Talk:Moons of Mars

Comments
I don't care if this stays as a separate article, but right now it merely duplicates the Mars article, and it is the Mars article that is being kept up. Either the info needs to be moved from there to here, or this has got to go. kwami 02:27, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi! To ensure consistency with articles for (five other) planets with more than one natural satellite, this article should be retained, maintained, and enhanced. E Pluribus Anthony 16:08, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Agreed. This article should be an overview to the Mars' satellite system. Also, facts that are shared with the both satellites belong here. For example, theories of their formation.--Jyril 16:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

This page needs reverted, it has been vandalized by IP 210.9.143.62. --71.205.107.102 04:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

This article and the main article should better align with regards to Jonathan Swift's reference to the moons of Mars. The main Mars article says this about the moons: "Author Jonathan Swift made reference to the moons of Mars, about 150 years before their actual discovery by Asaph Hall, detailing reasonably accurate descriptions of their orbits, in the 19th chapter of his novel Gulliver's Travels." This article states: "The actual orbital distances and periods of Phobos and Deimos of 1.4 and 3.5 Martian diameters, and 7.6 and 30.3 hours, respectively, are not remotely close to Swift's fictional satellites." So we have "reasonably accurate" and "not remotely close" describing the same facts. 209.216.210.54 (talk) 20:35, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

name of article should be "Mars's..."
The correct genetive of words ending in "s" is the same as for all other words: add "'s". Therefore, this article should be renamed "Mars's natural satellites". Teemu Leisti 09:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a spelling convention used by some but not all publishers. It's a matter of opinion. kwami 16:24, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm leaning towards Mars's myself, in the article. In the past, I dropped the extra s from articles such as Venus. I think it looks better, but the second s is far more common in more authoritative sources, and should bother fewer people. It's not true, though, that the genitive ending for -s words is always the same as the other cases. I doubt any source would disagree. Plural words ending in s  should not get the extra s, for one thing. Same goes when the pronunciation is awkward. Saros136 04:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I also think it looks better without the extra ess. It's more formal, and IMO therefore more appropriate to the title of an article. This discussion is also going on over at Uranus' natural satellites. kwami 04:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks like we've decided to change the names of the articles to "Moons of". I posted a notice with the other planets before making any changes. kwami 19:39, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Why does it "look like we've decided"? I don't see any signs of such a decision anywhere. RandomCritic 19:43, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * This has been discussed on the Uranus' natural satellites page. Saros136 19:48, 13 October 2007 (UTC) It won in a straw poll, 3-1.Saros136 19:48, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I must say that's an odd place to have such a poll. Why not at Natural satellite, the central page for the whole "natural satellites" grouping? RandomCritic 21:32, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It came up there in an argument over the proper genitive form of "Uranus", but it was a little out of the way. kwami 21:40, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * At least Venus doesn't have a moon! Lanthanum-138 (talk) 13:58, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What are we talking about? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.215.9.238 (talk) 02:12, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

previous moons
Years ago, Science News had an article that Mars' crust seems to have shifted, and for evidence they had catenae that were shifted from the equator in proportion to their age. They posited that the catenae were formed when small moons broke up and impacted. I can't find this in the SN archives, but it may be too old. Anyone know if this idea is still held? If so, it would warrant its own section here. kwami (talk) 21:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Image
Why does the caption include this: ? I don't understand why the {selfref} template is used and if I click on the image I don't see it any larger. --Xosé (talk) 22:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know about the template, but the image expands just fine in Firefox. kwami (talk) 00:12, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, OK - I just had to click twice (here and then again on the image page). So, what about the template? --Xosé (talk) 12:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

New image for capture of the moons theory
I'd love to replace this image: With this one:  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Enkera (talk • contribs) 13:12, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Mars moon hoax
Does anyone know the relation between the 1959 April 1 hoax by Walter Scott Houston in the Great Plains Observer, and the subsequent article by Iosif Shklovsky that took the idea seriously? Some references imply that Shklovsky got the idea from Houston's article, unaware that it was a hoax; other references (including the Wikipedia article) imply that Shklovsky was already working on the origin of the Mars moons and that the appearance of the two articles in the same year was coincidental. GHJmover (talk) 14:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This is the first I hear of the hoax as the source for Shklovsky's idea.
 * I haven't been able to check the only cited source for the claim (supposedly a May 4, 1959 issue of the Jefferson City Post Tribune), but this feels like a leap in reasoning made either by the editor, or by the journalist at the Jefferson City Post Tribune which could have 'connected the dots' between the April 1 hoax and the May 1 Shklovsky article. It's possible that Shklovsky heard about the hoax and was inspired by it as a solution the problem of the secular acceleration of Phobos (which had been known since 1946) - although a much stronger source would be needed to assert that, imo. If he had taken the hoax seriously as the current wording implies then I very much doubt he would've repeated it in Komsomolskaya Pravda without citing the original "discoverer", "Professor Hayall". Daydreamers (talk) 22:37, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Why the brackets?
The third sentence of the Recent Surveys section begins with the word 'the' in brackets&mdash;why?

It made me wonder if perhaps this section had been plagiarized but I didn't see any hint of that in the first two pages of a google search. Only real match was a yahoo answers page from "2 years ago" which appears to have been copied from wikipedia, and the brackets were included there too. I still think this section could have been plagiarized, though, as there is no good reason for those brackets to be there. tildetildetildetilde —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.84.100 (talk) 01:25, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Asaph Hall
The article previously referred to "Asaph Hall Sr.", but a hidden note in the text indicates that one source lists him as "Asaph Hall Jnr." and his bio in Wikipedia gives his full name as "Asaph Hall III." Given this, I changed his name to simply "Asaph Hall."PurpleChez (talk) 15:01, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Swift / Voltare?
Why the stuff about Swift and Voltaire in the *2nd paragraph*? Okay, mention it somewhere - but here? Surely things like orbital distance, discovery, etc, ought to come way before this fringe historical stuff?

Factual accuracy dispute regarding the image showing how Mars captured its moons
It shows Mars and Jupiter traveling around the sun clockwise, when this is not the case. I don't think there are any celestial objects that actually orbit the sun clockwise...?--24.130.151.188 (talk) 05:19, 9 May 2012 (UTC)


 * They do when viewed from the south pole. — kwami (talk) 16:05, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Even viewing from the north pole, there are known retrograde minor planets (which would orbit clockwise), such as 20461 Dioretsa and . Double sharp (talk) 08:01, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Surface gravity
I think this article should state the surface gravity of both of the moons in Gs and centimeters per second per second. Neutrino1200 (talk) 08:36, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

"Mystery solved: Mars's moons formed by a giant impact"
according to Astronomy Now.  Serendi pod ous  06:38, 5 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I wanted to add this article from Gizmodo relating to the new developments coming out this week on the theory of the origin of Mars' moons. While the name of the article is somewhat unprofessional, I found the info to be consistant with the article ous posted above. Let me know what you guys think. Cheers Comatmebro  User talk:Comatmebro 22:51, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Apparent sizes
Could this image be misleading? At least I, who have some knowledge about the solar system, was at first puzzled by it. "Isn't the Moon much bigger than that?" After close reading, its meaning became known: this is what Mars's moons and our moon would look like if they stood in the same sky. But seeing this image, many other laypeople will assume that the diameter of Phobos is really one third of our moon. Should we consider removing the image, or changing the notes? Steinbach (talk) 08:28, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Orphaned references in Moons of Mars
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Moons of Mars's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Gazetteer": From Portia (moon):

 From Francisco (moon):

 From Moons of Saturn:  From Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons: Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: Planet and Satellite Names and Discoverers From Bianca (moon):

 From Ophelia (moon):

 From Moons of Uranus:

 <li>From Hippocamp (moon): </li> <li>From Cupid (moon):

</li> <li>From Mensa (geology): </li> <li>From Moons of Neptune: </li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 12:27, 10 January 2023 (UTC)