101 Must-See Cosmic Objects: Crab Nebula

Have you ever started something that lasted a lifetime? Charles Messier found a whitish smudge near Zeta (ζ) Tauri on Aug. 28, 1758, while following a comet he had discovered two weeks earlier. But this smudge didn’t look like any comet he had ever observed, so he noted its location on a chart. And thus, without fanfare, the French observer began his catalog of non-cometary objects.

But Messier was not the first to observe M1 (also cataloged as NGC 1952). John Bevis is credited with