Charles Messier was a French astronomer most notable for publishing an astronomical catalogue consisting of 110 nebulae and star clusters, which came to be known as the Messier objects. The purpose of the catalogue was to help astronomical observers, in particular comet hunters like himself, distinguish between permanent and transient visually diffuse objects in the sky.
The data is sourced from Wikipedia
$ git clone https://github.com/jbcurtin/messier-catalogue.git
$ cd