A List Develops
While Charles was still at Badonviller as a teenager, a list of twenty-one nebulous objects found in the northern sky was written in a letter by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux (1718-51) to his grandfather Rene-Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur in 1746. It was not published, but rather read to the Historie de l’Academie royal des Sciences (Academy of Sciences) that year, and as a result de Chéseaux did not get credit for about a dozen discoveries. The letter was finally published in 1892 by Bigourdan in his Observations of 1884. The list includes twenty objects recorded by de Chéseaux and includes the objects M4, M6, M7, M8, M11, M16, M17, M22, M25, M31, M35, M42, M44, M71, and the yet unseen by him M13.
Messier’s Entry into Astronomy
A very important figure in Charles’ future, Joseph Nicolas Delisle (1688-1768) discussed transits with Halley and Newton in England in 1724. He was then invited to Russia to help establish an astronomical institute and stayed twenty-two years training the first Russian astronomers. On his return to France in 1747, he was given the sovereign appointment of Astronome de la Marine (Astronomer for the Navy), which paid him, his secretary Libour--who introduced Charles to the observatory at Hotel de Cluny and necessity of detailed record keeping--and later his assistant, our man from the country Charles Messier. Ironically Charles was hired for his penmanship skills and put to work on a map of Peking, China, and the Great Wall. Delisle soon introduced his new assistant to the science of astronomy and Charles’ first recorded observations were of the Mercury transit of 1753, which was a disappointing event. Delisle therefore made plans for the Venus transits of 1761 and 1769 and Charles became a comet hunter in the meantime and a very respected observer by 1754 while working as a Depot Clerk for the Navy.
Another List Develops
In 1755, Nicolas Louis de Lacaille published a catalogue of 10,000 stars in the southern sky observed from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. Forty-two of these objects are listed as nebulous under the title Sur les etoiles nebuleuses du ciel austral and published with the Academy of Sciences’ Memoiresde l’Academie and several more times in the Connaissance des Temps. It includes the objects M4, M6, M7, M8, M22, M55, and M83.
Messier’s Astronomical Disappointments and the Origins of His Catalogue
From 1757 to 1759, under Delisle’s direction, Charles tried to be the first to see Halley’s Comet while still a clerk at the Marine Observatory at Hotel de Cluny. Finding this comet would prove a theory that comets could actually return at an expected time and place. He sighted the comet on the 21 st of January, 1759, after doubting Delisle’s restricted search areas which were in fact leading him astray. Because Charles had looked outside of the designated zones, Delisle doubted the find and required further observational data and did not announce the sighting until the 1 st of April 1759, which may have been received as a April Fool’s joke by some French scholars. Unknown to them, Messier and Delisle were beaten by the “peasant in Saxony”, the farmer and amateur astronomer Johann Georg Palitzsch, who sighted Comet P/1758 Y1 Halley, on the 25 th of December, 1758, from near Dresden. As a consolation, Messier’s observations--which include M2 and M30 on the charts published in 1759--were used to correct the data for the 1835 return. Yet, Delisle would again refuse to publish a later comet finding by Charles on 26 th January, 1760, C/1760 B1 Messier. This comet closely passed NGC 2903, but Messier did not discover this galaxy which would have easily made it into his catalogue.
Our Dark Skies Web Community is a service of Vydor Network Services. All content of these pages, and the entire site is copyrighted by Vydor Network Services, and may not be used by anyone without express written permission. All works submitted to are governed by these rules. The forums are governed by the Forum Terms and Rules.
For information regarding advertising on Our Dark Skies, please see [this page].