101 Must-See Cosmic Objects: M55

M55 is one of the most unsung yet beautiful globular star clusters in the night sky. It’s also one of the most southerly globulars in Charles Messier’s catalog. Abbe Nicolas Louis de Lacaille discovered it in 1751 while surveying the southern stars from the Cape of Good Hope. Through his small telescope (inferior to today’s binoculars) he recorded it as looking like the “faint nucleus of a large comet.” Messier’s report of it was not much different: “a w