Talk:Asteroid

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

What's missing?

Hi Praemonitus, XOR'easter, ComplexRational, Nsae Comp! (I picked several people who either edit this article recently or some other astronomy-related ones.) I tried to update and rewrite the article that was heavily outdated, unsourced and just noot that good. I'd like to bring it eventually to GA, but right now I get stuck - maybe you can tell me what can be added/updated/rewritten so the article can be better? (I know that some sections are still poorly sourced, I would work on it when I'll have time.) I would be grateful for any comments you (or anybody else, of course) can give. Artem.G (talk) 17:24, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for including me. I had now a quick look and attended mainly to the lead images which were a bit overloading and without purpose/concept. Other than that I didnt have time to look into it. But it would be a nice project to participate to get this rather straight forward article to higher standards. Nsae Comp (talk) 18:55, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks, Nsae Comp, it would be great to work on this together! Artem.G (talk) 11:36, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Well I've only had a brief time to look it over, but a few thoughts come to mind:

• It might be in need of a tactical re-org; some statements appear to belong in other sections.

• It would be great if you can point me what statements you think should be relocated. Artem.G (talk) 18:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

• The IAU definition of an asteroid is missing.

• There is no official definition by IAU, I've added two sentences to clarify it (with refs)

• The topic of formation is covered by the Asteroid belt article, so what parts need to be mentioned here? Perhaps it needs a more tactical discussion?

• 'Formation' section is really small here, and I think it's needed for such an 'overview'-article. Do you think it should be trimmed or expanded?

• How did asteroid discovery change in 1998? Perhaps we need a section on modern ground-based exploration including radar mapping and the Vera Rubin Observatory.
• How is information about asteroids obtained, such as rotation, size, mass, and shape modelling? What new information is obtained via infrared observation?
• It can talk about meteorites and how their source asteroids are determined. For example, the source for the Chicxulub impactor.
• It could describe active asteroids to clarify whether they are asteroids or comets (or both).

• Added

• There is no mention of the yorp effect, which could be covered in the rotation section.
• Were the Martian moons originally asteroids?

• Added

I'm sure there are more. Praemonitus (talk) 21:09, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks, Praemonitus! I would try to address it all soon, your comments are really useful. Artem.G (talk) 11:36, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Artem.G. I might be able to do minor copyediting or add the occasional citation, but I don't have time to offer detailed feedback for several weeks. If you're still working on it then, I'll gladly join in, and ping me again if need be. ComplexRational (talk) 20:15, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Sure, it would be great to have any feedback from you when you'll have time! Artem.G (talk) 18:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Where did the size distribution table come from? Is it just another holdover from the days when people were like, "I'm an astronomy nerd with a database, so I'll calculate numbers and put them into Wikipedia"? XOR'easter (talk) 21:37, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

XOR, thanks for looking at the article! If you're talking about this small table - I don't know the source, it's probably from times immemorial. I'll try to find some modern sources on sizes distribution, though I'm not even sure that such table is useful. Artem.G (talk) 08:20, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Yep, that's the one. I usually see that kind of information presented as a graph, maybe with some fit parameters. XOR'easter (talk) 16:12, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

It looks like it was adapted from Fig 4 from Ref 81, that was really presented as a graph. Would try to find a newer reference, not from 2011. Artem.G (talk) 18:23, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Huh. I added Ref. 81 yesterday, figuring that it might be a little outdated but not too much so for the big picture. So the table came from reading numbers off a graph in a source that wasn't even in the article? XOR'easter (talk) 19:06, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Hm, I checked the numbers and no, it's not the source (I looked from mobile, and thought that I remembered the numbers in the table - turned out I didn't.) I think the table can be deleted, this size distribution is only a model, and I think not widely discussed one. Quick search didn't give me any newer source, but I'll check few more books. Artem.G (talk) 19:33, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I've removed it for the time being. XOR'easter (talk) 20:47, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Approximate number of asteroids (N) larger than a certain diameter (D)

D	0.1 km	0.3 km	0.5 km	1 km	3 km	5 km	10 km	30 km	50 km	100 km	200 km	300 km	500 km	900 km
N	25000000	4000000	2000000	750000	200000	90000	10000	1100	600	200	30	5	3	1

Spoken WP

starting work on a spoken version -- Vonfraginoff (talk) 15:48, 6 March 2024 (UTC)