Talk:Lunar and Planetary Institute

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[edit] DATA?

It would be very useful to have on this page either:

  • 1. A table of data for lunar and planetary bodies
 OR
  • 2. A link (or a better advertised link) to similar elsewhere

What I would like to see is data for:

  • main planets
  • larger asteroids
  • Kuiper belt objects regarded as planets (or 'Dwarf' Planets)
  • larger moons

As a general principal of clarity I would not expect lesser bodies to be shown - the data is availiable elsewhere after all.

Information that would be useful would be:

  • basic orbital data - eccentricity, distance from the sun's centre, or for moon's from their parent planet's centre (mean, max and min or similar), siderial year or again equivalent for moons
  • mass
  • radius
  • axial tilt - if known
  • orbital inclination - relative to Earth's orbit may be useful for observers, though again planetary emphemerides are avaliable elsewhere.
  • brief notes about atmosphere and composition - a few words only
  • symbol - if one exists

Units used should be SI or astronomical - not imperial - as an engineer in a previous life I realise both systems have advantages and have no axe to grind, but the majority of the world use metric units.

These are just ideas, I am a trained astronomer and astro-physicist but its not my profession, and I am not even sure if this is the best place in the wikipedia for it - it seems best not to do this myself but to put it out for discussion! What I envisage is information that a scientist, engineer or enthusiast might want for 'back of an envelope' work during coffee break. All of this can be found elsewhere but its not well laid out (or I didn't find the best source on Wikipedia) perhaps a new article called 'planetary and lunar data' with a link here would be best!?--Eek10bears 14:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)