Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Titan (moon)

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 02:59, 11 September 2007.

[edit] Titan (moon)

With pleasure, a co-nom with User:Serendipodous on the unofficial ninth planet. I thought I was cheating in working on this one, because the article was already in good shape after the work of others, but we still needed two hundred odd edits to audit it—less for inaccuracies and more for stale information, given that direct observation is on-going. LEAD, Orbit and Rotation, Cryovolcanoes, Exploration, and Possible Life have all been expanded. Overall refs up by a third, with some weak ones dropped. In my amateur opinion, the somewhat difficult concepts related to atmosphere composition and so on are presented in understandable prose. Given a slew of papers on this body, there's a healthy proportion of journal refs cited in the article; there's some inconsistency in ref formatting (J. Smith v Smith, J. etc.) because of multiple editors, but that can be taken care of, where pointed out. And there's still a few to-dos in terms of content presentation, which I think an FAC will help with. A lot of good editors have worked on this, so we can hear from them at once. (And everyone keep it on your watchlist, because info will keep coming regarding Titan! :) Marskell 20:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment — Overall good, but there are a few issues before I can support the FA:

Support — On the basis that you've been actively addressing the additional concerns and I think it's essentially at VA-quality now. Thank you both for your hard work on this. — RJH (talk) 16:06, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• If the radius is only known to within ± 2 km, is there really any need for two decimals of additional precision? Why not 2576 ± 2? Similarly for the density and mass. I.e. instead of 1.34520029 ± 0.00020155×10²³, why not 1.3452 ± 0.0002×10²³?
• Some of the text seems oddly worded (e.g. "revealing of") and there are a few issues with the text here and there, but on the whole it appears close to ready.
• Could the text explain Hadley cell and lineaments?
• Some of the dates don't need to be wikilinked. E.g. April 30, 2006 (per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(links)#Overlinking_and_underlinking:_what.27s_the_best_ratio.3F).
• You have a "citation needed" tag. Looks like more tags have been added.

Thanks. — RJH (talk) 22:37, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks RJ. I had intended to drop you a line about this one.

• Dropped excess decimals.
• Tweaked the one you noticed. Feel free to mention others.
• Are the sentences following the mention of Hadley cell not sufficient? I'm not responsible for the para but it seems straightforward to me. Fair enough on lineaments; I unpacked it.
  • Yes, sorry I had only weakly connected the two. Serves me right for skimming the text. — RJH (talk)
• Actually, MoS advises linking full dates, unless I'm reading it wrong.
  • Okay. I'm never sure which way the wind is leaning on that issue. Normally I only see full links in the citations — RJH (talk)
• Forgot that. Reworked the paragraph.

Cheers, Marskell 12:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment — This article has come a long way since the last time I read through it. However, I still think it has a little ways to go before it is a featured article. First, the climate section seems quite unbalanced, with two full paragraphs dedicated to the VIMS high altitude north polar cloud, but a much more limited discussion of the south polar cumulus clouds or the clouds seen elsewhere on Titan. The liquids section spends much of its time discussing the polar lake regions, but it is much more limited about river channels observed, not just by Huygens but by RADAR and VIMS as well. The obvious question a reader here will have is what does this distribution of fluvial/flood channel and lake/seas tell us about the overall climate of Titan. --Volcanopele 23:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to try to get this within the next day, Volcanopele. I have a paper to provide some balance in the clouds section. Marskell 15:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Update: I added another small para on clouds, which I hope partly answers your concerns. Marskell 07:01, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Good, but there are still two paragraphs regarding the high-altitude, north polar clouds that VIMS saw last year. It makes it sound like they are distinct clouds when they are not (or at least they aren't two different types of clouds). It would really help to make the climate section more concise if those two paragraphs were combined. --Volcanopele 00:53, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

How's that? Serendi^podous 06:52, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment. I don't feel qualified to evaluate the article's scientific accuracy, but as an interested layman, I would like to see (a) a diagram of Titan's orbit, to show where it is in relation to Saturn, and (b) a section on Titan's sky, similar to the one in the article at Enceladus (moon)#Sky from Enceladus (I realize you wouldn't see much from the surface except orange smog, but info on the apparent size of Saturn and visibility of the rings from the upper atmosphere would be good). Otherwise this article looks great! Cop 663 00:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I added an orbit diagram, it's not very pretty though, maybe someone can do better. Rubble pile 13:45, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Not bad for the timebeing. Marskell 15:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment - good read so far - some points:

• Needless to say, there are some ^{[citation needed]} tags that need to be verified or dropped before getting over the line.
• 3 to 4 ratio? - I am more familiar with the colon here as in 3:4 ratio, the other looks odd to me but not a deal-breaker if everyone else is ok with it.
• The prose is good but there are a few places where there is a "Scientists believe" or similar phrase, which would be good to steer away from if possible. I'm not sure how to do that stylistically - maybe the first person to come up iwth the particular idea and then to say that it was generally adopted or something but that would be ungainly...tricky to adress and not sure if possible.

• Given these difficulties, the topic of life on Titan may be best described as an experiment for examining theories on conditions necessary prior to flourishing life's on Earth. - erm, not sure which thing "flourishing" is referring to. Also "before" is a little better than "prior to" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Casliber (talk • contribs) 11:14, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

Overall Conditional Support if the cite tags can be addressed and maybe a couple of the "Scientists believe" type phrases or an explanation why it would be not feasible; I am an enthiusiast of solar system stuff, not an expert, but I'll defer to Volcanopele on that one and agree with his request. These are no biggies really and you've done a good job buffing the moon up. Nearly there. (PS: I took the liberty of tweaking a couple of straightforward thingies) OK, yer over the line though I do still find the opening phrases "Scientists have speculated that.." in Cryovolcanism and mountains and "Scientists believe that the atmosphere of early Earth..." in Prebiotic conditions and possible life irk me style-wise but they aren't deal-breakers. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment — some observations:

• Infobox is sparsely populated with citations. Every value, if it is not calculated, should have an inline citation;
• It would be good if the section about atmosphere included a graph with temperature profile in (T,p) plane, which also should indicate altitudes, positions of cloud and haze layers, etc. Without such a graph it is difficult to read the article;
• Cyanoacetylene is not a hydrocarbon;
• In the same section two images of haze layers are virtually indistinguishable. I think only one image should be left;
• The 'Clouds' subsection has two paragraphs about two different northern clouds. However I think they are one and the same. So the paragraphs should be merged;
• The third paragraph in 'Surface features' section is uncited;
• In the 'Dark terrain' subsection there is a strange phrase "The tidal winds cause sand dunes to build up in long parallel lines, with Titan's zonal winds aligning the dunes west-to-east.". I think zonal winds and tidal winds are the same winds, are not they?

To be continued. Ruslik 17:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ruslik. Partially done:

• Do see the first ref: "Unless otherwise specified: JPL HORIZONS solar system data and ephemeris computation service."

There are still no citations for albedo, temperature and composition. Ruslik 16:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

With albedo, which wavelength? Never mind; found albedo on NASA factsheet. OK; they're reffed. Serendi^podous 10:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Could you provide an example from another article of what that would like?

See Uranus (planet), section — Atmosphere. Ruslik 16:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

• Shuffled it out of the bracket.
• Fair enough. Left the true colour image.
• I'm going to contact you directly about the clouds. I had been thinking the same thing; maybe you can help.

I can not find any publication about the second set of observatios. However latitudes of the clouds are the same. They were observed with the same instrument (VIMS) over a short time period. So at least the article should not state so categorically that they are different clouds. Ruslik 16:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that I was not alone in insisting on merging those two paragraphs. Ruslik 11:30, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Incorporated that para into an earlier one and provided two refs.
• I'll leave that one for the timebeing.

I actually meant that 'zonal winds' refers only to the direction. Whereas 'tidal winds' refers to the origin. They can be (and probably is) simultaniously zonal and tidal. So it is misleading to mention them as they were completle different. Ruslik 16:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Cheers, Marskell 09:46, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Ruslik, Serendip merged the North Pole paras and I rendered the wording uncertain as to whether they are the same cloud. The sentence on winds was also tweaked. Marskell 14:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I fixed dune formation explanation myself. Ruslik 07:35, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I added a couple of specific numbers and tweaked the wording. All that's left is graph you've asked for—it's not something I'm competent to perform, honestly. Marskell 12:17, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The longitudinal dunes exist on Earth, the phrase is intended to provide general explanaition of their formation. I changed the text accordinly. As to graph you try to find this [1] I am sure the necessary numbers are there. Ruslik 12:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this the sort of thing you meant? I found it at JPL, so it's public. Serendi^podous 17:28, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Went ahead and added this one. I had seen other graphs in image searches but they all seemed too esoteric to me. I think readers will be able to understand this one. I may crop it and reupload later. Is this sufficient Ruslik? Marskell 08:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Support — Ok, now I support this article. Ruslik 08:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Marskell 10:48, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.