Presentation – Messier Marathon & Space News

For the March meeting, Tom Heisey gave a presentation on the upcoming members’ only Messier Marathon, with tips on conducting the marathon, links to log books, charts, and background information on Charles Messier, the French astronomer.

Messier was a comet hunter who discovered 13 comets. He made a list of objects that he confused with comets in the primitive telescopes of his day. Ironically, modern astronomers discovered that his objects were actually quite nice in modern telescopes. In the 1970s, Robert Hawley and others found that you could observe all of the Messier objects on a few evenings in March or April and the Messier Marathon was born!

The presentation includes many links, but here are the most important:

• The Messier Marathon page filled with tips and links to helpful logs, charts, and web sites: https://southplainsastronomy.org/2022/03/03/messier-marathons/
  
• Tom’s extended presentation for the 2022 marathon:
  https://southplainsastronomy.org/2022/02/23/messier-marathon-presentation-2-17-2022/
  
• SEDs.org page on Charles Messier
  https://www.messier.seds.org/xtra/history/biograph.html and history
  https://www.messier.seds.org/xtra/history/timeline.html
  
• Messier’s Log Book translated:
  https://astro.ago.uni-lj.si/mirror/www.seds.org/messier/xtra/history/m-cat.html
  
• PDF of Messier’s original catalog (in French):
  https://archive.org/details/messier-catalogue-des-nebuleuses-et-des-amas-detoiles…