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Wikipedia:Peer review/Asteroid belt/archive2

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Asteroid belt

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I'd appreciate any feedback you might have on how to further improve this page. The one area I'm having difficulty is in finding a good scientific source for why the concept of a destroyed planet (forming the belt) is now disfavored. Thank you. — RJH (talk) 19:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey RJH, I'm no expert in astronomy related topics, in fact I don't think I'd even make it as a novice, so take these suggestions with a grain of salt.

  • The asteroid belt is a region of the solar system falling roughly between the planets Mars and Jupiter where the greatest concentration of asteroid orbits can be found. How about the region instead of a region? Also, located instead of falling?
    • Done.
  • The next sentence introduces the term minor planets and uses it in place of asteroid orbits. It's a bit odd that we have separate articles on these terms when both articles state the terms are interchangeable. This may not be a problem (I didn't completely read both articles), and is probably outside of the scope of this article, but is it possible to at least clarify this a little between these two sentences to avoid confusing readers?
    • Good point. I added merge tags to the asteroid and minor planet articles since they are highly redundant.
      • Ok, so should existing links in the article to 'minor planet' be replaced with links to 'asteroid'?
        • I removed the links and clarified in the lead section that the two mean the same thing in this instance.
  • The 98.5% statistic makes the greatest concentration claim in the first sentence a bit redundant doesn't it? Is it worth just merging the two sentences?
    • Done.
  • most of the surviving material was swept out of the region. This wasn't clear at all until I read that only about 0.1% of the original belt remains. Can this be cleared up somehow?
    • I tried to, but I'm not 100% certain I understand the difficulty.
      • When I read that 98.5% of the solar systems asteroids are contained here, but that most of the material has been swept away I wasn't sure what to make of it. For some reason it wasn't immediatly clear to me that the belt is much less massive than it once was, until I read this later on. Both the new and the old sentences are fine, so if you have preference for one over the other then by all means use it, but I tried to clear up my confusion anyway.
  • The size of the smallest bodies is described in the third paragraph, so is it worth doing the same for the larger bodies so we get a better indication of the range of sizes?
    • Done.
  • No indication is given of why Bode thought another planet may orbit in the gap between Mars and Jupiter - is this known? Was Ceres' discovery by direct observation?
    • I started that section with a couple of paragraph-long discussion of the Titus-Bode law. Then I ended up removing it in order to keep the article focused. I think a reader could investigate this on the Johann Bode article if they were curious. Is that reasonable?
  • A total of 1,000 asteroids had been found by 1923, 10,000 by 1951, and 100,000 by 1982. I think this should probably be referenced.
    • Done.
  • About 220 of the asteroids in the belt are larger than 100 km. Maybe another reference needed here? Any chance of this being a little more precise than about?
    • Astronomers only know the approximate diameters of many of the asteroids, so it's a "best guess". I added a clarification. I added a link to the JPL small body database instead. That can be used to obtain the current best value. (It's actually at 211 now, so I was over a bit.)
  • (where 1 A.U., or astronomical unit, equals the average distance between the Earth and the Sun) Isn't it a bit late to be introducing this, considering the unit is used well before this paragraph?
    • I moved it up a tad. It was in an appropriate location originally, but the text was revised.
  • This "core" region contains approximately 93.4% of all numbered minor planets. It might be worth clarifying if you're talking about all numbered minor planets in the belt or the solar system here.
    • Clarified.
  • The absolute magnitudes of most asteroids are 11–19, with a peak at about 16. The problem is probably my (lack of?)understanding here, but it seems weird that a peak would be between a given range? Just checking.
    • Changed to "median".
  • They are redder in hue I don't have any suggestions off the top of my head, just the word redder seems a bit odd.
    • Tried to fix.
  • the mean orbital period of an asteroid forms an integer fraction with the orbital period of Jupiter. For some reason this just doesn't seem to read very well. Maybe something like the mean orbital period of an asteroid together with the orbital period of Jupiter forms an integer fraction .. and then work the mean-motion resonance into the rest of the sentence instead of leaving it until the next sentence? It just wasn't very clear until I read the next paragraph.
    • Slightly modified; hopefully it's better.
  • The main ones Maybe The main Kirkwood gaps?
    • Okay.
  • After five billion years, the current asteroid belt population bears little resemblance to the original one. Wording is a little odd again. will bear will probably suffice, but I don't think a little more work on this sentence would hurt.
    • I'm not completely clear about the problem, since it was comparing the current population to the progenitor asteroids. But I did a rewrite; hopefully it's better now.
  • Approximately a third -> Approximately one third ?
    • Okay.
  • The In media section is a bit lame. Half of the section is material that was only just discussed in the previous section. Any chance of this being expanded to include specific examples, maybe even some misconceptions or something?
    • Nope, sorry. This section was very deliberately whitted down to a bare minimum so that the article could focused on the scientific aspects of the belt. The main article link for that section contains a slew of examples and a discussion. The current article is past 32Kb. — RJH (talk)

Hopefully some of this helps, and thanks again for another interesting read. Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 12:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your good feedback. The references will take a little longer to complete. — RJH (talk) 15:49, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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