Talk:Eris (dwarf planet)

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Featured articleEris (dwarf planet) is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Featured topic starEris (dwarf planet) is part of the Solar System series, a featured topic. It is also part of the Dwarf planets series, a featured topic. These are identified as among the best series of articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve them, please do so.
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On this day... Article milestones
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February 18, 2006Featured article candidateNot promoted
September 15, 2006Good article reassessmentDelisted
September 27, 2006Good article nomineeListed
November 7, 2006Featured topic candidatePromoted
May 18, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
May 22, 2007Featured article candidatePromoted
August 27, 2008Featured topic candidatePromoted
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On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on January 5, 2007, January 5, 2008, January 5, 2009, January 5, 2010, January 5, 2014, January 5, 2020, and January 5, 2023.
Current status: Featured article

Untitled

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Caption

Hi. Maybe someone here can edit the infobox image caption. My edit failed. -SusanLesch (talk) 21:19, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You changed the alt text but not the caption. I don't think that's a photo, so I changed both to 'image'. — kwami (talk) 01:17, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

3rd symbol

A 3rd astrological symbol for Eris that's really for Proserpina might seem like trivia, but people will see it and not realize the implied claim (of an astrological prediction confirmed by astronomy), and it might be proposed to Unicode as a symbol for Eris (thankfully that didn't happen when the two current symbols were proposed), so IMO it should be checkable here. (And NASA's used the hand-of-Eris symbol, so these aren't just astrology.) — kwami (talk) 01:05, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Ceres (dwarf planet) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 08:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Can I please change the image to something new. In my opinion, it's better than this one. Kortana Jose Matez (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 02:19, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

infobox image

I just reverted an infobox image change because the caption no longer matched the image. The (current) image is a photograph from Hubble, the image I removed is an "artists impression" (i.e., painting). Certainly the requested image is more interesting, the question is whether an artists impression is better suited to an infobox than an actual photograph. Tarl N. (discuss) 19:46, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

AFAICT consensus has long been that we use single (best?) or composite natural-color photos when available for the infobox. Color-enhanced, artificial color (e.g. UV and IR composite) and B&W photos would be second choice. Artistic impressions, if sourced to a RS and not outdated, so they agree as closely as possible to current knowledge, are fine for the text, just not the info box, because they invariably introduce fictitious elements. — kwami (talk) 00:56, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Kwami. Wasn't sure what the policy was, sounds like we are where we need to be. Tarl N. (discuss) 07:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I asked at WP astronomy. I'd expect it's spelled out somewhere, but I have no idea where. Could be an informal consensus. — kwami (talk) 07:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Tarl N.: Addressed at WP:ASTROART. — kwami (talk) 18:35, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The images in question: File:Eris and dysnomia2.jpg, File:ESO-L. Calçada - Eso1142c (by).jpg

Plutoid

ArkHyena has recently removed the reference to the term plutoid.[1] In their edit summary, they raise a valid point, namely that the term is hardly, if ever, used in literature. While I think they are correct in principle, I am not sure whether removing it from the article altogether is the right choice.

The category of plutoid was introduced by IAU in 2008, to refer to dwarf planets in the outer Solar System. Following the announcement of the term by the IAU Executive Committee, it came to light that there was substantial disagreement among other parts of IAU (most notably the WG-PSN), who rejected the term. See Dwarf_planet#Name for details. This, it would seem, contributed to the term never becoming widely used in the scientific literature. While the IAU seems to have stopped using it, the definition is still technically valid. As far as I know, the 2008 decision was never reverted or amended.

There are reliable, recently published sources that use the definition, in connection to Eris or in general. Confining the list to books or articles published by Springer, there is A Guide to Hubble Space Telescope Objects from 2015: Eris, which orbits far beyond Neptune, is a plutoid while Ceres, which orbits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is a dwarf planet.[2] Another one, Asteroids, Comets, and Other Non-Planetary Objects[3] from 2018, says that Plutoid, meaning “resembling Pluto,” is an alternative name for a dwarf planet, while the 2019 book Classifying the Cosmos[4] (p.60) says that In honor of Pluto, dwarf planets beyond Neptune’s orbit are sometimes termed “plutoids,” though the term is not in common usage. Does this mean it should be kept out of the Wikipedia article entirely? Renerpho (talk) 07:28, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To go into more detail on my position and why I believe "plutoid" is best removed (or at the very least, not a necessary term to include) does hinge on its absence in literature and public usage, but how it is a redundant term as well.
Though there are occasional RS's that use the term (as per your examples), it still remains the case that RS's that use "plutoid" are overwhelmingly a decade old, with only sporadic usage past 2012 or so. This came from a cursory search on Google Scholar that I did, so no doubt there are ones that I may have missed and ones that aren't quality sources, but I doubt it's enough either way to change the equation. Now, it would be fine if "plutoid" was in common usage despite its occasional—at best!—appearances in literature, but this is also evidently not the case. To my knowledge, no popular science outlet has used "plutoid" since 2010, and the IAU themselves appear to have all but forgotten/abandoned the term themselves. Many astronomy glossaries, including Wikipedia's own, do not include "plutoid" (though those glossaries generally don't include more specific terms broadly, so this may not be as relevant).
Furthermore, the term is arguably pretty much redundant. The more common terms I see are simply "trans-Neptunian (dwarf) planet" or "Kuiper belt (dwarf) planet" or some variant thereof, e.g. an LPI abstract Evaluating Trans-Neptunian Dwarf Planets as Targets for an Interstellar Probe Flyby[5] or an article Geologically Diverse Pluto and Charon: Implications for the Dwarf Planets of the Kuiper Belt.[6] The IAU proposed the term to differentiate the newly-discovered trans-Neptunian dwarf planets from Ceres and any other candidate inner System dwarf planets. However, there generally is no strong consensus for any need to set a hard dividing line between Ceres and dwarf planet TNOs, especially since it has been revealed that Ceres itself is an icy object, making all consensus dwarf planets plus Orcus, Charon, and Salacia icy worlds. This makes the term redundant geophysically speaking. Dynamically speaking, the term is again redundant; astronomers seem to prefer the aforementioned "trans-Neptunian dwarf planet" as we already have a broad dynamical class where all consensus DPs except Ceres are members.
Ultimately, usage of the term "plutoid" seems to be analogous to the term "cis-Neptunian object"; both are defined terms that see sporadic usage, but neither truly do anything to improve/clarify communication of astronomy topics or reflect actual terminology used by astronomers. ArkHyena (talk) 19:45, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may not be common, but it is a used term from the IAU to Britannica to the OED to classes at UCLA within the past two years. If it's archaic we state it as such. We certainly don't use it in the lead but rather in the main prose. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:56, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's certainly fair, and any descriptive clarification of its usage wouldn't hurt. But beyond discussing the history of TNO terminology, is its inclusion even warranted or useful? ArkHyena (talk) 20:06, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Date format in dwarf planet articles

An IP user has recently attempted to change the date format in this article to DMY, which was reverted by ArkHyena.[7] I have no personal preference, but I like consistency, and I like to consider whether a change has merit before it is reverted. While the revert was technically correct, given the preferred date format (MDY) that's stated in the header, I wonder why we treat the articles in Wikipedia:Featured topics/Dwarf planets (plus Orcus, which is currently discussed to be included) so differently:

Six articles use DMY, three use MDY. What sets Eris, Makemake and Pluto apart from the others? I can understand using DMY for those articles that simultaneously ask for British English (this is preferred for Ceres, according to its header), but the others? Mixing American English with DMY seems weird, even random to me.

We can, of course, decide this on a per-article basis, but if we treat it as a coin toss then why did the edit have to be reverted? Renerpho (talk) 18:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I myself cannot give a definitive answer, as the articles that have had date formats set were decided long before I joined and began editing. If I had to fancy a guess, Pluto uses MDY and American English due to its close association as "America's planet," so to speak: it was the only one of the "old nine" to be discovered and confirmed entirely by Americans, its binary companion and at least two of its four small moons were all discovered by American-led teams, and the only mission to date was sent by NASA. Most of the uproar against Pluto's reclassification in 2006 appears to come from the U.S. This may arguably fall under MOS:DATETIES, although I would personally strongly object to applying DATETIES (and similar guidelines) to any celestial object. All other dwarf planets are much less clear, and honestly seem to be chance cases of MOS:DATEUNIFY, where the earliest versions (and thus, editor consensus) of some articles were in MDY and others in DMY.
As a side note, I would argue against suggesting or advising articles that use American English to adhere to MDY. I myself am a native American English speaker and I much prefer DMY formats :) Additionally, some non-native English-speaking editors may have learnt English through American media, despite hailing from regions that don't use MDY. ArkHyena (talk) 18:48, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ArkHyena: I personally use YYYY-MM-DD whenever I get the chance. ;-) Haumea has recently been changed by the same IP you reverted. The rest looks like it's been like this for a while. Renerpho (talk) 18:59, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fair! In either case, I don't believe the date inconsistency between dwarf planet articles is a major issue to readers—at least, I hope not. Regardless of date format, it seems all articles manage to convey timelines of relevant events clearly enough and in a self-consistent (within a given article) manner. ArkHyena (talk) 22:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Renerpho. Use ISO dates for all scientific articles. By the time something gets into the encyclopedia, the month and day are hardly important, so the year should come first. As a side benefit, the Brits and the Yanks will be equally unhappy. — kwami (talk) 00:57, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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