60 ASTRONOMY • MARCH 2020
Run a
Messier marathon
ON YOUR MARK. GET SET ...
Amateur astronomers across the
world delight in the beginning of spring.
Oh, sure, it means nights will be getting
warmer (at least north of the equator),
but, more importantly, the new season
signals the start of the Messier mara-
thon. Go!Some history
Eighteenth-century French astronomer
Charles Messier loved to hunt for comets.
But as he tracked his prey, he occasion-
ally would spot a fuzzy object through
his small telescope. He’d get excited,
thinking he had found a new comet, but
then, after repeated observations, he’d
notice the object didn’t move against the
background of stars like comets did.As you might imagine, this ticked
Messier off. He worried that other
observers — who weren’t as thorough
with their follow-up observations —
would report such sightings as comets.
This frustration led him to create and
publish a list of such “nuisance” objects,
and he began to record his encounters
with them.
His first find came during a search
August 28, 1758, when Messier discov-
ered a misty patch in Taurus. A comet?
No. This was the first of his nonmoving
objects, and it became the initial entry
— M1 — in his catalog. Subsequent dis-
coveries by Messier and others brought
the final tally of objects to 109, the cata-
log we recognize today.
In total, Messier discovered 41 of theSeeing all 109 objects
in one night should
be on your observing
bucket list.
BY MICHAEL E. BAKICH
The Crab Nebula (M1) in Taurus is the only
supernova remnant on Messier’s list. ALL IMAGES:
ADAM BLOCK/MOUNT LEMMON SKYCENTER/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA