Identifying Jupiter's Galilean moons

[Podgebag]

Jupiter and it's Galilean moons are great viewing, but as a noob I've never known which moon was which. I've had a quick trawl through this site but haven't found anything obvious to help with this, so thought I'd highlight the following just in case it helps anyone who wants to be able to do this:

    https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/celestial-objects-to-watch/jupiters-moons-javascript-utility/#

The Jupiter moon simulator is here:

    https://s22380.pcdn.co/wp-content/plugins/observing-tools/jupiter_moons/jupiter.html

and covers different types of telescope too.

Apologies if I'm re-hashing old/known info.

[John]

Those are useful tools

Cartes du Ciel and Stellarium are also useful for this. I've found Cartes du Ciel pretty accurate when it comes to tracking the position of the Great Red Spot as well.

When Jupiter is perhaps better placed than it currently is from the UK, it is possible to see the differences in the actual disk sizes of the Galilean moons with a scope at reasonably high magnification. It's fun to have a go at working out which is which using those visual differences. A couple of them are quite close which adds to the challenge !

 

[Podgebag]

Thanks. Have downloaded Cartes du Ciel and it's a bit of a step up from the SkyView mobile app, but looks like a good tool for planning and wandering the skies without having to rotate your phone about. I didn't know that there was an online version of Stellarium at: https://stellarium-web.org which includes a quick summary of when the planets are visible. Nice one!

I'm still getting used to the scope so Jupiter is pretty much my only target at the mo, despite the poor viewing conditions which includes trees, houses, street light out the front and my neighbours thinking I'm spying on them.

It's great being able to see Jupiter as a definite planet and I'm looking forward to the longer nights and hopefully seeing a similar differentiation with the moons too.

[johninderby]

I prefer Luminos but it’s iPad or iPhone only. Anyway here’s a couple of screenshots of Jupiter and moons will look tonight.

Edited June 28, 2019 by johninderby

[John]

It won't look like that from my back yard going by last nights showing !

 

[Mr niall]

Calisto is easy - but the rest I'm in the same boat!

[Stu]

Skysafari all the way for me. Available for iOS and Android in various versions it is a really powerful app which o also use to control the Goto on a couple of different mounts

 

[Alexandros]

As a fellow noob I can share how I separate them. I do it with the help of my computer or my phone. I have not discovered yet how I can identify them if I see them without any help. If anyone knows, I would be VERY interested in learning it!  

With my computer I use the software stellarium which shows you how the sky will be at night or at any time of the day. ( It even shows you how the stars will look like in the future so I had a blast looking at how constellations will change over time). There has been (recently as far as I can tell) an online version of stellarium, but that is not the same as the one you can download. The differences however, have not influenced me at all,

However I prefer my phone, which I can easily take outside when viewing. I use the stellarium mobile plus app (paid). There are free options as well. Star Walk 2 shows the 4 jovian moons but since it has a paid planets expansion, if I can describe it as such, I doubt it will have many more. If I remember correctly, Star Chart does not show them, unless you purchase them. You can purchase an expansion for most of the apps which will show the location of most of the solar system objects.

Here are some screenshots from Stellarium (not the online version,Edit: Whoops, sorry for greek characters didn't notice them), Stellarium mobile plus and Star Walk 2.

 

Edited June 28, 2019 by Alexandros
Greek characters crept in my screenshot, apologies.

[westmarch]

Although I like the online version, I struggled with the IOS version of Stellarium and, like Stu, opted for Sky Safari as being much more configurable.  

Having said that, on Wednesday night, I got bored with Jupiter wobbling around and tried to see how many of the Saturnian moons I could  spot.  I managed one - Titan, despite being able to identify fainter surrounding stars, I could not positively identify any of the other moons.

I must admit though that everything beyond Mag 10 was dancing in and out of view with the poor seeing and light pollution from Leeds. 🙄

John