[AJames]

No No No No No.... (with operatic overtones)

Halley and Lacaille, although the observers and discoverers of both these objects, the did not really disclose what they were.

1) Edmond said in 1677 that Omega Centauri was just a "luminous spot or patch in Centaurus" - no mention of stars anywhere. It was actually Ptolemy who discovered that the area was the "nebula on the back of the horse" - dorso Equino Nebulous. Halley added virtually nothing to what we know of this object. We could name it Ptolemy's cluster - but that is reserved for M7!

2) As for Lacaille - Abbe to his mates - at least had a telescope when he viewed 47 Tuc in 1751. He named it numero one in his catalogue, but he said;"It resembles the nucleus of a fairly bright small comet" - placing it under nebulolisities not accompanied by any star visible in a telescope of two feet. Lacaille didn't even name it 47 Tuc - Bode did that sometime later.

Halley claim for this "deep-sky discovery" is in my opinion just totally bunkum, with Lacaille's not far behind.

Indeed, it was very probably James Dunlop who first reported both these objects as being a star cluster and stellar in nature - though certainly both were observed using larger telescopes in somewhere between 1751 and 1820.

No! (with titanic and emphatic connotations) The name of the object should fit the description named by southerners for southerners - and not just on some trumped-up discoverer under very dubious circumstances. These deep-sky supremos of their class, size and in the Top 10 of the deep-sky objects.

When you read statements like;

"Messier 13 (M13, NGC 6205), also called the 'Great globular cluster in Hercules', is one of the most prominent and best known globulars of the Northern celestial hemisphere."

[ See http://seds.org/messier/m/m013.html ]

It makes no mention of the larger and brighter southern examples.

...but do in my mind keep coming back to the Rev. T. Webb ;

"The mere aspect of this stupendous aggregation is indeed enough t make the mind shrink with a sense of the insignificance of our little world. Yet the Christian will not forget that, as it has been nobly said, He took of the dust of this Earth, and with it he rules the universe!"

... but had the Rev seen Omega Centauri he would have needed a bottle of whisky, two bullets and a gun; then take a strong sedative just to calm him down!

As for 47 Tuc, it finally took R.T.A. Innes in 1896 to start balancing the ledger against the heavily weighted northern bias. He describes the true nature of 47 Tuc, he called;

"Most glorious globular cluster, stupendous object, completely insulated, stars all 12th to 14th magnitude. Central blaze ruddy, rest white."

If little pip-squeak M13 is a "superb globular", then what are these two southern deep-sky gems that meet their magnificence?

Where not just talking about some little piddling objects here!