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Charles Messier was a French astronomer and comet hunter, spending clear evenings looking through his telescope for comets. Often, he would find what appeared to be a comet out in deep space, a fuzzy patch of light, but found upon subsequent evenings of observations that the object didn't move relative to the stars. That's a problem, because comets move. He listed 110 of these "nuisances," which actually turned out to be galaxies, nebulae and star clusters.
Using star charts and celestial coordinates, we can pinpoint the positions of these objects in the sky. Like a roadmap to the stars, let's explore the universe to locate these jewels of the celestial night.