Messier Catalog at Uniform Scale

Explanation: What are some of the most interesting astronomical objects you can see in the night sky? Armed with a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you can look for the very popular objects in the Messier Catalog . Most of them, but not all, are also visible from the southern half of the Earth. The featured image shows all 110 objects in the catalog at uniform scale -- the same magnification. Charles Messier created the catalog in the 18th century. He was interested in comets , and his catalog was a list of known comet-like “ objects to avoid ” in the sky when observing or hunting for comets. The deep sky objects in the catalog include a supernova remnant (the Crab Nebula , M1), other galaxies (such as Andromeda , M31), nebulae (e.g. the Orion Nebula , M42, a star-forming region) and stellar clusters (such as the Pleiades , M45, a bright young open cluster ).