The open star cluster M41 (NGC 2287; mag 4.5) in Canis Major will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 2 January 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 21:18 and 01:59. It will become accessible at around 21:18, when it rises to an altitude of 18° above your south-eastern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 23:39, 26° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 01:59 when it sinks below 18° above your south-western horizon.
At a declination of 20°45'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 49°N.
At magnitude 4.5, M41 is too faint to be seen with the naked eye from any but the very darkest sites, but is visible through a pair of binoculars or small telescope.
The position of M41 is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| M41 | 06h45m50s | 20°45'S | Canis Major | 4.5 | 12'00" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 2 Jan 2026
| The sky on 2 January 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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99% 13 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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)