Template talk:Infobox planet/Archive 6

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Proposed additions

To editors Frietjes, Ktr101, Redrose64, Huntster and Plastikspork: A contributor has proposed some improvements on my talk page, so I added them to the sandbox and testcases page. Since I am not an expert, I felt I should run these edits by others who appear in the history. While the insertions made it necessary to update the "data" and "label" numbered positions, the essential edits are as follows (newsy items in bold):

| header20 = {{#if:{{{orbit_diagram|}}}{{{epoch|}}}{{{uncertainty|}}} {{{observation_arc_length|}}} ... {{{distance_from_sun|}}}|[[Osculating orbit|Orbital characteristics]]{{{orbit_ref|}}} }}

| data23 = {{#if:{{{uncertainty|}}} | [[Uncertainty Parameter U|Condition Code]] {{{uncertainty}}}}}
| label24 = [[Observation arc]] length
| data24 = {{{observation_arc_length|}}}

| label53 = {{longitem|Distance from Sun}}
| data53 = {{{distance_from_sun|}}}

Links:

• Uncertainty Parameter U
• Observation arc

The "Distance from Sun" has been explained to me to be the currently known distance of the object. If everyone is okay with these, then I'll add them to the live Ibox. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 03:36, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

---

Those additions are interesting, especially the "Distance from Sun". It is a way more friendly information to readers who don't know much about more technical stuff like perihelion and aphelion. However, wouldn't the template be a little too long? It is already pretty long. Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 04:05, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Both "arc length" and "distance from Sun" are problematic because they change constantly. The data would be inaccurate unless the arc length was updated on a daily basis and the distance was computed in real time. The "uncertainty parameter" is less problematic, but it also changes with time as the knowledge of the orbit improves. What are the plans for updating these quantities for the thousands of known objects? Is there a way to automate the process? JeanLucMargot (talk) 07:17, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

To editor Tetra quark: I agree that the template can become long in some articles, and the more parameters used, the longer it gets. We may want to collapse the sections, perhaps open a subpage with local collapsibility as editor Frietjes did for the {{This is a redirect}} template? This can make a big difference to the length of Iboxes and to the readability and professional appearance of articles.

To editor JeanLucMargot: I expressed the same concern about changing values to the proposer on my talk page and was reminded that

...most of the parameters in infobox planet are changing things, as perturbations can change any of the six orbital elements, along with orbital precession constantly changing longitude of ascending node, and mean anomaly constantly changing on epoch. Aside from that, apparent magnitude is ever-changing. That is the purpose of the epoch inclusion, to indicate the orbital elements at a specific date, usually near that of the last update to the article. As such, like magnitude, the distance from the sun would be expected to roughly coincide with the given epoch, unless specified.

Not sure about the ability to automate the update process, but that's a very good idea for all the changeable parameters. – Paine  08:31, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Some quantities change slowly with time, and some quantities change rapidly with time. The orbital elements are useful precisely because they vary slowly with time. Yes, the perihelia precess. But the fastest rate among the planets is ~2000 arcseconds per century, or ~0.000015 degrees per day. We can edit wikipedia every 65745 days (180 years) to report a change of 1 degree. We can probably handle that. The quantities that are proposed for addition, however, vary rapidly with time. For many objects, the arc length can change appreciably in a single day. All objects with arc lengths under 100 days can potentially experience a >1% change in arc length every day. Likewise, Mercury's distance from the Sun changes by >1% in a single day at certain times. Unless this distance is computed automatically, it will result in a poor addition because it will be inaccurate most of the time (unlike the orbital elements). A compromise might be to list the possible distance from the sun as a range of values (from perihelion to aphelion), but that information is already included in the infobox. On the subject of magnitudes, absolute magnitudes, once established, are constant. Apparent magnitudes can vary rapidly with time, in which case they are normally listed as a range of values from minimum to maximum. JeanLucMargot (talk) 09:19, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

My only edit to this template was to fix a previously described problem, but I have made a few comments on other matters, so that is what I shall do here. I do have one observation: there is no means to make an automatically-updated value. We can produce calculated values, which depend on some time value; and that time might be the present; but the figure will not be recalculated if somebody visits the page, only if somebody actually edits the page. For small numbers of pages that need to be automatically updated (such as categorising the articles in these dated cats into Category:Expired proposed deletions after seven days), we have Joe's Null Bot (talk · contribs), which simply makes a WP:NULLEDIT and in so doing forces all templates to be reparsed and all categories to be redetermined; but I don't think that Joe Decker (talk · contribs) would be willing to run it on some 11,000 articles on a daily basis for evermore. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:12, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I was going to say that admins should add "Distance from Sun (avg)", so the value won't vary with time. However, your idea seems better. Shorten the template by collapsing the aphelion and perihelion and add Distance from Sun as a range of two values. It will be more friendly to readers who don't know much about more technical stuff and readers with more expertise will quickly understand that the ends of the range is the aphelion/perihelion. There is a problem though. That would require someone to modify the information of every single article this template is in :/ Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 15:33, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

"Distance from Sun (avg)" is just the semi-major axis, so adding it adds nothing. --JorisvS (talk) 16:15, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The average distance from the Sun is the semi-major axis. I am not sure Wikipedia wants to dumb things down that much. Such things are probably better explained in the text of the article. -- Kheider (talk) 16:12, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes. I was just saying the same thing. There is no point in Wikipedia dumbing it down like that. If necessary for some reason, the body of the article is quite sufficient. --JorisvS (talk) 16:18, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Since we have both the semi-major axis and aphelion/perihelion, then there is literally no need in adding Distance from Sun.

I, personally, would dumb things down a little. Wikipedia can be pretty arid for laypeople sometimes. Anyway, let's try not to get too offtopic Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 17:02, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

As I mentioned earlier, that would be the "current" distance from the Sun. Since an object is only at aphelion/perihelion once at certain times in each orbit, the distance from Sun param would answer the question, "How far from the Sun is the object at the present time." – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 18:07, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

• The MPC/JPL only update orbital elements about every 6 months for established minor planets so they really do not change that often. Having said that many Wikipedia asteroids still use a 2005 epoch such as 5 Astraea, 6 Hebe, 7 Iris, etc. The apparent magnitude should be listed as a range, but for objects beyond Saturn you can list a single value as they will not change too fast/much. The distance from the Sun will rapidly change for eccentric objects currently inside of the orbit of Jupiter. Observation arc is more important than number of observations. For asteroids the observation arc is really important if it is less than 30 days, for TNOs if it is less than 1 year. Many Wikipedia articles also have bad orbits as someone will come along and change the orbital elements without changing the epoch. Not saying I am against these changes, I just want to point out the lament for quickly dated data. -- Kheider (talk) 13:52, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

My point for the addition of this data wasn't an up-to-date display of the exact number of observations and observation arc, but mainly for objects, like Kheider said, that have a fairly short observation arc, or low number of observations. These aren't meant to change on a constantly-update value, but simply the values given for the provided orbital elements, giving a general idea of what the orbital elements were calculated from.

Also, current distance from Sun, although changing constantly, would in fact be helpful to non-technical people, and serve as a more useful parameter than Mean Anomaly, although the two essentially change together. Mean Anomaly changes 360 degrees in an orbit, while the Solar distance can change more slowly for some objects, and might even serve as a synonym for mean anomaly- the distance from the Sun at the given epoch unless otherwise specified. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 15:07, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarifications and suggestions, and thank you for caring. Here is some additional information about the proposed changes. "Mean anomaly", which changes rapidly with time, is not one of the orbital elements. "Mean anomaly at epoch", which changes slowly with time, is. That quantity, combined with the other 5 elements, unambiguously defines the orbit. One cannot use "Distance from the Sun at epoch" as a substitute, because there are several points along the orbit that have the same distance from the Sun, and the resulting orbit definition would be ambiguous. I am not opposed to adding the range of distances from the Sun (from minimum to maximum), but I was merely pointing out that it would be redundant with the existing entries. If a decision were made to collapse the orbital elements (but hopefully not eliminate them), then I would support listing the range of distances from the Sun, because it provides important context about each object. The addition of the arc length could make sense if it were phrased appropriately, i.e., not as a quantity intrinsic to the object, but as an ancillary quantity pertaining to the orbital elements. For instance, a statement like "These orbital elements were computed on the basis of N observations and an arc length of D days available as of YYYY-MM-DD" would be valuable. I do not know enough about infoboxes to know if this can be accommodated. Have the proposers considered listing orbital elements only after they reach a certain maturity (e.g., U<=4) and to avoid the hassle of frequent updates until the elements are reliably determined? JeanLucMargot (talk) 17:30, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Although perihelion and aphelion do not add information to determine a body's orbit, it is meaningful additional information for readers. I would quite strongly oppose having the orbital elements collapsed by default, because it would mean that an additional action would be required to see the info, which would be a disservice to those who want to quickly look them up. --JorisvS (talk) 17:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Not all sections need to be collapsed, but some of them could be collapsed by default to make the Iboxes shorter and the articles more redible. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 18:07, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not against the idea per se, but against collapsing the orbital elements. --JorisvS (talk) 18:11, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I would very much be against collapsing anything by default. Certainly, code it so that sections could be collapsed if warranted in individual articles, but it seems a little presumptuous to force it on all articles. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:26, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

U<=4 (even U<6) would pretty much rule out recently discovered objects and someone would list the orbital elements anyway. I guess we can ad those categories (I might exclude number of observations to save space as the arc is much more important), but they may not get updated often. The number of observations could also be put in parenthesis next to the arc, ie: "Observation arc: 6 days (23 observations)". Listing the Uncertainty Parameter U would be useful. I often force it into the infobox below the epoch. -- Kheider (talk) 18:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Distance from Sun

I've been thinking... although that value would change constantly, it wouldn't be so hard to make a bot or a template calculate it.

For example, Earth's perihelion is 147 095 000 km and it's apehelion is 151 930 000 km. It's orbital period is of one year. If we start at Earth in it's perihelion and it moves 20% of the way to the aphelion, you increase by 20% of the aphelion minus perihelion calculation and add that value to the value of perihelion. Not sure how to explain, but it is quite simple Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 03:58, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I like the bot idea, but what you suggest (linear interpolation) is unfortunately not how nature works. It would give a good enough approximation for low eccentricities, but it would rapidly degrade for larger eccentricities. The distance from Sun is given by Kepler's laws of planetary motion and involves the evaluation of a cosine function and the solution to Kepler's equation, which regrettably is transcendental. I imagine that this is harder to do in a bot or template? An alternative would be to compute a look-up table once and for all for each orbit, and to have the bot look up the correct value according to the current date. I am not sure which one would be easier to implement. JeanLucMargot (talk) 06:24, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, right. I didn't take into account the fact that the planets will move slower at its furthest point from the Sun and faster at its closest. That's a shame. Anyway, there must be somewhere on the internet a website that shows the current distance from the Sun of the planets. Has anyone made a careful search or something? Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 06:34, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I like the idea, but would this entail very regular edits to all these pages by the bot? --JorisvS (talk) 11:09, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I think TQ's talking about behavior similar to the automatically-updated age field on BLPs. That'd be an interesting additional field to have.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  14:32, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

But eccentric asteroids currently inside the orbit of Jupiter, easily change distance from the Sun every month. Incorrect out-of-date values might even make Wikipedia look lame. I would be tempted to delete such an entry from the infobox (of eccentric asteroids currently inside the orbit of Jupiter) once the object was not of current interest. This field would be more useful for Trans-Neptunian dwarf planets that are moving slower due to their great distance from the Sun. -- Kheider (talk) 14:45, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, for planets only. It would need a check, like if |mp_something= is used, then don't show the current distance. Or perhaps a check on mass if a template editor someone wants to get fancy to use it only for the more/most massive MPs.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  15:04, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: By "the automatically-updated age field on BLPs", I assume that {{birth date and age}} is meant. This has nothing special to update it: it relies on the page being edited on (or fairly soon after) the person's birthday in order for the age to be updated. This is why you sometimes see IPs making edits like this which (even if they don't break the layout in so doing) are unproductive. A simple WP:NULLEDIT would have done the job - but some sort of action is necessary, the page won't update on its own; see my comments of 10:12, 18 January 2015 regarding automatic updates. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:05, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! I didn't know (nor see) that. (That's too bad.)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  19:19, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

It would then probably require a change in the software for these kinds of things to properly work. I think that would be beneficial, but I understand the scope involved could make it problematic. --JorisvS (talk) 22:42, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Distance from the Sun could in theory (keep reading) be updated via a bot using AstDyS-2 values, ie comet-like 20461 Dioretsa can be found at http://hamilton.dm.unipi.it/astdys/index.php?pc=1.1.3.0&n=20461 and is 26.8AU from the Sun. But numbered asteroids have to use their numbers at AstDys, while provisionally named objects use the provisional designation (license plate number). But for near-Earth asteroids you would then need to use NEODyS-2 instead of AstDyS-2. So for 2014 HQ124 you would use http://newton.dm.unipi.it/neodys/index.php?pc=1.1.3.0&n=2014+HQ124 Sounds kind of complicated for a bot. -- Kheider (talk) 15:13, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Summary

It appears from the above that inclusion of "uncertainty" and "observation arc length" are acceptable, and that "distance from Sun" should wait until an appropriate update method is secured. If there are no objections I will go ahead and add the first two parameters. The arguments for and against collapsibility and about the lengthening of the ibox in general may then be discussed in a new thread. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 16:11, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I would call them Uncertainty parameter and Observation arc. -- Kheider (talk) 16:23, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay, please check to make sure it's been done as you wish. – Paine  17:20, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 22 February 2015

I'd like to change the "Composition" section to this:

| label99 = Composition by volume | data99 = {{{atmosphere_composition|}}}

I always forget what the compositions are in terms of, and I have to look them up in some atmosphere subsection. I can see many others wondering the same thing. —wing gundam 07:30, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

 Done with a link to Atmospheric chemistry#Atmospheric composition. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 02:20, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 25 February 2015

| label92 =

Asteroid family

| data92 =

| label93 =

Apparent magnitude

| data93 =

| label94 =

Absolute magnitude (H)

| data94 =

| label95 =

Angular diameter

| data95 =

| header97 =

| label98 =

Surface pressure

| data98 =

| label99 =

Scale height

| data99 = | label100 = Composition by volume | data100 =

| below =

}}

Just add this to the end of the template. Summary: Add Asteroid family exoplanetaryscience (talk) 18:01, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:47, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Done. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 23:17, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

 Done – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 08:18, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Please add a link

Resolved

 – Tacsipacsi (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Please add the language link tr:Şablon:Gezegen bilgi kutusu. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sae1962 (talk • contribs) 20:19, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Interwiki links are now on Wikidata. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 20:01, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but this comment was posted in February 2013, now I just added the signature. --Tacsipacsi (talk) 20:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

And the interwiki links are now on wikidata. So how is this not resolved? Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Of course, it’s resolved. I just said that it wasn’t a bad request when it was posted. --Tacsipacsi (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Hill Radius?

Would it be useful to include the Hill radius of an object in the template, below escape_velocity? The only problem with this I could see is that for objects with large eccentricities would have constantly-varying hill radii, but for objects that move extremely slowly (e.g. 90377 Sedna) or objects that have fairly circular orbits (e.g. Ceres (dwarf planet)) it would be useful to include this parameter, as it is constant no matter the mass or size of the object. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 00:08, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I think it would be useful for planets/dwarf planets. -- Kheider (talk) 17:45, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Rename or Clarify "Dimensions"?

There seems to be a conflict between the "Dimensions" parameter (which lists diameter or major axes) and the "Mean Radius" parameter (which lists radius or, I suppose, semi-major axes if called for). It really seems like it would be a good idea to pick one or the other. Or else provide a "Mean Diameter" parameter, to remove the ambiguity. I was simply going to fix the 90377 Sedna page, which was vague (there was no indication from the template of whether dimensions meant radius or diameter, particularly when only one number is given), but now I don't even know what fix to make. Calculate and use "Mean Radius" instead? Add some kind of "dia" notation? Without reading the body text, it seems very unclear as it is. Digitante (talk) 02:38, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Add styles to image caption

I have a minor issue with the displayed image caption. The vertical spacing of the text lines (line-height) is larger than the spacing of the first line and the image (padding). To me, it should be the other way around. Also, the (absolute) value of the line-height should be reduced (in order to balance line-height relative to font-size). Here's my proposal to improve the caption's styling:

• | caption = {{longitem|Here's the text of the image caption|style=padding:4px 0 6px; line-height: 1.4em}}

Test cases I used:

• Moon – to see the effect of the padding parameter (one-liner only)
• Neptune – to see the effect of both, line-height and padding parameter in combination

Hope that makes sense. Cheers, Rfassbind -talk 05:39, 16 July 2015 (UTC)