I looked at one of the enlarged versions on the web site and noticed that the background was peppered with numerous small dots. I assume that some might be dim and distant stars in our own Milky Way. Others might simply be very distant galaxies that only show up as dots in the picture.
My question is: How many of such tiny dots have ever received any attention by mankind? Is there information collected, cataloged, or recorded for every faint dot in the picture?
Humans couldn't do this. But is there a way looking up, for example, the brightness or red shift of any of these dots? Or is it possible that I am the only person to ever pay any attention to the very small faint dot I spotted in that picture?
The distant points are mainly galaxies. Stars in our galaxy usually are very bright and have “spikes” of light due to optical distortions. There are probably billions of galaxies. I know that there are organized efforts to categorize galaxy types by volunteers. There is training on galaxy types for these volunteers, but I don’t know that there is any attempt to name them.
To partially answer your question, there are galaxies in that picture that are recorded in at least three different catalogs;
The NGC-The New General Catalogue
The IC- The index catalogue, and,
The UGC- The Uppsala General catalogue.
I can, on my SkySafari astronomy software, find each galaxy that actually LOOKS like a galaxy, and label them, but I don’t have the now-how to actually show you that image.
For stars themselves, there is the SAO Catalogue, or the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Catalogue.
Yes, professional astronomers actually DO catalog the stars themselves, but I don’t think they have cataloged every single one visible.