Rings Node On-line Tools
March 2017, Our generic Ephemeris Tools now work for any year between 1601 and 2599
A set of tools to assist planetary scientists in the planning, acquisition and interpretation of observations of the ringed (and possibly-ringed) planets.
Versions of these tools are also available to support the Cassini Mission and the New Horizons Jupiter flyby.
Planet Viewers
These forms enable you to generate a diagram showing the appearance of a planetary system at a specified time. Bodies and rings are rendered with terminators and shadows as appropriate. The viewpoint can be Earth’s center, a particular Earth-based observatory, or a spacecraft.
Ephemeris Generators
These forms enable you to generate a table listing useful information about the viewing geometry for a planet and/or any of its moons as a function of time. You are free to specify which of a variety of useful quantities to tabulate (e.g. RA and dec, phase angle, ring opening angle, distance, lunar phase, etc.).
Cassini Tools
These versions of the tools are intended to assist in the planning and analysis of Cassini data.
Saturn tools are updated regularly with the reconstructed Cassini tour.
New Horizons Tools
These versions of the tools are intended to assist in the planning and analysis of New Horizons data for the Jupiter flyby of early 2007 and for Pluto in 2015.