Talk:Mercury (planet)

Wrong image text

The image text for the transit of mercury image is incorrect:

"Transit of Mercury. Mercury is the small dot in the lower center, in front of the Sun. The dark area on the left of the solar disk is a sunspot."

Image description says:

"Mercury is visible as a black dot below and to the left of center, and sunspot AR2542 is prominently visible above center (as well as AR2543 below it and AR2544 on the upper left edge of the Sun)."

This seems to make more sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.80.103.108 (talk) 05:48, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I've edited the caption; it should be better now. Double sharp (talk) 06:33, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Dates

So what's going on with the recent reverting of date formats, this has taken it back to the versions where the reference dates both have the American and the British variety and I have found this. I will try this one more time. Iggy (talk) 09:13, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Please, also see this, last paragraph. Re-reverting. Purgy (talk) 12:12, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Purgy Purgatorio OK yes, I didn't see that. Iggy (talk) 12:18, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Not enough contentious to discuss THIS

@Arianewiki1, feel free to prefer for rational numbers x > 1 and positive measures A and B the formulation

A is x times smaller than B

to the statement

B is x times bigger than A

when the approximation $\quad B\approx {\tfrac {3}{2}}\cdot A\quad$ holds.

Certainly, I won't discuss this here, nor which assumptions this needs, nor if this were contentious, and definiteley not the topic "The is worst". Enjoy your ownership! Purgy (talk) 09:03, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that "1.5 times closer than" doesn't really seem to mean anything sensible, in isolation. What would "1.5 times closer than 1000 km" be, for instance? It does seem like confusing wording to use, and unnecessarily so. -- Begoon 09:23, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

@Purgy Purgatorio:@Begoon:

Sorry. Saying "The is worst" is not fair regarding a WP:GF, and if you read it as WP:PA my apologies. This was never personal.

However, I meant this was the worst rearrangement of words. Perihelion and aphelion are opposites, but in astronomical usage, perihelion also defines the set time (epoch) of the orientation of the orbit (and also calculating orbits from orbital elements like planets or binary stars), and therefore should always be first. Hence, "...so at perihelion, Mercury is about 1.5 times closer to the Sun than at aphelion." Saying "...so at aphelion, Mercury's distance to the Sun is about 1.5 times that at perihelion." ignores the convention. Grammatically what you say is right, but it in this instance, is overridden by this convention.

If you do have another way of expressing this and keep perihelion first, I'd gladly relinquish "ownership" (which was never my intent.) Thanks. Arianewiki1 (talk) 23:26, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'll take your word for the "convention", but I don't think following it should mean we have to make a grammatically meaningless statement. If you really have to have perihelion first then it seems the only sensible comparison would be that, at perihelion, Mercury's distance from the Sun is only about two-thirds (or 66%) of its distance at aphelion. I guess - Mercury's distance from the Sun increases by about 50% between perihelion and aphelion - or something similar could work, if you want to stress the "half" aspect, but it sounds a bit contrived. -- Begoon 02:42, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

"Not enough contentious to discuss THIS" Actually, I am grateful for the issue. There are systemic issues here with all the astronomy infoboxes with orbits, which puts aphelion in front of perihelion. I've opened a discussion here.[1] Arianewiki1 (talk) 02:27, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

---

@Begoon:@Purgy Purgatorio: Thank you very much Begoon for your very positive suggestion which I have now adopted in the article. Alternative viewpoints like this sometimes overcomes the other's occasional mindblocks. A five star contribution. Cheers. Arianewiki1 (talk) 07:31, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome, and I understand exactly what you mean. -- Begoon 07:48, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)

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Old source pre-MESSENGER

At the first close approach, instruments detected a magnetic field, to the great surprise of planetary geologists—Mercury's rotation was expected to be much too slow to generate a significant dynamo effect. [...] The origin of Mercury's magnetic field is still the subject of several competing theories.[162] - this source, 162, is from the 1970s from before the second mission to Mercury made scans of the planet's magnetism and narrowed down the theories significantly. Consider adding the information found in this nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/485052a or this article: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JE003528 which both elaborate on leading theories. A mention of the double snow state would perhaps be in order. (121.44.38.137 (talk) 19:24, 2 April 2018 (UTC))

The magnetic field is described in a separate section. This section describes the history of observations with spacecraft, and what was known at the time. The origin of the magnetic field remained controversial for about 30 years after the Mariner 10 encounters. I modified the statement and added a reference. JeanLucMargot (talk) 03:35, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 April 2018

2601:C6:CC80:168F:A4C9:CA4C:71D9:2DD4 (talk) 22:39, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

i want to add how many days

 Not done Please read the template above and give context, as "how many days" means little. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 23:13, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. L293D (☎ • ✎) 02:32, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Updated magnitude range

The new values of brightest and faintest apparent magnitude in the 'infobox' were reported in a peer-reviewed journal article that includes updated equations for computing planetary magnitudes. Those formulas will be used to predict magnitudes for future issues of The Astronomical Almanac published by the U.S. Naval Observatory and Her Majesty’s Nautical Almanac Office. The equations were solved at daily intervals over long periods of time in order to determine the magnitude extremes. As noted in the journal article, the apparent magnitude for Mercury can become extremely large when the planet transits the Sun and it is almost completely backlit. The value of faintest magnitude reported here is for Mercury very near to a transit. The paper in Astronomy and Computing can be located at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2018.08.002.Planet photometry (talk) 14:10, 10 September 2018 (UTC)