NASA has expanded its catalog of images of Messier deep sky objects by adding fantastic new images, and showing how far we have come since the 18th century, when French astronomer Charles Messier began cataloging strange and fuzzy objects in the sky. .
Messier was a comet hunter:The search for and discovery of comets was, at the time, a great way to make a name for yourself in the field of astronomy, but the telescopes he had at his disposal were a far cry from the technology we have available today, and Messier often found his efforts thwarted by seemingly comet-like objects: faint and fuzzy, but not moving the way a comet should.
He began to create a catalog of these objects as“do not come”, to clarify that they were not of interest to his field of research, without realizing the value that this catalog of 110 objects would have for future generations of astronomers and for astronomy in general.
Not only were they not comets, these mysterious blobs weren’t even in the solar system, and some were even beyond the Milky Way. Messier was seeing distant nebulae, globular star clusters, and galaxies, some of which were millions of light-years away.
And, thanks to NASA and ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope, in recent years we have been able to discover that Messier’s listIt contains some of the most fascinating objects in the sky.You may already be familiar with some of them.
Included in the catalog are the Crab Nebula, which shows a complex network of shock waves from a violent explosion that shattered a star; the Orion Nebula, cradling a nursery of very young stars; the Eagle Nebula, which contains the iconic Pillars of Creation; and the impressive Whirlpool Galaxy, positioned at the perfect angle to showcase the incredible arms of a spiral galaxy.
NASA’s new entries in the catalog are primarily galaxies and two globular clusters – globe-shaped collections of older stars, usually found in galactic halos.
Images credit: NASA
