stellar merger

"The man's a born straggler... another lucky exception to the rules of natural selection. A million years ago he would've been an easy snack for a saber-toothed tiger." -Carl Hiaasen Welcome to the latest Messier Monday, where each week we take a look at one of Charles Messier's original catalogue of 110 deep-sky objects that comet-hunters might easily confuse with those transient passers-by in our Solar System. Image credit: Greg Scheckler, from his 2008 Messier marathon, where he nabbed 105/110. Quite to the contrary, each of the 110 objects in the Messier catalogue are (semi-)permanent…