[Chaos-l] Check out Saturn's moons around 11:30 PM Saturday night

[Jim Pressley]

Folks,
Since sky conditions appear promising, here is a Saturday night
challenge.   Take a look at Saturn around 11:30 PM.    According to
Stellarium and other planetarium programs, eight of Saturn's moons will be
clumped on one side of the planet,  six of them bunched together in an
interesting arrangement near the rings (see attached charts).

One chart is from The Sky 6 and the other from Sky Charts.     I inverted
the views to appear as I think they will be seen in a Newtonian scope.
Besides being an unusually tight grouping, this offers us a nice
opportunity to explore the magnitude limit of our scopes.

On Monday night, using a 12.5" scope at 260X,  I could easily see six
moons:   Enceladus (12.3),  Iapetus (11.75),  Tethys (10.8), Rhea(10.25),
Dione (10.9)  and  Titan at (8.9).

At a magnitude of 12.3, Enceladus was tweaking in and out for me.    I was
unable to see Mimas (13.5) or Hyperion (14.8).   I expect seeing and (more
importantly) heavy light pollution at my site prevented my seeing these last
two.

The magnitudes given are from Stellarium.   I have not verified them with
other sources.

If you're out observing, see what you can do with these tiny moons,
Jim
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