Author Topic: Angles between Sun, Saturn, Cassini probe, Daphnis moon at given time  (Read 553 times)

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Offline rs20Topic starter

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Folks, this feels like a bit of a longshot, but I've underestimated the breadth of knowledege represented on this forum before -- so here's hoping!

I would like to know what the angles were between these objects at time 2017-01-16T13:06:18.716Z UTC (SCET on Cassini).
  • The Sun
  • Saturn (planet)
  • Daphnis (small moon of Saturn)
  • Cassini (NASA space probe)
Specifically,
  • Cassini-Daphnis-Sun angle
  • Cassini-Daphnis-Saturn angle
  • Sun-Daphnis-Saturn angle
  • Sun-Saturn-SaturnNorthPole angle (so, in other words, the angle between Sun-Saturn line and Saturn's axis of rotation)
  • Cassini-Saturn-SaturnNorthPole angle (as above, but with the Cassini-Saturn line).
Or, any data which I could combine with simple geometry to get these same numbers.

(Unless otherwise noted, Saturn means the centre of Saturn.)

I've been playing around with 'NASA's Eyes' (deeplink to the given time maybe?) and 'Space Engine', but unfortunately the former doesn't know about Daphnis (!) and the latter doesn't know about Cassini; and neither seem to offer a way to export any sort of coordinate data (which I guess stands to reason since they don't seem to be intended for scientific work.)

Any hints or advice (or even fully worked solutions :-D) would be most appreciated.
 

Online ataradov

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Stellarium is likely to have all the natural bodies, it is pretty detailed. I don't know about artificial satellites. I know it has some, but I'm not sure how accurate the coordinates are.
Alex
 
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Offline rs20Topic starter

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Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately Stellarium features neither Daphnis nor Cassini.
 

Offline LaserSteve

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Have you considered just emailing the  NASA Program's Principle Investigator?

Steve

"When in doubt, check the Byte order of the Communications Protocol, By Hand, On an Oscilloscope"

Quote from a co-inventor of the PLC, whom i had the honor of working with recently.
 


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