Observing Targets for Each Month

These Top 40 monthly observing targets are selected for southern observers for the evening sky (6pm to midnight).

Daylight saving is considered for the months of October through to March inclusively.

The observing targets are a mix of some of the best double/multiple stars, star clusters, galaxies and nebulae.

Also included are some carbon stars and planetary nebulae.

Object data is primarily from SIMBAD (simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad) and multiple star data from the WDS Catalogue (heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/wds.html).

The following sites were also useful:

NED (ned.ipac.caltech.edu), SEDS (seds.org/messier and seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc).