The Ptolemy cluster is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: M7

The Ptolemy Cluster (M7, NGC 6475; mag 3.3) in Scorpius will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 20 June 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 Jacksonville , it is visible between 23:01 and 03:48. It will become accessible at around 23:01, when it rises to an altitude of 16° above your south-eastern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 01:25, 24° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 03:48 when it sinks below 16° above your south-western horizon.

At a declination of 34°47'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 35°N.

At magnitude 3.3, M7 is tricky to make out with the naked eye except from a dark site, but is visible through a pair of binoculars or small telescope.

The position of M7 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
M7 17h53m50s 34°47'S Scorpius 3.3 22'12"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 20 Jun 2016

The sky on 20 June 2016
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
20:31
Twilight ends
22:09
Twilight begins
04:45


Waning Gibbous

98%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:16 12:10 19:05
Venus 06:40 13:43 20:46
Moon 19:53 01:15 06:36
Mars 17:38 22:49 04:00
Jupiter 12:18 18:37 00:55
Saturn 19:00 00:12 05:25
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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