“A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. 

They should see planets like our Earth.” 

Christopher Wren

Charles Messier, an Outer Space Contribution

Jorge A. Chu Joy Davila

Astronomy, according to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is the scientific study of objects beyond earth such as planets, stars, comets, interplanetary dust, and forward to new discoveries. This branch of science is known to be the most ancient of them all; it has existed since the daybreak of civilization. Much of the earliest celestial body knowledge recorded is credited to Babylonians. Greeks later made influential cosmological ideas, including theories of the Earth reaction to the rest of the universe. Throughout history there have been many significant discoveries that have affected in a positive way the further discoveries, such as: Ptolemy, Nicolaus Copernicus, assigned central position to the Sun in the Copernicus System, Johannes Kepler, established the Principles of Planetary Motion, Galileo Galilei contribution with the telescope and Sir Isaac Newton with the laws of motion and gravitation. Furthermore Sir Charles Messier made incredible discoveries which we now can see through spectroscopy.

Charles Messier was born in Badonvillier, Lorraine, France, as the 10th of 12 children, and grew up in humble conditions. In 1741, when Charles was 11, his father died, and he had to finish his school education, and the family had even less opportunity for any betterment. Charles got interested in astronomy when he was 14 years old, and a great 6-tailed comet appeared. This interest was further stimulated by an annular Solar eclipse which was visible from his hometown on July 25, 1748. Charles first employment was by a navy astronomer in 1751. Sometime in 1757, Charles Messier started looking for comet Halley. His first reported observation of M32, a companion of the Andromeda galaxy, took place in the same year 1757. Comet Halley was expected to return in 1758, which, at that time, was a scientific hypothesis. Delisle himself had calculated an apparent path where he expected comet Halley to appear, and Messier created a fine star chart of this path. Evidently it turned out that this patch was not moving, and was thus indeed not a comet, but a nebula. He measured its position on September 12, 1758, and it later became the first entry, M1, in his famous catalog -- this object later turned out to be one of the most interesting objects in the sky, the remnant of the supernova 1054, now commonly called the Crab nebula. […]In 1815, Messier suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed. After partial recovery, he attended one or two more academy meetings, but his everyday life became more and more difficult. In the night of April 11-12, 1817, Charles Messier passed away in his 87th year, in his home in Paris. In his lifetime Sir Messier discovered at least 110 objects (stars, galaxies, nebulas, clusters, and comets). Messier discoveries are currently standards in astronomy studies, such as the eagle nebula, crab nebula, dwarf elliptical galaxy, supernovas, Eye of God (nebula) planetary galaxy, globular clusters, Andromeda Galaxy, and so on. Messier’s discoveries are found in a list called Messier catalog, which contains all of his discoveries and important dates. Most of these discoveries are picture viewable thanks to the contribution of spectroscopy.

Bibliography

http://www.messiermarathon.com/about.htm