M15 - NGC 7078

M15 is a Globular Cluster in the constellation Pegasus.  It is is one of the oldest globular clusters known.   It is about 33,600 light years away and its total luminosity makes it 360,000 times more luminous than our Sun.  It is believed that at the center of M15 there is a blackhole that has pulled together a large concentration of stars orbiting it.

For the amateur astronomer this globular cluster looks like the image to your right.  The image was taken last night form VAO and it is a RGB color composite.   The exposure time was 20 seconds on each filter.   I post process the final image in photo shop for the artistic spikes on the foreground stars.

Now, I prefer grey scale  images myself so here is a rendition of  M15 in just the V band filter same exposure length and no processing.  You can see how cleaning up the image and stacking the 3 color filter images make for a more pleasant look.  But sometimes you really just want to see what comes right out of the telescope.  So I will give you both so you can enjoy the view.