Talk:3219: Planets and Bright Stars

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 12:26, 14 March 2026 by Lettherebedarklight (talk | contribs) (why did you delete every comment)
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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 :3talk 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)

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.

ObjectApp. MagB-V (Colour)
Venus-4.98 to -2.980.82
Mars-2.94 to +1.861.33
Jupiter-2.94 to -1.660.83
Saturn-0.55 to +1.171.04
Mercury-2.48 to +7.250.97
Sirius-1.460
Procyon+0.340.42
Antares+0.6 to +1.61.83
Altair+0.760.22
Betelgeuse0 to +1.61.85
Vega00
Polaris+1.86 to +2.130.6

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)

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)

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

Chart fixed by explanations here

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