This club project started many years ago, when we wanted a listing of the brightest deep sky objects on our computers with 64KB of memory on floppy disks. Thinking it would be an easy task, here we are nearly 25 years later, still maintaining and updating a much larger listing of information about what to observe at the telescope. How far we have come from the list of the brightest 300 objects contained within Burnham's Celestial Handbook, all typed in on my Apple II+. Time flies. As always, if you find an error, please let us know.

This ZIP file contains five text files:

This is the README.TXT file.

SACDOC.TXT is the documentation for the SAC database, there is much information here on the data fields and what the data means. Please spend some time reading this info before trying to utilize the database, it will help you to use this data effectively.

REVHIST.TXT is the revision history, a short file about the various releases of the SAC database.

POTPORRI.TXT is a set of information about a wide variety of astronomical phenomena from white dwarf stars, red stars, meteor showers, common names and more. These are useful files, but they did not fit the information style of the main database.

SAC_DeepSky_770.XLS is version 7.70 of the SAC data as an Excel spreadsheet. There are lots of possible ways to search and sort the data in this popular spreadsheet. It contains information on over 10,000 deepsky objects.

SAC_DeepSky_770_QCQ.TXT is version 7.70 of the Saguaro Astronomy Club database in quote, comma, quote delimited form. This is also called CSV for comma separated variable. Any modern database manager or spreadsheet will import the data in this format.

SAC_DeepSky_770_FENCE.TXT is version 7.70 of the SAC data as a text file that has vertical bars between the fields. You can search and sort the data with a text editor.

Thanks to Bob Erdmann for managing the "www.ngcic.org" web site and providing this valuable resource. The site now contains a photograph of each NGC object as well as information on every NGC designation.

SAC wishes to thank both Wolfgang Steinicke and Dr. Harold Corwin who have spent many hours searching for, and correcting, errors in the NGC. Their work is reflected in this release of the SAC database.

A small fraction of the number of objects still persist as NONEXISTENT, compared to the beginnings of this database. Brian Skiff of Lowell Observatory has been a constant help with a variety of information about deep sky objects. Stephen Michael Schimpf spent much time with the NOTES field, finding errors and trying to make the data more consistent.

Besides myself, I am going to list the dedicated group of people who have helped keep this an up to date and useful database: Bill Anderson, A.J. Crayon, David Fredericksen, Jack Jones, Jay LeBlanc, Matt Lutinnen, Peter Argenziano, Paul Lind and Paul Dickson.

Thank you to the skill, knowledge and expertise of all who helped the Saguaro Astronomy Club create this listing of what to observe in the deep sky.

Steve Coe
Database manager
Saguaro Astronomy Club

Many members of our astronomy club have always enjoyed the beauty of multiple stars and in an effort to provide a list of these objects, this project was begun. We are not foolish enough to believe that it is complete, but it should be a good starting point for many amateur double star observers with modest telescopes.

The previous versions of the SAC double star database have been created by starting with a large professional set of data, usually the Washington Double Star (WDS) catalog. We found that approach to provide plenty of stars but we found that size just created an overwhelming observing list.

So, this time we came at the problem from the other direction. Instead of creating a double star database from a huge file, we would put together the information from a wide variety of modest sources and created a larger file of multiple stars that have been discussed in the astronomical
literature. In other words--someone at some point said that these stars are worth observing.

There are three versions of the database in this release, in an effort to provide the users of the data the most useful format for their computer. The "fence" version is a text file that has a vertical bar, or fence, between each field. The "QCQ" version is a quote comma quote delimited
version so that the user can easier import it into a variety of spreadsheets or database managers. The third version is in the form or an Excel spreadsheet.

Documentation for Asterisms data Version 2.5
Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC) Phoenix, Arizona USA
Dated 9/27/2006
by Steve Coe

The Asterisms data that accompanies this document contain information on all the asterisms that are known. (to the group of people I observe with;-)

The data are arranged in the following order:

NAME, the name of the asterism.

CON, the constellation in the IAU format.

RA, the Right Ascension (2000) in hours, minutes and decimal minutes.

DEC, the Declination (2000) in degrees and minutes.

Mag, the magnitude of the asterism.

SIZE, the size in degrees (d) or in arc minutes (') of the asterism.

TIR, the chart number of the asterism on the Star Atlas 2000 by Tirion.

BSA, the chart number of the asterism on the Bright Star Atlas.

NOTES, other information about the asterism.

Tip: the SIZE field is going to determine the instrument you will want to use for observing an asterism. Very large asterisms, such as the Big Dipper or Winter Triangle are going to be best with the naked eye. Medium size asterisms, such as Orion’s Sword or Swoosh, will be best with binoculars or a wide field telescope. The smaller asterisms, such as Little Queen or Backwards 5 will be best in a telescope. Use the best instrument to get the best view.

Asterisms are fun groupings of stars that do not constitute an entire constellation, as a matter of fact some of these objects are on the border between multiple constellations. But, with a wide field instrument or some binoculars, there is a lot to see.

Do not count on the data here being precise. I measured the size and magnitude of many of these asterisms using my planetarium program, Sky Map Pro. I do believe that most of the positions are good enough to get the asterism into a wide field eyepiece in many cases.

There are enough asterisms here to keep an observer busy for a while, but if you know of more, please email me and I can add them to the list.

(Off-site Link) AstroByte Logging Software is a database system designed to help you keep all of your viewing sessions documented. It also produces report logs, and reports to assist in the field.

The SAC-Tracker

HNSky is an electronic planetarium program from Han Kleijn. It can map a variety of stellar and non-stellar databases, some of which are quite large (meaning it takes a long time to download), so only the smaller databases are included on this site. To access the larger databases & FITS images, please see the link at the bottom of this page. HNSky is free-ware. Read the help file and Enjoy!

1) HNSKY For Win95/95/98/ 2000/NT/ME/XP
Basic package HNSKY230.EXE (3.78 mbytes v2.3.9i) complete with small SAO star database, comet and asteroid and deepsky databases. With modern installation program.
The deepsky database contains 25500 deepsky objects based on
SAC 7.2, Wolfgang Steinicke revised NGC & IC, Kent Wallace SEC (PN) database and many galaxies from LEDA.
2) Double star supplement :Based on SAC2.1/WDS containing more then 10000 double stars.

SAC Webmaster Supplement Files
A) Objects Viewable From Metro Phoenix, "The Urban List"
B) Best 110 Double Stars
C) Best 110 Objects Beyond the NGC

For additional databases, both stellar and non-stellar, please see:
http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm or alternately http://www.geocities.com/han_kleijn/software.htm