The Principal Galaxy Catalog, 2003 Version (PGC2003) is a new catalog of principal galaxies. It constitutes the framework of the HYPERLEDA database that supersedes the LEDA one, with more data and more capabilities. The catalog is still restricted to confirmed galaxies, i.e. about one million galaxies, brighter than a B-magnitude of ~18. In order to provide the best possible identification for each galaxy, the authors give accurate coordinates (typical accuracy of better than 2 arcseconds), diameters, axis ratios and position angles. Diameters and axis ratios have been homogenized to the RC2 system at the limiting surface brightness of 25 B-mag/arcsec<sup>2</sup>, using a new method (EPIDEMIC). In order to provide the best designation for each galaxy, the authors have collected names from 50 catalogs. The compatibility of the spelling has been tested against NED and SIMBAD, and, as far as possible a spelling is used that is compatible with both. For some cases, where no consensus exists between NED, SIMBAD and LEDA, the authors have proposed some changes that could make the spelling of names fully compatible. The full catalog is distributed through the CDS and can be extracted from HYPERLEDA, <a href="http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr/">http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr/</a>;. This table was created by the HEASARC in July 2004 based on the <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/VII/237">CDS catalog VII/237</a> file pgc.dat.gz. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
