Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects: Difference between revisions

This page is where work is being done to come up with a generic table template to be used for organizing a list of facts about various astronomical bodies such as planets, natural satellites, and maybe also smaller bodies such as asteroids and comets (though I suspect that both asteroids and comets will be better served by having their own template design).

Most of these entries should be measured in SI units. Some of them, however, should have more "human-accessible" units, either in addition to or instead of SI units. I've indicated some cases with a second unit name in brackets. In the case of times (orbital periods, rotation), I think it best to give all periods in days for comparison purposes, and provide a translation (in parentheses) into years, days, hours, etc.; whatever is most appropriate for the duration being described.

Oh, and compared to table templates for things like the elements, I think that this template should be considered somewhat more flexible. Moons with no atmosphere whatsoever could skip the atmospheric composition section entirely, for example (though atmospheric density would still be listed). Moons also wouldn't have their orbital radii listed in AU, since AUs are such large units. For planets, use "perihelion" and "aphelion" instead of "periapsis" and "apoapsis."

In the case of "number of moons" and "is a moon of", only one of these rows will be used by any given object. There aren't any moons with moons, though perhaps "co-orbital with" might be a useful row to add in a few cases.

A set of colors for use in the 2-column headers of this table:

rocky terrestrial body	Transition metal color from the periodic table; rocky planets have lots of metals compared to the icy ones. Also, red is a "warmer" color than green, which fits the distribution of rocky and icy planets in the solar system.
icy terrestrial body	green contrasts nicely with the pink of rocky planets. Also, on the periodic table, it's the color of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and other common components of outer-solar-system ice.
gas giant body	blue skies, and noble gases on the periodic table (including helium, which is only found in large quantities on gas giants. It escapes from smaller planets). Also, two out of four gas giants prefer the cool soothing color of blue.

On the subject of obliquity: Obliquity is the angle between the object's axis of rotation and the normal to the plane of its orbit. Do not confuse this with the Tilt listed in the JPL pages, which is a measure of the angle between the local Laplace plane and the primary's equatorial plane. In fact, most inner moons have synchronous rotations, so their obliquities will be, by definition, zero. Outer moons simply have not been seen from close up enough to determine their true obliquities (although Phoebe, recently seen by the Cassini probe, may be an exception).

Conversion log

Done:

Mercury
Venus
Earth
- Moon
Mars
- Phobos
- Deimos
Jupiter
- Metis
- Adrastea
- Amalthea
- Thebe
- Io
- Europa
- Ganymede
- Callisto
- Leda (still stuby)
- Himalia (still stuby)
- Lysithea (still stuby)
- Elara (still stuby)
- Ananke (still stuby)
- Carme (still stuby)
- Pasiphae (still stuby)
- Sinope (still stuby)
Saturn
- Pan
- Prometheus
- Pandora
- Epimetheus
- Janus
- Mimas
- Enceladus
- Tethys
- Titan
- Dione
- Rhea
- Hyperion
- Iapetus
- Atlas
Uranus
- Cordelia (work in progress)
- Ophelia (work in progress)
- Bianca (work in progress)
- Cressida (work in progress)
- Desdemona (work in progress)
- Juliet (work in progress)
- Rosalind (work in progress)
- Belinda (work in progress)
- Puck (work in progress)
- Miranda (work in progress)
- Oberon (work in progress)
- Ariel (in progress)
Neptune
- Triton
Pluto
- Charon

Still to be done:

For Saturn:
- Telesto
- Calypso
- Helene

Usefull sources:

Minor planets (asteroids, comets, Kuiperoids, etc)

This table was taken from the 433 Eros article as a basis for developing a template:

**433 Eros**
Orbital characteristics
Orbit type	Near-Earth
Semimajor axis	1.45821 AU
Eccentricity	0.22290
Orbital period	1.76 years
Inclination	10.82948°
Physical characteristics
Diameter	13×13×33 km
Mass	7.2×10¹⁵ kg
Density	2.4 g/cm³
Rotation period	5h 16m
Spectral class	S
Albedo	0.16
History
Discoverer	Gustav Witt, 1898

Partial list of minor planets with tables:

Here's another table, generated from the {{Minor Planet}} template:
Template:Minor Planet

Stars

Stars with factsheets:

This table was lifted from Betelgeuse and may serve as the basis of a template in the near future.

**Star name**
Observation data
Semiregular Variable, type SR c
Right ascension (RA, α) (J2000,00)	05 h 55 m 10.29 s
Declination (Dec, δ) (J2000,00)	+07° 24' 25.3"
Distance from Earth	427 ± 92 LY (131 pc)
Visual brightness (V)	+0.45^m (+0.3^m to +0.6^m (+1.3^m))
Absolute magnitude	-5.3^m to -5.0^m
Physical characteristics
Mean Diameter (d_S= 1,392,000 km)	385,000,000 km ~ 276.6 d_S 2.57 AU (452 s.u.)
Surface area
Volume
Mass	~ 40 × 10³⁰ kg
Relative mass to the Sun (m_S= 1.9891 × 10³⁰ kg)	~ 20 m_S
Density
Surface gravity
Spectral type	M1-2 Ia-Iab (Red Super Giant)
Surface temperature	3600 K
Age
Color (B-V)	(1.500)
V-I	2.32
Luminosity (L_S = 3.827 × 10²⁶ J s^-1)	~ 10,000 L_S
Orbital characteristics
Period of rotation
Period	~ 2070 d to 2355 d

Galaxies

Galaxies with factsheets:

Andromeda Galaxy (M31/NGC 224)
Bode's Galaxy (M81/NGC 3034) (incomplete)
M87 (NGC 4486/Virgo A Galaxy)
Triangulum Galaxy (M33/NGC 598)

Note: Please see List of galaxies or Category:Galaxies for a list of galaxies that do not yet have infoboxes/factsheets.

The following is the M87 table, that may be used (and improved) for other galaxies:

**Galaxy name**
Observation data
Type	E1
Right ascension (RA, α) (J2000,00)	12 h 30.8 m
Declination (Dec, δ) (J2000,00)	+12° 24'
Distance from Earth	60 millions LY (18.4 Mpc)
Apparent magnitude (V)	+8.6^m
Apparent dimension(s) (V)	7.0'
Physical characteristics
Mass (Sun=1)	> 1.0 × 10¹²
Diameter	120,000 light years
Color (B-V)
Absolute magnitude	-22^m
Peculiarities	Radio emission jet from galaxy core huge (13,000) globular cluster system
Other denominations	NGC 4486 Virgo A radio source Arp 152

Useful links

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 * [[List of planetary nebulae]]
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