Custos Messium

Evidence suggests that Lalande was trying to avoid putting a living figure among the stars, but by deriving the Latin word for harvest, messium, from Messier’s surname, Lalande was able to find a clever way to allude to Messier.

Similarly, the Phoenicians viewed the part of the sky Custos Messium was located in as a giant wheat field.

[4] Custos Messium was popularized by its early adaptation in Johann Elert Bode’s Vorstellung der Gestirne.

The constellation was also included in a number of astronomy literatures at the time, such as the German addition of John Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis, Bode’s Uranographia, and Bode’s Allgemeine Beschreibung und Nachweisung der Gestirne.

[7] The border of the constellation Cassiopia was carefully drawn to incorporate the majority of the stars belonging to Custos Messium.