However, not until last year was it discovered that the young teenaged Messier had actually produced a southern hemisphere Messier catalogue.
Orphaned while young, Charles had lived with his paternal grandmother, a noted cook, and famed for having perfected the Quiche which took it's name from her province.
When young Charles turned 12, Madame Messier used her Gastronomical connections to secure him an apprenticeship with the French East-India Company, as a trainee working under noted seacook Roger La Roue, famous throughout the fleet for his Coq au vin.
His first voyage, to Madras, was made in 1742 aboard the Good Ship Aphrodite, and during his off duty hours the young Charles was entranced by the changing aspects of the sky as the ship sailed south towards the Cape of Good Hope. In this he was assisted by Captain Marquis deSade, who took a shine to the young lad, introduced him to the rudiments of celestial navigation, and let Charles play with his telescope.
Using both a 20 x 50mm spyglass and a low powered "night glass" he compared the appearance of different celestial objects and wrote his observations, with sketches, in a small log book updated from time to time on later voyages when he got access to somewhat bigger telescopes. At that early stage he was not looking for objects that resembled comets, and as a result his list first includes a wide range of objects.
His practice at drawing honed his drafting skills and helped him in his subsequent employment.
To encourage the lad, his grandmother published his catalogue in an appendix to her cookbook of 1749, particularly as most of his descriptions were food-related. As this book had limited circulation and was published in an obscure regional dialect, it was not re discovered until 2001, when a PhD student discovered the only copy to escape the ravages of the Revolution, the Alsaice Lorraine question and several bus loads of British soccer hooligans.
His descriptions clearly mirror his training aboard ship. For example:
MS 1: Object in Carina. One and a half hand-spans West of Crux Australis, resembling a very small but bright, lightly fried, double-yolked egg, surrounded by a mottled field of castor sugar.
MS 2: Large diffuse object in Doradus, about 4° x 5°, resembling an omelette with scattered particles of cheese.
MS 3: Small bright object adjacent to MS 2 looking like an overcooked starfish with bent legs.
MS 4: Diffuse object in Tucanae about 3° wide, resembling an oval soufflé scattered with weevils and accompanied by a small soft truffle.
MS 5: Neat cluster of evenly matched faint stars near Beta Crucis, one being ruddy in hue, triangular in overall shape, rather like a wedge of Camembert.
MS 6: Dark clouds in the milky way extending from Crux Australis to Scorpius, shaped like a leg of ham, much eaten, and with it's widest part in the East.
… …
The catalogue is only partly complete, and it is not clear if some observations were lost, or whether Charles had intended to make further observations on later voyages.
However, losses suffered to the British in the ongoing trade war in the East resulted in a marked reduction in activity by the French East-India Company and the premature end of Messier's career in cooking. Gastronomy in the end lost out to Astronomy.