Talk:38083 Rhadamanthus

Alternative source for size estimates (and other data)?
The main link from which a number of this object's characteristic data, particularly that curiously both vague and precise size estimate (ie, it's somewhere between two widely spaced but exactly specified limits), is now super-dead; it's not just a clearly out of date page, it's not just a missing page or sub-site, but the entire domain has been wiped out. DNS record not found, and presumably server long since dead.

It might be possible to pull it out of internet archive, maybe, with luck and a following wind, but to be honest it's a site whose name I've not seen before or on any other minor planet entry, and given that trying to google up alternatives has produced little of any real use but a surprising wealth of astrological pages, especially a number on a theme of "astronomy for astrologers" or suchlike, it may well have been another one of those and thus spewing a load of bunk.

The JPL/MPDB entry is good for orbital details and at least magnitude, but says nothing of any size estimate based on that, and I havent' actually gone through checking off each and every datapoint to check it's there and that it matches. The MPC entry isn't even as helpful as that, with 38083 not getting its own info page but instead just a single basic info line out of the hundreds of thousands of similar ones in the general monthly bulletin, reporting a subset of the JPL info with no obvious additions to it. SwRI does list off all 34 observations that had occurred by the time of that page's publication and again has what looks like fairly decent orbital calculations and predictions but nothing so much as a size estimate. Mike Brown's own page says 171km (not 287km) diameter (= 85.5km radius... not 87) but with no likely error range given and notes that it's a total guess (if a conservative one) based on the abs mag and typical albedo for objects of that value. Beyond that, the trail goes pretty cold.

Anyone got any good suggestions? The current range after all, if it's diameter (again, that's not made plain) covers possibilities from "clearly just a plain old asteroid or may-eventually-be-a-comet" through to "could maaaayyybe be a dwarf planet, if a number of other requirements are also met" (...if it's radius instead, then it's got no chance), and it would be nice to see if there's any independent confirmation of or updates to it's estimated orbits in order to bring that UP down from 3 to something just that little bit more concrete... 146.199.60.55 (talk) 06:22, 29 September 2017 (UTC)


 * OK, somehow ended up on this page again, seems the last time the data was refreshed was about 18 months ago, and even then it was using very much obsolete figures (the JPL database doesn't seem to keep track of the latest observations; SwRI has a few more-recent-than-2008 sightings listed and so a more accurate orbital estimate covering a 14-year rather than 9-year arc) and doesn't seem to have been an accurate transcription unless for some reason the result of calculating those figures changes over time?! (IE, what's listed here doesn't match what's on the JPL page anyway except in terms of the arc period and the abs.mag). Therefore I'm making the executive decision to update it to the more recent set of data from SwRI, given that it's already got a cite link in the orbital data section heading anyway. The JPL one can remain to fill-in any pieces that SwRI doesn't cover... Got a feeling I'll be doing a lot of that in the weeks to come, on different MP pages...


 * Still don't know where the size estimate came from though, unless we're going entirely by the magnitude, colour, and a thermal estimate of albedo or the like. Haven't seen any mention of an estimated diameter on any of the linked pages, that's for certain. Maybe there's a way of calculating it that hasn't been made clear? At the moment the "87 to 276km" (radius? diameter?) estimate looks somewhere between OR and PullingItOutOfYourAss... 46.208.118.226 (talk) 18:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

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