Messier Objects

Charles Messier was a comet-hunting French astronomer who sought to catalog the location of the brightest deepsky objects, many of which can be mistaken for comets in small telescopes. He assembled the list from 1758 to 1782.

The Messier Catalog contains a few more than 100 diffuse deep-sky objects. The actual number is controversial because of problems with identifying certain objects. M40 may not exist at all, or at best is a dim double star pair. M102 is possibly a duplicate entry of M101.

Today the list is considered the sky's very best showpiece objects for deepsky enthusiasts, especially by amateur astronomers and astrophotographers. All of the objects can be seen with small amateur telescopes and many can be seen with binoculars. A few are naked eye objects that have been well-known to sky watchers since ancient times, such as Andromeda (M31), the Beehive (M44), and the Pleiades (M45).