spiral galaxy

"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…

"When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system." -Kalpana Chawla Welcome to this week's Messier Monday, where I pick a new object out of the original catalogue of 110 "faint fuzzies" designed to help comet-hunters avoid confusion with these fixed, extended night sky objects. Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair Symon, from 2005-2009. In previous weeks, we've focused on a variety of objects, including a globular cluster, an open star cluster, a supernova remnant and an active star-forming nebula…