Star Clusters

Star Clusters covers, in just under 500 pages, star clusters, globular clusters, asterisms and other objects that have been misidentified as such.

It is both a descriptive text of the historical study and astrophysics of some the youngest (open clusters) and oldest (globular clusters) objects that populate the Universe along with the most up-to-date catalogue of these objects in existence---an effort that has taken more than a decade to complete. Over the last few hundred years many of these objects have been repeatedly rediscovered and subsequently renamed, misidentified as to their true nature, or given incorrect celestial coordinates.

Altogether there are 5,045 individual objects catalogued in this work that have a total of 13,949 “alias” names on average, nearly 3 names for each object. This work catalogues 2,017 clusters in the Milky Way or previously misidentified as Milky Way clusters, including 151 globular clusters or possible globular clusters, and 1547 open clusters or possible open clusters. Also catalogued are clusters or objects misidentified as such in several of the Local Group galaxies. This includes 2,025 objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 419 objects in the Small Magellanic Cloud, 578 objects in the Andromeda (M 31) galaxy and 6 objects in the Fornax Dwarf galaxy.

An extensive Appendix explains the origin of all object names and abbreviations and provides detailed references to the original source material for all object discoveries.

In total there are 197 illustrations and 119 pages of extended notes on objects that are either astrophysically or observationally of interest, or have been especially troublesome to cataloguers. The approach to developing this catalogue has involved a comprehensive survey of discovery documents, visual reports from telescopic observers and personal inspection of the great photographic surveys of the past century.

Particular care has been exercised to determine accurate positions across the entire catalogue. Finally, in addition to the chapters on the history and astrophysics of globular and open clusters a chapter is devoted to the observation of these objects.