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 Cambridge , it is visible between 21:39 and 03:40. It will become accessible at around 21:39, when it rises to an altitude of 21° above your south-eastern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 00:40, 36° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 03:40 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 | 8'26" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 2 Apr 2024
| The sky on 2 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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43% 23 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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)