THE MESSIER OBJECTS 

by Stephen James O'Meara

= Reviewed by James Kevin Ty =

This book is published in 1998. Stephen James O'Meara, a first man to recover or sighted Halley's Comet during its return in 1985 ; He was also the first to notice "spokes" in Saturn's B ring before Voyager spacecraft imaged them and also the first to determine the rotation period of the planet Uranus. With his "eagle sharp" eyes, he made the drawings of the Messier objects found in this book with a Televue Genesis 4" f/5 apo-refractor and eyepieces 22mm Panoptic, 7mm Nagler 2 and 1.8 barlow lens in his home near Mauna Kea where he estimated the limiting magnitude of that place to be around magnitude 8.5!!!!! Wished we here have an observing site like his. Anyway, he painstakenly utilizes many hours at the eyepiece and using different magnifications to view a particular object and later composited the final images that one can see in his sketches. He really amazes me with the kind of detail he can see with just a 4" refractor!!!

This book contains all the 110 objects including the duplicate and "missing"objects. On each object, an actual b/w photo and his drawing is shown plus a brief description which he made during his observations . This book is almost similar to the "The Messier Album" by Mallas and Kreimer (first published in 1978 and the latest 5th printing in 1994) but that the drawings found in that book is already almost 20 years old and with the latest high tech scopes in the market, one might be in a better hand to make a revisions on these objects. Also, the coordinates here are in epoch 2000.0 and O'Meara also made some magnitude estimates on some objects which can be found in magnitude , i.e. 8.0 (7.9 O'Meara).

Well, one thing an observer should note and "might think" is that all his sketches found in this book might look a little "exaggerated" when he is viewing them here in the urban and sub-urban . O'Meara has an excellent site in Hawaii with a super 8.5 limiting magnitude , so to really catch those details, we must reach out or go to a very, very dark skies to really match his observations and also with a very eagle-sharp eye like his. For those who will just be viewing in the urban or suburbs, just try to observe carefully and pick out the faint details with patience as he did and who knows? You might make a sketch which might be almost similar like his.

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