142 COSMOS. 



16h. 3om. 37s., N. Decl. 36° 47' ; first described by Halley 

 ill 1714. 



A cluster of stars near cj Centauri ; described by Halley as 

 early as 1677 ; appearing to the naked eye as a round cometic 

 object, almost as bright as a star of the fourth or fifth magni- 

 tude ; in powerful instruments it appears composed of count- 

 less stars of the thirteenth to the fifteenth magnitude, crowd- 

 ed together and most dense toward the center; E,. A. 13h. 

 16m. 38s., S. Decl. 46° 35' ; No. 3504 in Sir John Herschel's 

 catalogue of the clusters of the southern hemisphere, 15' in 

 diameter. {Obsei'vations at the Cape, p. 21, 105; Outlines 

 of Astr., p. 595.) 



Cluster of stars near k of the Southern Cross (No. 3435), 

 composed of many-colored small stars from the tw^elfth to the 

 sixteenth magnitude, distributed over an area of jVth of a 

 square degree ; a nebulous star, according to Lacaille, but 

 so completely resolved by Sir John Herschel that no nebulous 

 mass remained ; the central star deep red. [Observations 

 at the Cape, p. 17, 102, pi. i., fig. 2.) 



Cluster of stars, 47 Toucani, Bode ; No. 2322 of Sir John 

 Herschel's catalogue, one of the most remarkable objects in 

 the southern heavens. I was myself deceived by it for sev- 

 eral evenings, imagining it to be a comet, when, on my ar- 

 rival at Peru, I saw it in 12° south lat. rise high above the 

 horizon. The visibility of this cluster to the naked eye is in- 

 creased by the circumstance that, although in the vicinity 

 of the lesser Magellanic cloud, it is situated in a part of the 

 heavens containing no stars, and is from 15' to 20/ in diam- 

 eter. It is of a pale rose color in the interior, concentrically 

 inclosed by a white margin composed of small stars (four- 

 teenth to sixteenth magnitude) of about the same magnitude, 

 and presenting all the characteristics of the globular form.^ 



A cluster of stars in Andromeda's girdle, near v of this con- 

 stellation. The resolution of this celebrated nebula into small 

 stars, upward of 1500 of which have been i-ecognized, apper- 

 tains to the most remarkable discoveries in the observing as- 

 tronomy of the present day. The merit of this discovery is due 

 to Mr. George Bond, assistant astroiiomerf at the Observatory 



* '' A stupendous oVjject — a most magnificent globular cluster," says 

 Sir John Herschel, " completely insulated, upon a ground of the sky per- 

 fectly black throughout the whole breadth of the sweep.'' — Observations 

 at the Cape, p. 18 and .01, PI. iii., fig. 1 ; Outlines, $ 895, p. 615. 



t Bond, in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 

 new series, vol. iii., p. 75. 



