The Andromeda Galaxy is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: M31

The Andromeda Galaxy M31 (mag 3.4) will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 2 October 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 all night. It will become visible at around 19:27 (EST), 34° above your north-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 00:38, 88° above your southern horizon. It will be lost to dawn twilight at around 05:36, 36° above your north-western horizon.

At a declination of 41°16'N, it is easiest to see from the northern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much south of 28°S.

At magnitude 3.4, M31 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 M31 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
M31 00h42m40s 41°16'N Andromeda 3.4 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 3 Oct 2021

The sky on 3 October 2021
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
18:22
Twilight ends
19:55
Twilight begins
05:07


Waning Crescent

9%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:53 13:12 18:31
Venus 10:44 15:23 20:03
Moon 03:08 10:21 17:21
Mars 06:50 12:38 18:26
Jupiter 16:27 21:33 02:39
Saturn 15:41 20:29 01:18
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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