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Cookbook CB245 CCD Images Messier IndexBest CCD Images |
 
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French astromoner Charles Messier (1730-1817) created a catalog of of nebulae and star clusters so that these objects would not be confused for comets which was his observing focus. Messier claimed to have discoved 21 comets. The Messier catalog contains objects observed by Messier and his fellow astronomer Pierre Mechain (1744-1805). The largest telescope used by Messier was 3.5 inch refractor.
The Messier catalog lists 110 deep sky objects cataloged by M numbers: M1 through M110. Messier objects are an excellent observing list for those intersted in observing deep sky objects and whoes observing location is in the mid-northern latitudes.
All of the above Messier images were taken by David Haworth with a small 80-mm refractor telescope and a home built CCD camera. The image scale is the same for all the images and these images provide a good way to compare the size of the Messier deep sky objects with each other. All the images are the same field of view except M31 is three images combined because it is very large and M37 is croped because of bright star blooming. Some of the images like Ring Nebula M57 image is very small when compared with the large galaxy image of M33. For most of the images the image size or field of view is about 55 arc minutes high by 40 arc minutes wide with north positioned at the top of the Web page. For comparison the moon is about 30 arc minutes in diameter. Therefore, the images are a little less that two moon diameters high and a little more than one moon diameter wide.
Use the monitor test patterns to calibrate monitor brightness, contrast, height and width. There is a big difference in image quality with 256 color (very poor quality), high color (alot better) and true color (best quality) displays.