Page 120 - BBC Sky at Night Beginners Guide to Astronomy - 2017 UK

THE MESSIER his catalogue to be a list of
Charles Messier intended

things to avoid
CATALOGUE

HOW A FRENCHMAN’S 18TH-CENTURY LIST OF
NIGHT-SKY OBJECTS BECAME THE DEFINITIVE
CATALOGUE FOR AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS

For budding and seasoned star clusters, nebulae and one are commonly described by their telescopes: rather, it was
stargazers in the northern supernova remnant. This is their Messier number. So a list of objects to avoid. This
hemisphere, the Messier the famous Crab Nebula in ‘M42’ is often used in place is because Charles Messier,
Catalogue is the most famous Taurus, which is also the fi rst of, or in addition to, the actual the French astronomer who
observing list of astronomical object in the catalogue. It bears name of this object, which is created the catalogue, was a
deep-sky objects. Within the designation Messier 1, the Orion Nebula. comet hunter, and many comets
the 110-strong catalogue are commonly written as M1. The irony of this useful appear as faint, fuzzy blobs
examples of every known deep- The Messier Catalogue catalogue is that it was never in the sky – just as deep-sky
sky object – a good assortment has become so ingrained into intended to be a list of objects objects do. So he assembled
of galaxies, open and globular astronomical lore that objects for observers to hunt down with these deep-sky objects into a
list of ‘red herrings’, in order
to make sure they could be
The Crab Nebula is M1, the fi rst
object in Messier’s catalogue discounted during his cometary
searches. He conducted these
in his observatory, a wood
and glass structure atop a
tower in the medieval Hôtel
de Cluny in Paris.
GROWING NUMBER
The Messier Catalogue fi rst
arrived on the scene in 1771
as a list of 45 objects. Ten
years later it had been
expanded to 103, with some
of the later observations
being undertaken by Messier’s
assistant Pierre Méchain.
The catalogue stayed at
this size for over 100 years.
There were some interesting
ROB GENDLER/WWW.ROBGENDLERASTROPICS.COM X 4 NASA/ESA J. HESTER AND A. LOLL (ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY), WILL GATER X 4, historians made seven additions
developments in the 20th
century, as astronomers and
to the list. These were not just
arbitrary objects, but ones that
Messier and Méchain made
observing notes about shortly
after the fi nal version of the
catalogue was published. So

M110, a faint dwarf elliptical
120 skyatnightmagazine.com 2012 it was only in 1967 when