Messier mistake - M40

[Knighty2112]

You might be forgiven for thinking that all the Messier objects catalogued are either galaxies, nebulae of some form, globular or open clusters etc, but it seems even Mr Messier himself can make mistakes; so hence the seemingly erroneous inclusion into his famous catalogue of what is now known as M40, which may be the least viewed of any of the Messier objects. Why? It is a pair of 9th magnitude double stars (now know to be just optical doubles only) in Ursa Major, 50 arc seconds apart from each other. Messier was looking for a nebula report by Johann Hevelius in the same area in 1660 (possibly NGC4290 perhaps?). Messier never saw the nebula, but did see this visual double pairing. Why he added it to is catalogue is something of a mystery really, but hey ho, it is none the less there. Never seen M40 myself, but plan to look at it the next time clouds permit, and am prepared to be well underwhelmed really!

 

 

[S.A.M]

The really odd object within his great catalogue?

Peter

[ronin]

Traditionally Messier was cataloguing things that were "not comets" otherwise he would have identified a galaxy about 150 yeaars before Edwin Hubble did. M40 was reported to him at around that area of the sky and according to Wiki he recorded the double star kind of simply because he could not identify anything as a suitable alternative to the report.

Oddly it seems that Messier only recorded 17 of the first set of his catalogue of 45, the remainder were added by people to "The Messier Catalogue" after he died. They were added simply because his notes made a reference to something in that bit of the sky. You can get the idea that it should be "The Messier Mechain Catalogue".

He may have recorded it because it could be mistaken for an extended object, and so not a comet but something else.

[barkis]

Messier did make a BooBoo there, but considering the amount of dedication, and patience he showed compiling the list his Album now contains, I think we can forgive him one error ?.                       Likewise Percival Lowell, a fine Mathematician, Business Man, and Astronomer. His theory that perceived Canals on Mars were constructed by intelligent beings,,  drew so much ridicule from his peers and others, it all but broke the guy. The great contributions he made to Astronomy was almost forgotten as a result of people's preoccupation with the Canals prediction he had made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cloudsweeper]

Good point Gus.

There are also M24 and M73 - not real clusters.

Doug.

[Ben the Ignorant]

M40 has inspired these two videos despite being an error:

And the other misidentified Messier star group, M73, is discussed here:

 

[Arcturus D]

Maybe hundreds of years ago there was an object near the current M40 stars that is no longer visible.

[JeremyS]

On 21/09/2017 at 21:59, ronin said:

Oddly it seems that Messier only recorded 17 of the first set of his catalogue of 45, the remainder were added by people to "The Messier Catalogue" after he died. They were added simply because his notes made a reference to something in that bit of the sky. You can get the idea that it should be "The Messier Mechain Catalogue".

It's true that Messier only "discovered" 17 of the objects in his first catalogue of 45 objects, this catalogue was publish before his death. He published a final catalogue bringing the total to 103. The current catalogue contains 110 - the balance being added by other astronomers who examined Messier's notes.