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In the 1700s, Charles Messier, whose passion was hunting for new comets in the sky, got frustrated by continuing to find other objects that resembled comets, but were more distant "nebulae" -- fuzzy things much further from Earth.  So he made a handy catalog that eventually contained 110 of these objects that were easy to mistake for comets.  Today, we understand that his fuzzy objects are "nebulae" -- where stars are forming from cosmic gas and dust or are dying and letting go of a lot of material -- or galaxies, large remote collections of stars like the Milky Way.  In this guide, we give links to modern images of each of Messier's objects, taken with such large instruments as the Hubble Space Telescope. Each image was taken with public funding and is thus copyright free and can be used for any projects you or your students want to do.

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