Talk:List of asteroids

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the List of asteroids article.
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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on July 19, 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

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[edit] Article name

Perhaps this needs to be called "List of minor planets" instead? The minor planets that are catalogued and numbered in this way are not limited strictly to asteroids. —LarryGilbert 21:33, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Perhaps. Don't forget that the list only goes up to 4000 so far, so they're pretty much all "asteroids" with the possible exception of 2060 Chiron. It's debatable whether we can ever get around to listing every single numbered object (the number jumped from 79000 to 85000 in the last update, March to May, and there's every likelihood it will keep growing extremely quickly).
If I recall, "asteroid" and "minor planet" were almost always synonymous until recently. I believe the Centaurs like 2060 Chiron were called asteroids when they were originally discovered. The distinction between "minor planet" and "asteroid" only became an issue when they started finding KBOs, especially the ones bigger than Ceres; it seems wrong to call Quaoar an asteroid, and Sedna even more so.
If we get as far as (15760) 1992 QB1, I suppose it might be an issue.
If you want to go ahead and change it, I wouldn't object.
-- Curps 09:50, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
I call for a rename as well. These lists contain many KBOs, trojans, etc.. List of asteroids is simply incorrect. List of minor planets or List of minor solar system objects would be better. -- Jordi·✆ 12:32, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Minor planet is a synonym (or almost) for asteroid, and this list contains every minor planet known of the solar system, but the problem is that it also contains objects of the solar system which are not asteroids or minor planets. Objects like Pluto, Eris or Ceres are a part of the numeration of this list and they are not minor planets, these three are dwarf planets and they are bigger than an asteroid. Then, the name "List of minor planets" is still inadecuate to fit. ÏíìÏ 15:26, 13 May 2007 (U)

[edit] List of asteroids (1-100)

I took of the links to lists shorter than 1000 (like List of asteroids (1-100) since all of that information is in the list of asteroids (1-1000). Should these short pages be deleted? Rmhermen 20:33, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

I redirected them all to List of asteroids (1-1000) -- Curps 19:22, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting the pages for size

The "Meanings of asteroid names" pages have recently been split from 1000's into 500's, to put them below the 32K limit. Those pages are mostly edited down from the "List of asteroids" pages, which are close to 100K. Splitting these pages in half would be insufficient to go below the limit; splitting them into 250's begins to grow unwieldy, unless we begin to have two levels of selection(e.g. 1-1000 is a page with links to the four subpages).

Being a relatively new Wikipediast, I'm hesitant to just go splitting them up myself, but I feel like I should raise the issue.

Alfvaen 06:25, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

You can reduce them to 200 or even 100 with a bit of judicious table-handling: it would then be worthwhile merging back the meanings. --Phil | Talk 15:28, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
Please do not merge the meanings pages with the "raw" list! As it currently stands, the raw list is essentially language-neutral, which is a good thing for the other wikis. Merging the meanings in would destroy that.
Urhixidur 22:37, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

[edit] Do these need to be stubs?

Many of these articles are stubs, yet quite extensive numerical detail is given about them in the table. It is unlikely any other noteworthy information about them exists, so they have little potential for expansion. Hence I think we should remove these stub labels. Comments? 17:28, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, and have been removing some stubs as the occasion arises.
Urhixidur 21:40, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
Except for some additions, like source of name, these articles are as complete as possible. I'll still have check many of them for extra information, but I don't think that any casual editor will touch them. So I agree, it may be better to unstub them. --Jyril 21:51, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
I've put in a bot request to do this job Wikipedia:Bot_requests LukeSurl 18:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Different sources give different names of several asteroids

  • Asteroid 7214 1973 SM1, some sources give the name as Anticlus, while others give as Antielus.
  • Asteroid 8932 1997 AR4, some sources give the name as Nagatomo, while others give as Nagamoto.
  • Asteroid 11264 1979 UC4, some sources give the name as Claudiomaccone, while others give as Claudimaccone.
  • Asteroid 14428 1991 VM12, some sources give the name as Laziridis, while others give as Lazaridis.
  • Asteroid 20495 1999 PW4, some sources give the name as Rimanska Sobota, while others give as Rimavska Sobota.

Which ones are the correct names? -- Yaohua2000 04:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I did some additional research on asteroid 8932. JPL Horizons and [1] gives a name of Nagatomo, but [2] gives Nagamoto. I don't speak Japanese, but I can read some according to my Chinese knowledge. After some research on Google, I found the corresponding Japanese name of Nagatomo or Nagamoto is 長友信人[3], the asteroid was discoverred by 小林隆男. I googled the keyword "長友信人" "Nagatomo" and get 31 results, while "長友信人" "Nagamoto" get only 3 results. So I think the correct translation might be Nagatomo. -- Yaohua2000 05:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Once a while an asteroid may be renamed. The MPC link is always up to date.--Jyril 10:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New lists for asteroids number > 100,000

I've changed the title to a much friendly form: List of asteroids/$from–$to, and removed provisional designation column for named asteroids, add discovery site column, and i suggest to use its latin names rather than unicode names in the lists (however they can be used in their own articles), i don't know where the unicode names from (only a link in asteroid article), first, many sources only gives its latin form, unicode names is difficult to verify if it is correct, second, i found some conflicts in their names, different sources gives different names, maintain such lists, and make them correct is not a easy work.

If you have any suggestions, leave your word here. Thanks. -- Yaohua2000 05:55, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I like that, now URLs are easier to read. Hovewer, I'd keep the provisional designation column since it is needed for asteroids that have been named. I don't think the discovery site column is needed. And finally, see how discoverers are wikilinked. That makes the page less massive.--Jyril 10:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
No, the official names of asteroids are Unicode, not Latin. See the talk page of Meanings of asteroid names for details.
Urhixidur 19:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Oops, I didn't answer the first message carefully enough. Of course the names must be Unicode.--Jyril 00:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Date wikilinks

I wonder, do we really need wikilinks in the date columns? Removing the links could make the pages slightly easier for the servers to load.--Jyril 00:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] how was this made

How'd you guys get this done? a bot? wow!--Urthogie 21:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Several large Excel spreadsheets, with clever formulae. Mostly my work. Urhixidur 02:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
How do the formalae work? Sagittarian Milky Way 03:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] So many pages

Do we really need an article for every asteroid. Surely 950_Ahrensa or 976 Benjamina are not notable. I think very few of these are notable. Couldn't they just be combined into one large page for every thousand asteroids?--God Ω War 04:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice if someone would make a bot to merge these more easily.--God Ω War 23:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible precedent setting action

Contributors to this list may want to look to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/17823 Bartels, which will impact many of the lists linked here. I have no strong feelings on this topic, but suspect some of you may have... Williamborg (Bill) 05:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move

Since it seems nobody oppose in the discussion above, so could anyone move these articles to "List of minor planets/..."? Yao Ziyuan 20:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subpages no longer enabled in article namespace

The subpages feature has long been disabled for pages that are in the main article namespace, as this one is, and according to our subpages guideline we aren't supposed to be "using subpages for permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopedia." (Wikipedia:Subpages#Disallowed uses). According to this all these asteroid list articles are incorrectly titled, and since redirects of the form List of asteroids (1-1000) already exist anyway I'm going to move them over to that form tomorrow. I figured I should give a heads-up here before doing something that major, though, just in case there was an objection I was overlooking. Bryan Derksen 20:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Umm...What move were you contemplating? Sub-pages are very handy for large lists such as the asteroid one. It took a long time for wikipedians (well, mostly me) to break the lists up into slices of a hundred. We're talking about nearly 1600 sub-pages, here. Think carefully. Urhixidur 01:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2000 CR105

This is the actual name of one of the Oort cloud´s objects, In the page Oort cloud and 2000 CR105 it says that this object does not have a provisional name like (87269) 2000 OO67. In this case, How can I or anyone else find it in the List of asteroids?? ?? 19:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

2000 CR105 is the provisional designation. The object has not been numbered yet (insufficient observations to ascertain the orbit to the requisite level), and hence is omitted from Wikipedia's list of (numbered) asteroids. There are currently about 217,000 un-numbered objects, about 37% more than the set of numbered ones. Urhixidur 01:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why???

What type of person would:

  • give a damn
  • want to write these pages
  • waste their time writing these pages

--Drkshadowmaster 06:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

  • It's raw scientific data. It is important because it is. It's not a waste of time. Much more important than who slept with whom on this week's episode of some tv show or similar. And yet people "waste" their time on those articles. -Nard 07:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not the raw data, exactly. The raw data is the observations, and our sources are the reports. But this is basic verifiable data about the material structure of the universe, and therefore significant intrinsically. These are the things that thousands of people care about and study as a profession or a hobby. Let the television people write their articles, as far as I'm concerned--they have every right, and I won't go around making fun of them. And we expect the same tolerance and understanding. DGG (talk) 22:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps it has not occurred to Drkshadowmaster that amateur astronomers should help keep track of these many objects in perpetuity. With the early unnoticed result of billiard collisions vectoring them in our direction, the Earth might eventually risk a When Worlds Collide science fiction disaster reality. Milo 03:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page moved

I moved this page to "list of minor planets" as requested; the old page is at List of minor planets/archive. The moving and editing of the hundreds of subpages is best done with a bot, but at least this is a start. -- Beland (talk) 07:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Pluto is a (wiki) asteroid now! :-) -- Kheider (talk) 22:47, 21 May 2008 (UTC)