Messier 22
Globular cluster
Messier 22 or M22, also known as NGC 6656 or the Great Sagittarius Cluster, is an elliptical globular cluster of stars in the constellation Sagittarius, near the Galactic bulge region. It is one of the brightest globulars visible in the night sky. The brightest stars are 11th magnitude, with hundreds of stars bright enough to resolve with an 8" telescope. It is just south of the sun's position in mid-December, and northeast of Lambda Sagittarii (Kaus Borealis), the northernmost star of the "Teapot" asterism.
M22 was one of the first globulars to be discovered, in 1665 by Abraham Ihle and it was included in Charles Messier's catalog of comet-like objects in 1764. It was one of the first globular clusters to be carefully studied – first by Harlow Shapley in 1930. He placed within it roughly 70,000 stars and found it had a dense core. Then Halton Arp and William G. Melbourne continued studies in 1959. Due to the large color spread of its red giant branch (RGB) sequence, akin to that in Omega Centauri, it became the object of intense scrutiny starting in 1977 with James E. Hesser et al.
M22 is one of the nearer globular clusters to Earth – at about 10,600 light-years away.
“Messier 22” enters the record as globular cluster. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Messier, Globular and cluster can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Messier 22” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Messier, Globular and cluster provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11392. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1665, 1764, 1930 and 1959.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Messier 22” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.