Talk:Galilean moons
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[edit] Galilean moons
I hope noone minds that I've moved this to "Galilean moons", in the plural, because there is really no such thing as a Galilean moon and the four only have in common their discovery in a group. I know this is not the usual singular convention, but consider usage; Google gives 28x the number of hits for the plural.--Pharos 00:09, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Is there any evidence that anyone has ever actually managed to see even Callisto as separate from Jupiter with the naked eye? I suspect not. RandomCritic 17:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the history behind the discovery of the moons come later in the article? Probably, the list of moons should come earlier.
I have an issue with this part of the article - 'whether this was actually achieved by the Chaldeans remains a matter of speculation'. Since the word 'Chaldeans' leads to a disambiguation page, it could do with clarifying. Unfortunately I know nothing about the subject, and many of the potential meanings could be the correct one. Hopefully one of you knowledgable people will be abl;e to clear this up.
[edit] Pre-Galilean observations
While the Gan De connection, dubious as it is, at least has a real astronomical observation behind it, the "Horus" and "Marduk" conjectures do not appear to refer to astronomy at all - the citation given is totally inadequate - and don't belong in this article. So I'm deleting them. RandomCritic 20:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
There are some interesting notes on the possibility of naked eye observations of the Galilean moons in an archived Sky & Telescope article. Spaceman13 21:56, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Hodierna names
I'm having some trouble with these. For one thing it's not clear where they actually appear -- I assume the Ephemerides, but I can't find this securely stated anywhere. For another, it's claimed that the names are for the "four Medici brothers" -- but which brothers? The names given are Principharus, Victipharus, Cosmipharus and Ferdinandipharus. But Cosimo II's brothers were Francesco, Carlo, and Lorenzo -- no Ferdinand among them; and his sons were Ferdinando II, Giancarlo, Matteo and Leopoldo -- without a Cosimo. Ferdinando II had a son Cosimo (III) who would have been a child at the time of the publication of the Ephemerides. And who do Principharus and Victipharus refer to? My best guess at this time is that Principharus stands for the late Medici ruler at the time Hodierna was writing, Cosimo II; Ferdinandipharus for his son, Ferdinando II; Cosmipharus for Ferdinando's son, Cosimo III; and Victipharus (some web sources have Victripharus, I'm not sure which is correct) for Ferdinando's wife, Vittoria della Rovere. But that's all guesswork. If anyone has access to Hodierna's Ephemerides, perhaps they could see if it contains an explanation? RandomCritic 10:51, 31 October 2006 (UTC) jkjlkjkl
[edit] Visible with the naked eye?
The following sentences seem to be contradictory: "All four Galilean moons can, in principle, be sighted without a telescope." "Other than the Moon, Ganymede is the only planetary satellite that can be seen by the naked eye, but still can only be seen in good conditions." So which is it? Colin M. 11:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Merge Medician stars
Support:
- Of course, Medician stars should be merged into this article, as proposed in August 2007. Wikipedia cannot have 2 articles on the identical topic. Finell (Talk) 18:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
- OK, the merge is done.--Pharos 17:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Further work needed
Good work, and fast! To complete the merger, however, the subsection "Galileo" "Dedication" and the "Name" sections should be harmonized (there are fact conflicts) and duplication eliminated consolidated. Also, the facts and references should be harmonized with the relevant parts of Moons of Jupiter. Finell (Talk) 20:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, and we should also explain the difference in dates of the discovery between the pre-merge version, "January 7, 1610", and the version from Medician stars, "December of 1609 or January of 1610", (which I went with because that version was obviously researched more carefully). If I recall correctly Jan. 7 may be one of a couple of exact dates that it could have been. This requires further reading to clarify.--Pharos 23:11, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
- I did some editing and reorganizing, but did not consolidate the two sections. I don't have the book at hand, but any citations that are to Helden's introduction to Sidereus Nuncius should specifically cite the introduction in the footnotes to correctly attribute authorship. Finell (Talk) 01:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Galileo Discovery Dates
Callisto (only one with discovery date reference), Io, and Europa are listed as discovered on January 7, 1610. But Ganymede is listed as discovered on January 11, 1610? Should all four Galilean moons be listed as discovered on the same date? Do we have a reference that shows Ganymede was truly discovered last, even though Callisto orbits further out and Io switched sides every day further confusing Galileo?
-- Kheider 19:02, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Interior structure
There are some inmages in the article which show the interior sturcture of the moons. However, these are rather speculative. There is also no data on the different densities/compositions of the data which makes the images meaningless. There is no evidence to prove these structures are correct? How were they obtained? Jdrewitt (talk) 10:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Ok, more detail is provided on the interior structure in the individual articles relating to each moon. However, the images are meaningless on this page since the layers aren't labelled or explained. Considering this is already done in the individual moon pages, the interior structure images are superflous on this page and I will therefore remove them. Jdrewitt (talk) 12:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
