Celestia Forums

cel://Follow/Sol:Cassini/2004-10-06T13:33:51.45604?x=Ny095+7D4P6LDA&y=BGC4nIOUyK3//////////w&z=PFm4pFsB0RR6/////////w&ow=0.899138&ox=0.079598&oy=0.428113&oz=-0.043981&select=Sol:Saturn:Prometheus&fov=0.478664&ts=-1.000000<d=0&rf=104375&lm=4

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06522

As far as I can tell, these are the same views (the Celestia URL is the view from Cassini). But in the celestia version, Atlas is actually off to the right of the view, not above Janus and Prometheus in the view.

Is something wrong here?

Oh Evil One,

Celestia just uses a simple Keplerian orbital definition for Atlas. Unfortunately, it seems to be in resonance with several other satellites, so a Keplerian orbit simply doesn't describe it properly. See, for example, http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/SaturnMoons.html, which mentions errors in other predictions of its location.

Ah, right. I thought Saturn had been flipped upsidedown or something since two of the moons were in the right spot but one wasn't