What was Charles Messier's primary motivation for creating his catalog of fixed, fuzzy objects?
Answer
To avoid wasting time chasing them during comet hunts.
Messier was principally a comet hunter, and his initial, purely practical goal was to list these non-cometary objects so he and others would not mistake them for the moving comets he was tracking.
Related Questions
What was Charles Messier's primary motivation for creating his catalog of fixed, fuzzy objects?Which nebula is cited as the earliest known object of its kind, observed by Chinese astronomers centuries ago?Which object is cited as potentially the first *new* non-stellar object formally recorded by a systematic observer like Messier?Which nebula's discovery is specifically highlighted as the first instance of a *planetary nebula* being recognized as such?Who discovered the Ring Nebula (M57) in 1779 while observing Saturn?How did Charles Messier initially log the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) in his growing list?What advancement did William Herschel primarily bring to the study of nebulae beyond Messier's initial cataloging?What characteristic shape gives the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) its common name?If the standard for discovery is the identification of a specific, now-named class of nebula, which individual holds that distinction?What made assigning a single "first" finder of a nebula historically complicated?Which object was noted by observers like Christiaan Huygens in 1659 among the first deep-sky sights observed with a telescope?