Messier 55
Even the great observer Charles Messier had trouble seeing this globular cluster when building his Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters. It was originally spotted in 1752 by a French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in what is now South Africa, but it took until 1778 for Messier to catalog it.
This is because, while Messier 55 is large and reasonably bright, it is lacking a dense core and many of its stars are quite faint, making it hard to observe in non-optimal conditions.
For northern observers M55 sits low in the sky, so the view is hampered by a thicker layer of atmosphere, as well as water vapor and light pollution. This hindered Messier’s view from his Paris observatory. When he cataloged it, Messier noted that “its light is even and does not appear to contain any star.”
Though this image shows just a portion of M55, the cluster as a whole appears spherical because the stars’ intense gravitational attraction pulls them together. Hubble’s clear view above Earth’s atmosphere resolves individual stars in this cluster. Ground-based telescopes can also resolve individual stars in M55, but fewer stars are visible.
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