Although no longer in serious use, mention should be made of Ptolemy's star catalogue published in the 2nd century A.D. as part of his Almagest, which lists 1022 stars visible from Alexandria and was the standard star catalogue in the Western and Arab worlds for over a thousand years. Ptolemy's catalogue was based to some extent on an earlier one by Hipparchus from the 2nd century B.C. An even earlier star catalogue was that of Timocharis of Alexandria, which was written about 300 B.C. and later used by Hipparchus.
Aitken's double star catalogue,
This lists 17180 double stars north of declination -30 degrees.
The Gliese (later Gliese-Jahreiss) catalogue attempts to list all stars within 25 parsecs of Earth. Numbers in the range 1.0-965.0 are from the second edition, which was
Apparently, the integers represent stars which were in the first edition, while the numbers with a decimal point were used to insert new stars for the second edition without destroying the desired order. This catalogue is referred to as CNS2, although this name is never used in catalogue numbers.
Numbers in the range 9001-9850 are from the supplement
Numbers in the ranges 1000-1294 and 2001-2159 are from the supplement
The range 1000-1294 represents nearby stars, while 2001-2159 represents suspected nearby stars.
Numbers in the range 3001-4388 are from
Although this version of the catalogue was termed "preliminary", it is still the current one as of September 2001, and is referred to as CNS3. It lists a total of 3803 stars. Most of these stars already had GJ numbers, but there were also 1388 which were not numbered (plus the Sun, which needs no number). The need to give these 1388 some name has resulted in them being numbered 3001-4388, and data files of this catalogue now usually include these numbers. An example of a star which is often referred to by one of these unofficial GJ numbers is GJ 3021 (see Extrasolar planet).
The Henry Draper catalogue was published in the period 1918-1924. It covers the whole sky down to about ninth or tenth magnitude, and is notable as the first large-scale attempt to catalogue spectral types of stars. The catalogue was compiled by Annie Jump Cannon and her co-workers at Harvard College Observatory under the supervision of Edward C. Pickering, and was named in honour of Henry Draper, whose widow donated the money required to finance it. HD numbers are widely used today for stars which have no Bayer or Flamsteed designation. Stars numbered 1-225300 are from the original catalogue and are numbered in order of right ascension for 1900.0. Stars in the range 225301-359083 are from the 1949 extension of the catalogue. The notation HDE is used only for stars in this extension, but even these are usually denoted HD as the numbering ensures that there can be no ambiguity.
The Hipparcos catalogue was compiled from the data gathered by the European Space Agency's astrometric satellite Hipparcos, which was operational from 1989 to 1993. The catalogue was published in June 1997 and contains 118,218 stars. It is particularly notable for its parallax measurements, which are considerably more accurate than those produced by ground-base observations.
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