Talk:Jupiter

Contents

1 Classification of Jupiter's moons 2 Extra paramaters 3 huh? 4 Switched category 5 PD info 6 Attribution of "Sun, Jupiter, and debris" 7 Tidal force and orbit circularity of the moons 8 Jupiter in astrology? 9 Atmosphere and counting atoms 10 disambig? 11 intro pic 12 Barycenter

Classification of Jupiter's moons

The section with the above title is out of date as it doesn't refer to the many new moons discovered in the last ten years. I'm not sure if the simple division of four groups is still tenable. Someone who knows a bit more about the subject should check this section and correct it. The Singing Badger 21:25, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Extra paramaters

I think we should add two more parameters to the standardized table of data under "Orbital Data." In order to nail down planets' orbits in space completely, we need the perigee right ascension, and the ascending node right ascension. Then, the data can be used to obtain the EXACT orbit to within known precision in 3D space. This could be useful in generating 3D solar system simulations, or detailed starmaps. Where do I go to present this idea? Edsanville 23:14, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The article orbit explains about those missing parametres (argument of periapsis and longitude of the ascending node). They've also been left out of the asteroid entries, mostly because they don't mean much to the casual reader. If we were to put them in, we'd need to do that with the moons too, which is a pain to look up. Personally, I think we'd also need to give the celestial coordinates of each planet's pole --but where can one find these data?

Urhixidur 03:55, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

I personally think it would be nice to include all of these data, even for the moons. I know it probably doesn't mean much to the average visitor, but this should be a comprehensive encyclopedia, in my opinion. I actually came here to find enough data to plot the orbits of all the planets and their moons in 3d using OpenGL. Most books don't include this information, but some do. I always preferred the books that gave me all the data, instead of hiding some because the authors assumed I wouldn't be interested... Anyways, I'm sure I can find the data for the planets and moons. I'd love to put them on here as long as there's a consensus about it.

Edsanville 19:19, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you do wind up adding that information, please stop by Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical Objects and update to make everything nice and consistent. :) Bryan 00:11, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I Just Read Thats Its Now 62 Satellites, But Only 28 Of Those Are Over 1000 KM In Diameter, And 12 Of Those Have Yet To Be Named!

39! Saterlites!? Is that correct.

Check the paragraph right before the table listing Jupiter moons; a whole bunch of tiny moons only a kilometer or two in diameter were recently discovered. BTW, sorry I overwrote your 16 moon entry without comment, I was filling out the whole table at the time and ran into an edit conflict. Didn't know you'd put that in there until after I'd already nuked it.

Anyway, I guess a case can be made for either 16 or 39. There has to be a size cutoff at some point, otherwise Jupiter's ring particles would count as moons and that would just be silly. But since the new tiny moons have been classified as moons as far as I'm aware, 39 seems appropriate to me. Bryan 18:17 Sep 22, 2002 (UTC)

Well I suppose anything that is scientifilcy agreed on as a satelite shoudl be added. - fonzy

huh?

The following line doesn't seem to make any sense:

It has been known since prehistoric times.

How is it possible to know what humans knew before recorded history? If they didn't write it down, it's not there for us to read!

As far back as historical records go, Jupiter has been recorded as being known. Therefore, it makes sense that it msut have been known before records began.

Switched category

I switched the category from Jupiter back to Planets. This is one of those confusing thing about the way categories are supposed to work. The idea is, Jupiter is a planet; Jupiter is not a Jupiter. See Wikipedia talk:Categorization for details. Quadell (talk) 00:42, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Articles_that_have_their_own_categories seems to suggest that Jupiter really should belong to the category Jupiter. "Category:Jupiter" doesn't mean "these things are all Jupiters", if it did then it would be silly to have the Great Red Spot or Jupiter's moons categorized under there (and now that I think of it, in that case the only thing that would fit in that category would be Jupiter itself). What it means is "these things are on the subject of Jupiter, or closely related to Jupiter." (edit: Oh, and I should also point out that "Planets" is not a subcategory of "Solar system", so you can no longer get to Jupiter by following the Solar system heirarchy). Bryan 00:52, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That's because planets are not solar systems. Categories should be plural, e.g. places on Jupiter, things relating to Jupiter, etc. Check out Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#More_sophisticated_relations. Here I quote GUllman:

We have to think from the encyclopedia user's point of view. He/she is starting at the top level of the hierarchy with a subject in mind, and they need to know which blind path to go down to find an article on that subject. It might help to think of the problem as a game of twenty questions. The first question we may ask is, "Is your subject a Category:Persons, Category:Places, or Category:Things?" If they choose Category:Persons, then ALL the articles from then on should be about persons. Why? Because we may someday be able to click a link to collapse the hierarchy, and display all the articles below that level in one alphabetical order. If they wanted to know about Stephen King's books, they might choose Category:Things, and have a choice of Category:Animals, Category:Vegetables, Category:Minerals, Category:Ideas, etc., and go down one of those paths. My point is, Categories link only as a hierarchy; Wikipedia articles link as a network to every related article.

Since categories are new, there's a lot of misunderstanding about them. Hopefully this will iron itself out soon. Quadell (talk) 03:38, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

There are a lot of non-plural categories out there yet, however; Category:Medicine, Category:Biology, Category:Law, etc. In those cases the "Topics relating to -" prefix is implied, IMO. So Category:Jupiter is "Topics relating to Jupiter" and Category:Solar system is "Topics relating to the Solar system." It's too early yet to be making dogmatic statements about all categories, I think. Bryan 05:16, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Bryan --- one person's opinion on the Categorization talk page does not make a consensus. We had discussed a sensible ontology on Category Talk:Solar system and came up with a plan. If you'd like to re-open the discussion for Solar system categorization, we can do that, but I don't yet accept a pan-Wikipedia standardization argument. --- hike395 06:42, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I brought an expanded version of my thoughts up at the section of talk:Categorization linked above, suggesting that I thought the "Wikipedia way" should be to sit back and watch how categories get used for a while before trying to come up with standards about how they should be used. That'd probably be the best talk: page to go to for general discussion of these matters. Bryan 06:55, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Later: As an external data point, Looksmart [1] (http://search.looksmart.com/p/browse/us1/us317914/us77590/us264763/us169437/us10214805/) thinks that each planet deserves its own category underneath a solar system category. -- hike395

Category:Earth is going to be a doozy. :) Bryan 06:55, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Not really, just make it be the same as Category:Earth Sciences, and put all of Category:Geology,Category:Geography,Category:Biology underneath it, and presto! :-) -- hike395 07:14, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hm. Looks like this question of the nature of categorization has not yet been resolved. As I understand it, and I could be wrong, Wikipedia will soon implement a feature where you can see a category, and see everything under it at any level, in a tree structure similar to a directory structure. John Lennon is a member of people because Lennon is a member of British Musicians, is a member of Musicians, is a member of people. Jupiter's red spot is not a member of Planets, so it shouldn't be under any category that's under the category Planets.

So if I'm right about this, a user would say "I wonder what all interesting things are in the solar system," and would look in the category "Objects in the Solar System" or somesuch. Instead of having articles on Halley's comet and the Sun and Venus all together, they would be grouped in sub-cats. So the cat "objects in the Solar System" would have in it cat:Planets (which would include the article on Jupiter), cat:comets, cat:asteroids, and articles that don't belong in subcats (such as the Sun article.) If there was a category "Things relating to Jupiter" or "Places on Jupiter" (containing the article on the Red Spot), it wouldn't be related. If it were related, you would see the article Red Spot as a Planet.

I don't know if this is how categories will end up being used or not, but it's how I understand they were envisioned. Quadell (talk) 13:41, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

P.S. It would seem to make the most sense to me for the article Jupiter to include "see also: Category:Jupiter", but be itself in Category:Planets. Just my 2 cents.

I'm now leaning towards splitting the difference and having this article be both in category Jupiter and category Planets. The former because this article is about Jupiter, and the latter because the subject of this article is a planet. I removed the category Jupiter as a sub-category of Planets, since most of the articles below the Jupiter category are not actually planets. Basically, my interpretation of categories is headed in the direction of "categories with pluralized names are generally 'list of', whereas categories with singular names are generally 'articles about'." Not sure how commplace that interpretation is, though, so I'm holding off on any large-scale reorganizations of these articles yet. Bryan 01:24, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

PD info

I've taken some info from NASA's text at http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/jupiter.html --GeneralPatton 23:58, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Attribution of "Sun, Jupiter, and debris"

If we can identify the source of this remark, we should properly attribute it. I recall this quote coming from either Asimov or Clarke. I read it in a book by one of them, quoting the other. This page (http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2004Spring/Phyx103/jupiter.html) attributes it to Asimov, though I have no idea how reliable that is. --P3d0 17:54, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tidal force and orbit circularity of the moons

The article says that:

The tidal force from Jupiter, on the other hand, works to circularize their orbits.

Its not clear to me why this should be so, and the explanation in the article doesn't help me.

Here's an explanation by Henry Spencer: [2] (http://yarchive.net/space/orbits/tidal_circularize.html). He assumes the moons are tidally locked. As I understant it, the crux of the argument is that the moons rotate at a constant rate, but in an elliptical orbit, they don't revolve at a constant rate. At periapsis, where the moon is moving the fastest, the tidal bulge nearest the planet leads the moon's center of mass in orbit, so the planet's pull on that bulge will have a tiny retrograde component that tends to slow the moon down. When you slow down a moon at periapsis, the effect is to lower the apoapsis. Eventually the periapsis and apoapsis are equal, and you have a circular orbit. --P3d0 16:33, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

Jupiter in astrology?

I'm not sure if that should stay. As it currently stands, it is unsubstantiated. According to *which* astromancic tradition? Quote some sources (before 20th century, at least), otherwise it's gonna go...

Urhixidur 04:37, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

Atmosphere and counting atoms

The atmosphere section reads in part « Jupiter's atmosphere is composed of ~86% hydrogen and ~14% helium by number of atoms ». Sources? By number of molecules, that translates to ~75% H₂ and 25% He. And by mass we would have ~61-67% H and 39-33% He (depending on the isotopic ratio between He-3 and He-4). The figures in the next sentence do not match. Urhixidur 00:09, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

disambig?

I would think that Jupiter is a pretty clear case where the dominant usage is Jupiter (planet) and all other usages at the disambiguation page, Jupiter, are less common.

Hence, by convention shouldn't Jupiter point here and a link for other uses by placed at the top of this page? I.e. Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Types of disambiguation #3? For another example see Mars.

I can understand conflicts between Mercury (element) and Mercury (planet), but Jupiter (god) or any of the other terms can't be as influential as the planet itself. This comment probably also applies to Uranus and Pluto. Dragons flight 23:08, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

...and rest of the planets as well, especially with Saturn. --Jyril 00:10, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, for all planets. I think that a vast majority of the people who look up the names of any of the planets are looking for the planet and not any of the other articles of that same name. They should all go the planet's article and link to the disambiguation page. GamblinMonkey 03:48, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I, for one, think "Mercury" is equally likely to be the element. --P3d0 16:19, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

Jupiter is now listed on Wikipedia:Requested moves. I think whatever happens here would set a precedent for every planet with the exception of Mercury.

Incidentally, does anyone know why it needs to be listed there? Isn't this a straightfoward move that we could do without administrator intervention? --P3d0 23:36, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the planet being at Jupiter, and with the comments above. Several of the other planets' disambiguation pages should probably be changed as well. It needs administrator intervention because Jupiter has a history. Non-administrators can only move pages if the target either doesn't exist, or is a redirect to the former location, without any history (e.g., created earlier by the reverse page move). — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:52, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

How about this:

1. Move Jupiter to Jupiter (disambiguation)
2. Delete automatically-generated redirect at Jupiter
3. Move Jupiter (planet) to Jupiter

I think this would preserve all histories. --P3d0 19:29, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, should the page move achieve consensus, that is how the move would be done. However, an administrator is needed to delete the redirect; non-administrators do not have the ability to delete articles (including redirects). — Knowledge Seeker দ 19:43, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, I took the liberty of editing your comment, P3d0—hope you don't mind. — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:19, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with the proposed move. The non-planet uses of "Jupiter", taken together, are less significant than the non-planet uses of "Mercury", but still significant enough that Jupiter should be the dab page. JamesMLane 09:48, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Weak support - I think this is only just acceptable a case for primary disambiguation. violet/riga (t) 16:53, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Template:Moved violet/riga (t) 16:53, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

intro pic

The full disc image of the planet at the top of the page is a bit ....well.....sucky. The vidicon tubes of the 70's are simply not capable of showing the atmosphere in all its majetsy. I think this [3] (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ac/PIA04866_modest.jpg) image from cassini's ccd is jaw droppingly good ....but it's not a full disc. What do we think? Leave image as is, or replace?--Deglr6328 05:57, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Barycenter

I've never been thrilled with this statement:

Jupiter is ... so massive that its barycenter with the Sun actually lies above the Sun's surface

The distance of the barycenter is proportional to mass times distance, so it would be equally valid to say that Jupiter is so distant that its barycenter is above the Sun's surface. In other words, the barycenter's position is not the least bit significant in getting a feel for a planet's impact on the Sun. For instance, Mercury's barycenter would also be above the Sun's surface if Mercury were in the Oort cloud. --P3d0 16:17, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)