Saturn and its moons!

[spurius]

Got the scope out tonight. Only reason I had it out was coz I knew saturn might make an appearance. Sooner than I thoght actually.

What happened was that I showed my relatives saturn and its rings. When I normaly look at saturn I will see the planet, the ring system and a very faint dot which I always assume to be titan. This time even my relatives could make out 2 faint dots. Did saturn pass in front of a star? Did titan pass behind saturn, in which case what were the faint dots? The very fact I saw more than 1 dot while looking at saturn has completely confused me. Saturn has more than 60 moons, only titan is big enough to be seen from earth. The rest are like 20 miles wide and my useless scope will not pick them up.

Everytime I viewed saturn, it always had a faint dot nearby. On this occasion, why were there 2?

[John]

If the extra moon was as bright, or nearly as bright as Titan then it was a background star. There are a number of Saturns moons that are visible with moderate telescopes though but they are quite a bit dimmer than Titan and won't stand out unless carefully searched for.

[Stu]

I saw a couple tonight with the 76mm, which I assume we're Titan and Rhea closer in towards the planet.

Stu

[JamesF]

Dione, Rhea and Tethys are all close to Saturn visually right now and all around mag 10 so visible given a dark enough sky and large enough aperture (which probably wouldn't need to be that big really). If you're not sure it's often worth remembering or noting down the pattern of the objects and then checking in Stellarium or another planetarium program afterwards.

James

[northwalesparry]

I counted at least 5 moons last night some very faint.

[Superdavo]

There are at least 4 visible with a moderate telescope, between mag 10 and 12. Ive never seen them myself, but I photographed titan and 3 others about a year ago.

[Astro Imp]

You might find this useful:- http://www.skyandtel...t/saturn_moons#

FYI a similar app is available for Jupiter:- http://www.skyandtel...script/jupiter#

[starman1969]

I was looking last night too. I could clearly see what I thought was Titan but there were a couple of other faint dots visible as well.

The seeing was pretty average but at least I got a few glimpses of the Cassini Division through my Celestron 6SE.

[John]

I've managed to see 6 Saturnian moons with my 12" scope - Titan, Dione, Tethys, Rhea, Iapetus and Enceledus. The last two can be hard to spot, Iapetus because it tends to be further away from the planet than the other moons so harder to locate and Enceledus because it's an 11.7 magnitude object that gets "downed" in Saturns glare rather easily. I believe Enceledus is one of the most reflective objects in the solar system which I guess is why we can see it despite it's somewhat small 500km diameter.