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Hi, I am hosting a non-profit project called Continuum. It is an ongoing and real-time space exploration serie. In each interconnected episode, we discover and wonder at a new region of our galaxy, and beyond. The motto of Continuum is "be curious and contemplative". Released every few days on YouTube, each episode features an image, captured remotely at Obstech, Chile, which I share here after to explore freely. In the process, I explain the objects we encounter, in a hopefully engaging and documentary way. Doing so, I encounter a lot of lesser known (and sometimes, unknown) objects, and at already 34 episodes today, there was a need to start a satellite project of indexing them. Thus at episode #32 was born the LL Catalog of Unknown and Occult Deep-Sky Objects. This informal recollection is meant to highlight some of the cosmic wonders that have slipped through the net of astronomers, or that have not yet been photographed by the astrophotographic community. The aim of this satellite project is to encourage explorers to get off the beaten track, and make their own some of the many cosmic nuggets that dot our Continuum journey. It will be updated along the way, and retrospectively, so please bookmark it, as it will likely grow far bigger as the serie continues. Hoping it will be of interest for some of you. See you! Laurent |
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Hi Laurent, Big fan of your work - incredible and very pleasant to watch. Thanks for putting so much effort into it ! It goes without saying that the LL catalog is an excellent idea. Merci mon gars, Aygen |
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Merci Aygen for the kind comment! Looking forward to share more content and ideas  Laurent |
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Edit : someone on another forum advised to rebrand the catalog as a list instead. Nomenclature is important there, as "catalog" refers to a proper and reviewed academic catalog, while "list" suits more the informal intent of the project. What do you think? |
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Well, I think I have the largest collection of names and nicknames of astronomical objects beyond the solar system. To collect these names and nicknames, to write and to arrange them (with their coordinates, their constellations, and their catalog numbers) alphabetically in a not-so-small notebook (say: a cahier) and also on square shaped cards (10 by 10 centimeters) in broad ringmaps with 4 large U-shaped rings in each one of the 10 maps, is my hobby. I am not exactly an amateur astronomer, I am a collector of "oversized" cosmic things and structures one can't grasp! (much too large to put them in boxes, so to say). It is a hobby that started somewhere at the beginning of the eighties while reading the monthly U.S.-magazine ASTRONOMY. I want to put my entire collection online, in an article of Wikipedia, but... alas, it is almost impossible because of many of the names and nicknames I don't know the published sources (most came from ASTRONOMY, but a large part came from other magazines and books of which I can't remember their names or authors). By the way, have you visited the PDF of the online alphabetic list of named deepsky objects from CLEAR SKIES ? This is a veritable cornucopia for those who want to get a huge amount of this sort of nomenclature! Truckloads of names and nicknames! |
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By the way, I want to tell you the very sad story of the young Dutch connoisseur of named deepsky objects, Dennis van Bommel, who was a participant in the TV-game Wedden Dat with Jos Brink (1986). That evening in 1986, young Dennis was the winner of the bet to name each and every one of, say, fifty or sixty different named deepsky objects. He knew everyone of them by their officially accepted name! The next day, or a couple of days after his appearance on television, Dennis van Bommel was killed in a car accident. He was walking on street and was caught by a car. Dennis's appearance on television (in Wedden Dat) is somewhere on YouTube. We can only wonder... if Dennis van Bommel was still alive today, he might have been the world's most dedicated collectionneur of the nomenclature of deepsky objects and also of much larger structures in the most remote sections of the universe! I feel a kind of duty to continue the task of Dennis van Bommel, to collect names and nicknames of astronomical objects and structures beyond the solar system. I wish Dennis was still around. We could have been a team! |
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Hi Danny, Thank you for this interesting personnal story of yours and Dennis's. Was he a friend of yours? I feel sympathy and connexion with amateur astronomers who, through visual, photographic, or documentary means, dedicate their time to explore the sky in a methodical, or at least, interested way, like Herschells of our time; adventurers. I must admit, I feel there is a growing trend of boring images here and elsewhere. Don't we have enough of M42's? These are a good start, and I committed to them when I was a beginner. But I can not tell if this trend of lesser curiosity is the result of a growing number of new amateur astronomers, or is there a growing number of lazy astronomers in the existing pool? In any case, although imaging (or visual observing in its own right) are deep and fascinating endeavors by themselves, it seems to me that they should remain in our hearts for the means they are, and not the ends. They are Tools for the astronomer to explore the sky. Remember the word "astronomer" comes from the Greek words "astron" (star) and "nomos" (law or custom). So, the etymology of astronomer signifies someone who studies the laws or customs of stars. By the way, do you have a link to the pdf you referred in your first post? Also, I would be interested in seeing one of your notes (I'm sure others here too). Maybe a small voluntary team could help digitize and sort out your work. Laurent |
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I must say, this growing trend of boredom is everywhere on this planet! (sigh). It's on the radio too, because on the workfloor we have to listen to, say, one hundred lazy rhythm-less "normal" songs which are repeated almost every day (mostly songs about crashed relationships and other heavy topics in life, and also hopelessly screaming men-in-need). There is a documentary about this trend on Sundance Channel, about American radio stations which have very narrow selected small playlists of daily transmitted songs to keep labourers dumb like flocks of sheep, and for people without spirit (read: without salt-and-pepper in their blood, for people without riddim or electricity in their bodies). It is forbidden for labourers to start dancing or to behave out-of-normal ! We shall never hear African Reggae by Nina Hagen. I have known Dennis van Bommel not personally, I only know him from people who told me about the accident, and from his preserved appearance on YouTube. The adress of the PDF of CLEAR SKIES: Named-Objects-index.pdf (clearskies.eu) George Lucas had a vision when he made THX-1138 way back in the beginning of the seventies. I'm afraid it is gradually turning into reality. |
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Thanks for the pdf. These are reasonably obscure objects, I assume this list was crafted for visual observers mostly? Good movie. But our human paradigm is the way we make it to be. My personnal act on this is a commitment to Continuum and the LL list. Not much, almost insignifiant for sure, but society is a collective mirror of its individual constituents. Bitterness nor fear are useful reflections. Action is. Laurent |
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I don't think radio sources and X-ray sources, or other visually non-observable objects, are also included. And... alas, no coordinates in this list. Some of the mentioned catalog numbers don't seem to exist in the SIMBAD Query form. Many of the named objects are indeed VERY obscure! But... that's the challenge, to try to locate them via other, much more obscure online or printed sources! You know the Copernicus syndrome? Whole series of telescopic photographs of only one lunar crater: Copernicus. Okay, it is the most eye-catching crater on the moon's near side, but... (you know...). Once there was that visitor in my city's public observatory. The telescope was aimed at... Copernicus, because the staff of the observatory told me to do so (I was the telescope operator). The visitor, looking through the telescope: "Which one of the planets is this?" |
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Indeed, coordinates are a must. Every object of the LL list is referenced by coordinates and catalog list, per Simbad cross referencing. |
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These days one should be very careful when talking about something of which very few people know about. For example: the Circumzenithal Arc (a spectral colored halo phenomenon straight above the head, looking very much like the common rainbow). Most people say, when they hear about it: "Are you on drugs or something?" On the other hand, when one is talking about black holes: "You must be a mathematician" (black holes sound very high-schoolish). Other things I've heard, when I was talking about, for example, the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt (deeply frozen comet nuclei far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto): "Say, have you ever observed the central section of a naked woman?" (to most people, astronomy is something for brave and naive schoolchildren). |
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| It feels we are diverging from the original topic, which is specifically about objects most people would not know about. |
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| Sorry, I was carried away (too much "odd" memories from the years when I was a dedicated telescope operator in the public observatory of my home city). People ask'd me all sorts of questions, such as: "What do you think about flying saucers". My rude answer could have been: "Flying saucers? Pure nonsense!" Instead, my polite answer was: "Dear visitors, if you want to know more about them, try to find and read the books from Jacques Vallee and Allen J. Hynek, and also Philip J. Klass". |
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Danny Caes: I feel your frustration, but find useful to remember I am always the "general public asking dumb questions" of someone else, in a domain that escapes my scrutiny. |
