The Ptolemy cluster is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: M7

Across much of the world, 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 Fairfield , however, it is not readily observable since it lies so far south that it will never rise more than 14° above the 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 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 21 Jun 2025

The sky on 21 June 2025
Sunrise
05:17
Sunset
20:28
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
03:08


Waning Crescent

18%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:57 14:29 22:02
Venus 02:55 09:48 16:41
Moon 01:59 09:04 16:23
Mars 10:24 17:09 23:54
Jupiter 05:30 13:02 20:34
Saturn 01:03 07:01 12:58
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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