🌟 A Compact Contrast to Nearby M22
M28 lies just a few degrees from the showy globular cluster M22, making it an ideal follow-up object for comparison. While M22 is broad and rich, M28 is smaller, tighter, and more condensed—offering a distinctly different globular cluster experience.

🌟 Dense Core and Bright Halo
Even in small to medium telescopes, M28 shows a tightly packed core and a round, symmetrical shape. As aperture increases, its outer halo begins to resolve into faint stars, giving it a textured, grainy appearance that rewards patient observation.

🌟 Easy to Locate Using the Teapot
Messier 28 sits just about 1 degree north of Lambda Sagittarii, the star marking the top of the Teapot’s lid in Sagittarius. This makes it extremely easy to locate, even for beginners, and a quick addition to any summer stargazing session.

🌟 A Fine Object for Modest Telescopes
M28 performs well in 4- to 8-inch scopes, offering clear structure and resolution without needing a giant aperture. It’s a satisfying globular to explore in suburban skies and a pleasant surprise for those who often overlook it in favor of brighter clusters.

🌟 Historically Interesting and Astrophysically Rich
M28 was the first globular cluster in which a millisecond pulsar was discovered, revealing complex stellar interactions in its core. While this isn’t visible to the eye, knowing its astrophysical importance adds meaning to your observation.

🌟 A Great Stop Along the Sagittarius Tour
If you’re already observing Messier objects in Sagittarius—like M22, M25, M8, or M24—M28 fits perfectly into your route. Its proximity to key landmarks makes it a natural part of a night spent exploring the Milky Way’s brightest and most active region.

Use the Summer Triangle to find the Teapot Asterism of Sagittarius.

With binoculars or a telescope finder, point to Kaus Borealis. Then with binoculars or a low-powered eyepiece, hop 1° to M28. Explore with higher power.

✅ Start at Lambda Sagittarii (Kaus Borealis)
Use Lambda Sagittarii, the bright star at the top of the Teapot’s lid in Sagittarius, as your anchor. Messier 28 is located just about 1° north, making it an easy and reliable star-hop.

✅ Use Medium to High Magnification
Begin with low power to locate the cluster, then increase magnification to reveal more detail. Higher power helps separate the dense core from the surrounding halo and may begin to resolve some outer stars.

✅ Observe from a Dark Site
M28 is compact and its outer stars are faint, so darker skies improve contrast and resolution. Light pollution tends to flatten its texture and hides the grainy appearance at the edges.

✅ Let Your Eyes Adapt
Spend 20 minutes away from bright lights before viewing. Full dark adaptation helps bring out the faint outer glow and makes the core stand out more sharply against the background.

✅ Try Averted Vision for Resolution
Looking slightly to the side of M28 allows your peripheral vision to detect fainter stars in the halo. This technique is especially useful in medium-sized telescopes to tease out granularity.

✅ Compare It with M22 Nearby
After viewing M28, look at Messier 22, just a few degrees to the east. Comparing the two gives you a great sense of how globular clusters vary in brightness, size, and density.

❌ Naked Eye
With the naked eye, Messier 28 is not visible, even under very dark skies, as it lacks the brightness and size to stand out from the dense star fields of Sagittarius. It remains hidden among the Milky Way’s background glow and requires optical aid to detect.

✅ Binoculars
In binoculars, M28 appears as a faint, round smudge just north of the bright star Lambda Sagittarii. It lacks detail and structure but is distinguishable as a small, diffuse patch of light. Under very dark skies, it’s detectable but unremarkable compared to nearby objects like M22.

✅ Small Telescope
Through a small telescope, M28 becomes a compact, well-defined ball of light. Its bright core is immediately noticeable, and the surrounding halo appears as a soft outer glow. Resolution of individual stars is minimal at this aperture, but the cluster’s concentrated shape is clearly visible.

✅ Medium Telescope
A medium telescope reveals a more textured appearance. The core remains dense and bright, but the outer regions begin to break into faint, grainy stars. Averted vision helps bring out these details, and the cluster starts to take on the layered look typical of globulars, though still compact compared to larger examples.

✅ Large Telescope
In a large telescope, M28 becomes richly detailed. The bright core is surrounded by a growing number of resolved stars in the halo, giving it a glittering, three-dimensional quality. The contrast between core and outer regions is sharp, and with steady seeing and dark skies, the cluster shows off its dense, spherical nature in full.

🟣 In Bortle 1–2 skies, Messier 28 appears as a compact, bright globular cluster with a well-defined core and a soft, extended halo. Its outer regions show a grainy texture, and some stars in the halo can be resolved, especially with moderate to large telescopes.

🔵 Under Bortle 3–4 skies, M28 still stands out clearly. The core remains prominent, and the halo is visible, though fewer stars are resolved. The contrast with the background is slightly reduced, but it remains an appealing and easily observable object.

🟡 In Bortle 5–6 conditions, the cluster loses some of its depth. The bright core is still visible, but the outer halo blends more into the sky, and resolution of faint stars becomes difficult. It appears smaller and more uniform, with less structure.

🟠 Under Bortle 7+ skies, light pollution overwhelms the cluster’s subtle details. M28 appears as a dim, round blur with little texture or contrast. The outer halo fades into the background, and only the core remains faintly detectable.