Across much of the world, the Jewel Box open star cluster
(NGC 4755, also known as the Kappa Crucis Cluster; mag 4.2) in Crux
will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks.
On 4 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 Los Angeles , however, it is not observable because it lies so far south that it never rises above the horizon.
At a declination of 60°21’S, it is easiest to see from the southern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much north of 9°N.
At magnitude 4.2, NGC4755 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 NGC4755 is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| NGC4755 | 12h53m30s | 60°21’S | Crux | 4.2 | 0’00” |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 4 Apr 2024
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)
