"Upon one occasion, while engaged upon a seven-foot mirror, he did not remove his hands from it for 16 hours together." -from Caroline Herschel's obituary
Welcome to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we highlight a different one of the 110 deep-sky objects that Messier catalogued so that comet-hunters wouldn't confuse these permanent fixtures with transient comets. But each object has a unique, remarkable story in its own right.
Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair Symon, from 2005-2009.
Out of the 110 objects, a full forty of them are galaxies…