The French astronomer Charles Messier was born on June 26th, in the year 1730. Because Messier discovered over a dozen comets in his career, King Louis the 15th dubbed him, “the comet ferret.” How’d you like to have that on your resume? Messier used a telescope to find comets, which, when seen that far out in space, lack the familiar tails that develop after they come close to the sun. He saw a lot of fuzzy objects, which he at first thought were comets, but which on later inspection, turned out not to be. They didn't move, and so were not part of our solar system. Messier made up a list of about a hundred of these comet pretenders so he could avoid wasting time looking at them - if only he had known that what he was seeing were star clusters like M13 in Hercules, or nebulas like M42 in Orion, and galaxies like M31 in Andromeda or the Whirlpool, M51 - what incredible discoveries he never made!
Mon Jun 26, 2017 CHARLES MESSIER
