These people were the first to find galaxies

[glenc]

They didn’t know it at the time, but these 12 people were the first to discover galaxies.
(In 1924 Hubble found that the nebulae they saw were actually far away galaxies)

The Milky Way galaxy and the two Magellan Cloud galaxies (LMC and SMC) were obvious to night sky-gazers before the invention of the telescope in 1609.
Abd-al-Rahman Al-Sufi saw and recorded the Andromeda galaxy (M31) with the naked eye in the year 964.

Giovanni Battista Hodierna was the first to find a galaxy with a telescope, he found M33 in 1654. I think it should be called Hodierna’s galaxy.
Guillaume Hyazinthe Legentil discovered M32, which is next to M31, in 1749. I think the galaxy should be named after him.
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille was the 3rd person to find a galaxy with a telescope, he saw M83 in 1751 with a 0.5” aperture refractor. I think that galaxy should be named after him.

Charles-Joseph Messier found 10 galaxies between 1771 and 1781. He discovered M49, M110, M51, M58, M65, M66, M88, M89, M90 and M91 with a 3.5” aperture refractor from Paris, while he was searching for comets.

Johann Elert Bode found M81 and M82 in 1774, the galaxies are named after him.
Edward Pigott discovered M64 in 1779 with a 5” refractor. I think the galaxy should be named after him.
Johann Gottfried Köhler found a line of 5 galaxies in Virgo in April and May 1779, namely M59, M60, M84, M86 and M87.
Barnaba Oriani found M61 with a 3.6” refractor, also in 1779. I think the galaxy should be named after him.

Messier’s friend Pierre Francois Andre Mechain discovered 18 galaxies (8 more than Messier) between 1779 and 1781 with a 3” refractor. The galaxies were, in the order he found them, M63, M74, M77, M108, M85, M109, M98, M99, M100, M95, M96, NGC 5195 (M51), M94, M105, M101, M102, M104 and M106. Messier and Mechain found 16 new galaxies in March 1781.

Caroline Lucretia Herschel was the first woman to find a galaxy, NGC 253, with a 4.2” reflector on the 23rd of September 1783. I think the galaxy should be named after her.
This inspired her brother Friedrich Wilhelm [William] Herschel to start looking for clusters and nebulae. He found his first galaxy, NGC 7184, on the 28th of October 1783 with his massive 18.7” aperture speculum reflector. William finished up discovering an amazing 2,142 galaxies between 1783 and 1802.

[glenc]

People who found 10 or more bright galaxies, visually.
(Galaxies mag 12 or brighter)
Number, Name
727 Herschel W.
270 Herschel J.
49 Dunlop J.
40 Swift L.
18 Mechain P.
15 Tempel E.
13 Barnard E.
11 d'Arrest H.
10 Messier C.

[mental4astro]

Love your work here, Glen. The historical context is something that should be remembered.

Though I would argue with who discovered M33. I would put it in the same category as the Magellanic Clouds & M31 as it too is a naked eye object so would have been known to the ancients as a constant ghostly "twin" of the full Moon.

M31 is often said to be the farthest thing we can see with the naked eye - not true. M33 is. What makes it more difficult to see is it requires a really transparent sky. I've managed to see it under a Bortel 4 sky, but this site has tremendous transparency. No way that the ancients would not have seen it or some culture included it in their folklore/mythology. When other naked eye objects are so included in such mythologies I cannot see how M33 could not, particularly with its size rivalling the Moon & its location so close to the maximum northerly path the Moon can reach, it is highly unlikely that it was unknown to some ancient culture. Our knowledge of most ancient Asian cultures astronomical literacy is, well, crap, and there is no doubting some of these cultures were as advanced as any Euro-Middle Eastern culture. Our own knowledge of indigenous Australian astronomy is really crap, and much/most of it has been lost. Especially when they were the first to recognise a variable star in the night sky, it is unlikely the M33 was unknown to them, being such a significant AND lone smudge in the northern sky. Everything had a reason for its placement in the night sky regardless of culture, recorded in stone or not.

I wonder just how many people even consider M33 in their research. Very few I would be willing to venture with how little it comes to people's mind today as a naked eye object. Most amateur astronomers also cannot recognise what excellent transparency looks like vs everything else.

Something to ponder.

Alex.

[glenc]

Thanks Alex.
I agree, M31 would have been seen before Al-Sufi recorded it.
I have not seen M33 with my old naked eyes but many have.