In the late 18th century a French astronomer named Charles Messier compiled a list of 'fuzzy' objects as he was searching for comets. There are 110 objects in the Messier catalogue. I have mentioned them throughout my preceding posts as Messier 57 or M57 for example. They consist of galaxies, open clusters, globular clusters, and assorted nebulae. They are an amateur astronomer's dream as they have unique shapes and colours beyond the typical spot of light produced by a given star. Since most of these objects were found during Messier's research in France, they are all visible from our northern latitudes. Below is a picture I took of an open star cluster known as Messier 11 (M11) or the Wild Duck Cluster.
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| Messier 11 |
Many astronomical organizations have Messier marathons where a team of amateur astronomers get together and see if they can manually find all of the objects on the list. This usually occurs at the end of March and I will send out an event invitation if you would like to join for part of it. Messier objects are among some of my favourite things to see through a telescope. Below is a picture I took of Messier 57 (M57) or the Ring Nebula.
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| Messier 57 |
The thrill of searching the heavens and finding one of these objects is quite amazing. You are scanning the sky with your telescope and all of a sudden a giant cluster of stars appears in your view. It is much more exciting when you manually slew the telescope to one of these objects instead of punching a code into a handheld device to have the scope move to the object automatically. A lot of these objects are visible through binoculars on a clear night. Some objects, most notably M45 and M32, are visible to the naked eye in dark skies. Below is a picture I took of Messier 27 (M27) or the Dumbbell Nebula.
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| Messier 27 |
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