The Messier Catalog (M)

Charles Messier (1730 - 1817) was a French astronomer who spent most of his carreer searching for comets in our night sky. During his lifetime he discovered 13 comets and was credited co-discoverer of 7 more. While hunting for comets he frequently came across other bright diffuse objects that could easilty be mistaken for comets. To help himself and other astronomers he created a list of these objects. His orignal list contained 103 objects. With additional objects, like the Sombrero Galaxy (M104), added later by others based on Messier’s notes.

The final list which includes 110 diverse objects remains very popular with amateur astrophotographers like myself. The first Messier object that I captured was Messier 42 - The Great Orion Nebula back in 2021. In 2025 I decided to photograph all the other objects of the list using my own telescopes, and I’m still actively working on capturing the complete Messier catalog.

P.S. this page is still a work in progress, some of the images don’t have a description yet, but I am working on it!

Messier 1
The Crab Nebula
in HOO