The Bedford Catalogue, as discussed in the introduction, represents a perfect list for astronomers who have embraced the minimal astronomy ethos. There are however many problems to using the catalogue as it stands: The first of these, access to a copy of the catalogue has  been resolved by the republication of the second volume of Smyth’s ‘A cycle of celestial objects’ as the Bedford Catalogue by Willmann Bell (Lovi G. The Bedford Catalogue. 1986. Willmann Bell. Virginia, USA). This is a facsimile copy of the original text and is an essential purchase for anyone  exploring the Catalogue. I find the descriptions of individual objects were written with a wonderful style that still resonates a century and a half later with the experience of sitting on a crisp winter evening with a small telescope under the stars.

Unfortunately the catalogue itself, of which the Lovi edition is a faithful replication, has shortcomings both in terms of the recorded positions of objects and the descriptions which were made nearly a century before the true nature of galaxies and nebulae were understood. Many of the double stars have significantly different separations and position angles too as expected given that they are in orbit around one another. Finally analysis of stellar spectra was not available when the catalogue was published but is now critical to our understanding of different star types.

In order to make the catalogue useful I have started work on a companion volume to the Bedford catalogue and will contain the following:

• Updated coordinates for all the objects
• Extensive cross referencing of the objects with the other key catalogue data including the NGC and Messier Catalogues.
• Details on where to find the objects in several key stellar atlas’s including the Millennium atlas and Uranometria 2000.
• Detailed classification and description of each object including modern spectral and galaxy type data where appropriate.
• Cross references to key works in the amateur literature
• A Photograph of each non stellar object
• Key references from the professional literature where relevant to allow further study of the objects.

I hope eventually to publish this as a hardback book but clearly this undertaking is a big one that will take several years and I would like to make a contribution in the meantime by making the developing work available on the web as it grows. I will thus be publishing the guides and support articles focussed on the Bedford Catalogue on this site over the coming months as I write them and observe the objects myself. I do hope this will form a useful body of work and encourage use of this wonderful catalogue.