Messier 4 is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: M4

The globular cluster M4 (NGC 6121; mag 5.4) in Scorpius will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 28 May 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 Columbus , it is visible between 00:06 and 02:51. It will become accessible at around 00:06, when it rises to an altitude of 20° above your southern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 01:28, 23° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 02:51 when it sinks below 20° above your southern horizon.

At a declination of 26°31'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 43°N.

At magnitude 5.4, M4 is too faint to be seen with the naked eye from any but the very darkest sites, but is visible through a pair of binoculars or small telescope.

The position of M4 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
M4 16h23m30s 26°31'S Scorpius 5.4 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 29 May 2022

The sky on 29 May 2022
Sunrise
06:04
Sunset
20:52
Twilight ends
22:50
Twilight begins
04:06


Waning Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:43 12:43 19:43
Venus 04:24 11:01 17:38
Moon 05:33 12:51 20:18
Mars 03:16 09:18 15:20
Jupiter 03:13 09:16 15:20
Saturn 01:40 06:54 12:08
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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