Talk:Positional astronomy

Would the Moon be said to transit the Sun during a solar eclipse? If not, is the distinction made because it's more than just a speck on the Sun, or because the Moon orbits the Earth instead of the Sun? -- John Owens
 * Yehehe, in fact, using the orthodox definition, a solar eclipse is not an eclipse but an occultation. Tip: an occultation occur only in a narrow band, an eclipse is visible anywhere the body is above the horizon. A transit is just somthing reserved for Venus and Mercury (who can't occultate anything, because they far too small relatively to the sun).


 * The article eclipse is not really correct.
 * eclipse => a body go into the shadow of another body (lunar eclipse -> moon go the shadow of the earth)
 * occultation => an occulting body goes in front of another (eg frequent occultation of stars by the moon)
 * -- Looxix

The 2004 and 2012 pages make it sound like there are several transits by Venus over that eight year span, which is in contradiction to what you have about transits here, that there are only two, eight years apart. Can you check that, and maybe fix those two pages up if need be? -- John Owens
 * info seems to be correct in this page, the following one will only occur in 2117!
 * I will check the info in the page 2004 and 2012 later. -- looxix 01:21 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

I do not think I like the new page layout, with all the "meat" removed to separate articles. You don't get as much context from seeing the picture of the orbital layout without the descriptions of the subtopics. And it certainly doesn't make me feel better to see those separate pages started off with things like "...is an astronomical term...", or two separate "See also:" sections here, one right after the other. -- John Owens 21:23 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * It's even worse now that the meat has been hidden in the big list of related pages... Evercat 21:38 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * For a great intro (with lots of pictures) see the tutorials linked from Spherical astronomy. I'd think several of those belong in this article. MFago 01:55, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge?!
This page should be merged with Spherical astronomy -- or that page should redirect to here, with a note (they are different names for the same thing). I'll put a note on the pages themselves. MFago 01:48, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I've merged positional astronomy to spherical astronomy (the latter name seems to be more common). —Quarl (talk) 2007-02-26 00:38Z