Nebulae were discovered soon after serious studies of the sky were begun in the 18th century by Charles Messier, who was searching for comets and would often stumble across faint smudges of light which he identified in a catalog of some 100 objects you should ignore as 'not comets'. His first entry was 'M1' the Crab Nebula, in 1758. No great interest in nebulae was taken until 1783 when William Herschel began assembling a catalog of over 2500 nebulae. By 1864 his son Sir John Herschel had assembled a 'General Catalog' of over 5000 nebulae, and J. L. Dreyer in 1888 produced the 'Index Catalog' with over 13,000 entries.