Talk:28978 Ixion

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[edit] Pronunciation

6/8 of the dictionaries and mythological refs (Webster, Bollard, Brewer, Fagles, etc) I've found which list a pronunciation for Ixion have [ick-SIGH-un] as the only possibility. The other two (Columbia Encyclopedia and Zimmerman) had only [ICK-see-un]. This "feels" more Greek to an Anglophone. However, in Latin transliteration the first i vowel was short and the second long, supporting the majority opinion that the stress should be penultimate, since English generally follows the Latin for stress placement in Greek words. --kwami 06:22, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Greek is Ιξίων, and from this you might expect ik'-see-un. However, the classical Greek script was defective in not distinguishing long from short [i]. Liddell & Scott's Greek lexicon shows the iota as long, ῑ. Also, Latin borrowed the name as Ixīōn, giving us the penultimate stress, ik-sye'-un. --kwami 04:26, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Per Cassel's dict., the adjectival form is Ixīonian (short o takes the stress). kwami 05:16, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

[edit] Colour

I removed the following sentence because it's not properly explained. If anyone knows what it means, rewrite it and return it.

The infrared spectrum was found flat (did not show the red slope of Varuna)

The Singing Badger 20:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I’m afraid yours truly is the culprit who put this statement. It means precisely what is written. The spectrum is flat. Point. Unlike many other objects, showing red slope i.e. showing greater reflectivity in the redder (longer wave) section. If we were talking about visible spectrum, the object with flat spectrum would appear neutral (grey). The objects with red slope in the visible spectrum reflect better longer waves (red colour) than the shorter (blue) so they appear red. The steeper the slope the redder they appear. In the near infrared spectrum, often the notion of colours is still used by extension. Redder means longer waves. Bluer, shorter. The slope (relative reflectivity increasing or diminishing with the wave length) is a hint to the composition of the surface. I guess we need extra links and/or extensions of the existing articles. Explaining this here for Ixion does not help.

Sudden popular interest in NTO exposed articles with a bit more technical content. Still, I believe the encyclopaedia cannot stop on the level of the background information for the news. Hundreds sources on the internet do that. Consequently, I do not believe that we should start deleting technical content. Please compare with often extremely arcane articles in reputable encyclopaedias. We need to add extra articles/content in related areas, so the technical content can be linked to, not deleting. Are we going to delete content from elliptic integrals for example because a casual reader has no clue what this is about? Regards Eurocommuter 22:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I agree with you, and I apologise for any offence caused. I just find that taking sentences out to the talk page for reworking is usually the fastest way of getting them fixed. I absolutely agree that the technical information should be there. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a typo or a garbled sentence (the sentence as it stood was not strictly grammatical, and I did try looking at the articles on spectrum and infrared, and neither contained the word 'slope', hence my concern). Anyway, I think 'red slope' simply needs wikilinking to encourage some work on a future article, and I apologise again for misjudging the situation. The Singing Badger 01:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Ooops... No apologies needed, TheSingingBadger, except from me for what can be read as an outburst of my bad karma (I really did not realise it while typing…), I’m sorry!

Indeed, red links seem to be a good reminder and an encouragement to provide at least a stub. The proof. Regards Eurocommuter 13:10, 22 August 2006 (UTC)