Missing Messier object found....M111

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

After many years of searching, I believe I have found the "ultimate" Messier object, making it 111 on the list. I have seen pictures of all of them so far and I would have to say that this one is the "messiest" by far! The object itself has been in existence for a bit over 18 years, making it the youngest Messier object. I appears to increase in size over a period of several weeks and then for some unexplained reason suddenly disappears. Within days it reappears in a very similar form to its last appearance and gradually accretes matter.

I would be interested to see if anyone else has discovered a messier one!

[AJames]

Reminds me of the old joke objects, under "Lost Deep-Sky Objects"..

Messier 666 - A devil of an object to find in any aperture

Maybe it is in this room!!

The same source also had the old southern astronomer's joke...

"Did you hear about the northern hemisphere amateur astronomer who said he didn't mind doing all the observations during a Messier Marathon, in fact he thought it was a good challenge. However, the only thing he particularly objected too was having to carry his telescope and gear the 42 kilometres to the observing site to do it!"

[Kokatha man]

Yep, "oneofone": it's "oneofmany" I'm afraid!!! (pardon the pun) Astro-physicists surmise them to be a particular type of black hole that accumulates (mainly younger) human apparel and associated paraphenalia: it's cyclical, as critical mass approaches various internal and external forces purge the accretions to allow the process to re-invent itself. I've had several at the one time in galaxies near me. This phenomena is normal throughout the known universe!

[GrahamL]

Beware this object dosn't go supernova when it learns of its intimate existance on the web ..more so if its companion also explodes at the same time ..tread carefuly around this one ..IMHO theres more trouble than you ever could dream .so .so close

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Actually at the weekend, the acreted matter disappeared and the object returned to its dormant, transient state. I noticed that this morning (Monday) it has begun to accumulate matter around the event horizon again. I expect it will only be a few more days before it returns to it normal state of chaos!

[alan meehan (Alan)]

so thats where those missing socks go.......

[madtuna (Steve)]

I used to spot the same messier object quite often... then one day I went super nova and it dissapeared into the black hole in the wheeliebin galaxy. never saw it again