Messiern.

1850 Ld. Rosse in Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 140 504 A 6-feet aperature [sic] so strikingly brings out the characteristic feature of 51 Messier.

1853 W. Whewell Plurality of Worlds vii. 127 (note) The frontispiece to this volume represents two of these Spiral Nebulæ; those denominated 51 Messier, and 99 Messier.

1861 Monthly Notices Royal Astron. Soc. 21 33 The cluster known as 80 Messier changed, apparently, from a pale cometary looking object, to a well-defined star..and then returned to its usual and original appearance.

1899 Astrophysical Jrnl. 10 255 The cluster Messier 5..contains about 900 stars on the photographs made with the 13-inch Boyden refractor.

1929 Astrophysical Jrnl. 69 104 Messier 31, the great nebula in Andromeda, is the most conspicuous of all the spirals and the only one which can be seen easily with the naked eye.

1987 New Yorker 2 Feb. 26/2 Messier 1 turned out to be the Crab nebula in Taurus.

1917 Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific 29 177 Most of the Messier numbers, however, have been identified with numbers of Dreyer's New General Catalogue.

1943 H. Shapley Galaxies iv. 86 Many a modern amateur and some professional astronomers have since come upon one of these Messier objects and have excitedly telegraphed the supposed discovery of a new comet to the information bureau at the Harvard Observatory.

1968 K. G. Jones Messier's Nebulae & Star Clusters i. 29 Many of the Messier Objects, being on the whole, easily visible, have played a large part in revealing much of our present knowledge of stellar evolution and general cosmology.

1992 Astron. Now July 8/3 The galaxy is known as the Milky Way but has no Messier number.