Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects

main belt asteroids

See WT:AST, someone has mentioned possibly deleting most of the stub articles. 76.66.196.229 (talk) 06:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

We had a big discussion about this last spring, which is now in Archive 8 under "2 Asteroid articles". I notice there has been some activity since about the subject, which I need to examine. My initial position was:

"There are excellent tables at JPL and the Minor Planet Center that are maintained by professionals (and constantly updated by funded computer systems!), and how can or should we compete with those manually when tens of thousands of objects are at stake, and hundreds of thousands are obviously in store due to the NEO and LSST programs? We would not try to do this for stars. For asteroids, let us have some minimal criteria of notability, beyond being an entry in a catalog. If we just limit it to objects that require some words describing why they are interesting, and a reference or two, I think that will give us all the articles we need, and likely more than we can handle."

We discussed the possibilities of having a table with key properties, which would link out to JPL or the Minor Planet Center for more detailed information, or to articles of our own when there has been any real human effort involved in adding material, context, or references. I expect there is more to say about all this, but please remember that some of the data for asteroids may change fairly often, and we do not want to get ourselves into the situation of having thousands of articles that have to be updated continuously, else they become meaningless. I urge people who have an interest in this subject to at least glance over the work done in the archives, since Archive 8 at least, before continuing the discussion, lest we just go in circles. And remember that we do have articles for thousands of earthly counties, towns, islands, etc, that are not very important.

It would be nice to come to some conclusion on this nagging subject, that will keep it from coming up again and again. Thanks Wwheaton (talk) 19:48, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I am the "someone" Wwheaton mentioned who proposes to delete most of the asteroid-stub articles. At Wwheaton's suggestion I have read the archived discussion, and it seems to me that consensus was that these stubs are not notable. This thought was expressed by almost everybody who partook in that discussion in one way or the other. The only question seemed to be how to rework the available information into some kind of list. I propose to try the following: first of all ask the editor who operates the bot that creates all these stubs to discontinue his bot. Secondly, he is propbably the biggest expert on how to incorporate this information into a list with minimum effort. Debresser (talk) 20:55, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I object to this interpretation. I do not see any consensus in that discussion. Moreover, there seems to be a consensus to keep named asteroid's articles. Ruslik (talk) 09:23, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I did some analysis on that archive. In favor of deleting them as separate articles but making a table of the most important information contained in them were: Rick Block, Wwheaton, Kheider, J293339, Stifle, Alai. Against was Captain, who created a lot of them. Razor agreed that "we might be taking it a little too far" but in the end was in favor of keeping all these asteroids as they are named. Just deletion was the opinion of SarekOfVulcan.

So there was clear consensus, with 6 users (7 including myself now) in favor of turning all the stubs into redirects to a table, and 1 deletionist and 1 preservationist and 1 user dancing on both weddings to keep things balanced. :) Debresser (talk) 14:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Wwheaton actually said: I have no problem with an article for each named asteroid. So he did not support deletion. There is also Spacepotato who obviously was unhappy with deletion. So I can count 5 against deletion (including me). No consensus, in my opinion. Ruslik (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

You seem to suffer from a bias. Spacepotato wasn't unhappy with the deletion in and of itself. And Wwheaton was the one to initiate that discussion and this one too, and he also said there "I really do think it is madness" and is clearly in favor of a list in stead of separate articles. By the way, he is around, so he will state his opinion himself, I guess. Which leaves you and the user who created these stubs as their only defendants. Which makes a clear consensus to delete, IMHO. Debresser (talk) 18:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

With this debate appearing again, I suppose as one the people who created these articles, I ought to show up at a debate regarding their inclusion. It has been nearly a year since I finished creating the asteroid articles. During that time, I do not believe that concerns raised last time have come to fruition. Keeping the articles maintained and vandalism-free has not been a serious difficulty and the articles look just fine. The issues regarding Special:Unwatchedpages were dealt with when I added thousands of the asteroid articles to my watchlist. If there are still many of the asteroids still on that page, can someone please give me the article names? I will go add them to my watchlist. (I'm not an admin, so I can't see that page.) Most asteroids being discovered today are not named, so the rate of adding new articles will not be all that high. I do not believe Wikipedia will gain anything from putting these asteroids into a list and I believe that Wikipedia will certainly lose something from deleting them. Captain panda 02:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I am glad you are here to partake in the discussion. I agree with you that "keeping the articles maintained and vandalism-free has not been a serious difficulty" and I am happy that "the rate of adding new articles will not be all that high". But I disagree that "the articles look just fine". If an article is a stub and there is no reason to suspect that it will be anything more than that, we shoud consider Wikipedia:Stubs which warns: "When you write a stub, bear in mind that it should contain enough information for other editors to expand upon it. The key is to provide adequate context — articles with little or no context usually end up being speedily deleted". Which is precisely what I think should be done. Just copy the basic info into a list and turn the article into a redirect. You did a nice job of making a dime look like a dollar by adding an infobox and Wikipedia markup, but the content is still a dime's worth. No offence to your dedicated work, but let's face it. Debresser (talk) 10:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems that you are advocating deleting all stubs in Wikipedia (about 1,500,000 articles). It is a pretty radical proposal! I advise you to go to WP:VPR and make a proposal there. I am very interested what reaction will be?! Ruslik (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, that wasn't really what I had in mind. :) Debresser (talk) 16:58, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It might be hard to expand the majority of those articles, but should that automatically qualify them for deletition? I think that a list could clutter the information. --Harald Khan Ճ 18:21, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Not deletion, but turning them into a list. That list should obviously present the important information in a clear way. Debresser (talk) 19:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

WP:MERGE does list criteria for combining pages, and one of them is when a "page is very short and is unlikely to be expanded within a reasonable amount of time". A problem arises when you consider the number of rows on the asteroid infoboxes then contemplate how those would look on a mass table. I'm not sure if that would be a useful activity. Perhaps a format comparable to a list of TV episodes page would work. E.g. List of Heroes episodes. perhaps we just need to keep a few basic data, such as name, a, e, i, P and spectral class in the data row, then describe anything else interesting in the text box below.—RJH (talk) 20:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The discussion in moving in the right direction. Not if, but how. Debresser (talk) 20:36, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break #1

Our older proposals: I am copying two table suggestions in from the May 2008 discussion, perhaps we can build on them:

__________________________________

Rick Block's suggestion:

I don't think there's any reasonable way to include a,e,i,etc. without making the table overly wide or using a show/hide sort of approach. Using show/hide, this might look like the following (note there are 2 physical lines per entry since show/hide seems to introduce a 2nd line):

Name	Alternate name	Group	Discovery date	Discoverer	Orbital/physical characteristics	More information
20813 Aakashshah	2000 SB274	Main-belt	2000-09-28	Lincoln Laboratory	Data table H: 14.4 a: 2.6767409 e: 0.1117672 i: 2.98933 Node: 196.60418 peri: 307.92848 M: 164.07487 Epoch: 3871.4664786	JPL SBDB
677 Aaltje	1909 FR	Main-belt	1909-01-18	August Kopff	Data table H: 9.70 a: 2.9548394 e: 0.0497858 i: 8.48963 Node: 272.90478 peri: 280.18136 M: 123.27949 Epoch: 3965.1872566	JPL SBDB
2676 Aarhus	1933 QV	Main-belt	1933-08-25	Karl Reinmuth	Data table H: 12.8 a: 2.4032459 e: 0.1263205 i: 4.55345 Node: 289.75298 peri: 45.51728 M: 12.54766 Epoch: 4553.0696866	JPL SBDB

I'd be willing to write some code to construct tables like this (based on the data at JPL or some other available source). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

__________________________________

Wwheaton's alternative:

Here's my cut at a table, for the same three objects Rick Block has done above:

No. / Name	Alt. Name	Year	H	a	e	i	Node	Arg Peri	Anom. M	Epoch TJD	Full data
20813 Aakashshah	2000 SB274	2000	14.4	2.6767409	0.1117672	2.98933	196.60418	307.92848	164.07487	3871.4664786	JPL SBD
677 Aaltje	1909 FR	1909	9.70	2.9548394	0.0497858	8.48963	272.90478	280.18136	123.27949	3965.1872566	JPL SBD
2676 Aarhus	1933 QV	1933	12.8	2.4032459	0.1263205	4.55345	289.75298	45.51728	12.54766	4553.0696866	JPL SBD

I have included the absolute magnitude H, and the six principle orbital elements. In order for the orbital elements to be meaningful, it is also necessary to give the epoch time when they apply, since M changes rapidly and the others may also change, though usually very slowly. In order to save column space I have given this as Julian Date - 2450000.00. The choice of 2450000 will work for epochs from around 1995 to ~2023. (I am just guessing all the data at JPL have been generated for epochs since 1995, but there might be a few with no recent observations that are earlier.) There would need to be an explanatory header at the beginning defining all these, or a footnote at the bottom.

I have just copied the values from the JPL pages, but I actually am in doubt whether we need to have quite so many digits. Anybody doing high precision work is likely to go to the JPL tables directly anyhow, and I suspect we could get by with about 6 digits for the six primary orbital elements, and 7 or 8 for the epoch. This would save ~12 to 15 spaces. I have omitted the nominal size and albedo because these are not available for the newer objects, since they need photometric observations in visual and IR. We could add them if we think we have the space, and don't mind leaving them blank when unavailable.

The orbital period is redundant with a, but so useful I think it might be added also, in years to say, 3 digit accuracy. It seems to me we have the space if we reduce the accuracy on the orbit elements a bit. I dropped Group as largely redundant with the orbital elements; if we want to re-instate it I think I would put it in as a 2 or 3 character code, (eg, "M-B"), with an explanation decoding it in the footnote. Spectral class could be treated in the same way; it is not available for most objects. I reduced date of discovery to just Year, since it seems to me that it really only tells us if an object may have lots of (likely lower-precision) earlier observations or not. I also thought the discoverer was of marginal scientific interest, and therefore punted that.

My goal here has been to put the data in a form that can be used quickly by anyone looking for moderately accurate information about the main properties, in a format that could be read by computer for some statistical purposes, or even to generate rough (arc minute?) ephemermis info, but not good enough for high-precision positional work. Anything that drastically breaks the table format we choose -- whatever it is -- should likely have an article with the details in any case.

Being unfamiliar with the coding, I have given no consideration to the difficulties in generating a table, for thousands of objects, in this format. It may be impractical, in which case I bow to the necessities of the case. Anyway, let me know what you think. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 16:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

__________________________________

Looking at them afresh, I rather like the hide/show scheme Rick Block proposed, which I had forgotten. I am not too happy about mass deletion of existing articles out of respect for Captain Panda's labors, except as it causes Wiki administrative or institutional problems, which is a subject that I have no insight about. (I've posted requests on talk pages of a couple of administrators who commented earlier, asking for their views.) Personally, I think the table should be organized by number, as this has a (very rough) correspondence with history and observability, also would mean it will only expand at the bottom, so that the organization by rows would be somewhat stable. I favor including the major physical parameters (six orbit elements & epoch; orbital period; magnitude H; estimated size (from comparison of optical and IR brightness) when available; spectral class when available, rotation period if known; the name when there is one, plus wikilink to any article that exists, plus links out to JPL & MPC pages with more info, plus the things I've forgotten. I think the orbit data should be limited to fewer digits than I show above, (? 5 or 6?) both to conserve space, and to avoid the need to update the tables often due to planetary perturbations, etc. Wwheaton (talk) 00:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Unless I am mistake, hide/show is discouraged in mainspace due to problems with text-only browsers and universal access. DGG (talk) 01:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I have just checked the orbit elements from the three asteroids we used as examples above against the current JPL links. The agreement is not very good, even for those elements that are expected to be nearly constant. Some of this is due to planetary perturbations, and some due to improvements as new data come in. The bottom line is that we can round off the elements and save some column space, but how much is the right amount is likely to be a hard question. Also, as I feared last year, the values given in our current articles are likely to be outdated already. Wwheaton (talk) 02:08, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I also like that first table by Rick Block best. This is The Right Thing To Do, in my opinion. Debresser (talk) 13:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• Comments by RJH (talk):
  • 1. If this goes forward, I'll assume this is going to be a different tree than the existing List of minor planets pages. Perhaps 'List of named minor planets'?
    2. No offense, but neither of the tables seems wholly satisfactory to me. They both include columns that I expect have very marginal value to 99.9% of the wikipedia readers. These are better provided by a simple note with a JPL link. Node and Arg Peri seem questionable. OTOH, I think that semi-major axis and orbital period would be of interest to more readers; perhaps inclination and ellipticity as well.
    3. Some of the fields would be better presented in a text block below the stats. For example, for 20813 Aakashshah: "This is a main belt asteroid that was discovered 2000-09-28 by the Lincoln Laboratory. It is named after Aakash Shah (b. 1988)." Long tables of data are deathly dull; I think we need this to be more engaging for the reader.

I agree with the suggestion made by RJH in point 2. And I also agree with the suggestion to skip part of the decimals. Debresser (talk) 21:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, dull is in the eye of the reader I think. A log or trig table was dull unless you needed to do a calculation based on it. I favor all six of the standard Keplerian orbital elements, plus the epoch and the period, because they tell you where the thing is. With a fairly simple calculation (that could be put int a programmable calculator, for example) one can calculate the actual Cartesian position and velocity of the object at other times, subject to planetary perturbations not being serious and limited by the precision of the elements, of course. You cannot do these things without the node and argument of the perigee. You can figure where the object will appear in the sky with few minute-of-arc accuracy, for a telescope. You can also estimate the closest possible approach of an asteroid to the orbit of another body whose elements are known, such as the Earth. You could search for possible near approaches of a mission spacecraft, to Jupiter say, to an interesting asteroid en route, or the energy (or rocket delta-v) required to travel from a planet (eg, Earth) or asteroid to another asteroid. Then with spectral type, you could make a preliminary list of viable candidates for extraterrestrial resource use. You could also get such information manually by plowing through thousands of stubs, but one table would be easier (assuming we can find a usable compromise between accuracy and number of digits, of course.)

Hmm, well I enjoy mathematics but I'm not sure why I would find looking up a log value enjoyable. Perhaps for the end result?

Indeed. Wwheaton (talk) 20:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I really hope that nobody is using wikipedia as the basis of important calculations, as the data may become outdated and isn't necessarily being maintained or corrected. If you're not using the data for calculations, then I can't imagine why you'd need to know the 'Longitude of ascending node' or 'Argument of perihelion'. You'd be lucky to even find a non-astronomer that knows what they mean. Most simple tables of astronomy data I've seen only show basic things like orbital radius, orbital period, mass and size. :) —RJH (talk)

Also please see WP:NOT#STATS. WP:NOT is a frequently cited reason for deleting pages, so I try to avoid articles falling into one of those categories. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Nobody would use them for precision calculations, but I would hope we could provide data that suffices for minute-of-arc accuracy, or say 10,000 km in position of the object, which would be useful for the kind of overview estimates I mention above. And if this information is too detailed for a table, I cannot see providing it in separate articles, except for major bodies. Although no naive reader would know the meanings of the elements, many interested amateurs do, they are basic to knowing where the objects actually are, and their meanings are well-discussed and easily available (eg, orbital elements) within Wikipedia. Perhaps we should just have articles for a few hundred of the largest asteroids (? say > 100 or 30 km?) and let it go at that? Also, if we do not give the argument of the perihelion and the RA of the node, there is no point in giving the mean anomaly or the epoch of the elements. All of those are essentially only useful for locating a body in space at a particular time. The first three elements, a, e, & i, essentially give the size and shape of the orbit (they are normally nearly constant); the node, perihelion, mean anomaly, and epoch locate it at any particular time. I advocate keeping or dropping the latter four all together. Best, Wwheaton (talk) 20:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I would not mind a short string for discoverer and date, say, but I was hoping for a table with a regular enough format that it could be easily read by a computer program, which could then do statistical studies of various kinds, as suggested above. A few-character code for "main belt", or whatever, is fine, but "This is a main belt asteroid that was discovered 2000-09-28 by the Lincoln Laboratory. It is named after Aakash Shah (b. 1988)." is enough irregular information to merit a stub, in my opinion. Anyhow, it cannot be all things to all people, and this is just my POV. Professional mission planners must have access to much better tables than we will ever make, of course, though even with lots of digits and briefly coded additional information, such a table would be much more compact and less of a burden on Wikipedia I would think, than thousands and thousands of stubs. Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 08:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Detailed data tables should probably be on Wikisource or maybe Wikibooks. But it would be nice if we could make some type of periodic remote lookup queries to keep the data here updated. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Nosing around the JPL web sites, I find here much the kind of table I have been advocating:

   * Numbered Asteroids  (23 MB) or gzip compressed file  (8 MB)
   * Unnumbered Asteroids (23 MB) or gzip compressed file (8 MB)
   * Comets (359 KB) 

and

"Orbital elements and related parameters are also available for any asteroid (or comet) using our small-body browser. In addition, custom tables of orbital elements and/or physical parameters are available using our small body database search engine. We also provide fixed-format ASCII tables of elements."

I have just downloaded the numbered asteroids table, and it provides all I have been, wanting, and all reduced to a common epoch, for 207942 numbered asteroids, and all (that I've scanned) with H & G (IR) magnitudes, from which sizes can be estimated. Furthermore, it appears the data are updated very frequently by JPL. Total size when unpacked is ~23 MB. but I see no need to copy it here when we can just link to it and anyone can download it for their own purposes.

In the light of the easy availability of this information, I favor simply linking to the external JPL site, and having asteroid articles for only a few hundred or a thousand notable objects that are truly worth writing about. I think we should only have an article, beyond the most notable ones, when we have more to say than can be found in the JPL summary pages for each—which is quite a bit. Fairly simple computer programs can do moderate precision emphemerides from the orbit elements, but there is also a high-precision ephemeris program, HORIZONS, at JPL that one can use to run better projections, forwards and backwards, than any non-specialist is likely to be able to do without access to massive computing and programming resources. It seems to me that this changes the picture significantly. Wwheaton (talk) 08:09, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break #2

This is a worthy suggestion IMHO, satisfying all of our needs both as to providing information as well as to being an encyclopedia. Debresser (talk) 11:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I just realized that the "G" mentioned above and given in the JPL tables is not an IR absolute magnitude as I had presumed, but a spectral slope. I have struck over the incorrect text. Thus asteroid size is only very roughly indicated (by H) in the JPL tables. Wwheaton (talk) 20:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Another source is here at the university of Pisa, which gives even more detailed information (including uncertainties in the elements, and even the covarience matrix) for the same list of objects; it says they are updated monthly. Both of these links are now listed in the main Asteroids article. Wwheaton (talk) 00:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me we now need one or more definite proposals as to what to do with the asteroid stubs. I am thinking we should delete most of them. (The question of what to delete seems most pressing. I suggest keeping the articles for everything numbered up to the first one or two thousand ("old" asteroids), plus larger ones discovered since (based on a threshold H [this gives minimum size], value TBD), plus any others that have actual human-created information, text, references, etc beyond simply computer-generated numbers from the JPL & Pisa tables.) I further suggest we provide an index table, in numeric order, with the information in the JPL table (osculating elements, essentially), possibly some of the information from Pisa, absolute magnitude H, discovery date, a wikilink (on the number/name field I guess) to our article if we have one, plus a reference column with links to the JPL page for the object. Maintaining currently meaningful information does not appear too difficult, as both the JPL & Pisa tables seem to be kept up-to-date. There should clearly be explanatory information about the meaning of the columns in the table, as several are somewhat technical. I propose we take suggestions and modified proposals for a week or two (say till 15 March?) and then decide if we have come to consensus, and if we have, take action, so that this issue can be put to bed. Wwheaton (talk) 19:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I think all but the most notable should be deleted. Where notability is not measured by the asteroid's number, but by its outstanding physical characteristics or being named after the president's dog. Even if that would mean just a 10-25 asteroids. All others should be included in the list and turned into redirects. Debresser (talk) 22:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I think all named asteroids should be kept. I am fine with deleting any non-named asteroids, though. Captain panda 03:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I do not know what is meant by a "named" asteroid. Is "1234 Panda" considered named or non-named? Debresser (talk) 15:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, a number/name pair is considered named when it is listed at the Minor Planet center and officially recognized by the IAU. The un-named ones usually consist of an identifier that encodes the year of discovery. The stub pages should be converted to redirects to the merged summary tables, rather than deleted. —RJH (talk) 20:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

In that case I am against keeping all named asteroids. As I said before, just those with outstanding physical characteristics or being named after the president's dog. I've seen a few of them (10-15) and they are dull. No reason to keep them as articles/stubs. That's what we are talking about here. Debresser (talk) 21:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I concur, but, as before, I don't want to rush into a mass delete. I'd like to see one or more straw horse 'list of' pages set up, then we can hash out the details and see what will be used; perhaps using the table formats suggested above. Would it make sense to do this on a trial page (under this wikiproject) for the first 10 asteroids (incl. Ceres)? I.e. an introduction plus a table with headers, a row of data for each asteroid, then a row with a single paragraph summary. We can always re-use the text descriptions on the final page, so it won't be wasted effort.—RJH (talk) 20:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Good thought, RJH. Personally I think a cut based on absolute mag H (which implies a minimum size, depending on albedo) may be the way to go, with exceptions for anything truly notable for any other reason. But let's try out some alternate table schemes before trying to decide what really works best. And not rush into a mass delete until we have it right. The delete is surely a low priority thing, boring stubs probably don't hurt us too bad. Wwheaton (talk) 23:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break #3

Okay I'll throw out the first dart board: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/temp_list1. It only has a couple of entries at present, and I wasn't too concerned about the accuracy of the data or source: it's mainly for format.—RJH (talk) 23:31, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed the existing List of minor planets, which we should bear in mind. We might consider linking to these lists (which contain names of discoverers, dates and places of discovery observations, and provisional designations) for our table. For the record, the first numbered asteroid without a name seems to be No. 3757 (1982 XB), at the moment unless I have missed one in my cursory scan. Names get pretty sparse around 10,000 or so. Wwheaton (talk) 17:23, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. I have a suggestion. Make two lines of information. That way you can include in the second line the name of the discoveror, the date of discovery, type, dimension and mass. That is all standard information, so should be in a list. That was the whole idea, wasn't it. Any irregular information, such as for whom the asteroid is named, would be in text. Debresser (talk) 18:26, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I've never been a big fan of double-row table entries. Personally I think it'd be better in a separate table that is in-page linked from the first. (Perhaps down in a numerical data section.)—RJH (talk) 22:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I do understand your reluctance as to double-rowed tables, but

• the main problem of double-rowed tables is clarity of information, but with the nice layout from Wwheaton it feel that will be ok
• I hold it by far preferable to your suggestion "a separate table that is in-page linked from the first"

Debresser (talk) 22:52, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

• • Then we disagree. Shrug.—RJH (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
  • :) Let's see what others have to say about this. Debresser (talk) 23:01, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

It seems like our short-trial balloon lists are likely to have a lot of information that our "typical' (? whatever that is) entry would lack. We might want to consider basing our test table on #10000—#10020 to get something more representative. Or maybe 1—10, 101—110, 1001—1010, 10001—10010, 100001—100010 ? That would be 50 entries, logarithmically spaced. I'm up to start one based on my earlier suggestion, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/temp_list2. I'm time and energy strapped at the moment (as usual, more honestly), so it may take a while to get it up. Comments on the page, above or below, are welcome of course.

No comments anywhere I see here, but please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/temp_list2 for my second attempt (after the one above) and then also my third attempt, based on the JPL Numbered Asteroids table described 27 Feb 2009 above just before Arbitrary break #2.

• I need some sign of consensus before proceeding much further.
• I need some help with the table formatting wikicode, etc.

Please comment here or on the ./temp_list page. Thanks Wwheaton (talk) 00:49, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I liked Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/temp_list1. It looks nice; it diesn't have too many digits after the decimal dot. Just that I would make it a 2-row table, as stated above. Debresser (talk) 17:49, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe that size and mass are not known, or only very coarsely known, for all but the largest asteroids, no? I suppose that these will all have associated articles in any case. Rotation period is another important parameter that I think is known for a significant minority, by timing light variations. Wwheaton (talk) 00:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Wanting to keep the discussion moving, I have added quite a few objects (total now about 330, distributed from 1 Ceres, to #207942 "4291 T-3") from the ASCII JPL table, in order to get a better feel for what we are up against in terms of size, variability of data formats etc.

As is explained in the "test2" list page I have generated, I simply misinterpreted the perihelion passage times t_p in the detailed JPL pages for separate objects, as the epoch times. In fact, all the JPL object pages seem to have the same epoch time, of JD 2455000.5. This is in June 18, 2009, meaning that they must recompute the osculating elements pretty often (? like every year?) so one can easily compute a fairly accurate position at any time for a few years around the epoch time given, without having to do a big n-body calculation (which calls for the JPL HORIZONS program, or something like it, with the most accurate available input data.) The program that generates big ASCII tables of standardized elements also has a standard epoch, only 200 days earlier. That must be changed often too. Because it seems so much easier to generate the table en mass starting from the JPL ASCII table than to go through all 207,000 of the JPL object pages and try to pick out the elements and numbers we need, I think that is probably the way to go. (This has such important practical consequences that I am repeating the above information from the test2 page to make it more visible.)

At this point I favor dropping the epoch date as unnecessary, if all are the same (as they appear to be). The JPL "G" slope parameter seems to contain little information (it is given as 0.15 for almost every object), and I think it might be dropped. I also favor dropping the date of discovery, which is of limited physical interest, and easily found via the links for each object, and our own List of minor planets. But there are spectral types, size & albedo estimates, rotation periods, and B-V & U-B colors for quite a few. I would consider adding some of these, as they are physically important, but I am not clear what is really the reasonable maximum width of a Wiki table. Now that wide LCD monitor screens are becoming common, it may be reasonable to include more of these than would previously have been possible.

There are very few mass estimates, less than fifty total I suspect (this out of >200,000 total objects!) I see about five (Nos. 1,2,4,10,16) in the first 20, plus there are a few that have been closely enough approached by spacecraft (Nos. 243, 253, & 433), with doubtless more to come in due course. Very rough estimates of mass (factor of 3× either way?) can be obtained from those many more with size estimates, by guessing the density (? range 0.5 to 8, at the outside maybe?), but I doubt many of these are published or usable here.

Of course, as I have said several times, I personally strongly favor keeping reasonably accurate values for all six of the essential orbital parameters, which are needed to tell where any of these little guys actually are at a given time. I agree that they are boring to look at through a telescope, but so are stars. So I think their actual positions are important. Anyway, I'm interested to hear what people think about these trade-offs. I still disfavor double-line tables if that can be avoided. But I am thinking in terms of getting answers to questions like "What are the one-hundred most promising candidate objects for investigation as possible targets for exploration as possible sources of ice, or nickel-iron, or carbon, or nitrogen, etc in terms of mission velocity, object composition,....?" This may be too specialized an objective for this venue; maybe no more sensible person would dream of going to Wikipedia for such information.

Do we have consensus that we will only keep an article if the object has a name (several thousand do, probably less than 20,0000), or if it is otherwise notable in some special way? If that includes too many, then I would favor retaining their articles based on H, which is a very rough indicator of size, and thus of "importance". There is also the question of whether we really want to limit this to Main Belt objects. Because the vast majority of objects are in the belt, yet a fair number of interesting objects are not in the main belt), I think it would be better to keep the lot of them all in one big table, rather than proliferate (possibly overlapping) tables. If so I would propose trying to reach consensus on what to include and the formatting details. We should keep in mind also that the LSST is going to blow us out of the water with new objects fairly soon. We should think about how to deal with that, we are just getting started here, and don't want the whole thing to collapse in five years. There is also more information, at least at the MPC and the University of Pisa in Italy, some of which may need to be considered, but I have not done that myself yet. Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 11:40, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Masses are known for more than hundred asteroids now. In this relatively old paper (2006) the number of binaries is already more than 50. However it is growing rapidly. Among the first 20 the mass estimates are available for 1,2,3,4,6,7,9,10,11,15,16,17,19 (see this, which also a relatively old publication). Ruslik (talk) 12:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to repeat my opinion: "I am against keeping all named asteroids. As I said before, just those with outstanding physical characteristics or being named after the president's dog. I've seen a few of them (10-15) and they are dull. No reason to keep them as articles/stubs." So unless it is a somehow notable asteroid, in my opinion there is no need to have a separate article and a place in a list should be all. This is what the whole discussion started about. Not about unnamed asteroids, but about the thousands of uninteresting (to the public at large) named asteroid, save a 50-100 interesting ones. 11:58, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break #4

As a practical matter, I recently scolded an IP-editor for vandalism on Rinbidhoo, which at first I thought was a joke article. Then I had to apologize and revert my revert, after I considered asking for deletion, reviewed the rules for speedy deletion, and concluded that it could surely not pass the test for that, and was doubtful it could even find consensus for deletion under the normal deletion process, despite a certain lack of intrinsic interest in the eyes of some (me, in particular). I personally am not interested in carrying the flag for mass deletion of the stubs about objects that have any hope of rising to be objects of genuine broad interest. I think that a great many of these objects are likely to prove quite interesting in the next decade or two, and a fair number may rise to great importance before this century is out.

Anyhow, I'm happy to work on the table, but think the number of asteroid articles we should ideally have right now is probably in the few thousands (surely not much above 10,000, just a guess), and that that number is about to rise steeply in the near future. The uncompressed JPL ASCII list of numbered asteroids is 23 MB long, and has ~208000 objects. I have not looked at the list of un-numbered objects (see above) that they can provide. An un-numbered asteroid is one that has been observed, but does not yet have enough observations for a reliable orbit determination, but I see that it is also 23 MB long, and I assume that something like another >200,000 objects are likely to get numbers when LSST arrives. We are a bit like Magellan's crew here, noting down islands in the South Sea and the East Indies. Instead of being depressed, we should be exhilarated at the new vistas we see opening up. I do wish I had a real appreciation of the problems these stubs cause the Wiki machinery, the problems of the stub nome's in particular. Maybe you, Debresser (talk), or some of those folks would like to represent that side of the argument here. But I think the deletion process is likely to prove lengthy, contentious, and an exercise in needless hassle unless it is truly necessary and clearly justifiable under Wiki rules.

By the way, Captain panda or anyone, how many asteroid articles/stubs do we actually have now? I see 2 out of 40 missing articles around #3000 in my "version 2 table, and more of course as I sample beyond 10000. I also wonder how many stubs have no, or almost no, information not in our table proposals (not so easy to estimate, I know). It would be useful to have a better idea about the actual numbers in question. Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 01:40, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a dev or even admin. If I understand correctly, we editors shouldn't be worried about the strain on hardware, just about editing. It is in this respect that I can not agree that we need articles for any but the most interesting asteroids.

I'd complare it to the Honorverse I worked on a little here in Wikipedia. This is a military science fiction series. Main characters have their own article, but all others are brought together in one list List of Honorverse characters. We should do the same. To do otherwise goes against the notability guideline.

I see it is hard to persuade astronomers of this, but I think a broader forum of people would agree with me on this. Perhaps bring the question to them?

Frankly speaking, the only reason I see these stubs might ever be interesting/relevant/notable to anybody but scientists (and Wikipedia is not written for them) is when we'll start exploiting asteroids or living on them, as in science fiction. Debresser (talk) 11:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is written for scholars (people who seek to learn), some of whom are scientists. It has the ultimate aim, I believe, of making all verifiable, factual knowledge widely available, worldwide. Just because you may think asteroid orbit data is boring does not make it non-notable, or uninteresting to others. Asteroids are interesting individually and collectively, just like towns and geographical features on the Earth. More and more of them will be directly visitable and visited in the rest of the century. Cheers, Bill Wwheaton (talk) 08:14, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I can see them as interesting to amateur astronomers as target challenges. 70.29.213.241 (talk) 09:44, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Let them practise on the notable ones. Debresser (talk) 09:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I am going to go ahead with my version 2 table here if I don;t get constructive suggestions for modification soon. If others want to mass delete stubs, they can do so, but I am not enthusiastic enough about that to undertake it myself, unles convinced they are a real problem. Wwheaton (talk) 15:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Bottom importance

I think this project should add the {{Bottom-importance}} level to importance assessment. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 01:57, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Citing circulars

Hey mates! I've been working on GRB 970508. I'd like to cite an IAU Circular (this one), but I'm not sure how. I checked WP:CITET, but there doesn't seem to be any mention of circulars. I also asked Ealdgyth, but he didn't know either, so he suggested talking to you guys. Any thoughts? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:26, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

You can probably just use a {{cite journal}} template and set the issue field to the circular number.—RJH (talk) 16:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

V415 Carinae / A Carinae

We have two articles V415 Carinae and A Carinae on the same star. Which name should the merged article use? (A Carinae is the older article, V415 is a CarloscomB spawn) 76.66.193.69 (talk) 04:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Isn't the V designation for suspected variables? My vote would be for "A Carinae", except that SIMBAD uses "V415 Car".—RJH (talk) 18:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

According to variable star designation, the V series is just when you run out of letters. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 06:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't use "A Carinae", too much potential for confusion with "a Carinae" which is a different star. Icalanise (talk) 20:54, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I've merged the two articles together as V415 Car 70.29.213.241 (talk) 09:14, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

set indices for stars

For {{SIA}} on stars, it's been suggested that {{SIA|stars}} be used, and a guideline be developed by the WikiProject for perhaps a relaxed ruleset as compared to standard WP:DAB, to better convey information on star lists. See my talk page and user talk:Emperor for some background on the suggestion. It's related to the cleanup of Bayer designations I did earlier. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 14:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

There would need to be created a Category:Set indices on stars 76.66.193.69 (talk) 08:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

There's a Category:Set indices on astronomical objects now. 70.29.213.241 (talk) 06:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

NGC 246 and BD-12° 134

There is a suggestion to merge the star article BD-12° 134 into the planetary nebula article NGC 246. In any case, they need cleanup, since star names appear in the PN infobox, and viceversa. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 07:03, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Would be nice to see them expanded as well! How many such articles are there lying around? Sometimes I wonder what the purpose was of even creating them, if there was no more information available! CielProfond (talk) 13:58, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Well the star article was created by User:CarloscomB, who created a very large amount of stubs with every single "name" listed in SIMBAD as part of their star infoboxes, some of which are inappropriate as they more properly refer to something else, some of which are wrong since SIMBAD notation isn't necessarily the actual name; most of the articles contain just the information found on the SIMBAD basic printout. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 22:34, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I heard of the "CarloscomB incident" if I may thus express myself. While I salute the will to make things known, it was incomplete and unresearched, which is sad. Also sad is the fact that there are so many astronomical objects that a lifetime would be greatly insufficient to detail all of them, so I guess CarloscomB's intention was to get us (the Wikipedia community) started, and that someone would eventually pick up on some objects, and someone else on other objects, and so on... I'll do whatever I can on whatever objects I know about! CielProfond (talk) 04:22, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Some of the CarloscomB articles are actually duplicate articles, where the star exists as an article under another name already (see previous section on "A Carinae"). He also seemed to think that any pulsating variable should be categorized under millisecond pulsar for some reason, and that every quasar was "the first quasar discovered", any active galaxy was a quasar. Stub sorting complained that he added {{star-stub}} to every stubby star article that already had a more specific template (like {{giant-star-stub}} etc) and several articles directly added stub categories instead of via template, or in addition to the stub template. There's also severe overcategorization on many of the articles (it's categorized in the parent, and the more specific type). Some articles suffer from copy-paste syndrome with uncorrected information (the info applied to the first article created, not the current article). He also created categories that had stub templates applied to them. And many articles don't comply with WP:LAYOUT or MOS:HEAD, having {{clear}} or {{-}} for no reason, with data placed after every other section (references, see also, external links occur BEFORE a data section) and use badly formatted tables that occupy full width for no reason, or float for no reason. Multiple star system articles also don't use the standard star component infoboxes, instead he made his own table format (which should use "class=wikitable" but instead uses his own formatting, which causes some layout problems). 76.66.193.69 (talk) 10:40, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese star names

Traditional Chinese star names has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 11:39, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Article suggestion: Lunar lava tubes

If somebody has the time and the inclination, then I'd like to suggest a new article on the topic of lunar lava tubes that may be interesting to develop. There is a fair amount of scholarly information available on the web, both in regards to the lunar geology of the tubes and their implications for habitation and archival sites. (I've got this conjecture about tube interiors accumulating some cometary volatile deposits as per the polar ice traps, but I couldn't find anything to support that. But think how interesting such deposit layers would be, scientifically. :) It could perhaps be merged with rilles. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 21:13, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps a suggestion should also be made at WP:MOON, WP:AST, and WP:GEOLOGY 70.29.213.241 (talk) 22:08, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

List of stars in the Hipparcos Catalogue

List of stars in the Hipparcos Catalogue... does this list make much sense? 70.29.213.241 (talk) 22:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't think of any. It would probably be better to use redirects to the star articles.—RJH (talk) 20:53, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Anti-objects

The Wikipedia:Requested articles/Natural_sciences#Astronomy and cosmology section has request links for Antigalaxy, antimatter comet, Antiplanet, Antistar and Antiuniverse. I think these could be made into redirects to the antimatter article and discussed therein. Is there any reason to create separate articles? Thank you.—RJH (talk) 20:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I reckon Antistar should redirect to 100th Window personally... Icalanise (talk) 22:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Aren't Antistars something you find in astrology? 70.29.213.241 (talk) 08:40, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

It looks like there are several papers that cover the topic of anti-matter stars. I'm going to set up a disambiguation page for that one.—RJH (talk) 15:55, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Any such articles should take note of the fact that gamma-ray backgrounds and cosmic-ray studies have strongly limited the possibilities for such objects except in extremely distant regions of space, almost certainly not in the Milky Way. Anti-protons (& positrons) are seen (which can be produced in high-energy cosmic ray collisions with normal matter) but no anti-He or more complex nuclei (which we think could only be created in stars) have been observed. There was a review on this subject about thirty years ago in Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, I think by Gary Steigman (OK, it's Gary Steigman, Observational Tests of Antimatter Cosmologies. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 14:339 (1976)), that was very negative. As far as I know, nothing has changed since. The new Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) being sent up for the ISS might bring new light, with its new data, to this situation, I guess. Wwheaton (talk) 01:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

FAR on Comet

I have nominated Comet for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Cirt (talk) 12:14, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

FA Review

I have nominated H II region for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. --Roberto Segnali all'Indiano 10:44, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Feedback

I want to nominate List of Messier objects to featured list, any suggestion to make it better? Locos ~ epraix Beaste~praix 03:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

You could consider adding a column for angular size. Please convert the "Galaxia lenticular" entries to English. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 18:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

"Super-Pluton"

Once of the requested astronomy articles is Super-Pluton, which would essentially be a translation of the French-language Super-Pluton wikipedia article. (The latter appears to be based upon the Lykawka and Mukai (2008) paper.) This topic is covered in low detail at Planets beyond Neptune#Kuiper cliff. Would it be better just to redirect Super-Pluton to the "Planets beyond Neptune" article, or put in a request for a translation of the French language article? My preference is the former, as the latter seems rather conjectural at this point. (The wikipedia translators have been very helpful in the past, so I didn't want to end up wasting their time.)—RJH (talk) 16:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

As there was no reply, I was "bold" and made it a redirect. Somebody can always generate an article if they have the interest.—RJH (talk) 19:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed planetbox characteristics change

We already have minimum_mass and minimum_mass_earth attributes for Planetbox character, does it make sense to add optional maximum_mass and maximum_mass_earth (or maybe a mass range attribute instead), for example for the cases where the maximum inclination of an extrasolar planet's orbit is known and therefore the upper bound on the planet masses can be given as well? For example see Gliese 581 d. unsigned by user:199.248.185.22 at 22:22, 21 April 2009

Considering that most exoplanets are compared to Jupiter, there should be Jupiter based parameters. 76.66.196.218 (talk) 04:43, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Planetbox discovery question

The {{Planetbox discovery}} template's self-referential documentation of the discovery_site parameter is not informative. Is the discovery site supposed to be the country, some smaller geographic subdivision, the observatory (and device?), or something else? Another editor at Talk:Gliese 581 equestioned how the parameter was used in that article, so I went to the template to find the answer, but the answer isn't there. Could a project member please document that parameter with more specificity? Thanks. Finell (Talk) 21:43, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Note that confusion (or ignorance) about this point is causing inconsistencies. For example, each of the discovery sites indicated for the four planets associated with Gliese 581 are different, even though they were all discovered by the same team, at the same locations. — Aldaron • T/C 22:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I always thought it was supposed to indicate the observatory... 76.66.196.218 (talk) 03:44, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest using the observatory where the measurements were made (which would be La Silla Observatory, Chile in this case.) Spacepotato (talk) 04:56, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Solar system basic nominated for deletion at AfD

Solar system basic has been nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solar system basic. Note that the creator of this article has recently created a sandbox article User:HarryAlffa/Solar System synopsis that he categorized into article categories, so I expect the article to be recreated if deleted... 76.66.196.218 (talk) 13:53, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Lead section of Solar System

There is an active discussion on rewriting the lead section of Solar System, as Solar System is a featured article, more participants might be a good idea. See Talk:Solar System and Wikipedia:Featured article review/Solar System/archive1 76.66.196.218 (talk) 14:01, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Alternate exoplanet designations in main text?

What is the correct way to handle exoplanets with multiple designations? Given that the data templates associated with both stars and exoplanets have fields for alternative designations, is it necessary to also mention these designations in the text? Since lists of alternatives could easily get out of hand (and quickly lead to silly edit wars) I would argue that, as a rule, alternative designations should be kept out of the text, and limited to the appropriate place in the data boxes. Are there general guidelines on this point? — Aldaron • T/C 16:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

If you're referring to Gliese 581 e, I had a pretty reasonably contention to your unreasonable example. Gl 581 e is used in news articles in the real world (as opposed to Wikipedia & wikiworld), while your TYC catalogue example isn't. 76.66.196.218 (talk) 01:27, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

You're demonstrating my point. We could argue quite a bit about each of many designations that could reasonably be included in the main text. (The TYC designation is the only way to find Gliese 581 in Starry Night, for example; what about GJ, etc.?) I'm just looking for general guidance so that your line of reasoning doesn't trigger a wave of edits adding awkward "also known as"s to every exoplanet article, unless that's the agreed to policy. Im also suggesting that the issue can be avoided entirely, while satisfying all reasonable need for alternate designations, using the data templates provided. — Aldaron • T/C 03:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The TYC designation is not used to specifically refer to the planet in the _world at large_. Even though you use TYC in Starry Night, it is not something you find in a source where someone would type it into Wikipedia to see what it's about. While names used in news articles are, and thus should be in the text. We should facilitate people trying to find information from what they see in outside sources. The TYC example comes up with zero results in GOOGLE SCHOLAR, and doesn't work with SIMBAD, and nothing in GOOGLE NEWS. Which is why it is an unreasonable example. If a reasonable number of news articles use it to refer to the thing, it should be in the article, since it is used in the real world. 76.66.196.218 (talk) 06:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

You're missing my point (while again demonstrating it). I think redirects satisfy your goal without cluttering the article. Because of the large number of alternate designations for most stars, I fear we'll end up with parenthetical lists of alternate designations in every exoplanet and star article, as well as repeated arguments like this one about which designations are important enough to put there. There's no need for that to happen, since the "alternate designations" section of the infobox has it covered. — Aldaron • T/C 22:15, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It hasn't happened on other star articles. Most stellar designations do not show up in research papers, or news reports, only a few would. AND many star articles do indicate multiple names (ie. Rigel Kentaurus) so I fail to see why we should EVER restrict it to a single designation, if several are in frequent or common usage. I can't think of other classes articles are restricted in such a way as to EXCLUDE commonly used names from the article text. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 05:28, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok. — Aldaron • T/C 13:46, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

SN 2005gj

A new article on an interesting supernova. I'm a bit of an amateur so I'd appreciate review from someone with more experience. Thanks, —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 20:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOT#PLOT

Apologies for the notice, but this is being posted to every WikiProject to avoid accusations of systemic bias. Hiding T 13:27, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Well that's quite a bit odd. From my reading of WP:CANVAS this is indiscriminate canvassing... 76.66.196.218 (talk) 06:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

{{Infobox magnetosphere}}

I created this infobox for the articles about planetary magnetospheres (currently used in two articles). Comments and suggestions are appreciated. Ruslik (talk) 12:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Asteroid infoboxes

Hi WikiProject Astronomical objects. I notice that a whole bunch of asteroid articles (e.g. 1851 Lacroute, 1854 Skvortsov, 1855 Korolev, 1857 Parchomenko, etc) are displaying "Ap" and "Peri" in their infoboxes rather than "Aphelion" and "Perihelion". From looking at Template:Infobox Planet, I think one solution would be to remove the "apsis" parameter from the infoboxes in the articles. But I thought I'd better check whether that was the correct/best solution before updating a whole bunch of articles only to find out I was wrong (e.g. perhaps the template could/should be updated instead). BTW, once the correct solution is identified, if someone else feels like making the changes, don't feel obliged to wait for me to do it. Regards. DH85868993 (talk) 16:22, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The template is permanently protected, and you don't appear to be an administrator. Why would you want to remove it? 76.66.202.139 (talk) 06:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I wasn't clear. What I am suggesting is omitting the apsis parameter from the articles, not removing it from the template. (When I wrote "perhaps the template could/should be updated instead", what I meant was that perhaps an alternative solution could be to modify the way the template handles the apsis parameter when the specified value is blank, not that the parameter should be removed from the template altogether - although I can see how what I wrote may have caused confusion). The Usage Notes in Template:Infobox Planet/doc indicate that the apsis parameter should only be included (in the article) for bodies that orbit bodies other than the Sun (which is not the case for asteroids). Note also that specifying "| apsis = " (i.e. including the parameter but giving it no value) in the article does not have the same effect as omitting the parameter from the article altogether. I hope that clarifies things. DH85868993 (talk) 08:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You could just convert them to aphelion and perihelion parameter names, but as for the template, it's not necessarily true that we won't know an asteroid around a star other than the Sun any time soon... since there might already be one found around a pulsar (unconfirmed).

So, IMHO yes, you can just convert the peri to perihelion and ap to aphelion.

76.66.202.139 (talk) 13:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Magnetosphere of Jupiter

I nominated this article for peer review. You can leave your comments here. Ruslik (talk) 19:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of commons images

It looks like there is a bot called "CommonsDelinker" that is deleting all of the Chandra images because "Only non commercial use is allowed: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html." Unfortunately this bot is not doing a very good job and is leaving remnants behind (for example here). You may want to check the pages where you see that bot in your watchlist.—RJH (talk) 14:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Can't the images be restored locally here under fair-use? 76.66.202.139 (talk) 04:54, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Possibly, although the wording in Wikipedia:Image_use#Free_licenses seems uncompromising. Under fair use we would be limited to low resolution images. This is really most unfortunate, given the high value of Chandra's images for illustration purposes.—RJH (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Does your WikiProject care about talk pages of redirects?

Does your project care about what happens to the talk pages of articles that have been replaced with redirects? If so, please provide your input at User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3. Thanks, Matt (talk) 01:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I certainly think we should care about them, since they keep coming up for deletion because people suffer from WP:IDONTKNOWIT in relation to astronomy. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 10:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

The RDlog also tracks redirect related processes... 76.66.202.139 (talk) 10:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

133552 Itting-Enke

133552 Itting-Enke has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 04:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Removed from prod list after some expansion. Wwheaton (talk) 23:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

OTRS permission for Italian website's photos

See WT:AST, apparently permission is granted for use of these astrophotos from Fotographie - Immagini CCD 76.66.202.139 (talk) 04:17, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Planetary moon categories

A bunch of categories have been proposed to be renamed:

• Category:Mars' moons to Category:Moons of Mars
• Category:Jupiter's moons to Category:Moons of Jupiter
• Category:Saturn's moons to Category:Moons of Saturn
• Category:Neptune's moons to Category:Moons of Neptune
• Category:Uranus' moons to Category:Moons of Uranus

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_May_20#Planetary_moons

76.66.202.139 (talk) 05:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

OTRS permission for the Space Telescope Science Institute's Digitized Sky Survey website's photos

See WT:AST, apparently permission is granted for use of these astrophotos from STScI Digitized Sky Survey 76.66.196.85 (talk) 06:53, 23 May 2009 (UTC)