The Cosmos
milhayser | January 9, 2013On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel makes headway on his tour of "110 spectacular deep-sky objects" first cataloged by Charles Messier in 1758. Before powerful telescopes were developed, the heavens consisted of the sun, moon, stars, a few bright planets, and the rare passing comet. Comets were actively sought by men like Messier, who one night saw a bright smudge—too ill-defined to be a star—that "neither brightened nor changed position nor altered in appearance over the subsequent nights." He had spotted the beautiful Crab Nebula, an expanding lacework of stardust blown out by a…