Across much of the world, the open star cluster NGC 2516 (mag 3.8) in Volans will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 20 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 , however, it is not observable because it lies so far south that it never rises above the horizon.
At a declination of 60°45'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 9°N.
At magnitude 3.8, NGC2516 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 NGC2516 is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| NGC2516 | 07h58m00s | 60°45'S | Carina | 3.8 | 0'00" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 20 Jan 2026
| The sky on 20 January 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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8% 2 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)