Jupiter’s Irregular Satellites

[Michael O’Connell]

Hi Folks,
If there any software tool that can show me the positions of all the moons of Jupiter, not just the Galilean ones?
Thanks,
Michael.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Yes.

Both the MPC and JPL provide ephemerides, though MPC only for the outer satellites. The URLs are https://minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NatSats/NaturalSatellites.html and https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/ respectively.

If you wander over to http://www.astropalma.com/Projects/planetary_satellites.html you will see (most of) the images I have taken using these resources. One day, assuming I get a round tuit from somewhere, I will update that page with some more images. A fair number appear in my image gallery here on britastro.org

Have fun!

Paul

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 5 days ago by Dr Paul Leyland. Reason: Add missing JPL link

[Michael O’Connell]

That’s great, thanks Paul.

I use The Sky X Pro.
WHen I download the Ephemerides as a data file, the software doesn’t read it.
The only way I could get it to work iss to manually copy/paste the data parameters for each satellite.
Is that what you do, or do you use other software tools?
Thanks,
Michael.

[Grant Privett]

I also find TSX’s limitatios frustrating.

For objects like that I just type* the RA/Dec into TSX, tell it to use J2000 and then tell it to slew to the coordinates.

*Pasting works too.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Michael O’Connell wrote:

The only way I could get it to work iss to manually copy/paste the data parameters for each satellite.

Yes, that is exactly what I do. Takes an extra 30 seconds or so, but that is negligible compared with the exposure time needed to reach 20th magnitude or below.

[Michael O’Connell]

Thanks folks.

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