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Messier object. The Messier objects are a set of 110 astronomical objects catalogued by the French astronomer Charles Messier in his Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d'Étoiles (Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters). Because Messier was interested only in finding comets, he created a list of those non-comet objects that frustrated his ...
Dark sky image with some objects around Pinwheel Galaxy (M 101). The quarter in the lower right shows the tail of Ursa Major with the stars Mizar, Alcor and Alkaid.. The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on, unbarred, and counterclockwise spiral galaxy located 21 million light-years (6.4 megaparsecs) [5] from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.
Whirlpool Galaxy. The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a (M51a) or NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. [6][7][8] It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. [9]
Winnecke 4 (also known as Messier 40 or WNC 4) is an optical double star consisting of two unrelated stars in a northerly zone of the sky, Ursa Major. The pair were discovered by Charles Messier in 1764 while he was searching for a nebula that had been reported in the area by Johannes Hevelius .
Messier 36 or M36, also known as NGC 1960 or the Pinwheel Cluster, is an open cluster of stars in the somewhat northern Auriga constellation. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654, who described it as a nebulous patch. [5] The cluster was independently re-discovered by Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749, then Charles Messier ...
The Omega Nebula is an H II region in the constellation Sagittarius. It was discovered by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux in 1745. Charles Messier catalogued it in 1764. It is by some of the richest starfields of the Milky Way, figuring in the northern two-thirds of Sagittarius. This feature is also known as the Swan Nebula, Checkmark Nebula ...
Trifid Nebula. The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in the Milky Way's Scutum–Centaurus Arm. [3] It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. [4] Its name means 'three-lobe'. The object is an unusual combination of an open ...
Messier 66. Messier 66 or M66, also known as NGC 3627, is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the southern, equatorial half of Leo. It was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier [8] on 1 March 1780, who described it as "very long and very faint". [9] This galaxy is a member of a small group of galaxies that includes M65 and NGC 3628 ...