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Erin Anne
Erin Anne
04:33
@uhoh you're much more familiar with the Astronomy StackExchange than I am. Is a question about this on topic there? "However, the view of most astronomers is that Swift was simply employing a common argument of the time, that as the inner planets Venus and Mercury had no satellites, Earth had one and Jupiter had four (known at the time), that Mars by analogy must have two. Furthermore, as they had not yet been discovered, it was reasoned that they must be small and close to Mars."
specifically about how common it was. quote's from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Mars#Early_speculation
anyone welcome to pitch in ofc, uhoh is just the first person that popped into my holiday-and-long-year-addled mind
 
1 hour later…
uhoh
uhoh
05:41
@ErinAnne Depending on what the actual SE question about that would be, chances are good that sure it would be on-topic in Astronomy SE. You can check it's history tag to get a feel for what flies there.
However, you might also consider History of Science and Mathematics (or HSM for short) SE. See it's questions tagged with Astronomy to get a feel for what flies there as well.
Erin Anne
Erin Anne
05:58
ooh I didn't even know about HSM
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2060/why-did-18th-century-writers-think-that-mars-had-2-satellites?r=SearchResults&s=3%7C35.7073
is pretty close. I'll have to think about exactly what I want to ask--if there were other published opinions about the numeric-moon-number sequence or if it was all just owed to Kepler
 
15 hours later…
Erin Anne
Erin Anne
21:29
"COOL! The spicy article I wrote about satellite pollution is FINALLY published! "Bright satellites are disrupting astronomy research worldwide" in Nature News & Views.

This article required weeks of back-and-forth with the editor, the editor-in-chief, and Nature's lawyers, so I hope that means it's a good one.

During this process, I learned that satellite companies are so powerful and litigious that even giant publishers like Nature are terrified of getting sued. Which is...rather worrying." https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/111460537888232133
2
author link to the article: rdcu.be/drQOU

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