Finding Minor moons in Carte du Ciel

[lukebl]

Hi, I was trying to find Jupiter's moon Himalia in Carte du Ciel but, even though I had 'Show the faint satellites of the outer planets' ticked, it wouldn't show Himalia. It does, however, show Amalthea and Metis and Neptune's moon Nereid, for instance.

Any idea how to get it to display Himalia? Also, there doesn't seem to be an option to search for any of the minor moons in the search box.

I eventually found Himalia by a rather tortuous route. I went online to get the co-ordinates from an ephemeris, then typed in the position in 'User defined objects', but this does seem to be a shortcoming in CdC. Any ideas?

Anyway, here's a very rough and ready capture of Himalia (no flats, clearly) and a greatly enlarged animation of its motion over the period of about 40 minutes. You can see the bright glow of Jupiter off the top left of the view. Atik 383L, 200mm f/5 Newt

[johninderby]

Think you need an app like SkySafari or Luminos to show the minonor moons of Jupiter.

Screenshots from Luminos.

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by johninderby

[lukebl]

Thanks, John. I’ve got Sky Safari Pro but that doesn’t really help. I’d still need to manually punch in the coordinates into CdC (for GOTO purposes). I wonder why CdC has some of the moons, but not all of them (and in Himalia’s case, one of the brightest).

[johninderby]

Haven’t used CdC in years so not sure when it was last updated.

Moved on to Luminos which I get along with really well. Shows all of Jupiters moons  and I will be trying it with the AZ100 mount with GOTO shortly when I start beta testing it.

Edited November 23, 2021 by johninderby

[John]

Stellarium shows Himalia. It is a lot further away from Jupiter than the Galilean moons though (which are clustered close to the planet at this level of zoom):

 

[Merlin66]

Patrick has said he will update Cartes du Ciel very soon to include many of the faint planetary satellites.

 

[Merlin66]

Patrick has been working overtime!

The latest release now includes coverage of faint planetary satellites (using the Spice kernel - a 1.3Gb download

 Version 4.3 beta, release Notes

New calculation of the planetary satellites with CALCEPH library:
To have the best possible precision of the position it is now possible to calculate it using a SPICE kernel.
To do this, you have to install the corresponding data files from:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/skychart/files/2-catalogs/SpiceKernel/
The skychart-spice-base file is required and you can add skychart-spice-ext for more satellites. The list of satellites in each file can be found on the download page.
On Linux you also need to install libcalceph before you can use this function: https://github.com/pchev/libcalceph/releases/tag/v3.4.7

New functions:
- Add 8 faint satellite of Jupiter, this require to install the updated Spice kernel as of November 2021.
- New program icon by Mattia Verga.
- Adjust magnitude and distance for the effect of proper motion.
- Update to latest version of solar and lunar eclipse catalog.
- For date before 1657 the Delta T computation is from Morrison, Stephenson, Hohenkerk, Zawilski 2021.
- For date older than 1840-1950, depending on the country, when the LMT timezone is in use, the time offset is now for the longitude of the observatory.
- Can use SPICE kernel for NEO or other solar system objects. On Linux this require installation of libcalceph, see above.
- Use binary file instead of database for asteroid element, improve performance
- Show more asteroid information from the Asteroid lightcurve database
- Display object information directly from the Search window
- Add Alpaca telescope discovery
- Add civil twilight in the calendar
- Allow to import a mosaic in the observing list
- In Observer tool, stop the telescope motion when releasing the arrow button
- Use the nebula outlines from OpenNGC, add option to select line or surface
- Allow simulation for a single asteroid and comet
- Add menu "Window/Lock chart position" to not move the chart after a search
- Show hour angle and airmass under mouse cursor
- Add telescope handpad for ASCOM and INDI
- Add option to blure and set transparency of surface catalog
- Add pre-pointing feature for asteroid occultation

Bug fix:
- Fix Bayer labels
- Update Quicksat to support the new magnitude file
- Fix PHD2 comet tracking interface
- Fix setting telescope time
- Planet in line mode must be really transparent
- Fix "Show Mark" option for comet and asteroid simulation

Removed:
- Move SAC to obsolete catalog, replaced by OpenNGC
- Remove Iridium flare computation

[Merlin66]

The fainter planetary satellites are now plotted in CdC V4.3.4410 beta