History of the Messier Catalog -

History of the Messier Catalog

Charles Messier published his original list of 103

object entries in the Connaissance des Temps for 1784 in 1781.

Messier personally added the entry for M104

to his personal copy of the catalog from his observations, obviously

intending a further revision at that time, about one month after the list

was published.

Messier’s friend and colleague, Pierre Mechain, also continued his search

for nebulous objects, evidently with the intention to communicate his

observations to Messier for inclusion in a new revision of the Messier

Catalog. When this revision did not occur, he communicated his observations

of M104, M105,

M106 and M107

in a letter of May 6, 1783, to Bernoulli for publication in in the 1786

Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch.

These facts demonstrate that the original author and the main contributor

themselves intended to extend the catalog beyond its original 103 entries;

presumably this may mark the beginning of the attempts to enlarge the

catalog.

M104 was more or less officially

added to the catalog in 1921 by

Camille Flammarion.

David Nash has found the earliest popular discussion of the objects

M105 to M109

is the article by Owen Gingerich in the September, 1953

Sky and Telescope, in which he mentions the six “Mechain objects”

(M104 to M109).

Gingerich cites an article by Helen Sawyer Hogg in the RASC Journal, 41, p 265,

(1947) as a reference for the Jahrbuch report.

Considering the efforts of Messier and Mechain of 1781 to 1783 as the

beginning of attempts to extend the catalog, 1921 to 1953 may be regarded as

the beginning of general acceptance thereof.

Early references containing extended versions of Messier’s catalog include

an early list of 109 Messier objects published in “Olcott’s Field Book of

the Skies”, 4th ed., revised by R. Newton Mayall and Margaret W. Mayall.

This came out in 1954 and lists 109 Messier objects, though

M104 – M109 are noted as “not in Messier’s List” and added by Helen

Sawyer Hogg (M104 – 107) or Owen Gingerich (M108 and M109).

Within the next 15 years the additions became pretty widely accepted;

David Levy, in his “The Sky: A User’s Guide”, mentions only the modern

110-object catalog and claims to have observed them all between 1962

and 1967. In 1967, Patrick Moore’s “Amateur Astronomy” gives the

“original” to 104 but has M105-M109 listed as an addendum. Similarly

Neale E. Howard’s “The Telescope Handbook and Star Atlas”, also

published in 1967, lists the original 103 but refers to M104 through

M109 in a section devoted to observing the Messiers.

By the late 1970s this convention (modern Messier list of 109 or 110)

was close to universal, showing up in just about every available guide,

including the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Observer’s Handbooks

and the Webb Society Deep Sky Observer’s Handbook (1981 edition).

Nowadays, the modern list of 110 objects is widely accepted as the standard

Messier Catalog.

This page is widely based on information provided by

David Nash,

whose help is gratefully acknowledged.

Last Modification: 7 Feb 1998, 18:10 MET