As far as I'm aware of, I have not seen any astronomers calling Varuna a dwarf planet in recent scientific literature (2023, 2019, 2014). I think it's safe to remove the DP template and category from it.
(By the way, that 2023 abstract I linked above mentions JWST observations for confirming a possible satellite of Varuna spotted in Hubble images from 2005... it already took images of Varuna in November 2024, so we'll have to wait and see if it did find a satellite! Hopefully we can get a density from that, if it ever happens.) Nrco0e(talk • contribs)07:35, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What seems to be happening is that anything with a well-determined oblong shape, or a satellite with a well determined orbit, is excluded as a possibility. The ones that remain may be darker and therefore larger than expected, but if so are probably at best solid objects, not DPs. Our list of DPs seems unlikely to grow from known bodies. — kwami (talk) 15:18, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know anyone's ever called Varuna a DP. But that's true for most of our candidate objects -- that's in not our definition of what a 'possible DP' is. But the density calculation is based on the assumption that it is a DP, whether the researchers used that term or not. It seems our logic here is: 'if it's a DP [in HE], then its density is too low for it to be a DP. QED.' — kwami (talk) 16:30, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I removed it from the cat and template, but I'm not sure about this. An active thermal history might result in an icy body with a low density but still close to a HE shape, like Saturn's moons. They would be considered DPs even if they don't meet a literal reading of the IAU definition, which no-one actually seems to follow. So if Tethys with a density of 0.98 would count as a DP, why not Varuna? We don't expect TNOs to have been that thermally active, but Haumea and Pluto show that it's possible. Can we really justify removing any of the three low-density objects? — kwami (talk) 16:54, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I dunno, really. Tethys is generally thought of as a "satellite planet" / "major moon" AFAICS, but its density is so low that there's some talk about it potentially being quite porous (I discussed it with you back in 2022 at User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 32#Is Tethys solid?). Of course TNOs would probably have a rather different thermal history in general, but we know too little about specific cases. Double sharp (talk) 02:03, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're thinking Tethys might be like Hygiea? If Varuna were similar, then indeed it would no more be a DP than Hygiea would, even if both were 'worlds' by Stern's definition. Too bad we haven't had a flyby of Hygiea to help inform us. — kwami (talk) 03:02, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, in the sense that Hygiea seems to be a gravitational aggregate of the pieces that used to make it up – such a thing might not necessarily be solid throughout, no? Double sharp (talk) 09:42, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was just wondering why you tagged this article for a PROD, proposed deletion, and then, for some reason a few days later sent it to AFD but you never removed the PROD tag. Articles don't need more than one form of deletion. If you had just left the PROD, it would have been deleted today but now that it's at AFD, the PROD tag has been removed and it needs more time for an AFD discussion which could last a week or longer. Please just select one form of article deletion and don't put competing tags on any one article.
I now realize that I asked you to tag all of these articles that were part of the AFD but it looks like you PROD'd the articles and set up the AFD on the same day which was unnecessary. And when you added the AFD tag, you should remove the PROD tag since, in Wikipedia world, the AFD takes priority over the Proposed deletion. LizRead!Talk!05:30, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Liz: I see. I wasn't sure about the difference between AfD and PROD when I was setting up the grouped AfD for the other articles, but thanks for letting me know. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)06:00, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Double sharp and Renerpho: Updated List of natural satellites, that one was easy to fill out since I only had to make a few minor tweaks to my code for Moons of Saturn. The satellites aren't ordered by designation and are instead ordered verbatim from the MPC announcements, since I'm lazy and don't have time for that. I see a lot of the satellites on that list have outdated radii and orbital parameters, which sounds like a far bigger hassle which I absolutely don't feel like dealing with right now.
Great to hear! I've ordered the satellites by designation and created the redirects (except for the S/2023 batch, since there's fifty of them; maybe I'll get to that later). Double sharp (talk) 10:30, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Double sharp: The original plot was created in 2008 (not by me), and is used on many different projects. What you suggest would have to be a second plot, for the announcement dates. That's certainly doable. Renerpho (talk) 12:40, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On 11 April 2025, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article 269 Justitia, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that 269 Justitia is one of the reddest known asteroids in the asteroid belt? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/269 Justitia. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, 269 Justitia), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
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Thanks! I'm still not done updating the articles of Namaka and Hiʻiaka and I haven't touched the Haumea and Moons of Haumea articles yet, but I'm getting there. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)16:31, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/S/2025 U 1 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.
i've been assuming this is the orbital uncertainty, but if so, then ixion has gone from 3 to 0 in just 4 years. or does 0 mean 'not calculated' or something -- i hope i haven't messed things up. — kwami (talk) 04:54, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, since you've been recently updating the orbits of TNOs in their infoboxes, I should really tell you that the heliocentric orbital elements given by the JPL SBDB Lookup website are not accurate for TNOs because they fluctuate pretty significantly whenever it updates yearly. Barycentric elements are preferred for TNOs instead since they're more constant; see the footnotes in 307261 Mani and 38628 Huya, which explain this. You get barycentric elements from JPL's Horizons On-Line Ephemeris System. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)05:14, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ah, thanks. i knew barycentric were better, which is why i haven't updated any of those, but didn't know where to find them. — kwami (talk) 05:31, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
at máni, there are orbital 2 refs with different epochs, but only one epoch is listed in the infobox, and that's apparently the one for the heliocentric ref. also, the barycentric site lists params that are not defined, such as 'b'. so i'm not confident that i could use it correctly. — kwami (talk) 08:39, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bundling
I am aware you bundled your asteroid nominations on one subpage. WP:AFD states that is not how to do it. I also don't believe they are part of a series which is when you would bundle deletion nominations together so I've separated the nominations. Logoshimpo (talk) 09:16, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
observation arc
re. this edit, my understanding was that the cited observation arc should be for the observations that produced the cited orbital parameters. so it wouldn't matter how often they update, only how often we do. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the observation arc should be handled as part of the orbital parameters, and I'd prefer to have it given exactly as on JPL SBDB. (I've reverted the edit linked above.) Renerpho (talk) 01:31, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
can't save because there's a json error somewhere. well, people making this mistake probably aren't reading the template doc anyway — kwami (talk) 02:47, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]