M15

[blinky]

For the past few times I have been observing what I thought was M15. I was always a bit unsure though, I have seen a couple of globs before in my 8"Newt and they look more or less like the images you see on here. Like a big snowball with loads of stars round about. The thing is I am not so sure I am seeing M15. I am using 'turn left @ Orion' but have never found it in the finder scope, just by panning round where it is supposed to be with my 2" 32mm EP. What I find is something that is a fuzzy but to me looks more like a galaxy? I cannot get and sharp stars, the whole thing still looks fuzzy. Is this normal or am I indeed looking at a galxy that is nearby? It is so faint that in my ZS66 I can barely nake it out!

[Astroman]

Of all the ways to describe M15, I don't think I've heard "faint". There are a number of galaxies in the neighborhood which are faint, on the order of 13th magnitude or fainter, so I can only believe you have found it and your skies are not that dark.

To find M15, use the two stars in the lower leg of Pegasus, Theta and Epsilon as a pointer. Go just over half the distance between them along their line and you should find it. Once you do, crank up the power. It's not large, so the magnification will do two things. One is, duh, make it bigger. The other is make the background darker. Use the technique I've described elsewhere to discover more detail. That is, start around the outside edges of the cluster, picking up individual stars. Slowly work your way toward the middle, picking up stars as you go. Soon, you'll see there are thousands of stars, rather than one big fuzzy blob.

HTH.

[blinky]

Cheers Astroman, I think it must be a galaxy, looks like a smaller/fainter M31. I will try again using your directions Still at least I found something

[Azelfafage]

Can't see M15 right now as my roof is in the way, :x but looking forward to forming my own opinion when Pegasus moves round to a viewable position.

Regards,

A

[barkis]

Very interesting Glob is M15. It has about 100 variable stars, and also contains a faint planetary nebula. It is only 1 arc second in diameter and magnitude 14, so needle in haystack comes to mind.

AM is right when he said M15 is bright. At Mag. 6 it is of naked eye visibility, if you have a good sky and young eyes.

Ron.

[Vega]

I would zoom in with smaller EP once you've found it. Globs vastly improve when I go from 25mm to 10mm in my dob . M15 is a little cracker. Not quite up there with the big guns though (M3, M13, M92)

Vega