Saturn's moon movements, with Titan empasis

Event Date: March 30th
Time: 10:00 PM

Brief

Yesterday, I showed Saturn and its Moons.  Each night when we look at Saturn, we see the Moons revolving at different rates around the planet, the same way that they do with other planets.  With Jupiter as a good example, we have the Galilean moons, which I will start showing again during the late spring when the most giant of our solar system planets comes back into view from behind the Sun and its glare.  First, I will repost the image from yesterday of Saturn (500x magnified) and its moons, followed by one exactly 24 hours later: notice the changes.  In the second one, the image also has the orbits, to show that the moons are either coming from behind to in front of Saturn, or vise versa.

*click on images to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp.

Notice the changes?  As I showed with Venus' orbit in one of last week's entries, the orbits for the Moons have a 3-D look to them: brighter where closer to our line of sight, and dimmer where further.  Just as I mentioned yesterday that we are looking at Saturn from a mid-latitude as opposed to the equator, the angle that we see the Moons' orbits indicates that.
   
Detailed

   Titan, which is seen with a separation of 3 arc-minutes from Saturn's disc center at furthest from our perspective, is the largest and brightest of the Moons.  It is the only large Moon, although even bigger than our planet Mercury.  Even more interestingly, Saturn's slightly orange-ish color indicates an atmosphere that is too thick to show any features. 
   The Cassini Mission, visiting Saturn in late 2004, led to the Huygens probe landing on Saturn in January 2005; I remember the news about that clearly, and how one of my volunteer colleagues at Chabot Space & Science Center enthusiastically showed images to the public on a weekly basis!  Despite an atmosphere being predominantly of nitrogen (90%) and carbon, methane could also be found in the form of liquid methane.
Learn more about Cassini and the Huygens probe here, with images and videos included:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=12