Abell Catalog

(ay -bĕl) The standard catalog of rich clusters of galaxies visible from the northern hemisphere. It was published by George Abell in 1958. A supplement for the southern hemisphere was published by Abell and others in 1988.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006

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clusters of galaxies

References in periodicals archive

For the full Abell catalog, see https://is.gd/ AbellPNeCat.

Ethereal bubbles

Only four of the Abell catalog's members have NGC or IC numbers.

Known as the Medusa Nebula, this gem is one of only two planetaries in the Abell catalog with a popular nickname.

This is a nice object and rather small compared to most of the Abell catalog. It lies 20' east-northeast of the 6.4-magnitude orange star SAO 158306 and 8' south-southwest of 9.4-magnitude SAO 158326.

Of the 82 planetaries in the Abell catalog, I successfully observed 79 using the O III filter and found only three beyond my reach.

The best Abell planetary nebulae

Most galaxy-cluster studies rely on a 1958 list, the Abell catalog, that owes its existence to painstaking visual inspections of wide-field photographic plates.

Seventy-nine clusters stood out, outnumbering their counterparts in the Abell catalog five to one.

Combing for clusters

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