CATALOGUE, a list or enumera tion of the names of several books, men, or other things, according to a certain order.
CATALOGrE of the stars, is a list of the fixed stars, disposed in their several con stellations with the longitudes and lati tudes of each.
The most renowned composers of these catalogues are, 1. Ptolemy, who added his own observations to those of Hipparchus Rhodius, about the year of Christ 880. 2. Ulugh Beigh made a cata logue of the fixed stars in 1437. 3. Tycho Brahe determined the places of 777 stars for the year 1600. 4. William, Landgrave of Hesse, with his mathematicians, deter mined the places of 400 fixed stars. 5. In the year 1667, Dr. Halley, in the island of St. Helena, observed 350, not visible in our horison. And 6. J. Hevelius, adding his own observations to those of the an cients, and of Dr. Halley, made a cata logue of 1888. But the last and greatest is the Britannic catalogue, a performance the most perfect of its kind; compiled from the observations of the accurate Mr. Flamstead, who, with all the talents and apparatus requisite for such an un dertaking, devoted himself to that work for a long series of years. It contains 2934 stars.
In 1782, M. Bode, member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, publish ed a very extensive catalogue of the fixed stars, collected from the observations of Flamstead, Bradley, Hevelius, Tobias Mayer, De La Caille, Messier, La Mon nier, D'Arquier, and other astronomers ; in which the places of the stars, amount ing in number to 5058, are given for the beginning of the year 1780. This cata logue, which is a very valuable work, though there is reason to apprehend that the same star is inserted more than once, is accompanied by a celestial atlas, or set of maps of the constellations, engraved in a very delicate and beautiful manner. In the catalogu already enumerated, the stars are classed in constellations In the following catalogues they succeed each other, according to the order in which they transit the meridian, without any regard to the constellation to which they belong ; the name of the constellation being given, with a description of the stars' situation in it. The first catalogue of the stars, as we conceive, that was printed in this form, or in the order of their right ascensions, is that of M. de la
Caille, given at the beginning of his Ephemerides for the ten years between 1755 and 1765, and printed in 1755. It contains the right ascensions and declina tions of 307 stars, adapted to the begin ning of the year 1750. In 1757 he pub lished his " Astronomix Fundamenta," in which is a catalogue of the right ascensions and declinations of 398 stars, adapted likewise to the beginning of 1750. In 1763, the year immediately ,pucceeding that of his death, the " Ccelum Australe Stelliferum" of the same author was published ; and this contains a cata logue of the places of 1942 stars, all situ ated to the southward of the Tropic of Capricorn, and observed by the same in defatigable astronomer while he was at the Cape of Good Hope in 1751 and 1752. The places of these are given for the beginning of the year 1750. In the same year, the Ephemerides for the 10 years between 1765 and 1775, were pub li hod in the introduction to which, the places of 515 zodiacal stars are given, all deduped from his own observations. The stars in this catalogue are rectified to the•beginning of the year 1765. The Nautical Almanac for 1773 contains a catalogue of 380 stars, in right ascension, declination, longitude, and latitude, de rived from the observations of the late Rev. Dr. Bradley, and adjusted to the beginning of the year 1760. It has been since, viz. in 1798, republished, with cor 'rections, by Dr, Hornsby, in the first volume of Bradley's Observations. These make but a small part of what might have been deduced from the labours of that great man, if his representatives had not withheld the rest from the public. Mr.. Francis Wollaston informs us, that Dr. Bradley had the whole British catalogue calculated to the year 1744, and that traces may be observed in it of his having examined almost every star in it. He adds, from satisfactory information, that Dr. Bradley observed the British catalogue twice through; first, with the old instru ments of the Royal Observatory, previous to 1750, and afterwards with the new ones. The 380 stars above mentioned were carefully rectified for the year 1790 by Mr. G. Gilpin.