Welcome to my astrophotography website
Early astronomers systematically scanned the night sky to discover new "nebulas."
They made sketches and cataloged their findings. The catalogs became the basis for the sciences of astronomy and cosmology.
These catalogs are the basis for my own personal discovery of the universe and I have organized my website of photographs
around some of the most popular and interesting astronomy catalogs.
the telescope **1
General Catalogs
- Messier - Created by the French comet hunter, Charles Messier, in the 1700s (Read more)
- NGC (New General Catalog) - Discoveries made by the Herschel family in the 1800s by systematic scanning of the skies (Read more)
- IC (Index Catalog) - An extension of the NGC published by Dreyer near the turn of the 20th century (Read more)
Specialty Catalogs
- Arp - Compiled by Halton Arp in 1966 cataloging peculiar and interacting galaxies (Read more)
- Caldwell - created by Patrick Moore as a modern companion to the Messier catalog containing his own favorite objects (Read more)
- Herschel 400 - A popular subset of objects from William Herschel’s NGC catalog selected by various amateur astronomers and published by Sky & Telescope magazine around 1980 (Read more)
Local Neighborhoods
Explore scales of distance in our solar system, the Milky Way and our Local Group of Galaxies
- Earth’s Neighbors - Photos of the Sun, planets, asteroids, comets and objects floating through our solar system
- Our Milky Way Neighbors - a select list of stars, clusters and nebulae within several thousand light years of our solar system
- Galactic Local Group - a list of galaxies and dwarf galaxies gravitationally bound together with our Milk Way galaxy that is called "The Local Group"
I will be adding more photos and catalogs to this website as my journey takes me in new directions of exploration.
Enjoy!
Joe Ziha
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_object
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_General_Catalogue
https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Arp_contents.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldwell_catalogue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_400_Catalogue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Group
https://earthsky.org/clusters-nebulae-galaxies/what-is-the-local-group/
https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/08/the-local-group-our-galactic-neighborhood
** - Photo Credits:
1 - Public Domain
2 - Public Domain
3 - © Rockefeller Archive Center
4 - Public Domain