalogue of objects Deep Space in amateur astronomy. It contains approximately 8,000 objects known under the designation NGC objects. NGC is one of the largest general catalogues, including all types of deep space objects (for example, it is not specified only on Galaxies).

The author of NGC is John Louis Emil Dreyer - (since 1882 Director at Observatory Armagh in Ireland). Dreyer preferred to compile older observations and first published the Second Star Catalogue of the Armagh Observatory and after obtaining a government one-off grant of £2,000 in the year 1883 purchased a ten-inch refractor with which he could continue to observe nebulae, cluster and galaxies. In 1888 Publishes the New General Catalogue of Nebula and Clusters of Stars, known today as NGC.

This excellent catalogue containing 7,840 objects was actually developed against Dreyer's plans, which he planned to issue only accessories to Herschel's catalogue, but to order the Royal Astronomical Society he compiled a new catalogue. In the following years, he completed his work by publishing two supplements to the NGC: 1895 issues the IC I catalogue (Catalogue index) with 1,529 objects and in 1908 the second index Catalogue. The NGC catalogue and both accessories contain a total of 13226 objects. Dreyer's catalogues became the basic catalogue of unstellar objects.