Messier

[mcut]

so Messier used equipment to identify all types of phenomena and they were catalogued up to 103. 104 to 110 were added up until 1961.

I was wondering, based on an assumption of the kind of kit that Messier was using, whether a catalogue exists of things that can be seen with perhaps a 6 inch good quality scope today.

there seem to be so many NGC items which cannot all be visible to most amateurs.

were a messier catalogue to be compiled in 2008 with an average 6 or 8 inch scope, would it include a lot more than 110 items or do factors like light pollution mean that despite any limitations in equipment, Messier had the best skies to compile his catalogue.

[Naz]

Try this, gives a list of what each size of scope can see, some of the links from the site don't work.

http://tinyurl.com/36c4bb

naz

[GazOC]

Although Messier obviously had much better skies, his scopes were small with narrow FOV when compared with the ones available to amateurs today and there are quite a few bright objects that are curiously omitted from his catalouge. I think given a 6"-8" Newt and half decent skies you'd get a much larger list today.

Just as an aside, Starry Night Pro has a "Show Bright NGCs" option which is very handy for 'weeding out' the trickier objects.

[beamer3.6m]

I was wondering, based on an assumption of the kind of kit that Messier was using, whether a catalogue exists of things that can be seen with perhaps a 6 inch good quality scope today.

I think its called Turn Left at Orion

[Astroman]

Charles Messier was a comet hunter, because that's where the money was at the time. (Today, it's exosolar planets.) It's ironic that he's remembered more for all those pesky non-comet objects than the 60 some he did discover.

That said, the quality of optics today surely outclasses that available in the 1760's. The trade-off being he had much darker skies before the industrial revolution.

While Naz's link may suggest some guidelines as to what can be seen in what instrument, it does mention that seeing conditions will vary, and it doesn't seem to mention one's individual visual acuity or experience.

With all that, I'm fairly sure a reasonably experienced observer could compile a much larger list of objects than Charles Messier from a dark site under good conditions.

The NGC was compiled much later with much larger instruments from a variety of sites by several observers. Check out http://www.ngcic.org.

[barkis]

I think Messier had a 7.5" Gregorian 32 inches long, which was not of very good quality, and deduced to be usefully equivalent to a 3.5" refractor 28" long. This deduction was made by Messiers friend J.S. Bailly.

Telescopes in that era were generally referred to by their length rather than aperture. He used about a dozen different telescopes, but most were of smallish aperture, and achromatic in the 2.5" range.

I think people like Messier are to be greatly admired, although primarily a comet hunter, he set about cataloging these objects in order to reject them when looking for comets. It is said that when his wife passed away, Messier who had been nursing her, missed the return of a comet which was recovered by a rival hunter. When questioned about this, tears were shed, but he quickly uttered, "that poor woman"to deflect the disappointment away from the despair he felt at missing out on the comets return.

They did wonderful science with the instruments they had at their disposal. So let no one decry what we have available today.

If Messier had the choice of scopes we have, his album would have been a damn sight thicker than it is.

Ron.

[Cloudwatcher]

Thanks for that,Ron. Very interesting. Bet not many people knew that.

The scopes described don't sound like a good choice for widefield sweeps of the heavens which is what I always thought comet hunters liked.

Cheers

CW