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 Fairfield , however, it is not observable because it lies so far south that it never rises 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 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 3 May 2024

The sky on 3 May 2024
Sunrise
05:45
Sunset
19:52
Twilight ends
21:40
Twilight begins
03:57


Waning Crescent

19%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:56 11:16 17:35
Venus 05:30 12:16 19:02
Moon 03:28 08:57 14:37
Mars 04:12 10:14 16:16
Jupiter 06:23 13:33 20:43
Saturn 03:39 09:18 14:57
All times shown in EDT.

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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