Note: The Caldwell Catalog

Beyond Messier: The Caldwell Catalog by Patrick Moore and M. Barlow Pepin (Sky & Telescope, December 1995, pp. 38-43) was the first publication of Patrick Moore’s Caldwell Catalog.

Pepin researched and wrote the piece, which includes an introduction by Moore, working from a Xerox copy of Moore’s original list sent to Leif Robinson at Sky & Telescope in August, 1995. The copy cut off the final digit of Moore’s listed positions, leading to rounding errors. The article, with corrected coordinates, was reprinted by Sky Publishing and, along with an 8.5 x 11-inch finder card to the Caldwell Objects sold separately, was produced in thousands of copies from 1996-2002. Subsequently, the Caldwell (so named by Moore for his maternal surname) was covered by David Ratledge in Observing the Caldwell Objects (Springer Verlag, 2000). The Caldwell has also been adopted and incorporated into the database catalogs of most major manufacturers of go-to motorized telescopes. Celestron even includes a “Caldwell” button on the hand computers of their NexStar and GPS telescope models.