Most of Messier's objects are too dim to be seen by the naked eye. The few that are visible were mostly listed as stars in older lists.
Edmund Halley lists 6 "luminous patches" which "discover themselves only by the telescope, and appear to the naked eye like small fixt stars" (Halley).
These include M42, in Orion, part of the sword (or what ever that is between the hunter's legs), and Omega Centuari, listed as a minor star in the centaur (roughly on the horse's back) in Bayer's list.
(The other objects on Halley's list were either known to be "cloud-like" [M31] or too faint for naked eye astronomy.]
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