Caroline Herschel's Deep Sky Objects

Besides and before assisting her brother, William Herschel, in his great Deep Sky survey starting in late 1782, Caroline Herschel herself was an avid astronomical observer, and discoverer of comets (she originally found 8 of them) and deepsky objects. William Herschel has included her discoveries in his catalog, and assigned numbers to them. 
M     NGC       Herschel   RA       Dec     Con  Type   Discovery Date


M110  NGC  205  H V.18     00:40.4  +41:41  And  G E5p  1783 Aug 27
      NGC  225  H VIII.78  00:43.4  +61:47  Cas  OC     1784
      NGC  253  H V.1      00:47.6  -25:17  Scl  G Sc   1783 Sep 23
      NGC  381  H VIII.64  01:08.3  +61:35  Cas  OC     1783
      NGC  659  H VIII.65  01:44.2  +60:42  Cas  OC     1783
      NGC  891  H V.19     02:22.6  +42:21  And  G Sb   1783 Aug 27 (according to W.H. Smyth)
      NGC 2204  H VII.13   06:15.7  -18:39  CMa  OC     1783 Feb 26 (appendix to W.H.'s 1st catalog)
      NGC 2349  H VII.27   07:10.0  -08:37  Mon  non-ex 1783
      NGC 2360  H VII.12   07:17.8  -15:37  CMa  OC     1785 (1983 Feb 26?)
M 48  NGC 2548  H VI.22    08:13.8  -05:48  Hya  OC     1783
      NGC 6633  H VIII.72  18:27.7  +06:43  Oph  OC     1783
      NGC 7380  H VIII.77  22:47.0  +58:06  Cep  C+N    1787
      NGC 7789  H VI.30    23:57.0  +56:44  Cas  OC     1783 fall
Unless otherwise noted, the Caroline Herschel findings were looked up in John Herschel's General Catalogue.

In a posting to the Netastro Catalog email list (netastrocatalog-announce@atmob.org), William C. Bryson points out that from above list, NGC 891 and NGC 2204 might be mis-assignments (this email is also source of the NGC 2204 entry in this page; thanks !)

The above list contains 13 entries, but according to G. Buttmann (1961), p. 64, Caroline stated to have observed 14 objects until the end of 1783. If you have any information on the missing 14th entry, or corrections to the above, please email me.

Caroline Herschel was honored lately by the astronomical community by naming a Lunar Crater after her.

  • Short biography of Caroline Herschel
  • Biography of Caroline Herschel (School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland)

    References

    Please email me any additions, corrections, or comments. Especially, one source gave the number of 14, but didn't identify them, so, if you can, please help me with the remaining single one entry.

    Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org).
    Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

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    Last Modification: 9 Feb 2000, 12:00 MET