The Sombrero Galaxy is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: M104

The Sombrero Galaxy M104 (NGC 4594; mag 8.6) in Virgo will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 1 April 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 Jacksonville , it is visible between 21:41 and 05:07. It will become accessible at around 21:41, when it rises to an altitude of 21° above your south-eastern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 01:24, 48° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 05:07 when it sinks below 21° above your south-western horizon.

At a declination of 11°37'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere; it can be seen at latitudes between 58°N and 81°S.

At magnitude 8.6, M104 is quite faint, and certainly not visible to the naked eye, but can be viewed through a pair of binoculars or small telescope.

The position of M104 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
M104 12h39m50s 11°37'S Virgo 8.6 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 2 Apr 2026

The sky on 2 April 2026
Sunrise
07:12
Sunset
19:45
Twilight ends
21:07
Twilight begins
05:50


Waning Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:03 11:49 17:34
Venus 08:15 14:47 21:18
Moon 19:39 01:29 07:13
Mars 06:27 12:22 18:17
Jupiter 12:48 19:48 02:49
Saturn 07:02 13:05 19:08
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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