“Messier Catalog” collection
Pleiades
M45 / Seven Sisters / Kiʹmah
Kiʹmah is possibly a reference to Pleiades in Amos 5:8:
The One who made the Kiʹmah constellation and the Keʹsil constellation,
The One who turns deep shadow into morning,
The One who makes day as dark as night,
The One who summons the waters of the sea
To pour them out on the surface of the earth
—Jehovah is his name."
Triangulum
M33 / NGC 598
Triangulum is the smallest spiral galaxy in the Local Group (us, Andromeda, the Magellanic Clouds and a few more neighbours). It is thought to be satellite galaxy of Andromeda as they are moving towards us together. In 4 billion years all three galaxies might merge into one big elliptical galaxy!
Andromeda Galaxy
M31 / NGC 224
The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest neighboring galaxy, a mere 2.5 million light-years away. It is the only galaxy visible to the naked eye - but just barely. The galaxy is made up of around 1 trillion stars.
Bode's Galaxy & Cigar Galaxy
M81 & M82 / NGC 3031
Bode’s Galaxy is a grand design spiral galaxy which means it has prominent and well-defined spiral arms. It is about 12 million light-years away, and is 90,000 light-years across. Its nucleus is a supermassive black hole, with a mass 70 million times that of our Sun.
Ring Nebula
M57 / NGC 6720
Dora’s favorite planetary nebula imaged on the night of the summer solstice. In the middle is a (now) white dwarf. It is actually 200x as bright as the Sun, but is 2,400 light-years away. This nebula is tiny (when viewed from Earth), just 1.5 by 1 arcminutes. It only started the expansion 200-600 years ago!
