# Messier locator catalog

This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France (Wenger et al. 2000).

The 110 Messier locator records were queried directly from the public SIMBAD TAP service on October 17, 2026. This is an independent public derivative; no authenticated Science file or service was used. Native right ascension, declination, type, angular extents and V magnitude are retained; missing data stays null. Friendly aliases are editorial navigation aids. No distance, 3D placement or image is inferred.

The database and this derivative are offered under the [Open Database License 1.0](https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/), consistent with the [SIMBAD service notice](https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/). Application code has its separate private license. This is not a CC BY 4.0 dataset.

[Download the complete machine-readable derivative](messier-simbad-2026-10-17.json). The exact query, retrieval timestamp and original TAP response SHA256 are embedded in the versioned canonical src/catalog/deepSkyData.ts. Rebuild with tools/build-deep-sky.py.