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Hey Chris,
Here is a test of a nebula for you. Something that will be EASY for you to find and MAY show some colour.....but might just be grey to your eye, namely M42 - Great Orion Nebula.
No doubt you know what Orion looks like, it is the big constellation to the north - north west at the moment just after sunset and you should be able to see an asterism that looks like a saucepan, with a square base and a 45 degree angled handle. If you point your scope to the MIDDLE star on that 45 degree handle, you should see a fuzzy patch through the finder scope and then a bigger cloudy area through say a 10mm or 25mm eyepiece.
This is one of the biggest and easiest Nebulae to find and if you're collimation is OK, you should be able to make out a set of 4 stars in the middle of the cloudy bit, which is called the Trapezium cluster and these actually power the glow that is given to the surrounding Nebula.
Give that a try and tell us if you have any luck. Shouldnt take more than 30 seconds or so to track it down and point the dob to the right spot. Just make sure the finder and the main scope are pointed at the same spot (use Jupiter as something to help you line up the two) and then use the finder to point to the fuzzy star in the middle of the saucepan's handle to track down the nebula.
It is actually visible with the naked eye as a fuzzy patch so if you can see this first without a scope (and your dark skies suggest you should be able to) then hone in with the scope and you will be in for a treat.
M42 is one of the closest star forming regions in our galaxy to our solar system and is around 1500 light years away from Earth. Very cool.
Let us know how you go and we can suggest some other cool things to look at. I have a link to a star chart PDF which is great for printing out to help with narrowing things down visually and star hopping to galaxies and the like.
FYI, I have seen M104 - the sombrero galaxy with my 130mm reflector, from my back yard in Sydney, so a 150mm dob from dark skies would easily pull this in. Just have to know where to look.
Good luck
Cheers
Chris
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