Caldwell List

The Caldwell List grew out of a widely held view that Messier's List was incomplete. It left out a number of Deep Space Objects that either merited inclusion, or could not be seen from the latitude of Paris where Caldwell made his observations, or could not be mistaken for a comet, or were just missed. This spurred on the famous amateuer astronomer and broadcaster Patrick Moore to compile his own list of 109 objects (the same number as in Caldwell's original catalogue. 
        
He decided to arrange them in order of declination beginning in the far north and ending up in the far south, from the constellation of Cepheus to the constellation of Chamaeleon. Furthermore all the objects had to be visible by someone with an ordinary telescope of 4" or greater aperture under a dark sky, but also making some harder to see than others! Patrick Moore chose the name of Caldwell for his new catalogue, as he could not use Moore which would cause confusion with Caldwell (M) objects. He decided to make good use of his full name of Patrick Caldwell-Moore. He sent off his new list to 'Sky and Telescope' magazine to see if anyone would be interested. 
        
Well, they were and it was duly published in the December 1995 issue. Since then the Caldwell List has become a firm favourite withh amateur astronomers looking for more objects to view or image. It includes a number of magnificent 'Non Caldwell' objects, such as the 'Double Cluster' in Perseus - C14 and the 'Helix Nebula in Aquarius - C63, as well as glorious southern sky objects like the Eta Carina Nebula - C92 and  'Jewel Box' Cluster in Crux - C94.