To the naked eye it appears as a star of 5th mag or 5.4th mag, rather hazy. One of these rings, 1.5' in diameter, is so marked as to give the appearance of a comparative darkness like a hole in the centre. There are two sizes 12th mag and 13th mag, without greater or less, and the larger stars form rings like lace-work on it. Looking attentively, I retract what is said about the equal scattering and equal sizes of the stars. The stars are singularly equal, and distributed with the most exact equality, the condensation being that of a sphere equally filled. When the centre is on the edge of the field, the outer stars extend fully half a radius beyond the middle of it.
Two such rings on an oval crossed by a kind of bridge is especially conspicuous in the central part." In the records of his telescopic sweeps he recorded it as "Diameter full 20'. An attempt has been made to imitate this appearance in the drawing, but partly from the difficulty of its execution, partly from defect of engraving, the plate fails to convey a just idea of it. This explanation of an appearance often noticed in the descriptions of such clusters, is corroborated in this instance by the distribution of these appearently larger stars in rings or mesh-like patterns, chiefly about the centre where the stars are most crowded. On a consideration of all the sweeping descriptions, as well as from a great many occasional inspections of this superb object, I incline to attribute the appearance of two sizes of stars of which mention is made to little groups and knots of stars of the smaller size liying so nearly in the same visual line as to run together by the aberrations of the eye and telescope and not to real inequality. The stars are literally innumerable, and as their total light when received by the naked eye affects it hardly more than a star of the 5th or 5.4th magnitude, the minuteness of each may be imagined: it must however be recollected that as the total area over which the stars are diffused is very considerably (not less than a quarter of a square degree), the resultant impression on the sensorium is doubtless thereby much enfeebled, and that the same quantity of light concentrated on a single point of the retina would very probably exceed in effect a star of the 3rd magnitude. He wrote of it as "the noble globular cluster w Centauri, beyond all comparison the richest and largest object of its kind in the heavens. Sir John Herschel observed it at the Cape of Good Hope with an 18-inch f/13 speculum telescope.