Bonjour from France

[yapo]

Hello all,

I am deepsky observing for quite a few years now and found this place to be THE place to talk and learn about it !

Hope to contribute as soon as possible and in the meantime, clear skies to everyboby.

Yann Pothier

[Jimi Lowrey]

Welcome to the DSF Yann. I look forward to your posting. Nice to have some one from France here.

[yapo]

By the way (and as I can't find a better place on DSF where it should be posted), I recently found what could be the first "deep sky" mention in litterature, related to our particular field of interest that was popularized further by Leland Copeland in the 1940s. Guillaume LE GENTIL (discoverer of the lagoon nebula and M32) wrote the following in 1755 (Memoires de mathematiques et de physique, Savants etrangers, tome II, 1755, p.137) while elaborating about his M32 discovery :

"Les lunettes dont nous nous servons, à quelque perfection qu'elles puissent être portées, seront toujours très bornées et très imparfaites lorsqu'il s'agira de pénétrer dans le plus profond des cieux, où les nébuleuses paraissent résider."

"The telescopes that we use, whatever the level of quality that could be reached, will always be very limited and very imperfect when it comes to penetrate in the deepest of the sky, where the nebulae appear to reside."

Without any solid proof, these predictory thoughts appear to define quite nicely our present deepsky-side of the hobby. Accordingly but pushing this a little further, William DERHAM had described earlier (1735) that he felt "3-D effects" while observing nebulae speaking of larger distance compared to field stars (Philosophical Transactions or the RAS, vol.38, p.70).

If you have some similar statement older than this in mind, keep me updated, I'm fond of this.

clear skies, Yann