Talk:1 Ceres

Following [1] (Jan 9, 1998) the density of Ceres is only 1.98 ± 0.03 grams per cubic centimeter. Is this more recent/fiable than the current one?

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How is density computed/defined in this context, anyway? It does not seem to equal mass / volume (which would give 1.65 g/cm³)!

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The value for the surface area is obviously wrong. A sphere with diameter 932 km has got about 2,728,860 km² surface area, something that is not a sphere has even a greater surface area. I think we don't need the surface area here, one can calculate it approximately from the diameter. 193.171.121.30 19:38, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Minor Planet Template

Before I go off converting the rest of the asteroids, let's make sure I got the template right. This one conserves all the data in the previous table, and adds some fields. The one annoying limitation of templates, it seems, is that an embedded link cannot be aliased; for example, if I were to replace the current {{Minor Planet | orbit=413.949 Gm (2.767 [[AU]]) ... with {{Minor Planet | orbit=413.949 Gm (2.767 [[Astronomical Unit|AU]]) ..., the display breaks at the pipe right after "Unit". Until this Wikibug is fixed, we'll have to live with somewhat lesser-looking links.

I use a Delphi 8 applet I wrote that browses the oft-updated AstOrb.dat (available from http://asteroid.lowell.edu/); it has a button that grabs the data, computes some and spits out the template wiki-code to the clipboard. I only need to fiddle with it and add a few things such as the discovery and alternate designations data (which I get from http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/moc/index.html).

Urhixidur 02:48, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC)

The link for "spectral class" goes to spectral classification, which is all about stars. Before it went to spectral class, which is a disambiguation page.

Probably there should be a separate asteroid spectral class page... and it should be created before changing all the templates.

Also "rotation period" should be "rotation period", and "revolution period" should be "orbital period".

"Category" is unlinked, I wonder if there's some useful link it could point to. Right now the relevant information is on the "Minor planet" page. Maybe the Minor planet page should be renamed to "Minor planet families" or something, and the new "minor planet" page should be much smaller and should link to "minor planet groups" and various other links.

-- Curps 04:29, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Periods - done. Spectral classification - now links to [[Asteroid#Spectral classification]]. Category - now links to Minor planet (which is nearly all about asteroid categories anyway).

Urhixidur 12:15, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC)