It's been almost four years since I created the Sharpless catalog section of this website. I can finally announce that there is a commentary for each entry in the Sharpless catalog.
The Sharpless commentary would not have been possible without the work of Veta Avedisova and her colleagues at the Institute of Astronomy, Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow. Avedisova's crucial paper identifying ionising stars for many HII regions and her recent Catalog of Star-Forming Regions in the Galaxy have brought together a huge amount of information on many Milky Way objects. In so far as the world's astronomers have succeeded in creating an Encyclopedia Galactica, Veta Avedisova is its editor-in-chief.
I'm now moving on to finish my commentaries on the RCW and Gum nebulae and, of course, I will add new research results on Sharpless objects as they become available. Even now, 50 years after the publication of the final Sharpless catalog, there are many unresolved mysteries concerning these objects and at some point I'll put up a special article listing some of these.