The Caldwell Catalogue

Here's something I didn't know ... there exists a list of objects similar to the Messier Catalogue, but made with the amateur astronomer in mind. (As opposed to just being a list of fuzzies that are "not-comets")

This list is called the Caldwell Catalogue, and is named after its creator - Sir Patrick Moore (huh?  What-the?)  He used his other surname 'Caldwell', since the M for Messier was already taken.

This list consists of a better mix of interesting objects that are achievable for the amateur astronomer with moderate equipment, and deliberately includes an even mix of Southern as well as Northern hemisphere objects.  There are 109 of them, to give it the same flavour, with a mix of planetary nebulae, open and globular clusters, galaxies and nebulae.

I found this when I was downloading the Messier Catalogue from AstronomyLogs.com.  There was this other PDF there for the Caldwell Catalogue, and a quick trip to wikipedia cleared up the question.

So now I have a new list of objects to start collecting, well - the more Southern ones, anyway.