Charles Messier

See also: Messier

Charles Messier , born with Badonviller (Meurthe-et-Moselle) the June 26th 1730 and died in Paris the April 12th 1817, is a astronomer French, in particular an eminent hunter of Comet S. It studied 44 scrupulously of them and discovered of them 20 between 1760 and 1801 - sometimes jointly with other astronomers among whom appear Pierre Méchain and Alexis Bouvard.

It should however be recognized that the fame of Charles Messier is before any exit of its catalog of 110 objects of the deep sky of diffuse aspect (stellar Amas S and Nébuleuse S within the meaning of the time), catalogs that it produced for the comet researchers in order to avoid any confusion with these fixed but still strange objects. Today, this catalog is not used as well by the comet hunter as by the astronomer amateur eager to have an outline of the most spectacular objects which it will be able to find in the night sky. It indeed indexes the majority of the clusters, nebulas and most brilliant Galaxie S of the boreal and, to a lesser extent, southern sky.

The instruments of the time did not offer the luminosity nor the resolution of the instruments of today and it is amusing of reading the notes made by Messier itself on each object. Let us see, for example, which he wrote on the galaxy M65 that one finds in the constellation of the Lion: “nebulous very weak which does not contain any star (...)”.

The Astéroïde 7359 Messier was named in its honor.

Principal discoveries

  • 1764 : the Nebula of Haltère (M27);
  • 1773: the Galaxy of the Gun dogs (M51);
  • 1781: the principal galaxy of the Virgo Cluster (M87 alias Virgo A).

Related article

External bond

  • Biographical note

December 6th 1764 -->

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