Henry Draper Catalogue

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Named after

[

]

The

Henry Draper Catalogue

(

) is an

published

between 1918 and 1924, giving

for 225,300 stars;

it was later expanded by the

Henry Draper Extension

(

HDE

), published

between 1925 and 1936, which gave classifications for 46,850 more stars, and

by the

Henry Draper Extension Charts

(

HDEC

), published from 1937 to 1949

in the form of charts, which gave classifications for 86,933 more stars. In

all, 359,083 stars were classified as of August 2017.

The HD catalogue is named after

, an amateur astronomer, and covers the entire sky almost completely down

to an apparent

of about 9; the extensions added fainter stars in certain areas of the sky.

The construction of the

Henry Draper Catalogue

was part of a pioneering effort to classify stellar spectra, and its

catalogue numbers are commonly used as a way of identifying stars.

History

[

]

The origin of the

Henry Draper Catalogue

dates back to the earliest photographic studies of stellar spectra.

made the first photograph of a star's

showing distinct

when he photographed

1872. He took over a hundred more photographs of stellar spectra before his death in 1882. In 1885,

began to supervise photographic spectroscopy at

, using the

method. In

1886, Draper's widow,

, became interested in Pickering's research and agreed to fund it under

the name Henry Draper Memorial.

Pickering and his coworkers then began to take an objective-prism survey of the

sky and to classify the resulting spectra.

Classifications in the Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra

Secchi

Draper

Comment

A, B, C, D

Hydrogen lines dominant.

E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L

III

Did not appear in the catalogue.

—

Wolf–Rayet spectra with bright lines.

—

Planetary nebulae.

—

Other spectra.

A first result of this work was the

Draper

Catalogue of Stellar Spectra

, published in 1890.

This catalogue contained spectroscopic

classifications for 10,351 stars, mostly north

−25°. Most of the

classification was done by

The classification scheme used was

to subdivide the previously used

(I to IV) into more specific classes, given

letters from A to N. Also, the letter O was used

for stars whose spectra consisted mainly of

bright lines, the letter P for

, and the letter Q for spectra not fitting into any of the classes A through P. No star of type N appeared in

the catalogue, and the only star of type O was the

and Pickering published a more detailed study of the spectra of bright stars in the northern hemisphere

in 1897.

Maury used classifications numbered from I to XXII; groups I to XX corresponded to subdivisions of the

Draper Catalogue types B, A, F, G, K, and M, while XXI and XXII corresponded to the Draper Catalogue types N and O.

She was the first to place B stars in their current position, prior to A stars, in the spectral classification.

In 1890, the Harvard College Observatory constructed the

in order to study the sky

in the

, and a study of bright stars in the southern hemisphere was published by

and Pickering in 1901.

Cannon used the lettered types of the

Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra

, but dropped

all letters except O, B, A, F, G, K, and M, used in that order, as well as P for planetary nebulae and Q for some

peculiar spectra. She also used types such as B5A for stars halfway between types B and A, F2G for stars one-fifth of

the way from F to G, and so forth.

Between 1910 and 1915, new discoveries increased interest in stellar classification, and work on the

Henry Draper

Catalogue

itself started in 1911. From 1912 to 1915, Cannon and her coworkers classified spectra at the rate of

approximately 5,000 per month.

The catalogue was published in 9 volumes of the

Annals of Harvard College

Observatory

between 1918 and 1924. It contains rough positions, magnitudes, spectral classifications, and, where

possible, cross-references to the

catalogs for 225,300 stars.

The classification scheme used was

similar to that used in Cannon's 1901 work, except that types such as B, A, B5A, F2G, and so on, had been changed to

B0, A0, B5, F2, and so on. As well as the classes O through M, P was used for nebulae and R and N for

Pickering died on February 3, 1919, leaving 6 volumes to be overseen by Cannon.

Cannon found spectral

classifications for 46,850 fainter stars in selected regions of the sky in the

Henry Draper Extension

, published in

six parts between 1925 and 1936.

She continued classifying stars until her death in 1941. Most of these

classifications were published in 1949 in the

Henry Draper Extension Charts

(the first portion of these charts was

published in 1937.) These charts also contained some classifications by

, who supervised the

work after Cannon's death.

The catalogue and its extensions were the first large-scale attempt to catalogue

of stars,

and its

construction led to the

scheme of stellar spectra which is still used today.

Availability and usage

[

]

Stars contained in the main portion of the catalogue are of medium

, down to about 9

(about

⁠

as bright as

the faintest stars visible with the

). The extensions contain stars as faint as the 11th magnitude selected

from certain regions of the sky.

Stars in the original catalogue are numbered from 1 to 225300 (prefix

) and

are numbered in order of increasing

for the

1900.0. Stars in the first extension are numbered

from 225301 to 272150 (prefix

HDE

), and stars from the extension charts are numbered from 272151 to 359083 (prefix

HDEC

). However, as the numbering is continuous throughout the catalog and its extensions, the prefix

may be used

regardless as its use produces no ambiguity.

Many stars are customarily identified by their HD numbers.

The

Henry Draper Catalogue

and the

Extension

were available from the

as part of their

third

Currently, the

Catalogue

and

Extension

are available from the

service of the

(French for "Astronomical Data Center") at

as catalogue

number III/135A.

Because of their format, putting the

Henry Draper Extension Charts

into a machine-readable format

was more difficult, but this task was eventually completed by 1995 by Nesterov, Röser and their coworkers, and the

charts are now available at

as catalogue number III/182.

References

[

]

Nesterov, V. V.; Kuzmin, A. V.; Ashimbaeva, N. T.; Volchkov, A. A.; Röser, S.; Bastian, U. (1995). "The Henry Draper

Extension Charts: A catalogue of accurate positions, proper motions, magnitudes and spectral types of 86933 stars".

Astronomy and

Astrophysics Supplement Series

110

: 367.

Cannon, Annie. J. (1936). "The Henry Draper extension".

Annals of Harvard College Observatory

100

: 1.

HyperSky

. Willmann-Bell, Inc. 1996. Archived from

on May 9, 2008.

Webb, Stephen (1999).

Measuring the Universe: The Cosmological Distance Ladder

. Springer. p. 327.

; Gallagher, John S. III (2007).

(2nd ed.). Cambridge

University Press. p.

Barker, George F. (1887).

Proceedings of the American

Philosophical Society

166–

172.

Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey (1986).

. MIT Press. p.

Cannon, Annie J. (1915). "The Henry Draper Memorial".

Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

: 203.

, p. 108;

, pp. 2–4

Pickering, Edward C. (1890). "The Draper Catalogue of stellar spectra photographed with the 8-inch Bache telescope as a part of

the Henry Draper memorial".

Annals of Harvard College Observatory

1–

388.

See in particular

pp. 1–2.

Maury, Antonia C.; Pickering, Edward C. (1897). "Spectra of bright stars photographed with the 11-inch Draper Telescope as part

of the Henry Draper Memorial".

Annals of Harvard College Observatory

: 1.

, Table I

, p. 112

Cannon, Annie J.; Pickering, Edward C. (1901). "Spectra of bright southern stars photographed with the 13-inch Boyden telescope

as part of the Henry Draper Memorial".

Annals of Harvard College Observatory

: 129.

, pp. 110–111, 117–118

, pp. 117–119

, pp. 214–215

Cannon, Annie J.; Pickering, Edward C. (1918). "The Henry Draper Catalogue".

Annals of Harvard College Observatory

;

hours 0 to 3,

(1918),

;

hours 4 to 6,

(1918),

;

hours 7 to 8,

(1919),

;

hours 9 to 11,

(1919),

;

hours 12 to 14,

(1920),

;

hours 15 to 16,

(1921),

;

hours 17 to 18,

(1922),

;

hours 19 to 20,

(1923),

;

hours 21 to 23,

(1924),

, pp. 121–122, 128, 133–134; also see

, vol. 1, pp. 5–11

Hearnshaw, J. B. (1986).

. Cambridge

University Press. p.

Cannon, Annie Jump; Shapley, Harlow (1937). "The Henry Draper charts of stellar spectra".

Annals of Harvard College

Observatory

105

(1): 1.

;

, p. 138

Cannon, Annie J.; Mayall, Margaret Walton (1949). "The Henry Draper extension. II".

Annals of Harvard College Observatory

112

: 1.

Schulz, Norbert S. (2005).

. Springer. p.

, article,

Encyclopædia Britannica Online

, accessed September 12, 2008.

See p. 2, Cannon and Shapley 1937 and p. 369, Nesterov et al. 1995.

2008-09-16 at the

Astronomical Data Center,

. Accessed on line September 11, 2008.

Henry Draper Catalogue and Extension, A. J. Cannon and E. C. Pickering,

External links

[

]

The

Henry Draper Catalogue

and its extensions are available on line free of charge at the

service of the

Henry Draper Catalogue

and

Extension

, A. J. Cannon and E. C. Pickering,

The

Henry Draper Extension Charts

: A catalogue of accurate positions, proper motions, magnitudes and spectral types

of 86933 stars, V. V. Nesterov, A. V. Kuzmin, N. T. Ashimbaeva, A. A. Volchkov, S. Roeser, and U. Bastian,

This page was last edited on 6 April 2026, at 14:50

(UTC)

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