Best dates for STARS and Planets (Venus, Jupiter or Saturn)

To know what Planets are visible on these dates, go see Moon and Planets page.

                            2008 dates

Aug    20  -  31                           

Sep    01  -  06  and  18  -  30

Oct    01  -  05  and   18  -  31      

Nov    01  -  04  and   15  -  30

Dec   01  -  04  and    15  -  31

                          2009 dates

Jan      15  -  31        

Feb     14  -  28        

Mar     14  -  31

Apr     14  -  30        

May    13  -  28       

Jun     12  -  26

Jul      11 -   27        

Aug    10  -  25        

Sep    10  -  23

Oct     09  -  24        

Nov     07 -   23        

Dec     07 -  23

• There are two types of star clusters: Open and Globular.

• OPEN CLUSTERS (OC) are a bunch of stars held in a small space by each othr es gravity. A typical OC has about 100-500 stars and these OC's number in their hundreds and are fairly bright and easy to find and view in a small quality telescope. During our southern winter, many are found scattered along the Milky Way strip between Carina (on the western side of the Southern Cross) through the latter into Scorpio and ending in Sagittarius.  

• Because of their nature most of them can be glimpsed in amateur telescopes. Some of the brighter ones like NGC 4755 in Crux ( 'Jewel Box') and NGC 3352  in Carina can be seen fairly well in low power scopes and binoculars, while others require at least a 100mm dia. telescope or bigger to see the more distant and fainter ones. If you look in the Messier catalogue there are dozens of star clusters and these can be found on the Internet. Just type Messier catalogue number 1 - 104 in Google and away you go! 

• GLOBULAR clusters on the other hand are not as bright as or numerous as the Open Cluster type. In our southern winter we have Omega Centauri-NGC 5139 which spans 2 degrees of sky (about a finger width) and contains about 4 million stars. In our summer skies we have 47 Tuc (NGC 104) near the Small Magellanic Cloud.

• Best nights to view star clusters is listed under Stars and Planets.