Messier's globular discoveries

[Martin Meredith]

250 years ago last week, Messier discovered 4 globular clusters: M9 (28th May 1764), M10 (the day after), M12 (the day after that) and M14 (1st June). I'm not sure what he was doing on May 31st ;-) He also discovered M19 on June 5th.

By way of celebration, I captured these and some other GCs last night (M19 was too low for me to include) -- the first clear night in 2 weeks. I've included a few NGCs from Ophiuchus to give a sense of how much larger the Messier objects tend to be. 

There's also a shot of M3 which I took in April. This was actually Messier's first 'Messier object' discovery, earlier the same month of May 250 years ago. And to give a sense of scale, there's Omega Centauri from my recent trip south.

The scale is the same for each image, so these are true relative apparent sizes. All are single 30s subs, so this is 7 minutes work in total 

My personal favourite is M4 followed by M12; there's a lot going on. But overall I like the variety, something I feel can be difficult to appreciate when viewing GCs individually.

As ever, the colour balance between captures is not great, but I think it adds to the feeling of these as separate objects. M9 and the NGCs could be improved: they were rather low at the time and with clouds coming in just after midnight I was in a bit of a rush. The image has been downsized a little for posting.

Thanks for looking

Martin

[nytecam]

Well done Martin - an impressive GC haul - and I very much like your notes including a historical perspective - excellent. 

I'm not easy with some of the postings by long exposure APers on their dedicated fora for their pretties with little or no interest in the target itself beyond PPP [perfect photographic presentation]  and universal "I think you need more subs"     

[Paul81]

Great post Martin, I echo the previous comments. I also really like the way the composite image shows the sizes of the various globs, I never appreciated how massive Omega Centauri is compared to the Messiers we all know and love!

[Martin Meredith]

Thanks Nytecam and Paul.

The back stories to some of these objects have always interested me almost as much as the objects themselves. Stoyan's book on the Messiers is great in this respect e.g. the light and air pollution he had to contend with observing from near the centre of Paris...

Yes, Omega Centauri is a real beast, though perhaps it lacks the subtlety of some of the other globulars 

Martin