What happen to the MOONS? 13th Sept 2006

[geckooptical]

Setting up the telescope at the High Wycombe Footpath Astronomy meet. Aiming the telescope to observe Jupiter. It was for me the first time ever to see only one moon along side Jupiter. There were no moon shadows across the planet, but the other three must of been behind Jupiter. This was at 8:00pm WAST here in Western Australia. Can someone help me identify the lone moon. Is there some where on the net to help identify Jupiters moons?

Michael

[astroron (Ron)]

Mike If you have a copy of Astronomy 2006 there is a chart to show which moons are visible, I don't know any net sites.

[rmcpb (Rob)]

Try using the Javascript application for finding Jupiter's moons at the Sky and Telescope web site.

[iceman (Mike)]

Do a search on the forum for "Jupiter 2", it's a great program.

I just had a look then, and on that date/time, the visible moon was Io.

Callisto was visible, but was at maximum elongation on was a long long way from Jupiter. Europa was being eclipsed by Jupiter's shadow, and Ganymede was occulted by Jupiter.

Cheers

[Argonavis (William)]

I find "Meridian" to be almost as good and it includes other planets (for example the Moons of Saturn).

Easy to download off the net.

[Lester]

Hi Michael,

the one moon in close to Jupiter was IO and 2 moons were behind with Callisto way out to one side at max elongation.