PiFinder™ Catalogs

The PiFinder ships with several astronomical catalogs you can search and filter. Each carries a short catalog code shown on the UI. Choose which catalogs are active in the Filters menu.

A few catalogs — the Washington Double Star catalog especially — hold far too many entries to scroll. For those, use Name Search to jump to an object by its designation, or sort by Nearest to surface the objects closest to where your scope is pointed.

Abl

The Abell Catalog of Planetary Nebulae (George O. Abell, 1966): 79 confirmed planetary nebulae.

Arp

Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (Arp 1966). Galaxies with unusual morphology. See Wikipedia - Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies

B

Barnard’s Catalogue of 349 Dark Objects

C

Caldwell catalog

Col

471 open clusters compiled by Swedish astronomer Per Collinder.

EGC

Catalog of Extra-Galactic Globular Clusters: globulars associated with nearby galaxies, mostly in Andromeda, visible through modest amateur telescopes.

H

A subset of William Herschel’s original Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, selected in response to a letter in Sky and Telescope.

Harris

Globular Clusters in the Milky Way (Harris, 1997). Compiled by William E. Harris, used by permission.

IC

IC catalog

Lyn

Open Cluster Data, 5th Edition (Lyngå 1987) — 1,151 open clusters.

M

Messier catalog

NGC

NGC 2000.0, The Complete New General Catalogue and Index Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters by J.L.E. Dreyer (edited by R.W. Sinnott).

RDS

The RASC Double Stars Observing Program: 110 double-star targets visible from the northern hemisphere across many constellations.

SaA

Saguaro Astronomy Club Asterisms Database Version 3.2

SaM

Saguaro Astronomy Club Double Star Database Version 4.0: 2,162 double stars.

SaR

SAC Red Stars Database Version 2.0

Sh2

313 H II regions (emission nebulae), comprehensive north of declination −27°.

Str

Named bright stars. Especially useful for aligning GoTo scopes.

Ta2

The TAAS 200 deep-sky observing list for the intermediate observer: the best 200 non-Messier objects easily visible from central New Mexico (north of declination −48°).

TLK

TLK’s hand-picked list of interesting variable stars visible from the northern hemisphere.

WDS

The PiFinder includes over 130,000 double and multiple star pairs from the Washington Double Star Catalog. The full list is far too long to scroll, so find a pair with Name Search (type its WDS designation) or sort by Nearest to bring up the doubles closest to where your scope is pointing. For more on WDS, see https://www.astro.gsu.edu/wds/