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Although
I have imaged both digitally and on film nearly every emission
nebula in the entire sky in both hemispheres many times over
with instruments ranging from wide angle lenses to 16 inch behemoths,
I have spent nearly no time at all on the globular clusters.
One that I had never done for some reason was M15, one of two
of the most concentrated globulars in the entire sky. (47 Tuc
is the other in the southern hemisphere)
Look closely at
the star colors that compose this object. A generally blue population
of faint stars around 15th magnitude and fainter are interspersed
with a handful of orange super giants. This represents two stages
in the life of these ancient objects, which are nearly as old
as the universe itself. It is currently assumed that most are
the stripped out remnant cores of small galaxies that were in
the process of merging 10 billion years ago to form our Milky
Way Galaxy, and were left over when the process had completed
it self.
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