Quote:
Originally Posted by tailwag
Just went to this and according to it, there was no moon in the direction I was looking  I turned the laptop upside down and Hyperion would have been where I was looking.....but according to me, I was facing North and had the East on my right, at the right time and date and nothing, a real bummer. I suspect that I just don't have the cafe directions right, it almost certainly had to be Hyperion because that was the only one away from the others and off center. |
Tailwag, start with Jupiter and its moons - however that means getting up at 4am!! Firstly, you'll see better what the disk of a planet looks like at 20x (but I think you've already described Jupiter, as I recall), so what looks different when you look at Saturn has to be the rings (in a simplistic way of thinking). If you cannot make out the rings, it certainly looks like a football compared to everything else!
Secondly, the four moons of Jupiter are easily spotted and then you can orient the image of sky view cafe the right way for our viewing location.
I've only seen Titan when looking at Saturn so far. Not sure whether the other moons of Saturn are particularly visible at 20x???
Now, if I have my brain around it properly, think of us hanging upside down off Earth looking at Saturn. The "top" of Saturn that we see closest to the zenith when Saturn crosses the meridian is therefore its south pole (or close to it depending on relative Earth/Saturn tilts). That is why when you turned the laptop upside down, you got the right view (maybe). So I'm sure now that you definitely have to flip the N/S view.
Next chance I get on Jupiter, I'll work it out again - if Jupiter's moons help and are in a nice recognizable pattern at the time I view.
