The Messier catalog, popular with amateur astronomers, was actually just a by-product of comet hunting. The aim was to avoid ...

The designation M stands for Messier objects. I understand the history behind how these were identified and cataloged. But what are NGC objects? Where did NGC come from and how is it applied?

Messier 22 has some features that make it stand ... This allowed scientists to precisely determine the positions of the objects above (and many others) and track how they move throughout the ...

Some welcome breaks in the cold lately have made it feel like spring is just around the corner. I was shocked to see a ...

March is the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere; with that, the hunt for Messier objects can begin!

Read Showing a large portion of M66, this Hubble photo is a composite of images obtained at visible and infrared wavelengths.

He believed that the nebulae were objects within the Milky Way. Charles Messier also produced a catalog of over 100 prominent nebulae in 1781. Messier was interested in comets, so his list was a ...

Messier was interested in comets, so his list was a set of fuzzy objects that might be mistaken for comets. He intended for comet hunters to avoid them since they did not move across the sky.