B.2 Nebulae data file

This is a text file usually called nebulae.dat. There is no header. The file is just a whitespace separated stream of numbers and constellation abbreviations. In order to make it more readable though, the standard PP3 nebulae file has every nebula on one single line of its own.

Each dataset has the following eleven fields:

1. NGC catalogue number (`0' if not listed there),
2. IC catalogue number (`0' if not listed there),
3. Messier Catalogue number (`0' if not listed there),
4. The astronomical abbreviation of the constellation. It must be all uppercase.
5. rectascension in hours,
6. declination in degrees,
7. visual brightness in magnitudes,
8. large diameter in degree minutes,
9. small diameter in degree minutes (must be equal to the large diameter if unknown),
10. the horizontal angle if the large diameter in degrees (`720.0' if unknown), and
11. the type of the nebula: 0: unknown, 1: galaxy, 2: emission nebula, 3: reflection nebula, 4: open star cluster, and 5: globular star cluster.

Example

     1 0 0 PEG 0.121083 27.7089 13.6 0.0283333 0.02 -30 1
     2 0 0 PEG 0.121417 27.6786 15 0.0166667 0.01 -22 1
     3 0 0 PSC 0.121333 8.30139 14.4 0.0183333 0.01 -21 1
     4 0 0 PSC 0.123472 8.37389 16.9 0.01 0.005 55 1
     5 0 0 AND 0.130222 35.3628 14.8 0.02 0.0116667 -25 1
     6 0 0 AND 0.159056 33.3089 14.1 0.0283333 0.0266667 -50 1
     
     1976 0 42 ORI 5.58808 -5.39028 4 1.08333 1 720 2
     3034 0 82 UMA 9.93167 69.6831 9.2 0.186667 0.0716667 25 1
     7000 0 0 CYG 20.9806 44.5167 4 2 1.66667 720 2

PP3's nebulae data origin

It's the NGC/IC catalogues as compiled by Wolfgang Steinicke.