Talk:Minimum orbit intersection distance

A fact from Minimum orbit intersection distance appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 May 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that minimum orbit intersection distance is one of the measures used to determine if a near-Earth object, such as (4953) 1990 MU (orbit pictured), is a Potentially Hazardous Object?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/May.

Wikipedia

Kheider notes

Lists using different epochs:

Epoch 2013-Nov-04 – archive.is
Epoch 2015-Jun-27 – archive.is
Current Epoch – JPL SSD
1999 SM5 E-MOID=0.0499AU at Epoch 2015-Jun-27

Inconsistency

In the table listing Potentially hazardous asteroids with Earth MOID < 0.0004 AU, the fist entry, 1999 AN10, is listed with an MOID of 0.000003 AU (450 km; 280 mi). The page 1999 AN10, to which it points, states an MOID of 0.000708904 AU (106,050.5 km. Which is wrong ? Epitalon (talk) 16:28, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fix: according to JPL Small-Body Database Browser, earth MOID is 2.83761E-6 au Epitalon (talk) 17:01, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's irrelevant what other Wikipedia articles say. Wikipedia is not itself a reliable source. The only thing that counts is what other reliable sources say different to JPL. Then we would have to make a decision on which was the most reliable/had the most up to date information. SpinningSpark 17:28, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, the orbit (and therefore the MOID) changes every day! The JPL SBDB will update values for asteroids every 6 months or so (currently:2023-Sep-13 previously: 2023-Feb-25). Any source that states the MOID without stating the epoch it is defined at is pretty much worthless. -- Kheider (talk) 12:41, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lunar distance

Is there a reason why LD is not used? Apart from diverging MOIDs, I can imagine there might be no precise definition of "lunar distance", but writing that Apophis will pass within 0.1 LD (and this is an approximation of the value) says more than "0.0002056 AU" . And 40 LD, as another example is far more telling.

alex (talk) 10:22, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I guess its because sources always quote in AU. I don't think we should convert from one non-SI unit to another non-SI unit when sources don't use it (at least not the sources in our article). SpinningSpark 17:23, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Spinningspark. I like the article to match the source so readers/editors can verify there is no manual conversion error. Too many editors make conversion errors, sometimes even a simple cut&paste goes wrong. All the numbers in the table are less than 0.0004 AU (~60,000km or ~5 Earth diameters) -- Kheider (talk) 21:36, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]