Discovery of Nebula

A nebula, derived from the Latin meaning ‘mist’, is a cloudy or fuzzy patch of light in the night sky. The plural is nebulae.

The first star catalogue know to have been completed was that of Hipparchus who observed at Rhodes between 146 BC and 127 BC.

Next star catalogue was that of Ptolemy who observed at Alexandria from the years AD 127 to AD 151. His most famous contribution to astronomy was his Great Syntaxas. He noted about nebula behind the string of Scorpius.

Ptolemy has inserted five stars in his catalogue, which on account of their haze aspect, he distinguished by the appellation of Cloudy Stars.

The first true ‘nebula’ as distinct from a star cluster, was included by the Persian astronomer, Abdul Rahman al Sufi, in his book of the Fixed Stars, compiled for the epoch AD 964.

He described constellation of Andromeda and for the first time in recorded history he mentions the locations of a nebula which is now identified as M31.

In the 15th center, Ulugh Begh, a grandson of Tamerlane founded an observatory at Samarkand and also compiled a star catalogue: this however, contained only the same nebulous objects as in Ptolemy’s catalogue.
William Herschel and Caroline Herschel extended the number of nebula. He observed and documented nebula of different kinds.

The telescopes of William Parsons, Earl of Rosse (1800-1867) extended the catalogue of nebula. Rosse succeeded in resolving nebula which William Herschel had observed only as luminous patches of light and discovered a spiral variety which also important in solving the riddle of the nebula.

In August 29, 1864, Sir William Huggins at Tulse Hill, London trained his telescope and new spectroscope in the planetary nebula NGC 6543 in the constellation of Draco. Higgins discovered a single emission line in the spectrum, which characterized the nebula as a hot gas.
Discovery of Nebula