Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Amalthea (moon)

Amalthea (moon)

I noticed that articles about the majority of large jovian satellites are unreferenced. So I started the job from inside the jovian system and the first satellite worth attention is Amalthea. I added necessary references and in process rewrote the article. I would appreciate any comments, suggestion especially about the language as I'm not a native english speeker.Ruslik 10:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Comments (Dr. Submillimeter)

This article generally looks very good. The heavy reliance on references throughout the article is commendable (except for one section). I also like the fact that the article does not simply state facts but instead describes the scientific significance of these facts.

Specific comments on the science:

• It would be nice to see every line in the infobox referenced except for those quantities that are calculated from the other quantities in the table. This is currently done with articles on galaxies (see Sombrero Galaxy, for example). Even if this information is referenced again in the main text, it does not hurt to cite these references a second time.
• In astronomy, the term "red" is usually used to indicate that the difference in magnitudes between two photometric wave bands (such as the B-band and the V-band) indicates that the longer-wavelength band is relatively high. Is that how the term is being used here? It might be worth clarifying this in the text (as well as describing the wave bands in which the object looks "red").
• The article mentions dust from Amalthea forming both an "Amalthea Gossamer Ring" and a "Thebe Gossamer Ring". Are these both separate rings?
• The section named The view from the surface is unreferenced. Can this be fixed?

Style comments:

• It would be nice to see the Physical characteristics section broken into subsections that discuss specific properties of the moon (such as a section for the surface, a section for the mass and internal composition, etc.).
• My personal preference for links to astronomical journal articles is to link to the ADS Abstract Service entry. This allows the readers to choose whether to read the PDF or GIF versions of older scanned articles and allows users to choose between the journal and preprint articles for newer articles. (Note that people outside of academic institutions probably cannot access PDF or electronic articles from journal websites without paying for subscriptions, whereas the preprint articles are publicly accessible.) The links to the ADS pages also allows for checking other things related to the articles as well, such as "also read" articles and citations to the articles.

I hope these comments are useful. However, I am only an extragalactic astronomer; you should probably get additional comments from a planetary scientist. Dr. Submillimeter 12:10, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. "Thebe Gossamer Ring" was a plain error. I incorporated most of your suggestions, with one exception. I think that the section Physical characteristics is too short and the proposed subsections would be only one paragraph long, which is not good. I also noticed that there are no articles about photometric bands in wikipedia (V-band article is actually about radiospectrum). Ruslik 06:56, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

This could be a problem, although I would recommend checking to see if Wikipedia contains articles that mention multiple photometric wave bands. Maybe we should create some articles or at least some stubs. I suggest using Allen's (or maybe Allan's?) Astrophysical Quantities for information. (I would have fun writing an article on the K-band.) Dr. Submillimeter 20:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

RJH

I'm not a SME, but still a few items stood out.

The text includes the following statement:

"The orbit of Amalthea has non-negligible eccentricity ~0.003 and inclination ~ 0.37° (to the equator of Jupiter). Such high values of inclination and eccentricity are unusual for inner satellites and can be explained by the influence of the innermost Galilean satellite Io."

These parameters appear to be unusually small, rather than "high values". Can this be checked?

The sentence about "mean motion resonances" should be explained for the lay reader, as well as linked to orbital resonance. In what sense was the orbit "excited"?

Thanks. — RJH (talk) 21:18, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The sentence about eccentricity and inclination is correct. They are high compared with other inner moons (see Metis).

I think linking to the orbital resonance is enough for this short article.Thanks for comments. Ruslik 14:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Cryptic C62

Hey dee ho, I'll quickly run through the article and add points as I go:

• I removed the link to the asteroid at the top. It's really not necessary, since there's an ample disambiguation page at Amalthea.
• Introduction: You should read through WP:LEAD. Basically, the introduction is supposed to summarize all of the content in the rest of the article. The current intro discusses the discovery and the naming process, which are not mentioned later.
• Tildes: I don't think ~ is proper. "Approximately" or "estimated at" looks nicer.
• "but the nature of this color is currently unknown." I would use "origin" or "cause" instead of "nature".
• Make sure citations come after punctuation marks.
  • This is right: ,¹³
  • This is wrong: ¹³,
  • This is wrong: , ¹³
• Avoid subjective phrases like "The result was surprising."
• The physical characteristics section doesn't have much information about what Amalthea is made of. Sulfur is mentioned, but the subject isn't elaborated upon. Is that information not known yet?
• There should be more context of the other moons of Jupiter. How many moons are there? How large is Amalthea compared to the other moons?

You've found a wealth of good sources already, and I'm sure you'll be able to address these issues. Keep up the good work! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with removal of the link to an asteroid since such links are present in many articles about celestrial bodies.

The reliable information about Amalthea is very limited and its composition is not known for sure. I mentioned all hard facts about it. I don't want to write about speculations.

Comparison between Amalthea and other moons is not so necessary since there are links to a page about inner jovian satellites. In addition general discussion of jovian moons would make the article very long: there are 63 of them!

Use of tilde is justified in infobox because there is no room for words there.

Thanks for the comments I will try to take them into account.Ruslik 14:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)