M1 - the beginning of a Messier Marathon

This is not about the London-Leeds motorway, but relates to a fascinating object in the Constellation of Taurus. It is called “M1”, because it is the first object in Messier’s Catalogue of Nebulous Objects and Star Clusters. Charles Messier, a French astronomer, who became Head of the Naval Observatory in Paris, had a passion for observing and discovering comets. The French King called him “the Ferret of Comets”.

While he was searching for Halley’s Comet in 1758, he observed a patch of light in Taurus, which he concluded was not a comet, as it was not moving against the position of the background stars, as a comet would do. He compiled his list of other objects which were potential comets but again were not moving relative to the background stars and could not therefore be comets. He then compiled his Catalogue of 103 such objects, to which 7 more were added later, making a total of 110, from M1 to M110. The Catalogue is still used by astronomers to this day. In those days he only had a small telescope but would have benefitted from dark skies.

The Earl of Rosse, who observed M1 through his massive telescope in 1844, thought it resembles a crab, and called it “the Crab Nebula”. It is in fact the remnant of a supernova, caused when a star exploded in 1054 CE, and was observed and recorded by astronomers in China. It was said to be so bright as to be visible clearly in broad daylight. We now know that it contains a pulsar, the first to have been discovered. This is a rapidly rotating neutron star, giving out radio pulses, hence its name. It is about 6,000 light years from Earth.

So for astronomers who use the Catalogue, M42, for example, means the Orion Nebula and M31 means the Andromeda Galaxy. All the objects are visible in the Northern Hemisphere, and some astronomers attempt “the Messier Marathon” i.e. to observe all the M objects over a short period of time, at the end of March and the beginning of April, and when there is no Moon visible to outshine faint objects.

Messier has probably given his name to more astronomical objects than anyone, through his Catalogue and also having an asteroid and a crater on the Moon named after him.

Post Views : 44