Messier 111: Difference between revisions

The Messier objects are a set of over 100 astronomical objects first listed by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. Messier was a comet hunter, and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not comets, so he compiled a list of them,[2] in collaboration with his assistant Pierre Méchain, to avoid wasting time on them. The number of objects in the catalog reached 103 during his lifetime but a few more thought to have been observed by Messier have been added by other astronomers over the years.

The first edition covered 45 objects numbered M1 to M45. The total list published by Messier finally contained 103 objects, but the list "got an independent life" by successive additions by other astronomers, motivating the additions by side notes in Messier’s and Mechain’s texts indicating that either of them knew of the objects. The first such addition came from Nicolas Camille Flammarion in 1921, who added [[Messier 104]] after finding Messier’s side note in his 1781 edition exemplar of the catalogue. M105 to M107 were added by Helen Sawyer Hogg in 1947, [[Messier 108]] and [[Messier 109]] by Owen Gingerich in 1960, and [[Messier 110]] by Kenneth Glyn Jones in 1967.