Template talk:Infobox planet/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

American Units

What is the matter with adding how many miles it is from the sun? Most people I know know the distance from earth to the sun in miles, not km. Nicholas.tan (talk) 00:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Most people you know know the distance from the Earth to the Sun? That's quite a claim, are you an astronomer? 76.66.202.139 (talk) 06:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

In a word, "clutter". The scientific world uses km. All you need to do is learn to convert km to miles. This is something that they teach in the 5th grade. What do you do when a distance is given in AU or Gm, you convert it. I'm from Sacramento, CA by the way. -- Kheider (talk) 08:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation

It would be helpful if the template had a "pronunciation" parameter, for providing the IPA pronunciation of the planet's name and a link to an audio file. This would allow this information to be moved out of the article leads, reducing clutter and improving legibility. The infobox is a better place for this kind of information, since it is of limited utility and interpreting IPA requires some technical knowledge that most readers will lack. Pronunciation would fit well in the "Designations" section.--Srleffler (talk) 22:07, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal. This has just been implemented for the Star infobox templates and it seems to work fine. See, for example, the Vega and Sirius articles.—RJH (talk) 19:10, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Please substitute the text at User:Srleffler/test for the current template text. (diff) This adds the "pronounce" field to the designations section. I haven't provided a link to WP:IPA for English, since I presume editors will pass templates such as {{Audio-IPA}}, which already provide links to whatever help is needed.--Srleffler (talk) 05:22, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done, please update the documentation. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:00, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Could someone please move the "pronounce" field so that it appears directly below the mp_name parameter. Then it will be next to the name that it is explaining how to pronounce. At the moment it sits three lines further down, which makes it difficult to notice. Iridia (talk) 01:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. It should go above the "alt name" parameter, so it doesn't look like we are trying to give the pronunciation of the alternate name(s).--Srleffler (talk) 02:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, can the text in the "pronounce" field please be at normal text size rather than the current smaller size version? kwami mentioned that it is rather hard to distinguish some of the IPA symbols at present, and I agree. Iridia (talk) 07:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I've moved it up as requested. Regarding the size though, it is currently the same size as all the other text, and it might look extremely odd if it was bigger than everything else, don't you think? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it will work if we are very careful to only put IPA text in that field, such that all 'this is like the Greek word' notes go in a footnote and so aren't also in larger text. IPA is all "apparent" lowercase, so having it a little larger should not impinge visually on the surrounding fields, since they have normal use of multiple letter cases. It would only need to be the same size as the body text in the main article, since that is known to be readable. Iridia (talk) 12:21, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, most of the fields are all upper case, since numerals are upper case in nearly all fonts, or at least mixed case. Caps in IPA are all small caps, so it actually looks smaller than the fields of numbers.

(Yes, numerals also come in upper and lower cases, though lower-case numerals have almost no online presence.) kwami (talk) 19:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

The {{IPA-en}} template surrounds all of the non-IPA text it generates with <small>tags. Adding <big> tags around the field should make this text match the size of the other text in the infobox, and will make the IPA text one size larger than it is.--Srleffler (talk) 21:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Please add <big> tags around the "pronounce" field as per consensus from the discussion immediately above. Iridia (talk) 12:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for implementing this.—RJH (talk) 15:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Undone. If you want the non-IPA text from {{IPA-en}} to be displayed at regular size, it should be changed at {{IPA-en}}, not clumsily overridden here. By putting the entire parameter in <big> tags, it makes the IPA text look huge and quite awkward compared to the rest of the infobox text. Kaldari (talk) 05:18, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Diameter (II)

I would appreciate a way to toggle between dimensions and diameter in this template. There's definitely a possibility for confusion, given that some articles have radius and some have dimensions, where by dimensions they mean diameter. I didn't initially see it as a problem, but as this discussion at Haumea shows, it needs to be made explicit due to the current mixed usage among TNO articles. I'd also mention that it's not about the education level of Wikipedia readers in this case (as was mentioned in the previous discussion): diameter is the standard usage in the TNO literature, eg. Stansberry; et al. (2007). "Physical Properties of Kuiper Belt and Centaur Objects: Constraints from Spitzer Space Telescope". {{cite web}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help). Iridia (talk) 10:24, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

group="note" needs to be changed

I think that I see some discussion above about adding a "note" parameter. The problem is, if you use a group="note" in a reference on a page with this infobox, then the infobox takes that Reflist group... you can't put it at the end of the page. I don't know what to suggest here, so I didn't actually use {{editprotect}}, but something needs to be changed...
— V = I * R (talk) 20:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

No, it's usable: the way to put the Reflist into the normal Notes section is to set the field note = yes in the infobox. See pages like Charon for usage. It should be properly documented rather than just on this page, though - it's not currently in the documentation. Iridia (talk) 04:16, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see... You're definitely correct that, no matter what, this must be documented. Regardless though, I still think that this "feature" should be removed. Do you (or anyone else for that matter) know the rational for adding it in the first place? It's extremely confusing, and will continue to be so regardless of documentation (which people will not look for), for people who don't know about it.
— V = I * R (talk) 09:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I only worked it out from examining the discussion above when I encountered the problem for the first time recently. Perhaps ask Ruslik, its implementer? Iridia (talk) 13:24, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Why no Solar Day?

I find it quite interesting to know the length of a solar day of a planet. It is not something which is easily calculable by lay people, yet it is an interesting and quite fundamental fact about a planet. Further, knowing the number of local solar days in a planet's local year can be quite interesting (eg: Mercury day lasts 2 Mercury years). It seems most planetary articles mention the length of the solar day, so why not add it to the template? Any thought on adding at least Solar Day, if not the number of solar days per year as well? Temple (talk) 08:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that it is not always known, to start with. Even when the sidereal rotation period is known, an object's solar day will vary over the duration of its orbit, and minor planet orbits also tend to change sometimes quite fast (see for example the Yarkovsky effect and Kozai mechanism articles), leading to yet more uncertainty in defining an "average" solar day. Urhixidur (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Epochs

What is the standard epoch value for minor planets for the purposes of this infobox? -Happy5214 (talk) 00:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Generally the epoch used is near whatever date the infobox is created. A lot of old articles use a 2004/2005 epoch while more recently created articles have a 2008/2009 epoch. -- Kheider (talk) 01:44, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Big pronunciation

Hi,
I see a discussion above where it was decided to put <big> tags around the pronunciation.
What I am seeing today is a freakishly large field which is unreadable precisely because it is too big to display properly.
Varlaam (talk) 06:53, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I second this. It doesn't make the text the same size as the rest, even though this was the intention behind using the <big> tags. Arsia Mons (talk) 22:09, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

spectral_class problem

Help I have been converting a deprecated template to this one and I noticed that what formerly worked for the field spectral_type does not always work for spectral_class. I.e.. Someone may want to investigate this and amend this template as necessary, or modify the article(s). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Mean orbital radius

This parameter is useless and poorly defined. As already proposed back in 2007, it should be deleted. Why? Currently, it links to "radius", which does nothing to define what it is an average of. Is it a time average or a geometric average? The two quantities are quite different, and readily calculated from eccentricty and semi-major axis (see here). Urhixidur (talk) 15:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Named after parameter

It has already been suggested to add an "Eponym" parameter. I want to repeat that request, but i think it should rather be called "Named after". Especially for the (tens of) thousands of minor planets where somebody just picked a name of somebody more or less famous, i think that "eponym" doesn't really fit. And not all minor planets (like Siberia) aren't named after people. Who they are named after is about the most interesting thing for many minor planets, that are just lumps of rock, after all. (Example, 2222 Lermontov and Mikhail Lermontov).--ospalh (talk) 09:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I support this offer. — — Chesnok (talk • contribs) 12:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this consensus? I see nobody disagree, so it's probably uncontroversial. Here we go.

{{editprotected}}I think after the "Pronunciation" line would be the best spot.

AFAIS this diff would add a "Named after" line, if the parameter is given. The full, modified infobox is at User:Ospalh/Infobox planet named after.--ospalh (talk) 16:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

 Done. Please update the documentation. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Albedo

I assume "albedo" refers to visible geometric albedo. Is this correct? If so, can that be specified in the template documentation? Kaldari (talk) 15:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Missing something important — distance from Earth

Now before you go saying something about this being too Earth-central or humanity-central, go on the Earth page and see quite a few Earth-central consensus phrases, like "Earth is the only planet known to harbor life", and so on. Why can't we include a parameter for the distance of a planetary body from planet Earth? It seems to be this is one of the most relevant pieces of information people will be looking for, including myself, which is why I'm bringing up the discussion. Such a parameter is in the Sun infobox, and in fact is the first listed piece of information in the infobox. — CIS ^(talk | stalk) 15:14, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Having the Earth-distance in the Infobox (since planets do not orbit the Earth) would be a waste of space for most planets, much less the asteroids. The only "planets" that regularly get close to the Earth are Mercury, Venus, and Mars. For the other planets you can just subtract 1AU from their distance from the Sun to get their generic Earth distance. Most asteroids (minor planets) are in the asteroid belt and the Near Earth asteroids have distances that always vary since they are being scattered by the major planets. I just do not think it would be a useful entry and would be difficult to cite and VERY epoch dependent for most asteroids. -- Kheider (talk) 16:19, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

But being added as a parameter doesn't mean it has to be added to every planetary body's infobox... only the extremely relevant ones, like Saturn, the Moon, Jupiter, etc., where the mean distances could be given. — CIS ^(talk | stalk) 19:29, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

That is kind of my point: Earth is 1AU from the Sun by definition. Jupiter is 5AU from the Sun, so Jupiter can come within 4AU of the Earth. Saturn is 9AU during perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) and so Saturn can come within 8AU of the Earth. -- Kheider (talk) 19:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Embedded minor planets reference

[1] is currently added as a reference on articles which relate to minor planets. I would like to remove this reference, for two reasons. 1) that page acts as a gateway to other pages, which actually list the information; it lists none itself. 2) The editors of the articles may like to use other sources for the information, e.g. journal articles. Are there any objections to this standard reference being removed? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:51, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you are referring to my comment at Template_talk:Infobox_Planet#Alternative_names regarding minor planets such as 14827 Hypnos. I agree I don't care for that reference when using "minorplanet = yes". -- Kheider (talk) 02:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

{{edit protected}} The MPDes service has been stopped for unknown time. We shall comment out or remove the link to this service from the template. I did it on template sandbox. Fjörgynn (talk) 08:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done. I think it is simpler just to remove it. No advantage in commenting, which may cause confusion later on. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Absolute magnitude

The definition of absolute magnitude for planets and small bodies (H) is pretty different from the common stellar absolute magnitude definition (M). In my opinion a simple wikilink in the infobox to absolute magnitude is misleading. I suggest to wikilink Absolute magnitude#Absolute magnitude for planets (H) and change the name of the table field from Absolute magnitude to Absolute magnitude (H). -- Basilicofresco (talk) 09:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I second this opinion as I've often thought this myself. -- Kheider (talk) 15:48, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there any objection? Is it possible to implement the new field name? -- Basilicofresco (talk) 08:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

So is an ADMIN going to at least update the wiki-link for the "Planets Infobox absolute magnitude" to Planet (H) instead of Star (M)? See Talk:90377_Sedna/Archive_1#Absolute_Magnitude.
-- Kheider (talk) 22:32, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. Do we need to do anything for extra-solar planets? kwami (talk) 23:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

{{edit protected}} Absolute magnitude#Planets (H) needs to direct to Absolute magnitude#Solar System bodies (H) -- Kheider (talk) 16:30, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Fahrenheit for surface temperature for planets so that average Joe's like myself can read/understand it???

Hi. I'm not a scientist - I'm a CPA. I went to the Venus page to see what the surface temperature is, and in the "Infobox", it gives Kelvin and Celsius but not Fahrenheit. I had to take the Celsius number and Google it to get a Fahrenheit number (I later found that if I dug deep enough into the article, I could find the Fahrenheit number). Can you people who run/edit the Infobox, can you not add Fahrenheit so that the average member of the public who lives in countries that use Fahrenheit can immediately get a number that we understand??? I mean, as it is, these entries read like they are saying, "These entries are only for scientists, not for the general public to read and understand". Thanks in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.162.27.14 (talk) 07:49, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Positive pole

{{edit protected}} In 2009 the IAU working group for cartographic coordinates and rotational elements [2] decided to use the right hand rule to define the poles of dwarf planets, minor planets, their satellites, and comets, replacing north of the invariable plane which they still use for planets and their satellites. To avoid confusion with "north pole" they recommend "positive pole" when using the right hand rule. Thus {{Template:Infobox planet}} needs two new parameters displaying

Positive pole right ascension

Positive pole declination

This implies that the present "declination", which displays "North pole declination", should be renamed "declination_north_pole", but some phase-in would be needed to avoid breaking present infoboxes. Even though positive pole and north pole are the same for about half of the asteroids listed in their report, both these and those with swapped poles should use the term positive pole. This template change is needed for the dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres and a few minor planets and comets. The IAU working group did this because the pole of Comet Encke precesses from north to south of the invariable plane in only a few decades, while minor planet (asteroid) Toutatis has excited state rotation so similar cases where the rotational pole precesses from north to south in days can be anticipated. These latter cases probably won't appear in infoboxes because the positions of their poles change too rapidly to be useful. — Joe Kress (talk) 00:24, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Not done for now: As this seems to be a significant change, it might be good to leave it a few days to allow other editors to comment. When you've worked out exactly what needs to happen, please make the change to Template:Infobox planet/sandbox and reactivate the request. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Diagrams for orbits

Orbit of near-Earth asteroid 7474 (1992 TC).

I had an idea for a little project, but since this is a fully protected template I'll need to show consensus to do it before it can be done.

The basic idea is that orbital characteristics are fairly difficult to decipher (abstruse, even. How's that for a $10 word?), even for those of us who are familiar with them. Their simply a long list of numbers after all, which makes them tend to kinda swim together when you look at them. They need to stay in the template of course (they're certainly useful), but they should be more accessible.

The best way to make a list of figures accessible is to create a graph or diagram. Visual elements tend to make things quite accessible. So, I wanted to propose the addition of a "diagram" field, which would be associated with the orbital characteristics section, so that I/we could start adding diagrams to the articles that this template is used on (One possible example diagram for the orbit of 7474 (1992 TC) shown to the right). Thank you for your consideration.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:45, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

That would be quite useful for some of the more extreme objects. For example, Wolfram Alpha does exactly that these days: eg. Eris; it's going to be very hard to improve on that. Iridia (talk) 01:10, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

What happens when the orbital characteristics are refined because of new measurements? Will we have a criteria for when an orbital diagram can be removed as misleading? Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:42, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that a concern already, with just the text? Do we, or will we, need special additional criteria here for some reason?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:16, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Not really, because by its very nature a diagram requires more specialized editing capability, whereas the text can be modified by anybody. This makes it more difficult to perform updates of diagrams, so it may require removal of the diagram until somebody decides to supply a replacement. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:26, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Right, but... you seem to be suggesting that is a reason not to add them at all, anywhere. There not worth adding because they could change, maybe, at some point in the future? Is that a legitimate concern, or is it just trying to think up any contingency that may become problematic (which I can appreciate, but we should be clear about what's being said here).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:38, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I would not worry about any diagram created with an orbital data arc greater than 1 year. Besides most of the diagrams are at too low of a resolution to show small changes in the orbit. Obviously for NEOs that are subject to a major perturbation by a planet, the orbit will change quite a bit. -- Kheider (talk) 20:53, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, but right now this is about the possibility of adding a parameter to the infobox so that they could be added at all. Are you supportive of adding the parameter?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:20, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Would the diagram be auto created by Wikipedia each time the page is loaded (based off of the current orbital parameters in the infobox), or would it create a permanent GIF/JPG/PNG that would have to be re-done and re-uploaded if the infobox was updated? Curious. -- Kheider (talk) 23:27, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

an auto-created thing would be nifty, but there's nothing in the MediaWiki software that can do that sort of thing (and its' extremely unlikely that there ever will be). No, this is about adding a parameter field which could contain an additional image inside the infobox. There's nothing about this proposal that is any more permanent then the existing image= parameters. I expect that if the orbital characteristics of some body were to significantly change, that the diagram image would be removed or replaced (hopefully replaced).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:57, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

"Right, but... you seem to be suggesting that is a reason not to add them at all, anywhere." Well not really, because some orbits are better known than others. For example, orbital diagrams for some of the larger asteroids are likely to remain fairly stable, whereas the diagrams for many exoplanets are likely not to be. So I'm wondering at what point is an orbital diagram removed as outdated? Regards, RJH (talk) 19:37, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah... well, I was only thinking of bodies within the solar system (particularly since most of them are easily available [or easily made] for visualization in Celestia). I see your point, though... we could easily provide guidance on this in the template documentation though, I'm sure. Images (including diagrams) don't really need citations per se (although they certainly don't hurt), but they certainly shouldn't be controversial. I mean, if one does become controversial for some reason, I don't see any issue with it being removed, just like anything else is. I guess that I just don't see how this criticism is relevant to the addition of the parameter, which is what I'm proposing, because the criticism itself seems aimed at the orbital parameters in general.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:01, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Implementation

Code to implement this change is currently in Template:Infobox planet/sandbox, and I've created a test case on Template:Infobox planet/testcases to ensure that everything works correctly. The "orbit_diagram" parameter was added to the beginning of the Orbit section, in the template code.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:20, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that using a fixed absolute size is undesirable. Ruslik_Zero 11:46, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

That's fine. The size was picked to match the normal width of the box, but I'd rather it be removed than become a barrier.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:49, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks good,  Done. Please update the documentation, you should probably note that the image size is not forced and should be specified. ‑Scottywong| chat _ 01:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! ...now I've got to actually make up diagrams. Damn. lol (I'm kidding about the "damn" part, obviously)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)