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Messier, Charles 1730-1817
French astronomer

Born in Badonville, Lorraine, he began his life as an astronomer in 1751 in Paris. He observed the return of Halley's comet in 1759 and from that time onwards was an avid searcher of comets, discovering independently a total of 13 of them. He mapped the faint unmoving nebulous objects in the sky which he could discard in comet-searching, and drew up a catalogue of 103 entries (1781) by which his name is perpetuated in astronomy. Messier's objects, known by the prefix M and their catalogue number, comprise nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. The 'ferret of comets', as he was nicknamed by Louis XV, was elected to the Royal Society (1764) and the Paris Academy of Sciences (1770).