The Theta Carinae cluster is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed


Objects: IC2602

Across much of the world, the Theta Carinae open star cluster (IC 2602, also known as the Southern Pleiades; mag 1.9) will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 3 March 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 64°23'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 5°N.

At magnitude 1.9, IC2602 is visible to the naked eye, but best viewed through a pair of binoculars.

The position of IC2602 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
IC2602 10h42m50s 64°23'S Carina 1.9 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 3 Mar 2031

The sky on 3 March 2031
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
17:44
Twilight ends
19:16
Twilight begins
04:50


Waxing Gibbous

81%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:50 12:40 18:30
Venus 07:39 14:00 20:21
Moon 12:42 20:05 03:23
Mars 23:04 04:12 09:20
Jupiter 02:13 06:50 11:27
Saturn 09:56 17:09 00:22
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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