The Ptolemy cluster is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: M7

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 South El Monte , it is visible between 23:01 and 02:38. It will become accessible at around 23:01, when it rises to an altitude of 16° above your south-eastern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 00:49, 21° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 02:38 when it sinks below 16° above your south-western 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 22'12"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 20 Jun 2028

The sky on 20 June 2028
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:53


Waning Crescent

1%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:32 11:25 18:18
Venus 04:07 11:00 17:52
Moon 03:35 10:57 18:24
Mars 04:16 11:22 18:28
Jupiter 11:57 18:15 00:32
Saturn 02:43 09:18 15:54
All times shown in PDT.

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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