The Omicron Velorum cluster is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: IC2391

Across much of the world, the Omicron Velorum open star cluster (IC 2391; mag 2.5) in Vela will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 31 January it will reach its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time, and on subsequent evenings it will culminate four minutes earlier each day.

From South El Monte , however, it is not readily observable since it lies so far south that it will never rise more than 2° above the horizon.

At a declination of 53°02'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 16°N.

At magnitude 2.5, IC2391 is visible to the naked eye, but best viewed through a pair of binoculars.

The position of IC2391 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
IC2391 08h40m30s 53°02'S Vela 2.5 29'06"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 3 Jul 2025

The sky on 3 July 2025
Sunrise
05:42
Sunset
20:07
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:58


Waxing Gibbous

63%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:48 14:43 21:38
Venus 03:00 09:52 16:44
Moon 14:02 19:35 01:01
Mars 10:19 16:47 23:14
Jupiter 05:15 12:26 19:36
Saturn 00:15 06:14 12:12
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Image credit

© Digitised Sky Survey (DSS); Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II)

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