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| | Charles Messier (June 26, 1730 - April 12, 1817) |
 | | This occurred about 2 weeks after he had discovered another comet, on June 14, which became known as Comet Lexell; unusually, this comet was not named for its discoverer, Charles Messier, but for the calculator of its orbit, Anders Lexell, a Finnish astronomer and mathematician working at St. Petersburg Observatory. |
 | | In the same year of 1771, on September 30, Charles Messier was finally officially made the "Astronomer of the Navy" by the Minister of the Navy, de Boines, and granted a regular salary of 1700 francs annually (this was raised again in 1774 to 2000 francs). |
 | | M63 was the first discovery of Méchain (on June 14, 1779), who had definitely started observing about that time, and like Messier focussed on comet searching and observing. |
| www.seds.org /messier/xtra/history/biograph.html (4865 words) |
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