Messier Objects List

The Messier Catalog is collection of the most beautiful Messier objects which contains nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. French astronomer Charles Messier started his search for comets in mid of 18th century while the visit of Halley’s Comet. He spent his whole life in searching comets. In that era, the size of telescopes were small as compared to today’s optics so it was hard to determine between comet and fuzzy object. He found many comet like objects but they did not appear to move like comets do, so to avoid this confusion between comet and comet like object, he made a catalog of objects which are fuzzy and look like comets. Messier had discovered 13 comets.

Messier found a small cloudy object Taurus constellation. The first Messier object observed by Messier was the remnant of a supernova explosion also known as Crab Nebula (M1). He started keeping a list of such cloudy objects and initially made a list of 103 objects in Messier catalog. Later catalog was expanded through successive additions by other astronomers. It was first milestone in the history of the discovery of Deep Sky objects.

Messier objects may be useful as a reference for amateur astronomers. Today, Messier Catalog is useful for amateur astronomers. “Messier Marathon” is the challenge for amateur astronomers to find messier objects as much as possible in a single night. Messier Marathon can also held to encourage a sense of wonder and exploration and to increase the interest in night sky.

After the success of Messier catalog, later many similar or advanced catalogs started to evolve as time and optics of telescopes get developed. The Caldwell Catalogue compiled by Patrick Moore consist 109 star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies for observation by amateur astronomers. The Herschel 400 catalogue consist Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. The New General Catalogue (NGC) contains 7,840 deep-sky objects like Nebulae and Clusters of Stars compiled by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888. Index Catalogue (IC), the major update of NGC catalog published by Dreyer in two parts in 1895 containing 1,520 objects and in 1908 containing 3,866 objects. Then Revised New General Catalogue also compiled in 1970 by Jack W. Sulentic and William G. Tifft.