The cluster NGC 3114 is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: NGC3114

Across much of the world, the open star cluster NGC 3114 (mag 4.2) in Carina will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 20 February 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 60°07'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 9°N.

At magnitude 4.2, NGC3114 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 NGC3114 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
NGC3114 10h02m20s 60°07'S Carina 4.2 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 20 Feb 2025

The sky on 20 February 2025
Sunrise
06:38
Sunset
17:32
Twilight ends
19:05
Twilight begins
05:06


Waning Crescent

40%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:08 12:41 18:14
Venus 07:40 14:13 20:45
Moon 00:57 05:30 09:57
Mars 13:17 21:02 04:48
Jupiter 11:03 18:28 01:52
Saturn 07:31 13:13 18:55
All times shown in EST.

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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