The Searchable Universe is a collection of 26 celestial object catalogs. The catalogs contain several thousand objects of interest to amateur and professional astronomers. The Searchable Universe differs from the typical catalog in that each object is hyperlinked to a variety of information. With this site you can retrieve images, astrometric data, spectrographic information, bibliographic references, finder charts and observing lists. This does not include whatever information that can be found with a general web search. In short you can retrieve a staggering amount of information for most of the objects in the catalog with just a few mouse clicks.

The catalogs are all in the same format, as described in the Catalog Format help page, but the information content will vary from catalog to catalog. If you can learn to use one catalog, you can use them all. To use the catalogs it would be helpful to be familiar with the following concepts.

• The types of objects that astronomers study and their characteristics. Globular clusters, planetary nebula, double stars, diffuse nebula, etc.
• What and where the constellations are.
• The nomenclature used to name celestial objects, e.g. NGC 2932, M 45, HD 203332.
• The concepts of right ascension, declination and visual magnitude.

With only these basic ideas you will be able to understand the data as it is presented here. My advice: you can't break anything so pick a catalog and play. There's a whole universe to explore!

Disclaimer: The information presented on this site is intended solely for educational and research purposes. Any commercial use may be a violation of copyright law.