A. Latusseck
William Herschel's catalogue of more than 2500 nonstellar celestial objects is without doubt one of the great astronomical achievements of this exceptional astronomer. Largely unknown, however, is a list containing fifty-two fields of extensive nebulosity, which Herschel published in 1811 as a supporting argument to his nebular hypothesis (Herschel, 1811: 275-276), all of which were observed as a by-product of his sweeps between 1783 and 1802. For the purpose of a final revision of Herschel's objects, his sister Caroline's copies of the eight observing books containing the results of his decade-long sweeps (Herschel, Herschel and Herschel, 2004) were analyzed. As a result, a number of errors and inaccuracies were found and corrected. Furthermore, the terminology used to describe the observed nebulosities--which differed widely from that used by Herschel to describe non-stellar objects in his better-known catalogues of nebulae--was investigated in order to obtain a clearer impression of the appearance of Herschel's objects. The resulting revised list, being one principal result of the review of Herschel's list of fifty-two nebulosities, contains corrected physical information on each of the nebulosities. It further gives estimates on the reliability of Herschel's observations and finally summarizes all of the noticed peculiarities in a separate column.
Manuscript in pdf format: jad14_4.pdf