Pease 1

My observing buddy, Mark Birkmann, and I convincingly saw Pease 1 last night. M15 was just west of the meridian, seeing was surprisingly good considering that a front had just passed through. The finder charts at http://www.blakcskies.com/peasefc.htm were of inestimable value. It was best seen at mag of 586X. (9mm Nagler plus Paracorr in 40 inch f5 Dob.) Blinking with an OIII filter convinced us we were seeing the planetary. After the planetary was identified with the OIII filter it was possible to discern that it was different than the other stars in the cluster even when the filter wasn't used. Toughest part was trying to coordinate blinking the right portion of the globular cluster with the filter as it drifted through the field of view rather rapidly at such high magnification. This activity took place about 14 feet off the deck of the observatory. At one point I found myself leaning out a bit far from the ladder while making a series of passes while blinking and wishing I had moved the ladder a tad closer to the eyepiece. Mark used a different asterism than the one suggested at the blackskies website above. Pease 1 is located approximately halfway between a "double" star that is located NNE of the core of the globular on a line drawn from that optical double to the center of cluster. The optical double is itself halfway between two other stars that create an asterism that looks like a very short "T" with the short upright of the "T" pointing towards the center of M15. I would estimate that the separation between this "optical double" and Pease 1 is about 15 to 20 arc seconds. Finder chart 2 at the blackskies site shows both asterisms that can be used to starhop to Pease 1.