My Observed (and Unobserved) Messier objects

My observed (and unobserved) Messier ObjectsMartin Veasey | Orion Watching

Looking back, it has now been four years since I bought my Skywatcher Newtonian telescope and I thought it worth taking a look at my slow and stately progress through the Messier Deep Space Objects. Purely coincidentally, my logs indicate that I have observed 55 – exactly one half of them.

I’ve provided a schematic plot of the night sky, with the Messier objects colour coded according to my progress. North and South are top and bottom and, given my observing position just to the north of London, it’s no real surprise that I’ve progressed the Northern half rather more thoroughly than the Southern hemisphere – I’m not even sure that the most southerly Messiers are observable for me …

There are a number of interesting omissions that the plot shows up well. I have neglected M74, the elegant Phantom spiral galaxy in Pisces (so one for the next winter) but what happened to M3 (globular cluster) and M106 (spiral galaxy) in Canues Venatici and the entire Virgo galaxy cluster – what was I thinking !

One of my summer projects !

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