Identified at Last? The Case of the Misssing M102 Did a false lead 232 years ago hide the truth about this "nonexistent" Messier object? Michael A. Covington 34 September 2015 sky & telescope For more than two centuries astronomers have referred to about 100 prominent star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies by numbers such as M31 and M42. These are from the Messier catalog, published in installments from 1771 to 1781 by the French comet-hunter Charles Messier. He was primarily documenting objects that could be mistaken for comets. Messier's own 13 comet discoveries have faded into history. But his list of noncomets was such a convenient tally of deep-sky objects for small telescopes that astronomers quickly adopted it and have used it ever since. This part of the story is well known, but then the