Sly boots 9 wrote:
can anybody help me?

The M stands for Messier, as in Charles Messier, French comet hunter
and deep sky object cataloguer. M66 is the 66th object in his catalogue
of deep sky objects. Initially inspired by the need to distinguish
comets (which move through the constellations) from other deep sky
objects (which do not), the catalogue eventually stood on its own.

In its final form, it runs from M1 (the Crab Nebula) through M110 (a
companion of the Great Andromeda Galaxy, itself catalogued as M31).
Even today, there is some dispute over the identity of one of the
objects--M102, which is alternately considered a duplicate of M101
on one hand, or NGC 5866 on the other. (There may be a few other
minor candidates, but those are the two big ones.)

Messier lived from 1730 to 1817. He is buried in the cemetery of
Pere Lachaise, in Paris.

Brian Tung
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