CATALOGUE, a list or enumeration of the names of books, men, or other things, disposed according to a certain order.

Catalogues of books are digested in different manners, some according to the order of the times when the books were printed, as that of Mattaire; others according to their form and size, as the common booksellers’ catalogues; others according to the alphabetical order of the authors’ names, as Hyde’s catalogue of the Bodleian library; others according to the order of matters or subjects, which are called classed catalogues. See Bibliography. Catalogue of the Stars is a list of the fixed stars, disposed in their several constellations, with the longitudes, latitudes, &c. of each, or according to their right ascensions, that is, the order of their passing over the meridian.

The first who undertook to reduce the fixed stars into a catalogue was Hipparchus Rhodius, about 120 years before Christ; a work in which he made use of the observations of Timocharis and Aristyllus for about 180 years before him. Ptolemy retained Hipparchus’s catalogue, containing 1026 fixed stars, though he himself made abundance of obser-vfttions with a view to a new catalogue. About the year of Christ 880, Albategnĩ, a Syrian, brought down the same to his own time. In the year 1437, Ulugh Beigh, king of Parthia and India, made a new catalogue of 1022 fixed stars, since translated from the Persian into Latin by Dr [7:6:239]Hyde. The third who made a catalogue from his own observations was Tycho Brahe, who determined the places of 777 stars for the year 1600, which Kepler, from other observations of Tycho, afterwards increased to the number of 1000 in the Rudolphine tables; adding those of Ptolemy omitted by Tycho, and of other authors, so that his catalogue amounts to above 1160. At the same time, William, landgrave of Hesse, with his mathematicians, Christopher Rothmannus and Justus Byrgius, determined the places of 400 fixed stars by his own observations, with their places rectified for the year 1593; which Hevelius prefers to those of Tycho. Ricciolus, in his Astronomia Reformata, determined the places of 101 stars for the year 1700 from his own observations; and for the rest he followed Tycho’s catalogue, altering it where he thought fit. In the year 1667, Dr Halley, in the island of St Helena, observed 350 southern stars not visible in our horizon; and the same labour was repeated in 1710 by F. Noel, who published a new catalogue of the same stars constructed for the year 1687.

Bayer, in his Uranometria, published a catalogue of 1160 stars, compiled chiefly from Ptolemy and Tycho, in which every star is marked with some letter of the Greek alphabet, the biggest star in any constellation being denoted by the first letter, the next by the second, and so on; and if the number exceeds the Greek alphabet, the remaining stars are marked by letters of the Roman alphabet; which letters are preserved by Flamsteed, and by Senex on his globes. The celebrated Hevelius composed a catalogue of 1888 stars, 1553 of which were observed by himself; and their places are computed for the year 1660. There have been various other and more extensive catalogues of stars by Flamsteed, De la Caille, Mayer, Bode, Zach, and Herschel. See Astronomy.