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During the period 1758 to 1782,
French astronomer Charles Messier compiled a list of about
one hundred fuzzy things in the sky.
His object was to
catalog things that were often mistaken for comets because
finding comets was a quick way to fame in eighteenth-century astronomy.
Today we recognize these "nuisance" objects to be (often beautiful)
nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters that are central to our modern
understanding of astronomy.