The Orion Nebula (M42; mag 4.0) will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 15 December 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 Cambridge , it is visible between 19:42 and 03:38. It will become accessible at around 19:42, when it rises to an altitude of 17° above your south-eastern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 23:40, 42° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 03:38 when it sinks below 17° above your south-western horizon.
At a declination of 5°23'S, it is visible across much of the world; it can be seen at latitudes between 64°N and 75°S.
At magnitude 4.0, M42 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 M42 is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| M42 | 05h35m10s | 5°23'S | Orion | 4.0 | 0'00" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 15 Dec 2018
| The sky on 15 December 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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61% 8 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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)