The Messier Catalog is the most popular catalog in astronomy. In the middle of the 18th century, during the return of Halley's comet, a French astronomer named Charles Messier began a life-long search for comets. He would eventually discover 15 of them. For his own convenience and to avoid confusion, he began keeping a journal of sky objects such as galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters which could mistakenly appear as a comet through a small telescope. Over time, this journal evolved into the Messier Catalog, a list of 110 of the most famous deep sky objects. Looking at these astrophotography images, it is hard to believe that these objects could have been mistaken for comets at one time.
The breakdown of the Messier catalog is as follows:
Galaxies - 40
Globular star clusters - 29
Open star clusters - 26
Emission nebulae - 6
Planetary nebulae - 4
Reflection Nebula - 1
Supernova remnants - 1
Star clouds - 1
Double stars - 1
Asterisms - 1
I decided not to put all of the 110 Messier objects on the same page - the result for each object was not detailed enough. The 2 attached posters each contain half of the 110 objects. The images are somewhat to scale, although not exactly because of the large size range (from M31 at 189 arc-minutes to M40 at 1 arc-minute).
The technical data for the objects of these 2 posters are shown in Revisions J and K. This includes the location and size of each object.
If you would like to read more about any of these objects, each of the objects in the poster has previously been uploaded and described individually on Astrobin. They all reside in my
Astrobin Messier Collection.
This effort is part of the work currently being compiled in my upcoming eBook, which I will make freely available upon completion.
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