Talk:3219: Planets and Bright Stars

There are sight color differences...209.240.116.218 19:55, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I've created a version that brings out the color contrast, but I don't have permissions to upload it yet. How may I get those? Rumbling7145 (talk) 20:04, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

See Special:ListGroupRights for info about becoming autoconfirmed. In the meantime, you can upload the image onto an image hosting website such as Imgur or ImgBB and I can help you upload it! tori :3^{talk to me!} 20:20, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

[Ninjaed... You got there just before me, just realised I ended up Edit Conflicted...  :P Editing down to the bits that weren't said above.]

[...] you've been here a while, but 'only' edited thirteen times, it looks like [...]

[...and when someone else uploads it...] you can alwas add your own [claims to ownership], to the finished 'file page' [if the user concerned doesn't credit you already]. 81.179.199.253 20:31, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Here you go! https://ibb.co/5gyVM59C Rumbling7145 (talk) 15:19, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Anyone know where that </div> overlaying "Add Comment" at the bottom of the discussion is coming from? Barmar (talk) 21:01, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, Tori's signature is a bit lopsided with its tags, by the time it gets to the browser (is one </span> short, and has one closing </a> before the closing </span> that should have been within it), but not sure how that might have tricked-out the rest so that some closing </div> is redundant, without going through the entire page source to track down any other accumulated discrepancies.

I've seen that rogue close-div before, and I seem to recall that some precautionary extra close-tags (in either HTML or Wiki markup) have been added to 'make sure' some things don't run on. But it seems to vanish after some later edits (either main comic page or discussion one), and I would have imagined that the excess tag would just be 'ignored' under most circumstances. But it's difficult to tell easil tell what a combination of meta-tagging and actual tagging does.

And there's all kinds of weirdness in the scripting part of the page, like the bit that says node.outerHTML="\u003Cdiv id=\"localNotice\" lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003E\u003Cdiv[... most of this statement removed ...]\n\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E"; with escaped DIVs in it, that only apply when the script self-modifies the page-source. 81.179.199.253 21:59, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

In fact, the rogue DIV only appears when viewing the transcluded Talk page within the main article. Viewing the Talk page directly doesn't seem to show it (or have it in the same bit of the respective HTML source), which adds to my belief that it's a run-on tag (not?) being opened as part of the Comic page's definition. 81.179.199.253 22:02, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Jupiter, Venus, Mars (at its peak) and Sirius are noticeably brighter than the others. Mars, Antares and Betelgeuse are also quite red. Also if you look at planets through a telescope or good binoculars you can tell that they have a larger size (and some have moons). The others would be quite hard to tell apart without knowing their position.

Object	App. Mag	B-V (Colour)
Venus	-4.98 to -2.98	0.82
Mars	-2.94 to +1.86	1.33
Jupiter	-2.94 to -1.66	0.83
Saturn	-0.55 to +1.17	1.04
Mercury	-2.48 to +7.25	0.97
Sirius	-1.46	0
Procyon	+0.34	0.42
Antares	+0.6 to +1.6	1.83
Altair	+0.76	0.22
Betelgeuse	0 to +1.6	1.85
Vega	0	0
Polaris	+1.86 to +2.13	0.6

It would be interesting to see if these characteristics are at all present in the comic (it does look like Mars, Betelgeuse and Antares are red and Saturn is a little yellow so maybe the colours are right), or what the comic should look like if they are not --22:50, 13 March 2026 (UTC)Sameldacamel34 (talk)

Created a nice image using the explanations on this page (using Gemini)

Chart fixed by explanations here -- 2A09:BAC3:2FF0:28C:0:0:41:127 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Proper motion

According to the Wikipedia page to proper motion, it is defined relative to the center of the solar system. So having a proper motion of zero makes the sun stand out indeed. 84.115.169.154 04:50, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Err. proper motion is "relative to the center of mass of the Solar System," aka the barycenter, which is not the center of the Sun, but rather very close to it and sometimes outside of it. So, I think, (and I am definitely inexpert here), the [center of the] Sun is rather rapidly moving in an angular fashion about that point, far more so than any other object, whose angular movement around that point is much slower. Just like if you are one foot away from the north pole and wandering aimlessly, you can very quickly change your longitude from +90° to –90° in a step or two. So, I think, the Sun does indeed have "high proper motion," not "zero proper motion." But someone please correct me. Also, I (earlier) tried to explain proper motion in the last graf of the article and I suspect I did a poor job (possibly also inaccurate), so I'd appreciate someone with the, err, proper expertise fixing it up. JohnHawkinson (talk) 05:00, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

(Indeed...) The barycentre for the Sun-Jupiter pair, alone, sits (just!) outside of the mass of the Sun, and Jupiter is the main non-solar part of the mass. (That we know of, and that forms identifiable point-gravitational components. Even if they were more massive, the ring/shell nature of the Asteroid Belt, Kuiper Belt and Oort Clouds likely cancel themselves out.) Depending on where the rest of the planets are (next most influential would be Saturn, with everything else far smaller and/or further away), there's going to be funny a 'petal-like' track of the barycentre w.r.t. the Sun (or vice-versa), with seemingpy retrograde periods and inflections, but if you chose to sit it out 'at' the barycentre and track the Sun's position you'd expect 360° of 'heavenly motion' from Sol every 11.86 years (for a little over a third of the time you'd be within the Sun, due to the sufficient balancing out of masses around it, but you could still track the direction to its centre ...assuming you weren't bothered by being within the Sun, like you aren't bothered by being right next to it for the rest of the time).

Barnard's Star is (otherwise) the star with the current greatest proper motion, at 10.358 seconds of arc per year. Comparing the two (not that BS is going to complete any 'orbit', like that), it means that the Sun moves with Proper Motion (if I've not messed up toouch, on the back of this envelope) slightly above 175x greater than BS's current record rate. Though, instantaneously, the strict comparison would fluctuate over time due to the complex resonancing nature of the Sun's theoretical looping and de-looping w.r.t. the reference frame. 82.132.238.245 17:36, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

The extremely high parallax of the Sun (324,000 arc seconds if I calculate correctly) swamps out any prer motion. 2600:1001:B008:1230:9C83:B115:90B1:6038 12:12, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Err…wutt? Again, I am not a domain expert or even really a domain user, but…

(a) A single object cannot have a "parallax." Parallax is a measure of error between two viewpoints (line segments), or perhaps between three points in space (the far object and two eye positions). Assuming the Sun is the far object, what are the other reference points or lines? If one is the Earth (a pretty big if ) then what is the other?

(b) 324,400 is 90 degrees, a right angle. "The Sun has a parallax of 90 degrees" is not a concept that makes sense to me.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding though? JohnHawkinson (talk) 13:20, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Using usual definitions of stellar parallax, half the shift in angular position of the star when viewed from opposite "ends" of Earth's orbit. From, say December to June the Sun's position relative to the background stars shifts by 180 degrees. It's a bit of a joke, but this _is_ a comic we are discussing. 2600:1001:B008:1230:9C83:B115:90B1:6038 15:12, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@81.179.199.253, I do not think that writing «a simple "angle per time"» is more clear than «degrees/second» or «rad/sec.». Just like saying "linear distance" is more confusing to people than "feet" (or meters). One might even suggest if we have to label something "simple" that is evidence that it isn't. I think, also, the grammar of the sentence got even more complex. JohnHawkinson (talk) 20:09, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

With the "angle per time", I wanted to avoid the argument being had (astronomy tends to use "arc-seconds per year", rather than any radian-based measure, in my experience) and make it more neutral.

As for how complicated it then went, I was tempted to just leave it to the wikilink, but tried to respond to the prior edit comments instead. I could cut it back again, though. 81.179.199.253 20:18, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I think that's totally wrong and every edit seems to make it worse and worse. More neutral isn't easier-to-understand, and that's what we need. Using the wrong units is better than using no units. I lifted rad/s from the enwiki article, but I have no idea if it is correct (and I'm starting to suspect it's not). Degrees/second would be the most clear, because far more people know what a degree is than a radian. Happy pi day. JohnHawkinson (talk) 21:12, 14 March 2026 (UTC)