Saturn's moons corrected

Geoff sent this note out Friday morning to the RASC Yahoo!group:

Well, I just checked in Starry Night, and discovered that the "moon" to the right of Saturn, which I identified as Titan last night, was in fact the star HIP46232, magnitude 6.3. The real Titan was the object to the left of Saturn, magnitude 8.2. The three tiny moons close in, left, right, and below Saturn, were Dione, Tethys, and Rhea, respectively. At least one person mentioned seeing something below Titan: that was Iapetus. (All the above are Newtonian orientation; for refractors and Cassegrains, reverse up and down.)

Memo to self: print out the positions of Saturn's moons before each star party. I did it Tuesday night, but forgot Thursday night.

Here's the positioning from Cartes du Ciel:



N.B. View above is mirror-inverted, as shown in my SP-C8.

I did not see the moon between Rhea and Tethys, the one very close to the moon (Encelade, magnitude 11.6). I also did not notice the moon below Tethys, the one at the 4 o'clock (Hyperion, magnitude 14.1). But I did notice Iapetus (mag 11.0) above Titan, first in Scott's apo telescope, and later in mine (when the skies stabilised).

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Lesson learned: field or background stars can easily outshine Saturn's moons...

I'll be careful next time.

Also, my Procyon X palmtop software is clearly wrong. I'll try contacting the authors to see if there's a zap or bugfix or maybe simply a more current planetary database.