Talk:Mercury (planet)

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[edit] (fact)

I reworded the intro somewhat, hopefully for the better, and added two fact tags: I've always seen the symbol for Mercury described as Hermes' caduceus, not the caduceus plus head and hat, and the Sumerian name looks like it might have lumped phonograms and determinatives together. kwami (talk) 06:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

What is up with all the attacks today? Have the vandals decid to target this page? Or some school asked about a paper on mercury and they are venting their frustrations. Should we request a semi-prot? Samuel Sol (talk) 19:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean today? 3 days ago there were 8 attacks. But I'll protect it if you like. kwami (talk) 19:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
I reverted the page at least once today. Other editors reverted more (I remember two at least). It looks calmer now, so it may not be necessary. But I will keep an eye if it continues. Samuel Sol (talk) 19:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other Language Names

Basing myself on this comment during Neptune's FAC. I'm removing from the main article the foreign names of the planet. And copying it below.

The Greeks of Hesiod's time called it Stilbon ("the gleaming") and Hermaon.
In India, the planet was named Budha (बुध), after the son of Chandra (the Moon). The Chinese and Sinoxenic cultures know the planet as the "water star" (水星), after one of the Five Elements. The Hebrews named it Kokhav Hamah (כוכב חמה), "star of the hot one" ("the hot one" being the Sun).
Our name for the planet comes from the Romans, who named it after the Roman god Mercury, which they equated with the Greek Hermes and the Babylonian Nabu.

Samuel Sol (talk) 17:07, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I left the part on the body, although I'm not sure it belongs in the article. More comments about ancient observations would be awarented(sp?). Samuel Sol (talk) 17:21, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I'll see if I can find anything useful... Kaldari (talk) 17:35, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Still on the name, I'm not sure about using Planets as source. Is it reliable? Samuel Sol (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, strangely that was the best source I could find on the Sumerian names of all the planets. I'll see if I can find something better. Kaldari (talk) 19:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

(<-) Nice new source mate. Just to be sure, book? Journal? To update to the the cite template. Samuel Sol (talk) 20:11, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Beat you to it :) That one took some digging, BTW, but apparently it is the definitive source. Kaldari (talk) 20:15, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Sweet. Well done mate. Damn work and most of the internet blocked :P Samuel Sol (talk) 20:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

A note for future editors: Some sources (including the NASA source) precede the Sumerian transcription with "MUL". "MUL" was a symbol used by the Sumerians to designate that they were referring to a star or planet, but it is not considered part of the actual name. Some sources superscript it like so: MULUDU.IDIM.GU4.UD. Also, the "4" is a reference number in the Sumero-Akkadian Transliteration system to designate which of several syllables a certain Sumerian sign is most likely designating. Some sources list the Sumerian name as simply "Udu-idum-gu-ud", which is basically correct. The version I have used in the article is exactly how it is printed in the original Hunger and Pingree article (which is considered the definitive source on the matter). Kaldari (talk) 20:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, while Hunger and Pingree translate the name as "the jumping planet", a strictly literal translation would be more like "wild sheep, bull/steer of the sun". Although since there are apparently a million different ways to translate Sumerian, I think "the jumping planet" is as good as it gets. Kaldari (talk) 20:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I added a shorter version of the note above to the article notes, since I think it might be useful to people actually researching the historical names. Kaldari (talk) 21:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Kaldari. That answers my concern about someone mixing up determinatives with phonograms. By the way, the Chinese name was correct, at least for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. — kwami (talk) 09:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and in Japanese, Wednesday is literally 'water day' - an apparent loan translation. — kwami (talk) 09:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] vandalism

It seems that every hour this article pops up on my watch list with s.o. reverting vandalism. It's FA - shouldn't it have some minimal protection? — kwami (talk) 18:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Earliest records of Mercury

Our article currently says that Mercury has been known since the 3rd millennium BC, but we don't provide any reference for this statement. The MUL.APIN record referenced in the citation I added only dates back to about 1370 B.C. Anyone know of earlier records than that? Kaldari (talk) 23:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

After doing some more digging, I'm afraid our entire section on Sumerian and Babylonian records of Mercury may be wrong. The earliest record of Mercury I can track down is from the MUL.APIN, which dates to c. 1400 BCE. By that time, the Sumerians were long gone and the Babylonians were running things. According to our article, the MUL.APIN it is a record of "Babylonian astrology", not Sumerian. The MUL.APIN tablets are written in the Sumerian language, however, which may be the source of the confusion. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the history of the Sumerians and Babylonians to feel comfortable rewriting the paragraph. Also, I don't know if this is the actual first record of Mercury or not. Sources on this issue seem to be virtually non-existant. Can anyone offer some assistance in sorting this out? Kaldari (talk) 21:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I tried cleaning up the wording of this section a bit. Someone needs to add info on the Mayas knowledge of Mercury as well. Kaldari (talk) 20:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Still FA?

Parts of this article look like they would not survive a FAC. There are long stretches of facts with no citations to back them up and the citations are not properly formatted. I'm also seeing a few stub paragraphs. This may need an FAR soon.—RJH (talk) 21:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. This article has undergone a lot of revision since it was promoted to FA two years ago, especially due to the recent MESSENGER fly-by. It could use some clean-up and additional citations. I've tried to clean-up the Magnetic field and (sup) Ancient astronomers sections, but there are still areas that need more help. The first four paragraphs of the Orbit and rotation section for example, have no citations at all. Kaldari (talk) 18:43, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks.—RJH (talk) 21:47, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

The mean temperature is listed as 452 K; but the Mercury fact sheet lists 440 K. I'm not sure where the 452 came from and that makes the other temperature values dubious.—RJH (talk) 21:47, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

If this article is demoted, who do you anticipate will do the work required to return it to FA status? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.70.90.206 (talk) 23:44, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
There are several dedicated individuals in Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects and Wikipedia:WikiProject Solar System who have performed much work bringing the Solar System articles up to FA. (See Wikipedia:Featured topics/Solar System.) But once a page reaches FA, I think it still needs regular upkeep to keep it at that level.—RJH (talk) 15:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Age of Mercury

How old is Mercury? The articles on Sun and Earth claim their respective ages to be nearly same 4-5 billion years. So I guess, Mercury too must be a twin.Anwar (talk) 20:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC) Rocks on Mercury have not been available, so no direct answer can be given. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.41.51.240 (talk) 11:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Obliquity

The source cited for the axial tilt gives a value of "~0", rather than 0.01 as listed in the article body. So it is unclear where that value came from. The conclusion of the following reference gives a value of 1.6 arcminutes for the mean obliquity:

Rambaux, N.; Bois, E. (2004). "Theory of the Mercury's spin-orbit motion and analysis of its main librations". Astronomy & Astrophysics 413: 381–393. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20031446. 

That would correspond to 0.027°. Does anybody have a better reference? If not perhaps the article should use the above? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I wonder what is wrong with the doi field that it doesn't complete the URL properly?—RJH (talk)

I added two sources that list the axial tilt as approaching zero - a JPL page that lists it as zero, and a journal that lists Mercury as having "No axial tilt". Whether that means "No appreciable axial tilt" is unclear. Let me look at this ref and see if I can correlate the three. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 19:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
1.6 arcminutes is pretty close to no axial tilt; that's near the limit of resolution of the human eye. But it's still good to be accurate.—RJH (talk) 19:43, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely. I'm shifting refs now. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 19:46, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Greek letters

Multiple astronomy articles present ancient Greek names for the objects, including Sirius, Venus, Mars, &c. For some reason, editor "Rubble pile" has taken a special interest in removing the Greek name from this article. Is there a consensus for the removal of the Greek name from this page in particular? I do think we should have a consistent policy about this across wikipedia. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 15:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Can't see a reason to delete them. Serendipodous 16:06, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I see no need to include the original names in Greek rather than the transliterations. Seems like trivia to me rather than encyclopedic content. We don't include the native name of the planet in any other languages, why Greek? Besides, we only seem to have one of the original Greek names anyway (the planet had two names in Greek). Kaldari (talk) 16:15, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Patently untrue. Venus#Venus_in_human_culture, Mars#Historical_connections, Jupiter#Human_culture and Saturn#History_and_exploration list the planetary name in multiple languages, including Greek. The names are present because they were culturally important.—RJH (talk) 18:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Aren't we talking about Mercury here? Besides, the transliteration is completely adequate for our uses. Why would we need to also list it in the native script? What's wrong with just listing the Greek names as Stilbon and Hermaon? I don't suspect that many of the people reading this article can actually read Greek script. Kaldari (talk) 18:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread your message. *sigh* However, there are still numerous examples of both the original greek and the transliteration (such as Galaxy and Milky Way) If a reason is needed, then I suppose for fact checking of the transliteration and also for consistent web searches. I see no problem with including both.—RJH (talk) 18:59, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Isn't the fact that we only have a native Greek version of one of the names a problem? Anyone know how to write Hermaon in Greek script? Kaldari (talk) 19:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
And don't forget the cuneiform letters for the Babylonian name in the previous paragraph.Rubble pile (talk) 19:35, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Good luck with that one! Kaldari (talk) 19:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
If we find a means to include the alternative Greek name, then I see no reason not to do so. I've seen articles with two forms. Likewise, the Sirius article includes the heiroglyphic version of it's name. I'm sure there is somebody out there who could supply the Babylonian rune in time. So I'm still not seeing a problem, as long as we're consistent.—RJH (talk) 22:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
We're not consistent at all. Some articles have planet names in Kanji, some have Greek, some have nothing but English transliterations. Even within this one article, we're not consistent. We have the native Greek version of one Greek name, a transliteration for another Greek name, and the Anglicized versions for 2 more Greek names. If you want consistency, I would suggest reverting back to Rubble pile's edit as a good start. Also, it's trivial information. An English encyclopedia article doesn't need the cuniform, hieroglyphic, Greek, Kanji, and Braille versions of every planet name. If you want that, we should start a list article to list all of them, not just the one or two that seem interesting to us. Kaldari (talk) 22:51, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Furthermore, statements such as "the planet is called X in Greek" should be cited to a reliable source. If the reliable source gives a transliteration of the Greek we can trust it to be an accurate transliteration. Hence, we would only need the Greek letters "for fact checking of the transliteration" if the reliable source didn't provide one. Rubble pile (talk) 00:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
If anyone is still interested, Hermaon (a variant form of Hermes) is the transliterated version of Ἑρμάων. Reference: H.G. Liddell and R. Scott; rev. H.S. Jones and R. McKenzie (1996). Greek–English Lexicon, with a Revised Supplement, 9th edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p690. ISBN 0-19-864226-1.  --Dr pda (talk) 11:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. Unfortunately the font set on my PC isn't displaying the first character properly.—RJH (talk) 14:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[De-indenting] Citing to a reliable source is a different issue than removing the Greek name because a transliteration exists. The citation issue is a problem for much of this article. In other astronomy articles the citation does exist. Simply adding a {{Fact}} tag should suffice for now.

Yes we should be more consistent. No I don't agree that deleting the name is the best way to achieve that. I would like this discussion to include the people who put the Greek name there in the first place. At this point I don't think we have enough opinions to form a proper consensus.—RJH (talk) 15:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't really object to the Greek so long as we're actually consistant, and it doesn't turn into a list of names in other languages. Kaldari (talk) 15:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether there's a consensus on that, but perhaps this whole issue should be covered in the MoS? Sometimes the names in other languages have historical cultural aspects (such as Arabic names of stars), so it probably makes sense to include them. But just copying a name that's already in the Languages box along the left wouldn't make sense otherwise.—RJH (talk) 15:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
The name Mercury is taken from the Roman Mercurius, which was in turn adapted from the Greek Hermes, which was in turn adapted from the Babylonian equivalent whose name I can't remember. So yes I'd say that the Greek name for Mercury is of encyclopedic import. Serendipodous 15:07, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
I've cleaned up the wording a bit in the article. Let me know if that looks acceptable to everyone. Kaldari (talk) 17:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
It looks good to me. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 16:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Geology of Mercury

If the problem of the geology section is one of comprehensiveness, then surely the Geology of Mercury article should be re-merged back into this one? Serendipodous 20:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that might go a little far, but there's definitely some good material there that can be added here. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 01:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I've added some items (and refs) from the Geology article to expand this one. Some of the paragraphs were redundant - obviously this article was paraphrased from that one - but the structure was helpful. I also split the temperature items from Geology, and combined them with Atmosphere for a "Surface Conditions" section. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 13:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] August 2006 Version

Just for reference here is the August 25th 2006 version. It only used 23 references. -- Kheider (talk) 03:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

For comparison, we just broke 100 references today. Considering that this article was promoted in May 2006, that's impressive. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 14:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Internal Structure

This section seems to be the biggest challenge, apart from the magnetosphere. It's tagged for cleanup and expansion, but I can't see a real good way to expand it. Most of the items I'd add are already referred to under Surface Geology and similar sections, so no need to duplicate those items here. As for cleanup, everything is referenced, and the section flows linearly from crust to core. Any ideas on how to clear these tags? UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 14:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see how it could be expanded. It seems fine to me. Serendipodous 17:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Observation section

could probably do with an image like this, since it focuses on naked eye observation. The transit image was better suited to the ground based telescope section. As for the extra Mariner 10 image, I couldn't find a place for it, so I ditched it, if that's OK. Serendipodous 17:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The only public domain(ish) image like that I can find is a photo in a NASA article here. Would that work? UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 18:24, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
It's difficult to know, since it's probably copyright of the photographer. Still, if its status can be determined I think it would work. Serendipodous 18:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
  • The Xackobo image was taken on 2002-May-04 when Mercury was in the evening sky with an elognation from the Sun of 20.9°, APmag 0.40, 0.85AU from Earth, Phase: 38%.
  • The NASA (Jeff Beal) image on 2006-Feb-13 was also in the evening sky with an elognation from the Sun of only 12.9°, APmag -1.07, 1.21AU from Earth, Phase: 88%. (Maximum elognation during that orbit was 2006-Feb-24 at 18.1°.)

If all else fails I can get a picture of it on July 1st (elognation 21.8°) with my Canon EOS 300D using a Canon EF 50mm lens. -- Kheider (talk) 19:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

That'd be the best option, I think. I can't tell if the Bulgarian image is free or not, but I'm reasonably certain that the NASA image isn't. It'd be nice to have a free image for that section. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 19:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "lobate-shaped colour units"

Does anyone have a clue what that means? Serendipodous 22:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

...Lobe-ish, maybe? It's unclear. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 15:17, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Lobate-shaped means it has a lobe, as in a lava flow. I'm not sure what the "colour units" was meant to communicate, but perhaps the ground has a different hue than the surroundings? I've sometimes seen that on moon shots when the surface colors get exaggerated.[1] Still, it's pretty unclear.—RJH (talk) 17:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
As I can remember this referes to the results of Mariner's 10 image reprocessing. It showed that some units in the smooth planes have lobate shapes resembling lava flows. This units are slightly different in color from their surroundings. Ruslik (talk) 18:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing note

Sorry if this is obvious to everyone else, but this note seems a bit hard to parse: "1/30 is the fractional equivalent to 2.1′." Perhaps it would make more sense if it were written out, like "1/30 of a degree is the fractional equivalent to 2.1 arcminutes." Kaldari (talk) 19:21, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

That would make a great deal more sense. No objection from me. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 19:43, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Done. Kaldari (talk) 20:27, 6 June 2008 (UTC)