Cornelis van Zuilen's 110-object Messier mosaic

Cornelis van Zuilen has photographed all 110 objects in the Messier catalog and assembled them into one mosaic, Space.com reports. The Dutch amateur astrophotographer spent 352 hours and 13 minutes collecting that light, work spread across many nights.

That is just under 15 full days of telescope exposure time, and it comes to a little over three hours per object on the list.

Van Zuilen told Space.com by email that he started with the Pleiades, known as Messier 45, in 2024, soon after buying his first cooled deep-sky camera. "About a year and a half ago, I decided to capture the entire catalogue," he said.

He imaged the objects with an Askar 103APO telescope and a William Optics Redcat 51 MK2.5, capturing the ancient light with ZWO astronomy cameras and filters, then editing each one in Photoshop and the astronomy software PixInsight.

Much of the work happened on his balcony in Heiloo, in the Netherlands. Other objects needed a trip out of town, because treetops and farm buildings kept crowding the frame.

"I often had to travel to a semi-dark field nearby to get a clear view of the horizon, which meant many nights of sleeping in my car," van Zuilen said. "But to be honest, I actually really enjoyed that part, it felt like camping."

What is the Messier catalog

Charles Messier, an 18th-century astronomer, drew up the list to save himself a headache: these fuzzy patches of light could be mistaken for comets, according to NASA. The catalog has been revised several times since, and it now takes in some of the best-known sights of the Northern Hemisphere sky, among them the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Pleiades open star cluster (M45) and the Orion Nebula (M42).

Can you see them yourself

Every object on the list can be found with a modest backyard telescope under dark sky conditions, which is what makes the catalog a popular sightseeing checklist for amateur astronomers. Nothing here needs a research-grade instrument or a trip to a mountaintop.

That is the quiet appeal of the project. The sky above a suburban balcony and a field outside a small Dutch town holds the same 110 objects the catalog has held since the 18th century, and someone with patience and a modest telescope can tick them off one at a time.

In the finished mosaic, some objects appear larger than others, and that was deliberate.

"As you might notice, some images are larger than others, and there's a reason for that too," van Zuilen told Space.com. "Those are my favorite images!"

Most of those favorites carry a story about how they came to be, he said, which makes the collage more personal to him.

For anyone who has been meaning to point a telescope at something other than the moon, the Messier list is a reasonable place to begin. It is 110 targets, and the first clear night is enough to start.

• astrophotography
• Charles Messier
• Cornelis van Zuilen
• deep-sky objects
• Messier catalog