messier

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." -John Wayne There's a lot to look forward to on the precipice of the new year, and many of us will be up until midnight to ring it in. Well, if you're up that late, why not step outside and take a look at one of the deep-sky wonders of the Universe that won't be visible in the early part of the night for months! This Messier Monday, a near-moonless sky will greet you until the pre-dawn twilight, and…

"A sister is both your mirror - and your opposite." -Elizabeth Fishel With 110 deep-sky wonders to choose from in the Messier catalogue, our long-running series on Messier Monday promises to keep us busy for some time to come! As we've finally passed the winter solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, many new spectacular sights await skygazers in the early part of the night. As it's also the 1-year anniversary of when we adopted a little sister for our dog from the local humane society, I thought it would only be fitting to highlight the little sister to last week's Messier object. Image…

"Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe." -Maria Mitchell It's time again for Messier Monday, where we highlight the various wonderous deep-sky objects of the night, and show you how to find them against the expansive backdrop of stars. The (almost) full Moon is out tonight, polluting your night sky with as much light as a large-sized urban area, but that doesn't mean all of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue are off-limits! Image credit: Mike Keith’s delightful (a)periodic table of Messier objects! While extended…

"The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself." -Thomas Szasz But on this Messier Monday, you're lucky enough that you're about to be introduced to one of the great northern galaxies of the Messier catalogue that is feeding itself! There are 110 deep-sky, non-transient objects that make up the Messier catalogue, and a full 40 of them are galaxies, the most numerous and most distant of all the types of objects catalogued by Messier. Image credit: Tenho Tuomi of http://www.lex.sk.ca/astro/messier/index2.…

"Give me a man who says this one thing I do, and not those fifty things I dabble in." -Dwight L. Moody While star clusters may dabble in a number of physically interesting things, there's one thing that they do above all others, and that is shine. For today's Messier Monday, where we spotlight one of the 110 deep-sky wonders of the Messier catalogue, let's take a look at one of the brilliant open clusters of stars that's recently formed in our neighborhood of the galaxy and that will appear all winter long: Messier 50. Image credit: Greg Scheckler, using the robotic telescopes of http://…

"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." -Franz Kafka The night sky is our window into the Universe beyond the Solar System, and in some cases, even beyond our own galaxy! Perhaps the oldest useful collection of deep-sky objects, the Messier catalogue showcases 110 of the most prominent night sky wonders, a full 42 of which are located beyond our own galaxy. Today, for Messier Monday, let's take a look at one of the true rarities of the Messier catalogue: a globular cluster that's not a part of our own galaxy! Image credit: Al Kelly of http://www.kellysky.net/; images…

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Leonardo da Vinci Welcome back to another exciting Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! As Comet ISON dives towards the Sun and a nearly perfect full Moon towers overhead, it's easy to forget about those wondrous deep-sky objects that are fixed, but the 110 prominent members of the Messier Catalogue are always on tap for dedicated skywatchers. Although the extended objects -- galaxies and nebulae -- are difficult to view with a…

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all." -Abraham Lincoln It might be Veterans Day / Armistice Day all around the world, but it's still Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! We may have been fighting wars for all of human history, but nearly all of the 110 deep sky objects that make up the Messier Catalogue go back long before that. Image credit: Tenho Tuomi of Tuomi Observatory, via http://www.lex.sk.ca/. Today, we take an in-depth look at one of the brightest and closest star clusters in the entire night sky, one that -- despite being…

"Dream no small dreams, for they have no power to move the hearts of men." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Welcome back to yet another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we highlight one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue, showing you where and how to find it in the sky and telling you a bit about the history and the physics/astrophysics behind it. Each one tells its own unique story, and today's distant wonder is no exception. Image credit: Rich Richins, of all 110 Messier objects (in no particular order). On a virtually moonless night like…

"I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms." -Voltaire Every object that we look at for Messier Monday has its own flavor, its own qualities, and its own unique characteristics. By far the most numerous of the 110 deep-sky objects making up the Messier catalogue are the galaxies, of which there are 40. It's best to observe them on moonless nights, as their surface brightness is spread out across a large area, and even a crescent Moon's presence in the night sky can make all but the brightest of these galaxies invisible to the eye, even in good equipment. Image credit: Mike Keith…

"Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error." -Benjamin Rush Welcome back to another Messier Monday! Each week, we take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky wonders of the Messier Catalogue, from distant galaxies to nearby star clusters, from nebulous star factories to ancient globular bunches, and from stellar remnants to the rare-but-interesting anomalies. There are only three such anomalous entries out of all 110 Messier objects, and today provides us with a fantastic opportunity to take an in-depth look at one of them. Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair Symon…

"The deeper reason we fear our own glory is that once we let others see it, they will have seen the truest us, and that is nakedness indeed. [...] It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling his." -John Eldredge Welcome back to another Messier Monday, where the glittering wonders of the night sky -- visible to anyone at the right latitudes with even simple equipment -- are on display for everyone. The bright collection of 110 deep-sky wonders include star clusters, globular clusters, galaxies…

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." -Patrick Henry It's not a good idea to showcase a galaxy for you every Messier Monday, considering that even a crescent Moon can render most of them completely unobservable. Now that the autumnal equinox has passed, however, a very special spiral will be visible after sunset for the next six months or so in a relatively nondescript part of the night sky. Out of the 110 deep-sky objects that comprise the Messier catalogue, a full forty of them are galaxies, although today's object wasn't recognized as…

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." -Joseph Campbell It took Charles Messier and his assistant, Pierre Méchain, a lifetime to scan and survey the sky for all the permanent deep-sky objects visible in their telescopes that could possibly be confused for comets on first class. More than 200 years later, these 110 deep-sky objects are among the best seen and most wondrous sights of the Universe, accessible to anyone with a decent telescope and dark skies. This Messier Monday, let's look the farthest into the…

"I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words." -Joseph Pulitzer When it comes to the Messier objects, though, it isn't words that get concentrated; its collections of stars, gas, dust and more! So welcome to another edition of Messier Monday, where we take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue. Some of these objects are only a few light-years wide, containing just a…

"Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -Winston Churchill To kick off every week for nearly a year now, we've begun it with Messier Monday, where we take an in-depth look at the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the first elaborate catalogue of fixed night-sky wonders that could possibly be confused for transient comets. Originally, when first published, this catalogue was made up of 103 objects; the final 7 were added posthumously. Each one tells its own unique story, yet all of them tell a sliver of our own story,…

"Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg." -Hans Christian Anderson Welcome back for another Messier Monday! There are 110 deep-sky objects in the Messier catalogue, some of the most prominent night-sky fixtures, as seen from Earth, running the gamut of astronomical phenomena from within our galaxy and beyond. Each week, we pick a new one to place under the spotlight, examining what it is, what we know about it, and how to find it, among other spectacular facts. Image credit: Rolando Ligustri, taken over many years, retrieved from http://www.…

"A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle." -Khalil Gibran It’s time again for another Messier Monday! The Messier Catalogue was the original comprehensive and accurate catalogue of fixed, deep-sky objects visible to any dedicated (northern hemisphere) skywatcher with even the most primitive of astronomical equipment. Over the centuries, as our understanding of what we're looking at has improved, these 110 celestial wonders have provided classic examples of astronomical phenomena ranging from stellar corpses to new star-forming regions, from young…

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows." -Robert Frost It's time again for another Messier Monday! To kick off each week, we've been taking a look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue. Compiled in the 18th Century to help skywatchers avoid these fixed night sky wonders (so that they could better hunt comets), these represent some of the most viewed and easily visible nebulae, star clusters and galaxies visible from our home world. Image credit: Tenho Tuomi of Tuomi Observatory, via http://rockpoint.dyndns.org/. An…

"There is an ancient saying among men that you cannot thoroughly understand the life of mortals before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad." -Sophocles Imagine looking up at the night sky -- able to survey the full depths of space -- with eyes the size of saucers instead of our paltry, few-millimeter-sized pupils. What do you suppose you'd see? Well, here on Messier Monday, we take a journey through the first catalogue to effectively do just that! Charles Messier catalogued, over many years in the late 18th Century, 110 deep-sky objects, each unique, and each telling its…