© Digitised Sky Survey (DSS); Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II)

The Andromeda Galaxy is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed

Objects: M31
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The sky at

The Andromeda Galaxy M31 (mag 3.4) will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 2 October 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 Washington , it is visible all night. It will become visible at around 20:15 (MDT), 31° above your north-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 01:32, 85° above your northern horizon. It will be lost to dawn twilight at around 06:27, 34° above your north-western horizon.

At a declination of 41°16'N, it is easiest to see from the northern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much south of 28°S.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

At magnitude 3.4, M31 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 M31 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
M31 00h42m40s 41°16'N Andromeda 3.4 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 2 Oct 2026

The sky on 2 October 2026
Sunrise
07:27
Sunset
19:15
Twilight ends
20:42
Twilight begins
06:00

21-day old moon
Waning Crescent

47%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:27 14:46 20:05
Venus 10:05 15:00 19:56
Moon 22:32 06:27 14:21
Mars 01:58 09:08 16:17
Jupiter 03:25 10:16 17:08
Saturn 19:26 01:34 07:43
All times shown in MDT.

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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Washington

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

37.13°N
113.51°W
MDT

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