| Description | Discovered by Messier himself (#14) on July 27, 1764: "It contains no star; it is round, it can only be seen difficultly with an ordinary telescope of 3.5-foot [FL]". <--> M28 is ranked 14 and 18 in terms of brightness and size, respectively, out of the 29 Messier GCs. The core has a decided pentagram-like appearance, and appears to have an extended halo of stars that are not counted as part of the object. I note that the Astrometry.com annotation draws the boundary as pretty much the points of the pentagram. This is a very challenging object for me to observe because it stays under 24° at its peak, at a point (due south) where trees obscure almost 30°. I have a small window to the SE, where my horizon falls below 20°. I was able to take advantage of it, briefly, here. At such a low elevation, clouds along the line of sight can readily obscure the capture, and so it happened. At nearly 2 AM, I was pleased to be able to capture anything. |
