Saturns moons?

[DazC]

Morning all

i was up early today so thought i'd have a good look at Saturn as i've not viewed it in a while. The seeing was fairly good, not amazing but better than it has been lately.

Whenever i've viewed Saturn before i've been so awestruck by the rings around the planet that i've not really thought to look for it's moons. This morning however i decided to look around for them. I could see three specks of light in my fov with my 6mm ep, one at 3 o'clock the furthest out, one at 5 o'clock just a little closer to the planet and one at 10 o'clock really close to it.

Would these specks of light be three of Saturns moons or are they light from faint stars behind Saturn? I don't have a pc only an android phone so stelerium is not an option for me check this yet.

Any help greatly recieved.

Thanks.

D.C

[DazC]

Sorry, just realised i said 6mm ep, it's a 7mm!!!!!!!

[Demonperformer]

Depends a little on exactly what time you were viewing it, and your location. I had a quick look on CdC at 2am from my location, and the positions you give don't seem to me to fit particularly well with any of the moons, but I'm not sure which (if either) direction will be inverted in your scope.

Might be worth you downloading a copy of CdC and setting it up for your location and zooming in on Saturn to see which moons were where and see how it matches what you saw.

en:download [skychart]

[DazC]

Thanks DP, it was around 2am and i'm in nottingham but which way my view was inverted i'm not sure, i'll have to look at that one.

Thanks anyway.

D.C

[Demonperformer]

OK. This is a screenshot from CdC at 2am this morning. The red circle is 37.5', which is about the fov in the 130eq (which is upside down but right and left are correct, I think - that's how the screenshot is aligned) using the 7mm e/p in your sig.

The bright blob in the centre is Saturn. The labelled moons are:

I - Iapetus

D - Dione

R - Rhea

Te - Tethys

T - Titan

Not sure if that helps a lot, but it may give you some idea - maybe someone else can be more exact.

[lukebl]

Here's another view from the same time as Demonperformer's image (from Winjupos)

Here's their magnitudes. With your telescope you should find Titan and Rhea pretty easily, plus Tethys and Dione if they're well-placed and the sky is dark.

Mimas 13.1 mag

Enceladus 11.9 mag

Tethys 10.4 mag

Dione 10.6 mag

Rhea 9.9 mag

Titan 8.5 mag

Hyperion 14.4 mag

Iapetus 11.3 mag

[pluto2884]

I was wondering the same thing about the moon of Saturn, there are loads of mobile apps for the moons of Jupiter you would think someone would create one for Saturn or even expand a Jupiter moon app to cover Saturn.

Would love to know which are moons and which are just stars so i can keep a proper record.

[Demonperformer]

CdC (download link in above post) provides positions of the moons so you can do that.

[pluto2884]

True am just being lazy and ideally I would prefer it on my phone so I compare what I see with where the moons are.

[Demonperformer]

Don't know anything about it, but maybe worth having a look at the app mentioned by Entropystar in this thread?

http://stargazerslounge.com/observing-planetary/169467-saturn-moons-rings-faint-targets.html

[DazC]

Thanks for all your help evreyone. I think i could fairly confidently say i saw two of Saturns moons but i'm not 100% so i won't be ticking them off my list just yet.

Thanks again.

D.C

[EssexMigrant]

Hi DC

I don't know whether or not you've tried this, but perhaps surprisingly, you may see more moons by using a lower power eyepiece. Using my old C102HD I see moons better with my 18mm Kelner than with, for instance, my 9mm Nagler or 5mm Radian. This is another instance where magnification doesn't help. I pulled in five a few nights back, but only four last night.

Cheers

Max

[pluto2884]

by the way, found an app for android phones, "saturnian widget" fits on the desktop, shows the moons and by tapping the widget you can change views depending on if you are looking through a refractor or newtonian so on.

hope it's clear tonight as forcasted so I can test it out.

[nigelnaturist]

I think this may be the view you were looking at Hip67402 mag. 7.81 and Hip67333 7.68 fit the outer points and at titan is the brightest moon at 8.38 mag, I put in your eye piece for the fov in Starry Night.

Hope this helps.

I need to read up about inserting images but hopefully this link will work.

tmb 7mm 2012-03-20 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[DazC]

Thanks again guys, pluto2884, itried that app but it didn't seem to work. Don't know if there was a problem when it was down loaded??? I'll try again.

EssexMigrant, i know what you mean about mag. isn't everything, i found that out with M42.

And thanks nigelnaturist, i'll have a look for starry night.

Thanks once more.

D.C

[Kung-Fu_Kills]

'Pocket universe' is a brilliant app, for the iPhone. The main feature Is the real time sky, including planet's, galaxies and such. It also has jupiter's and saturn's moons real time. I use it quite a lot and it's fantastic for a few quid.

[mike.brightmore]

I just managed to see 5 of Saturn's moons at 3.00 am this morning. Identified in the thread below.