Ring-Moon Systems Node On-line Tools
A set of tools to assist planetary scientists in the planning, acquisition and interpretation of observations of the ringed (and possibly-ringed) planets.
August 2022, Our Planet Viewer and Ephemeris Generator tools now support JWST. We are also providing preliminary “place-holder” tools for the upcoming Europa Clipper and JUICE missions to the Jupiter system.
Versions of these tools are also available to support the Cassini Tour, the New Horizons flybys of Jupiter and Pluto, and the Juno mission.
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, JWST, HST, or a planetary 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.).
