Did I see moons or just stars?

[Manok101]

I was looking at Jupiter tonight and i noticed a moon set up kind of like:

.

. . 0 . . . Not exact, but were all of these moons? Or is one of them a star thrown in the mix? Can I see more than the 4 big moons with a 10"? Or was I just seeing things? The ones that weren't the big ones were very hard to see.

[Ags]

You can only see the 4 Galileian satellites with amateur equipment. The other dots must have been stars.

[Pete Presland]

i am guessing 4 would be Galileian moons the other 2 background stars.do a simple drawing next time you observe,do this over a few sessions and you will see which ones are moons and be able to plot there movement.

[Jove]

You often see some stars mixed in with the moons, but the moons are much brighter. I was looking at Jupiter around midnight and saw (5", you'll see many more stars):

W                     E
a  O b   c    d    e

where:

a: Ganymede

b: Io

c: Europa

d: HIP 11884 (Star, Mag 9.2)

e: Callisto

As bunnygod says. keeping track of the motions is interesting. You should be able to get a good view of moons transiting Jupiter with a 10" scope too, magazines publish the times of these events.

[brantuk]

If you look with binocs before using the scope it'll be more obvious wich are the moons and wich are the stars I reckon

[John]

The Javascript utility linked to from the web page below will show you the relative positions of Jupiters 4 brightest moons at any specified time so you will know which moon is which:

Jupiter's Moons Javascript Utility - Planets - SkyandTelescope.com

[Manok101]

This was my first time looking at Jupiter on a clear night with my 10" scope, and was amazed at the detail, I've got a couple of color filters, would one of them bring out the bands more? I kept seeing halos around things, and couldn't tell if it was my scope, the glass of the eyepiece or what, but compared to my 4" it was amazing.

[Datapoint2]

I had a similar experience to this when seeing jupiter for first time a few weeks back. We could see what looked like 5 moons through an 8" reflector and 6"inch dob, neither of us were sure if we should be able to see more than 4, guess we were looking at 4 moons and a star too.

[GJBC]

we had a member of the public at our observing session 11 pm on Sunday evening say she could see 5 moons. we checked the following morning on Stellarium and it proved to be HIP 11884 as well. they were all perfectly in line