I'm wearing my planets-and-galaxies tie to help celebrate the discovery of what turned out to be the Crab Nebula, on 12 September 1758. Charles Messier was studying the sky for comets, anticipating the return of Halley's Comet, The object he saw (which is referred to as Messier Object 1) did not move across the sky, so it was not a comet. The Crab Nebula was the first astronomical object recognized as being connected to a supernova explosion. That event (the explosion) had been recorded in 1054 by Chinese and Japanese astronomers. It actually occurred around 5450 BCE in our dating (because the object is 6500 light years away from us). The internal structure of the nebula was first revealed through telescope observations in the 1840s.
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