by Jamie Dillon
Last night I pulled the scope out at sunset, on account the sky being clear again, very much a "who am I to blow against the wind" kind of thing.
Turned out what I really wanted to see was M15, the bright globular in Pegasus. By the time I got outside after an evening with the gang, the Moon was leaning well into the West, around 11:30, there were stars out in a hazy sky. Transparency was around 4.0, with seeing on the low end of moderate, 3/5. I poked around a little but found myself spending a good half hour staring at M15.
Globular clusters fascinate me, how they orbit around the galactic plane, even more how they have a dynamic internal equilibrium that will maintain a dazzling compact shape for several billions of years. M15 has been there for at least 40 turns of the Galaxy, more then twice as old as our Sun, old enough for those Population II stars to pre-date the formation of metals.
This one is especially beautiful, with a very bright dense core and a tight spangle of stars, resolving almost to that bright center. Has a great shape, captivating. Cruised down to visit M2, another complex favorite, looked at M31 of course, even stared at the Apennines as the Moon shimmered down towards the streetlight over the back fence, peeked at 7789 in Cassiopeia, sneaked a look at Almach, gamma Andromeda for the color, but then again I swung Felix back over to the end of Pegasus' leg and stood and gazed at that dazzling cluster for a good while again.