C/1771 G1 (Messier) - two maps: map 1 / map 2

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The Pleiades (M45), the Crab-Nebula (M1) and M35 and M37 are drawn.

M1             


M35                                                               


M37                                                 


M45

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On this chart Messier mentions a 'cone of light' that he observed on June 3rd 1771.
 It stretched along the heavens all the way from Castor/Pollux to Capella.

This is what Messier reports on this phenomenon:
"The same evening (June 3rd 1771), with a clear and quiet sky, around 9 hours, examining the sky near the horizon where the Comet had set, I noticed, some 20 degrees above the horizon, close to the head of Gemini, a cone of light, easy to see, resembling the tail of a Comet, with an approximate length of 25 degrees from one side to the other, and a width of approximately 6 to 7 degrees on one side, the other end ending in a nucleus, being brighter and more condensed that the tail, so that I initially took this light for a Comet, and I was only to be certain that it wasn’t after having examined it with a telescope: this light was whitish and was moving like rays of Aurora Borealis; it was brighter towards the point of the nucleus, than at the middle or the widened part; these waves of light would start at the nucleus and move along the cone until the end, the moment one of these lights was diminished another would follow: one was able to observe the form and movement of the cone of light from minute to minute, by comparing the distance from the core with one of stars in the head of Gemini, it went from the head of Gemini towards that of Leo: this phenomenon lasted about a good half hour, and then gradually disappeared. I have made a drawing of this light, as I have seen it, from α of Gemini and Auriga, on the second Chart of the appearance of the Comet."
Charles Messier: Cône de lumière semblable à la queue d’une Comète.
Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, année MDCCLXXVII, (Paris, MDCCLXXX). Page 167