Omega Centauri is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: NGC5139

Across much of the world, the brightest globular cluster in the sky , Omega Centauri (mag 3.6) will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 13 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 Cambridge , however, it is not readily observable since it lies so far south that it will never rise more than 0° above the horizon.

At a declination of 47°28'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 22°N.

At magnitude 3.6, NGC5139 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 NGC5139 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
NGC5139 13h26m40s 47°28'S Centaurus 3.6 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 14 Apr 2026

The sky on 14 April 2026
Sunrise
06:03
Sunset
19:24
Twilight ends
21:05
Twilight begins
04:21


Waning Crescent

10%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:20 11:13 17:06
Venus 07:05 14:14 21:24
Moon 04:38 10:20 16:14
Mars 05:22 11:27 17:31
Jupiter 10:50 18:24 01:57
Saturn 05:35 11:41 17:47
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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