The Sculptor Galaxy NGC 253 (mag 7.1) will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 3 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 Columbus , it is visible between 00:06 and 02:50. It will become accessible at around 00:06, when it rises to an altitude of 21° above your southern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 01:28, 24° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 02:50 when it sinks below 21° above your southern horizon.
At a declination of 25°17'S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 44°N.
At magnitude 7.1, NGC253 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 NGC253 is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| NGC253 | 00h47m30s | 25°17'S | Sculptor | 7.1 | 0'00" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 4 Oct 2031
| The sky on 4 October 2031 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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83% 18 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)