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| Collinder | |
|---|---|
| Name | Collinder catalogue |
| Author | Per Collinder |
| Language | Swedish |
| Published | 1931 |
| Subject | Open clusters |
| Entries | 471 |
| Country | Sweden |
Collinder is an astronomical catalogue compiled by the Swedish astronomer Per Collinder that lists open star clusters. The catalogue, published in 1931, became a widely used reference for observers and researchers alongside contemporary compilations and helped standardize identifications for many intermediate and faint clusters across the Milky Way. Its entries later informed work by observational programs at observatories and by individual astronomers studying stellar populations, galactic structure, and cluster evolution.
The catalogue bears the surname of its compiler, Per Collinder, linking it to Swedish institutions such as the Uppsala Observatory and to contemporaneous figures like Harlow Shapley, Jan Oort, Arthur Eddington, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. Variants of the catalogue name used in literature include "Collinder catalogue" and "Collinder list", while cluster designations are typically rendered as "Collinder" followed by the entry number in works by the Royal Astronomical Society, International Astronomical Union, Harvard College Observatory, Yerkes Observatory and in catalogues compiled at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Cross-references to the Collinder numbers appear in compilations by R. J. Trumpler, Gustaf Strömberg, J. Allen Hynek, and in surveys executed with instruments at Palomar Observatory and Kitt Peak National Observatory.
The Collinder catalogue enumerates 471 open clusters and provides positions, angular sizes, and descriptive remarks. It was published within the periodical outlets connected to the Stockholm Observatory and cited in bulletins from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, The Astrophysical Journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The list includes prominent, well-studied objects and numerous lesser-known fields observed by astronomers at facilities such as Lick Observatory, Leiden Observatory, Observatoire de Paris, Copenhagen Observatory and the Lowell Observatory. Many Collinder entries overlap with designations in the Messier catalogue, the New General Catalogue, the Index Catalogue, the Bayer designation tradition and modern surveys like the Two Micron All-Sky Survey and the Gaia mission databases maintained by the European Space Agency.
Several Collinder entries correspond to clusters that are prominent in observational astronomy and stellar astrophysics. Examples include clusters identified with the Pleiades, the Hyades, the Double Cluster pair in Perseus, associations linked to the Orion Nebula complex, and fields near the Coalsack Nebula and Tarantula Nebula as studied by researchers at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Objects in the catalogue have been subjects in investigations by astronomers such as Walter Baade, Edwin Hubble, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, V. M. Slipher, Antonia Maury and E. E. Barnard. Later photometric and spectroscopic follow-up with instruments at Keck Observatory, Very Large Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory refined distances, ages, and membership lists for many Collinder entries and for associated clusters catalogued by Janet Mattei, George Herbig, Simon Newcomb and Fritz Zwicky.
Per Collinder compiled the catalogue using photographic plates, visual inspection, and existing positional catalogues from observatories including Uppsala Observatory, Leiden Observatory and Mount Wilson Observatory. Criteria emphasized apparent concentration of stars, angular extent, and contrast with the surrounding stellar field, paralleling methods deployed by Robert Julius Trumpler and influenced by classification schemes developed at Yerkes Observatory and in discussions at meetings of the International Astronomical Union. The catalogue entries note central coordinates tied to the Besselian epoch conventions of the era and include observational remarks useful to surveyors at facilities like Greenwich Observatory and Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. Subsequent reanalyses used proper motions from the Hipparcos mission and parallaxes from Gaia to test Collinder membership assignments and to reassess cluster reality versus asterisms as debated by researchers at Cambridge University Observatory and University of Chicago.
At publication, the Collinder catalogue was incorporated into star atlases, finding charts, and observing lists distributed by the Royal Astronomical Society, American Astronomical Society and various university observatories. It provided a standardized numbering embraced in stellar population studies by Bengt Strömgren, Sebastian von Hoerner, Lyman Spitzer, Allan Sandage and others. Critiques focused on subjective selection of sparse clusters and the limits of photographic sensitivity at observatories such as Palomar and McDonald Observatory, sparking refinements in classification by teams at Harvard College Observatory and in later catalogues like those published by Bica and Dias. The Collinder list remains cited in modern literature examining cluster dissolution, initial mass functions, and galactic structure by groups at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Space Telescope Science Institute and in Gaia-based consortium papers.
The Collinder catalogue sits alongside a tradition of open-cluster catalogues including the Trumpler catalogue, the Melotte catalogue, the Dolidze catalogue, the Lynga catalogue, the Dias catalogue and cross-indexes in the SIMBAD Astronomical Database, Vizier service, and the General Catalogue of Variable Stars. Its numbering persists in observational logs, amateur astronomy guides published by the British Astronomical Association and in professional cross-matching by teams at CERN-hosted data centers, the European Southern Observatory and national archives. The Collinder compilation contributed to long-term efforts to map the Milky Way and to characterize star cluster demographics, influencing research trajectories at institutions such as Princeton University, Caltech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and observatories worldwide.
Category:Astronomical catalogues