Talk:Moons of Jupiter/Archive 1

message: With the inclusion of the recently discovered moons, the column with the 'groups' of moons has gone all out of whack.. is it really needed? Perhaps it could be mentioned seperately which moons were thought to be in groups, and on the table simply list them by average orbital distance. --Patteroast 22:05, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps it would also be worth adding the orbital inclination, which is necessary to see why they have been grouped the way they are. --Keith Edkins 08:06, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

message: Because we relied on the JPL Solar System Dynamics pages, we had some very odd things going on with the irregular moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Specifically, we had strong violations of Kepler's third law. Now that I've found the IAU-MPC Natural Satellites Ephemeris Service, it has become clear the solar perturbation "explanation" doesn't wash. The ephemeris generated respect Kepler's third law down to five decimal places. I'll shortly use these more reliable values to update the tables.
Urhixidur 12:59, 2005 May 6 (UTC)
:Well, the orbits of the irregulars are not Keplerian (i.e. highly perturbed; 3- and not 2-body approach is needed) and JPL provides the mean elements from the integrations. Of course, our Moon’s orbit is not Keplerian either. If you take the ephemeris (they are Keplerian) the orbit will look very different in less than a year. I was surprised to read that for Pasiphea for example, (osculating) semimajor axis can change as much as 1 Gm in as little as 2 years, the inclination around 5 degrees and the eccentricity as much as 0.5 in some 25 years! Consequently, when the ephemeris are needed to locate the sat in a given moment in time, mean orbital elements are more suitable for most other uses (e.g. grouping the sats). Eurocommuter 14:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kepler's third law saved 

message: I'm highlighting the moons of the gas giants according to the following criteria: Lunar sized (Galileans, Titan, Triton) bold name in a medium voilet background (style="background:#ccccff";); smaller spheroidal moons (Saturn & Uranus) bold name in a lavender background (style="background:#eeeeff"); irregular moons not bold and on a white background.
I expect that some of you will object to these categories, and perhaps something else would be better. My idea was that the lunar-size category is one of general human interest, and the spheroidal/irregular distinction is relatively objective and is found frequently in the scientific literature. Especially in the case of Saturn, I think it's important to do something to make the tables more visually accessible and to make the 'main' moons easier to find. They're getting too big to easily navigate. kwami 05:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Kwami, I like this idea and it works well. I think we need an explanation at the top of the table, because the phrase 'Spheroidal moons in bold' is easily overlooked in its current location. Also, I think 'planet-sized moons' is a better term than 'lunar-sized'. Other than that, I think it's great. The Singing Badger 16:33, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree as well. The Galilean moons are so different from the rest of Jupiter's satellites they should be highlighted. Dralwik 23:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  highlighting 

message: Some of the moons are listed with orbital inclinations greater than 90°.
For consistency with the pages listing other gas giants' moons, it might be an idea to subtract
the inclination from 180, and give the orbital period as a negative number.
CS Miller 12:41, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Retrograde orbits 

message: "Jupiter has 63 known natural satellites." -- Does this imply that there are non-natural satellites, and if so, what is the citation ? -- Simon Cursitor
:Well, it did when Galileo was in orbit. Natural satellite is the scientific term for moons, so it's just saying that we currently know of 63 moons orbitting Jupiter. --Patteroast 15:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Curiosity of phraseology 

message: This was corrected from 20 to 10; I can find figures anywhere in the 10-20 km spread, but I don't know which is the latest.  The Leda (moon) article still uses the 20km figure. RandomCritic 23:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Leda diameter

message: The IPA used in the table probably shouldn't be in italics. It looks like crap. --24.11.177.133 15:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Changed the italics to brackets. --24.11.177.133 16:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  pronunciation 

message: What are those Roman Numeral designators called anyway? They are currently under the "name" heading in the table, which seems wrong. --Yath 04:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roman numerals 

message: : The navigation boxes at bottom were created specifically to avoid having lengthy and repetitive "see alsos" under the name of each planet.  What's the argument for doubling the information from the navboxes under "See also"? RandomCritic 13:14, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A question that can be best answered by Urhixidur, who has added them to this and the other moons pages. The links to the other moons pages are indeed redundant, being adequately covered in the navigation box, while Galilean moons is twice linked to in the article itself. Jupiter's moons in fiction does not appear to be linked to elsewhere, however. If you want to eliminate the See Also section altogether (which I would support), I would suggest incorporating a reference to that last one in the article text itself (perhaps in an appropriately expanded lead?). Thylacoleo 04:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additions to "See also" 

message: There has been consensus to change the name of the Uranus' natural satellites article to "Moons of Uranus" here. This fits the footer, is less jargony, and avoids the apostrophe issue some people complain about with Uranus and Mars. However, this article should have the same format. Anyone here wish to comment, support, or object? kwami 19:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would approve of "Jovian moons" myself, but given that all of the forms of these names mean exactly the same thing, isn't the best thing to do just to leave them alone? RandomCritic 19:50, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See the discussion at Uranus' natural satellites, which was triggered by people objecting that the title was orthographically incorrect. kwami 20:52, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (Actually, I like "Jovian moons" too. kwami)  —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 20:53, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think a centralized discussion at the parent article Natural satellite would be preferable to a lot of dispersed discussions over nine or so different Talk pages. RandomCritic 21:37, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, it was an invitation to join the discussion over there, since it started going somewhere. kwami 21:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Moons of Jupiter" 

message: Perhaps somewhere it should be clarified that "Jovian" refers to the same thing.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greeklamb (talk • contribs) 19:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Jovian" 

message: My brother had an "Atlas of the Universe" published in the very early 1970s, which mentions that the moons were mostly unnamed (unique among the planets other than Earth), but that names had been proposed.
The seven proposed names were Adrastea, Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Pan and Poseidon.  I see that Adrastea has been adopted for one of the subsequently-discovered mooons, but not for one of those seven.
I wonder why the astronomical community singled out Jupiter for having unnamed moons.  All ten of Saturn's moons had names.  All five of Uranus' moons had names.  Both of Neptune's and both of Mars' moons were named.  Jupiter's only distinction seems to have been that the majority of its moons (7 of 12, then 7 of 13) were discovered during the 20th century and using photography, while it was ensured that the single discoveries at each of Saturn (10th of 10), Uranus (5th of 5) and Neptune (2nd of 2) were named so they didn't stick out like sore thumbs. GBC 07:22, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If I had to guess, it would be that they didn't consider captured chunks of rock to be of the same importance as the larger Galilean moons and moons of the outer planets. We're getting the same argument today, with people saying it's ridiculous to name dozens of 1-mile chunks of rock and call them "moons". kwami 10:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

text: See Naming of natural satellites. RandomCritic 14:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Earlier name proposals for 6th to 12th satellites

message: In this section there's a sentence that stops abruptly, probably accidently deleted during a prior edit.
Moons of Jupiter#Grouping the moons
Regular satellites consisting of the Amalthea group of inner moons and the four Galilean moons, formed in situ
Someone should probably fix that. - Norse Am Legend (talk) 00:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That sentence is correct. In_situ in this case means that the regular satellites formed in or near their current locations in respect to Jupiter. There's no period on either of the sentences in that short list. --Patteroast (talk) 00:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I wiki-linked 'in situ' to try to avoid further confusion. :) --Patteroast (talk) 00:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formed in situ what? Formed in situ what?! 

message: i like this page  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blackout650 (talk • contribs) 18:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  good job