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The deep sky · Beyond Messier

The NGC catalogue.
The sky in depth.

Galaxies, clusters, nebulae… Find a designation, explore a constellation and locate your next discovery in the sky.

7 840numbers in the New General Catalogue.
8 373 entries including components and historical cross-references.
OpenNGC data · 19 October 2026

Preparing the catalogue…

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Select an entry to display its fact sheet. Table magnitudes are measured in the V band.
ObjectTypeConstellationMag. V
Page 1
Position on the celestial sphere in J2000 coordinates. This diagram is a coordinate reference, not a photograph.

NGC FACT SHEET

One entry, one patch of sky.

Constellation
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Right ascension · J2000
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Declination · J2000
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Magnitude total · bande V
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Magnitude total · bande B
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Apparent dimensions
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Position angle of the major axis
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Galaxy morphology · source code
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Common names in OpenNGC
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Other identifications

Explore the constellation →Learn more with SIMBAD ↗

Total magnitude and dimensions alone cannot predict the visibility of a diffuse object. Surface brightness, sky conditions and the instrument also matter.

Reading the catalogue

Designations, with their nuances.

7 840 numbers, 8 373 entries: why?

The NGC covers numbers 1 to 7840. OpenNGC also details components, pairs and historical cross-references. This extract contains 8 373 NGC entries: it retains the 274 flagged duplicates and the entry classified as nonexistent. They do not represent that many distinct physical objects.

NGC cross-references may open another fact sheet. IC designations are retained as references; the IC catalogue itself is not included. “Nature to be determined” reproduces the source’s Other category, with its notes when available. These entries require careful interpretation.

Coordinates, magnitudes and dimensions

Equatorial coordinates are given for epoch J2000. Total B and V magnitudes are displayed separately: a missing value remains unreported. Magnitude filtering and sorting use only V. The filter therefore excludes entries without a V value when a maximum is selected.

Dimensions are apparent axes in arcminutes; the position angle is measured from north towards east. Source measurements may describe different extents depending on the objects and surveys. The data are neither an instrument recommendation nor a guarantee of visibility.

From the catalogue to the planetarium

The fact sheet’s button centres the planetarium on the entry’s coordinates, at the time and location displayed there. The marker represents neither its photographic size nor its actual visibility. Duplicates and the object classified as nonexistent are not added as independent targets.

The planetarium search recognises NGC designations, including their components. French names for Messier objects are taken from the portal’s fact sheets; other names and source notes retain their original language.

Sources, licence and data

OpenNGC, Mattia Verga, © 2023, licence Creative Commons Attribution · ShareAlike 4.0. Snapshot saved on 19 October 2026, commit be3cd6c54988. Field guide.

OpenNGC draws on NED (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, JPL/Caltech under contract with NASA), SIMBAD (CDS, Strasbourg), HyperLEDA, Harold Corwin’s notes and several HEASARC tables, among other sources. Detailed provenance is retained in the complete NGC/IC source table.

Adaptation for this portal: selection of NGC entries and displayed fields, numerical conversion without reducing coordinate precision, grouping the two regions of Serpens into its constellation, translation of types and matching with Messier fact sheets. Adapted data remain under CC BY-SA 4.0 and are available in the adapted NGC dataset · compressed JSON and through the CSV export of the selection.

Photographs: only images already present in the Messier catalogue, with their authors and individual terms stated on the fact sheets. Other entries are accompanied by a position diagram. Interface text and diagrams are designed for Universum · Steve Cimolino.