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 now available to support the Cassini Mission and the New Horizons Jupiter flyby.

[VIEWER THUMBNAIL]
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.
Click for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Mars.

[TRACKER THUMBNAIL]
Moon Trackers
These forms enable you to generate a diagram showing the apparent east-west motion of one or moons relative to the disk of a planet, within a specified time period.
Click for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Mars.

[EPHEMERIS THUMBNAIL]
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.).
Click for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Mars.

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.

Keywords for Rings Node internal indexing: tool tools toolkit toolkits form viewer ephemeris generator moon tracker satellite moons satellites ephemerides spice chart charts picture pictures diagram diagrams postscript ps download downloading render rendering jupiter jupiter's jovian saturn saturn's saturnian uranus uranus's uranian neptune neptune's neptunian ring rings ringlet ringlets j_rings s_rings u_rings, n_rings voyager 1 voyager 2 voyager I voyager II vgr 1 vgr 2 spacecraft spacecrafts flyby voyagers encounter nasa jpl galileo orbiter spacecraft gll flyby encounter nasa jpl new horizons pluto cassini geometry phase angle incidence angle emission angle shadow boundary ring plane crossing telescope observatory latitude longitude viewfinder mars martian occultation occultations sun earth star stars background