The French astronomer Charles Messier was born in 1730, he was very interested in trying to discover as many new comets as he could . He kept seeing fuzzy objects while searching for comets which annoyed him. In 1781 he produced his catalog of star clusters and nebulae.
He was not interested in nebulae he was a comet hunter, he listed the fuzzy nebular objects so that he could save time by not confusing them with comets. Comets when faint can look like fuzzy objects. Today few people remember any of the 13 comets he discovered, but everyone uses the M or Messier numbers of his catalog. I wonder what he might think of that. Messier died in 1817,
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