StarCo by Ludo Coppens © 2014-
In 1774 Charles Messier’s Catalogue des Nébuleuses et Amas d’ Etoiles Observées à Paris was published. As a prolific comet hunter, Messier was explicitly not interested in those fluffy objects in the night sky that where not comets. So he made a list of objects that could be discarded in his nightly surveys. The list contains many objects he discovered himself, but also a lot that where first seen by some of his colleagues, especially Pierre Méchain. As it turned out later, most of these uninteresting objects where especially worthy for later astronomers. Although many of them have since received other designations, they are still best known by their M-