Stellarium Jupiter moon times out

[Quoll]

Last night (Monday) I checked Sky & Telescope’s utility for the time Io would exit an eclipse by Jupiter’s shadow, which said 00:14 am (Local time Tuesday morning). I set Stellarium for this time but Io had long since exited. According to Stellarium Io was due to exit at 11.33 pm

Well when I watched Jupiter in the scope the Sky & Telescope time was on the mark. I’ve noticed some discrepancy before with the times for moon movements with Stellarium but was not as positive the times were out (and by as much) as I was last night.

Anyone else have this problem or know why Stellarium’s times would be out?

Because it’s displaying the wrong times for Jupiter’s moons, I take it it’s doing the same thing for Saturn’s. Last night/in the wee hours of this morning I had some very good views of Saturn with my 8” DOB and wanted to check Saturn’s moon positions in Stellarium against what I’d seen as I’m a newbie and wanted to check that what I was seeing were moons and not stars.

Any help would be much appreciated as I want to have another crack at Saturn’s moons.

BTW if anyone doesn’t know about Sky & Telescopes very useful Jupiter’s moon utility here’s the link http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/javascript/jupiter#

Cheers, Bill

[CJ]

It's of no help but, I had a similar experience with a satellite transit of the moon I witnessed a month or so back. Stellarium had the satellite missing the moon by a couple of degrees. I'm confident my location is accurate. I've long been a big fan of Stellarium but...........

[Barrykgerdes]

Check whether you have simulate light speed ticked in the main menu. Don't forget that what you see in the scope actually happened quite some time earlier and the discrepancy for Saturn will be even more.

When you tick simulate light speed (default is un-ticked) I think you will find Stellarium will show what you expected to see.

Barry

[Quoll]

Thanks heaps Barry. That works!

As soon as I read your post I thought that makes sense. You forget that you’re actually watching something that happened back in time when you look in the scope.

I’m sure you’ll find this helpful to Chris.

[byronpaul]

I didn't know this about Stellarium.

Will be checking my setting tonight as well :)

[Barrykgerdes]

Download the latest user manual at.

http://barry.sarcasmogerdes.com/stellarium/stellarium_user_guide-new.pdf

Page 24 under planets and satellites references some of the features that can be turned on or off.

Barry

[CJ]

Thanks Barry and Bill. I'll give that a try. Shame I cant remember the date of the transit I saw! didn't think to add it to my sightings log.

[Astro_Bot]

If you have the Astronomy 2014 handbook, it lists all the Jupiter events (and much more) for the year in extensive detail (page 112 onwards).

There'll be a slight difference in times (as listed) depending on where you are with respect to the benchmark for the Eastern or Western timezones, but you should be able to calculate that and then have a minute-accurate reference to compare to (the EST time they give is "mean solar time on the meridian of 150 deg E. longitude", while WST is taken at 120 deg E).