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
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
is the article by Owen Gingerich in the September, 1953
Sky and Telescope, in which he mentions the six “Mechain objects”
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
whose help is gratefully acknowledged.
Last Modification: 7 Feb 1998, 18:10 MET