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Messier,
Charles French astronomer Born: Badonviller, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Vosges, June 26, 1730 Died: Paris, France, April 11, 1817 |  | ||||||||
Brahe Galileo Herschel Hevelius Hubble Kepler Leavitt Messier Shapley |
Messier was an astronomer who delighted in tracking down comets. In the course of his systematic searches of the sky, he often came across permanent heavenly objects which he described as "fuzzy nebulosities". In order not to confuse them with comets, he made a chart of over one hundred of these objects, so that astronomers could check the position of a suspected comet against his list. The objects in this list are still known as Messier 1, Messier 2 and so on today. They are often abbreviated to M1, M2, etc. They cover a wide variety of objects. Some are nebulosities and some are collections of stars. Herschel was able to resolve some of these objects. Messier 13, for example, is a huge cluster of stars, as many as a million, now known as the Great Hercules cluster, because it occurs in the constellation of Hercules. These clusters of stars became important later on, enabling astronomers to calculate the size of our Milky Way galaxy, about 150 years later. Some of the Messier objects are systems of stars as large as, or larger than, our own galaxy. Messier 31, for example, is the great Andromeda galaxy. As a comet hunter, Messier was reasonably good, considering the limited telescopes of those days, and he discovered 21 comets in all, none of which are of any particular interest. His mapping of the Messier objects, however, has immortalized his name in the field of astronomy. | |||||||||
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