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Southeast Texas

Southeast Texas is a cultural and geographic region in the U.S. state of Texas, bordering Southwest Louisiana and its greater Acadiana region to the east. Being a part of East Texas, the region is geographically centered on the Greater Houston and Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan statistical areas with a combined population of 7,662,325 according to the 2020 U.S. census.

Geography
Southeast Texas includes part of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and most of the Texas portion of the Intracoastal Waterway. The area is also crossed by numerous rivers and streams, the largest three being the Sabine River, the Neches River, and the Trinity River.

In Southeast Texas and the rest of the Southern United States, small rivers and creeks collect into swamps called "bayous" and merge with the surrounding forest. The only large bodies of water in Southeast Texas are Galveston Bay and Sabine Lake, but the large reservoirs of the remainder of East Texas are just to the north. The eastern portion of Southeast Texas is geographically and culturally attached to Southwest Louisiana, though western, southern and northern areas maintain their own distinct Texan cultural identities.

Near the coast, the land is low and extremely flat, and often marshy. The Piney Woods extend into the northern parts of Southeast Texas, reaching as far south as the rice paddies and marshlands that lie between Houston and Beaumont. The highest point on the coast is at High Island, where a salt dome raises the elevation to around 40feet (12m) above sea level.

Away from the coast, the terrain begins to exhibit the rolling hills of Northeast and Central Texas. Toward Central Texas, the mixed pine and hardwood forests give way to the East Central Texas forests of post oak and grasslands.

Golden Triangle
The Golden Triangle is an area of extreme Southeast Texas near the Louisiana border. The "triangle" is formed by Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, which are the largest cities in the area. "Golden" refers to the wealth that came from the Spindletop oil strike near Beaumont in 1901. In an attempt to distance the area from the petrochemical industry, some area interests attempted to rename the Golden Triangle as the "Triplex." This name change did not catch on, and local residents still refer to it as the Golden Triangle. Some residents of the Golden Triangle do not consider the Greater Houston area to be part of Southeast Texas and place the western boundary of the region approximately at the Trinity River, which is roughly 30 miles from downtown Houston.

This area holds the annual South Texas State Fair in Beaumont.

Big Thicket
The Big Thicket is an area of dense forest located in the area just north and northwest of the city of Beaumont. There are many small towns in this area, including Woodville and Kountze.

The Big Thicket National Preserve protects part of the old thicket, highlighting the area's biological resources. The 97,000 acre (390 km2) preserve boasts a varied ecology of piney woods, swamps, and coastal prairies. It includes extremely diverse range of plant species including orchids, cactus, cypress, and pine in close proximity to each other. Approximately 65,000 people visit this area each year.

Two historically important routes cross the Big Thicket: to the north lies the old cattle route or Beef Trail, that ran from Tyler County to Louisiana; to the south is the Spanish Trail or the Atascosito Road, that parallels modern Highway90 and Interstate10 from Liberty to Orange.

Galveston Bay
Galveston Bay is a large estuary located along Texas upper coast. The bay is fed by the Trinity River and the San Jacinto River, numerous local bayous, and incoming tides from the Gulf of Mexico. The bay covers approximately 600 square miles (1,500 km2), and is 30 miles (50 km) long and 17 miles (27 km) wide. Galveston Bay is on average 7–9feet (2-3m) deep. The bay has three inlets to the Gulf of Mexico: Bolivar Roads (the exit of the Houston Ship Channel) between Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula, San Luis Pass to the west, and Rollover Pass to the east.

The Houston Ship Channel, connecting the Port of Houston to the Gulf, passes through Galveston Bay. Houston is the largest city on the bay, while smaller ones include Galveston, Pasadena, Baytown, and Texas City. The bay provides nursery and spawning grounds for large amounts of marine life and is important for both commercial and recreational fishing.

Climate
Compared to the rest of the state, Southeast Texas' climate is warmer in winter and cooler in summer. On average, the region receives more rain than other parts of the state, and it experiences a wet season and dry season like the tropics. This can increase the humidity level in the region. The relatively mild and wet climate is largely due to the influence of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Southeast Texas region can be comparable to that of Southern Louisiana in climate. Average annual rainfall in the Golden Triangle is 60 inches (1,500 mm). Rainfall totals in other parts of Southeast Texas are lower, but still in excess of 40inches (1,000 mm) per year. During Tropical Storm Claudette in 1979, the city of Alvin recorded an official 24-hour rainfall total of 42inches (1,067 mm)—the highest one-day rainfall total ever measured in the United States. Nederland received 66 inches during Harvey.

Houston has been called the "Lightning Capital of Texas", as its density of lightning strikes is higher than it is in other parts of the state. This area of unusually high lightning activity stretches from Houston eastward into Southwest Louisiana. Much of this can be explained by the natural occurrence of thunderstorms in the region, which form almost daily during the wet season. However, the unusual clustering of lightning around the developed areas of Houston, the Golden Triangle, and Lake Charles, Louisiana have led many researchers to believe that some combination of urban heat islands and air pollution are responsible for increasing the number of lightning strikes beyond even the already-high natural levels.

Southeast Texas is vulnerable to hurricanes. Major hurricanes that have severely affected the area in the 21st century include Hurricane Rita in 2005; Hurricane Ike, which passed over much of Houston and surrounding areas in 2008; and Hurricane Harvey, which inundated Southeast Texas in 2017. Weaker storms strike the area routinely. Some, like Tropical Storm Allison and Tropical Storm Claudette, have caused considerable damage.

Culture
The culture of Southeast Texas is closer to Acadiana in Louisiana or the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, than it is to West Texas; among some of its population, Cajun and Creole identity has been preserved and can be seen during cultural celebrations such as Mardi Gras. Much of contemporary Southeast Texas has its roots in traditions that go back generations; the region is consistent with much of northern and eastern Texas in that it is part of the Bible Belt—an area in which many inhabitants have strongly traditional Protestant Christian beliefs. Additionally, the Catholic Church in the United States has remained a prominent religious influence since Spanish colonization and missionary work. Among its largest cities in East Texas outside Houston, many still follow a rural Southern way of life, especially in dialect, mannerisms, and cuisine.

Economy
In the urban areas of Southeast Texas, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and technology are prominent industries. Houston is the largest city and economic center of Southeast Texas, and it holds the third most Fortune 500 headquarters by concentration in the U.S. as of 2021. Major corporations in the region include APA Corporation, Chevron Corporation, HostGator, Jason's Deli, JPMorgan Chase, and Sysco. Outside of the cities, agriculture, tourism and small business have always been major factors in the economy.

Higher education
The University of Houston System is the largest and most prominent university system based in Southeast Texas, although Texas Southern University, Prairie View A&M University, the University of Saint Thomas, Houston Baptist University, and others are also notable subjects to the region's undergraduate and postgraduate systems. Rice University in Houston was ranked 15th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report as of 2022. In areas closer to Beaumont, Lamar University within the Texas State University System is the center of higher education.

Sports
Within Southeast Texas, the city of Houston and its metropolitan area has a rich sporting culture and area residents are active in many spectator and participant sports. Spectators attend events including teams from four major professional sports teams and collegiate sports; Beaumont is also the second principal location for collegiate sports. Participants enjoy activities from running in Memorial Park to sailing on Galveston Bay and Clear Lake. A number of other sports are also available, including nearly a dozen fencing clubs, ranging from recreational clubs to elite competitive organizations.

Transportation
There are a variety of highways stretching between the Greater Houston and Beaumont metropolitan areas, connecting the communities to the remainder of the Gulf Coast region of the United States, and the Texas Triangle. Among other modes of transportation, the largest airports operating in Southeast Texas are all stationed in the city of Houston.

title: Southeast Texas


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Wikipedia talk:Subpages

Creating subpage for existing Wikipedia
I wish to create a subpage for The National Arts Club. Based on what I've read it seems that feature could be turned off. Is there a way I can turn it on? I've read a few articles about subpages and I'm a little confused about what is allowed and where it is allowed. Any help would be appreciated -thanks! Susan21w (talk) 14:54, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * "subpage" here refers to a specific software feature for pages with a slash in the title like "National Arts Club/Members". This software feature is disabled for articles and cannot be enabled. It's possible to create a second article about National Arts Club like "List of members of the National Arts Club" but it wouldn't be classified as a subpage. It's a small article. Couldn't you just expand it? It's difficult to create an article satsfying Wikipedia requirements like Notability. I recommend Articles for creation if you want to try. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:58, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. I'll see if I can just add another paragraph as you suggested. Susan21w (talk) 19:06, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Need input on a group of subpages for one article
Would like some input from the watchers of this page. There was an unrelated page move at Talk:United Kingdom general election, 1832–33 which was using subpages to store article information. It seems I'm the only one that has raised this issue there, so would like to know if this is a valid use-case or not. Note that the discussion has also branched off to Talk:List_of_MPs_elected_in_the_United_Kingdom_general_election,_1832–33 so pick where-ever you want to comment. (unrelated note, could this talk page be archived? It's pretty long with discussions from 2005) --Gonnym (talk) 07:12, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Hello from the future. I don't know if anyone ever helped with your inquiry, but at the very least I've archived the old talk here. —  Scott  •  talk  12:29, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Bold 185.200.147.60 (talk) 03:19, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 July 2023
Hi Tejal here need permission to publish my change made in articles with given citations and image. whatever I'm editing and publish has an solid proof and no fake or copyright information is given. Teju98 (talk) 05:28, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This is not the place for this request. Continue the discussion on your talk page.  RudolfRed (talk) 05:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikipedia talk:Subpages


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ETF

ETF may refer to:

Education

 * Evangelical Theological Faculty, in Leuven, Belgium
 * Protestant Theological Faculty (Evangelická teologická fakulta), Charles University, in Prague
 * University of Belgrade School of Electrical Engineering, (Serbian: Elektrotehnički fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu)

Finance

 * Early termination fee
 * ETF Securities, a British asset management firm
 * Employees' Trust Fund, a social security program of the Government of Sri Lanka
 * Exchange-traded fund

Sports

 * Egyptian Tennis Federation
 * European Tablesoccer Federation (1963-1993), see Sports table football

Other uses

 * ETF Ride Systems, a Dutch amusement ride manufacturer
 * Electron-transferring flavoprotein
 * Emergency Task Force (Toronto Police Service), of the Toronto Police Service
 * Escape The Fate, an American rock band
 * European Training Foundation, of the European Union
 * European Transport Workers' Federation, in Brussels, Belgium

title: ETF


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The Travels of Marco Polo

Book of the Marvels of the World (Italian: Il Milione, lit. 'The Million', possibly derived from Polo's nickname "Emilione"), in English commonly called The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Italian explorer Marco Polo. It describes Polo's travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295, and his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan.

The book was written by romance writer Rustichello da Pisa, who worked from accounts which he had heard from Marco Polo when they were imprisoned together in Genoa. Rustichello wrote it in Franco-Venetian, a literary language widespread in northern Italy between the subalpine belt and the lower Po between the 13th and 15th centuries. It was originally known as Livre des Merveilles du Monde or Devisement du Monde ("Description of the World"). The book was translated into many European languages in Marco Polo's own lifetime, but the original manuscripts are now lost, and their reconstruction is a matter of textual criticism. A total of about 150 copies in various languages are known to exist, including in Old French, Tuscan, two versions in Venetian, and two different versions in Latin.

From the beginning, there has been incredulity over Polo's sometimes fabulous stories, as well as a scholarly debate in recent times. Some have questioned whether Marco had actually traveled to China or was just repeating stories that he had heard from other travelers. Economic historian Mark Elvin concludes that recent work "demonstrates by specific example the ultimately overwhelming probability of the broad authenticity" of Polo's account, and that the book is, "in essence, authentic, and, when used with care, in broad terms to be trusted as a serious though obviously not always final, witness."

History

The source of the title Il Milione is debated. One view is it comes from the Polo family's use of the name Emilione to distinguish themselves from the numerous other Venetian families bearing the name Polo. A more common view is that the name refers to medieval reception of the travelog, namely that it was full of "a million" lies.

Modern assessments of the text usually consider it to be the record of an observant rather than imaginative or analytical traveler. Marco Polo emerges as being curious and tolerant, and devoted to Kublai Khan and the dynasty that he served for two decades. The book is Polo's account of his travels to China, which he calls Cathay (north China) and Manji (south China). The Polo party left Venice in 1271. The journey took three years after which they arrived in Cathay as it was then called and met the grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan. They left China in late 1290 or early 1291 and were back in Venice in 1295. The tradition is that Polo dictated the book to a romance writer, Rustichello da Pisa, while in prison in Genoa between 1298 and 1299. Rustichello may have worked up his first Franco-Italian version from Marco's notes. The book was then named Devisement du Monde and Livres des Merveilles du Monde in French, and De Mirabilibus Mundi in Latin.

Role of Rustichello
The British scholar Ronald Latham has pointed out that The Book of Marvels was in fact a collaboration written in 1298–1299 between Polo and a professional writer of romances, Rustichello of Pisa. It is believed that Polo related his memoirs orally to Rustichello da Pisa while both were prisoners of the Genova Republic. Rustichello wrote Devisement du Monde in the Franco-Venetian language.

Latham also argued that Rustichello may have glamorised Polo's accounts, and added fantastic and romantic elements that made the book a bestseller. The Italian scholar Luigi Foscolo Benedetto had previously demonstrated that the book was written in the same "leisurely, conversational style" that characterised Rustichello's other works, and that some passages in the book were taken verbatim or with minimal modifications from other writings by Rustichello. For example, the opening introduction in The Book of Marvels to "emperors and kings, dukes and marquises" was lifted straight out of an Arthurian romance Rustichello had written several years earlier, and the account of the second meeting between Polo and Kublai Khan at the latter's court is almost the same as that of the arrival of Tristan at the court of King Arthur at Camelot in that same book. Latham believed that many elements of the book, such as legends of the Middle East and mentions of exotic marvels, may have been the work of Rustichello who was giving what medieval European readers expected to find in a travel book.

Role of the Dominican Order
Apparently, from the very beginning Marco's story aroused contrasting reactions, as it was received by some with a certain disbelief. The Dominican father was the author of a translation into Latin, Iter Marci Pauli Veneti in 1302, just a few years after Marco's return to Venice. Francesco Pipino solemnly affirmed the truthfulness of the book and defined Marco as a "prudent, honoured and faithful man". In his writings, the Dominican brother Jacopo d'Acqui explains why his contemporaries were skeptical about the content of the book. He also relates that before dying, Marco Polo insisted that "he had told only a half of the things he had seen".

According to some recent research of the Italian scholar Antonio Montefusco, the very close relationship that Marco Polo cultivated with members of the Dominican Order in Venice suggests that local fathers collaborated with him for a Latin version of the book, which means that Rustichello's text was translated into Latin for a precise will of the Order.

Since Dominican fathers had among their missions that of evangelizing foreign peoples (cf. the role of Dominican missionaries in China and in the Indies ), it is reasonable to think that they considered Marco's book as a trustworthy piece of information for missions in the East. The diplomatic communications between Pope Innocent IV and Pope Gregory X with the Mongols were probably another reason for this endorsement. At the time, there was open discussion of a possible Christian-Mongol alliance with an anti-Islamic function. In fact, a Mongol delegate was solemnly baptised at the Second Council of Lyon. At the council, Pope Gregory X promulgated a new Crusade to start in 1278 in liaison with the Mongols.

Contents
The Travels is divided into four books. Book One describes the lands of the Middle East and Central Asia that Marco encountered on his way to China. Book Two describes China and the court of Kublai Khan. Book Three describes some of the coastal regions of the East: Japan, India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia, and the east coast of Africa. Book Four describes some of the then-recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, like Russia. Polo's writings included descriptions of cannibals and spice-growers.

Legacy
The Travels was a rare popular success in an era before printing.

The impact of Polo's book on cartography was delayed: the first map in which some names mentioned by Polo appear was in the Catalan Atlas of Charles V (1375), which included thirty names in China and a number of other Asian toponyms. In the mid-fifteenth century the cartographer of Murano, Fra Mauro, meticulously included all of Polo's toponyms in his 1450 map of the world.

A heavily annotated copy of Polo's book was among the belongings of Columbus.

Subsequent versions
Marco Polo was accompanied on his trips by his father and uncle (both of whom had been to China previously), though neither of them published any known works about their journeys. The book was translated into many European languages in Marco Polo's own lifetime, but the original manuscripts are now lost. A total of about 150 copies in various languages are known to exist. During copying and translating many errors were made, so there are many differences between the various copies.

According to the French philologist Philippe Ménard, there are six main versions of the book: the version closest to the original, in Franco-Venetian; a version in Old French; a version in Tuscan; two versions in Venetian; two different versions in Latin.

Version in Franco-Venetian
The oldest surviving Polo manuscript is in Franco-Venetian, which was a literary language which mixed Old French with the Venetian language, spread in Northern Italy in the 13th century; for Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, this "F" text is the basic original text, which he corrected by comparing it with the somewhat more detailed Italian of Ramusio, together with a Latin manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

Version in Old French
A version written in Old French, titled Le Livre des merveilles (The Book of Marvels).
 * This version counts 18 manuscripts, whose most famous is the Code Fr. 2810. Famous for its miniatures, the Code 2810 is in the French National Library. Another Old French Polo manuscript, dating to around 1350, is held by the National Library of Sweden. A critical edition of this version was edited in the 2000s by Philippe Ménard.

Version in Tuscan
A version in Tuscan (Italian language) titled Navigazione di messer Marco Polo was written in Florence by Michele Ormanni. It is found in the Italian National Library in Florence. Other early important sources are the manuscript "R" (Ramusio's Italian translation first printed in 1559).

Version in Venetian
The version in Venetian dialect is full of mistakes and is not considered trustworthy.

Versions in Latin

 * One of the early manuscripts, Iter Marci Pauli Veneti, was a translation into Latin made by the Dominican brother Francesco Pipino in 1302, only three years after Marco's return to Venice. This testifies the deep interest the Dominican Order had in the book. According to recent research by the Italian scholar Antonio Montefusco, the very close relationship Marco Polo cultivated with members of the Dominican Order in Venice suggests that Rustichello's text was translated into Latin for a precise will of the Order, which had among its missions that of evangelizing foreign peoples (cf. the role of Dominican missionaries in China and in the Indies ). This Latin version is conserved by 70 manuscripts.
 * Another Latin version called "Z" is conserved only by one manuscript, which is to be found in Toledo, Spain. This version contains about 300 small curious additional facts about religion and ethnography in the Far East. Experts wondered whether these additions were from Marco Polo himself.

Critical editions
The first attempt to collate manuscripts and provide a critical edition was in a volume of collected travel narratives printed at Venice in 1559.

The editor, Giovan Battista Ramusio, collated manuscripts from the first part of the fourteenth century, which he considered to be "perfettamente corretto" ("perfectly correct"). The edition of Benedetto, Marco Polo, Il Milione, under the patronage of the Comitato Geografico Nazionale Italiano (Florence: Olschki, 1928), collated sixty additional manuscript sources, in addition to some eighty that had been collected by Henry Yule, for his 1871 edition. It was Benedetto who identified Rustichello da Pisa, as the original compiler or amanuensis, and his established text has provided the basis for many modern translations: his own in Italian (1932), and Aldo Ricci's The Travels of Marco Polo (London, 1931).

The first English translation is the Elizabethan version by John Frampton published in 1579, The most noble and famous travels of Marco Polo, based on Santaella's Castilian translation of 1503 (the first version in that language).

A. C. Moule and Paul Pelliot published a translation under the title Description of the World that uses manuscript F as its base and attempts to combine the several versions of the text into one continuous narrative while at the same time indicating the source for each section (London, 1938). ISBN 4-87187-308-0

An introduction to Marco Polo is Leonard Olschki, Marco Polo's Asia: An Introduction to His "Description of the World" Called "Il Milione", translated by John A. Scott (Berkeley: University of California) 1960; it had its origins in the celebrations of the seven hundredth anniversary of Marco Polo's birth.

Authenticity and veracity

Since its publication, many have viewed the book with skepticism. Some in the Middle Ages viewed the book simply as a romance or fable, largely because of the sharp difference of its descriptions of a sophisticated civilisation in China to other early accounts by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and William of Rubruck who portrayed the Mongols as "barbarians" who appeared to belong to "some other world". Doubts have also been raised in later centuries about Marco Polo's narrative of his travels in China, for example for his failure to mention a number of things and practices commonly associated with China, such as Chinese characters, tea, chopsticks, and footbinding. In particular, his failure to mention the Great Wall of China had been noted as early as the middle of the seventeenth century. In addition, the difficulties in identifying many of the place names he used also raised suspicion about Polo's accounts. Many have questioned whether or not he had visited the places he mentioned in his itinerary, or he had appropriated the accounts of his father and uncle or other travelers, or doubted that he even reached China and that, if he did, perhaps never went beyond Khanbaliq (Beijing).

Historian Stephen G. Haw however argued that many of the "omissions" could be explained. For example, none of the other Western travelers to Yuan dynasty China at that time, such as Giovanni de' Marignolli and Odoric of Pordenone, mentioned the Great Wall, and that while remnants of the Wall would have existed at that time, it would not have been significant or noteworthy as it had not been maintained for a long time. The Great Walls were built to keep out northern invaders, whereas the ruling dynasty during Marco Polo's visit were those very northern invaders. The Mongol rulers whom Polo served also controlled territories both north and south of today's wall, and would have no reasons to maintain any fortifications that may have remained there from the earlier dynasties. He noted the Great Wall familiar to us today is a Ming structure built some two centuries after Marco Polo's travels. The Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta did mention the Great Wall, but when he asked about the wall while in China during the Yuan dynasty, he could find no one who had either seen it or knew of anyone who had seen it. Haw also argued that practices such as footbinding were not common even among Chinese during Polo's time and almost unknown among the Mongols. While the Italian missionary Odoric of Pordenone who visited Yuan China mentioned footbinding (it is however unclear whether he was only relaying something he heard as his description is inaccurate), no other foreign visitors to Yuan China mentioned the practice, perhaps an indication that the footbinding was not widespread or was not practiced in an extreme form at that time. Marco Polo himself noted (in the Toledo manuscript) the dainty walk of Chinese women who took very short steps.

It has also been pointed out that Polo's accounts are more accurate and detailed than other accounts of the periods. Polo had at times denied the "marvelous" fables and legends given in other European accounts, and also omitted descriptions of strange races of people then believed to inhabit eastern Asia and given in such accounts. For example, Odoric of Pordenone said that the Yangtze river flows through the land of pygmies only three spans high and gave other fanciful tales, while Giovanni da Pian del Carpine spoke of "wild men, who do not speak at all and have no joints in their legs", monsters who looked like women but whose menfolk were dogs, and other equally fantastic accounts. Despite a few exaggerations and errors, Polo's accounts are relatively free of the descriptions of irrational marvels, and in many cases where present (mostly given in the first part before he reached China), he made a clear distinction that they are what he had heard rather than what he had seen. It is also largely free of the gross errors in other accounts such as those given by the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta who had confused the Yellow River with the Grand Canal and other waterways, and believed that porcelain was made from coal.

Many of the details in Polo's accounts have been verified. For example, when visiting Zhenjiang in Jiangsu, China, Marco Polo noted that a large number of Christian churches had been built there. His claim is confirmed by a Chinese text of the 14th century explaining how a Sogdian named Mar-Sargis from Samarkand founded six Nestorian Christian churches there in addition to one in Hangzhou during the second half of the 13th century. Nestorian Christianity had existed in China since the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) when a Persian monk named Alopen came to the capital Chang'an in 635 to proselytize, as described in a dual Chinese and Syriac language inscription from Chang'an (modern Xi'an) dated to the year 781.

In 2012, the University of Tübingen sinologist and historian Hans Ulrich Vogel released a detailed analysis of Polo's description of currencies, salt production and revenues, and argued that the evidence supports his presence in China because he included details which he could not have otherwise known. Vogel noted that no other Western, Arab, or Persian sources have given such accurate and unique details about the currencies of China, for example, the shape and size of the paper, the use of seals, the various denominations of paper money as well as variations in currency usage in different regions of China, such as the use of cowry shells in Yunnan, details supported by archaeological evidence and Chinese sources compiled long after Polo's had left China. His accounts of salt production and revenues from the salt monopoly are also accurate, and accord with Chinese documents of the Yuan era. Economic historian Mark Elvin, in his preface to Vogel's 2013 monograph, concludes that Vogel "demonstrates by specific example after specific example the ultimately overwhelming probability of the broad authenticity" of Polo's account. Many problems were caused by the oral transmission of the original text and the proliferation of significantly different hand-copied manuscripts. For instance, did Polo exert "political authority" (seignora) in Yangzhou or merely "sojourn" (sejourna) there? Elvin concludes that "those who doubted, although mistaken, were not always being casual or foolish", but "the case as a whole had now been closed": the book is, "in essence, authentic, and, when used with care, in broad terms to be trusted as a serious though obviously not always final, witness".

Other travelers
Although Marco Polo was certainly the most famous, he was not the only nor the first European traveler to the Mongol Empire who subsequently wrote an account of his experiences. Earlier thirteenth-century European travelers who journeyed to the court of the Great Khan were André de Longjumeau, William of Rubruck and Giovanni da Pian del Carpine with Benedykt Polak. None of them however reached China itself. Later travelers such as Odoric of Pordenone and Giovanni de' Marignolli reached China during the Yuan dynasty and wrote accounts of their travels.

The Moroccan merchant Ibn Battuta traveled through the Golden Horde and China subsequently in the early-to-mid-14th century. The 14th-century author John Mandeville wrote an account of journeys in the East, but this was probably based on second-hand information and contains much apocryphal information.

title: The Travels of Marco Polo


text:
Exchange-traded fund

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund that is also an exchange-traded product, i.e., it is traded on stock exchanges. ETFs own financial assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, debts, futures contracts, and/or commodities such as gold bars. Many ETFs provide some level of diversification compared to owning an individual stock.

An ETF divides ownership of itself into shares that are held by shareholders. Depending on the country, the legal structure of an ETF can be a corporation, trust, open-end management investment company, or unit investment trust. Shareholders indirectly own the assets of the fund and are entitled to a share of the profits, such as interest or dividends, and would be entitled to any residual value if the fund undergoes liquidation. They also receive annual reports. An ETF generally operates with an arbitrage mechanism designed to keep it trading close to its net asset value, although deviations can occur.

The largest ETFs, which passively track stock market indices, have annual expense ratios as low as 0.03% of the amount invested, although specialty ETFs can have annual fees of 1% or more of the amount invested. These fees are paid to the ETF issuer out of dividends received from the underlying holdings or from the sale of assets.

In the United States, there is $5.4 trillion invested in equity ETFs and $1.4 trillion invested in fixed-income ETFs. In Europe, there is $1.0 trillion invested in equity ETFs and $0.4 trillion invested in fixed-income ETFs. In Asia, there is $0.9 trillion invested in equity ETFs and $0.1 trillion invested in fixed-income ETFs. In the first quarter of 2023, trading in ETFs accounted for 32% of the total dollar volume of stock market trading in the US, 11% of trading volume in Europe, and 13% of trading volume in Asia.

In the US, the largest ETF issuers are BlackRock iShares with a 34% market share, Vanguard with a 29% market share, State Street Global Advisors with a 14% market share, Invesco with a 5% market share, and Charles Schwab with a 4% market share.

ETFs are regulated by governmental bodies (such as the SEC and the CFTC in the United States) and are subject to securities laws (such as the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 in the United States).

Closed-end funds are not considered to be ETFs; even though they are funds and are traded on an exchange they do not change the number of shares they have issued, unlike an ETF. Exchange-traded notes are debt instruments that are not exchange-traded funds.

ETFs vs. mutual funds
ETFs are similar in many ways to mutual funds, except that ETFs are bought and sold from other owners throughout the day on stock exchanges, whereas mutual funds are bought and sold from the issuer based on their price at day's end. ETFs are also more transparent since their holdings are generally published online daily and, in the United States, are more tax efficient than mutual funds. Unlike mutual funds, ETFs trade on a stock exchange, can be sold short, can be purchased using funds borrowed from a stockbroker (margin), and can be purchased and sold using limit orders, with the buyer or seller aware of the price per share in advance.

Costs and fees
Both ETFs and mutual funds charge annual expense ratios that range from 0.02% of the investment value to upwards of 1% of the investment value. Mutual funds generally have higher annual fees since they have higher marketing, distribution and accounting expenses (12b-1 fees). ETFs are also generally cheaper to operate since, unlike mutual funds, they do not have to buy and sell securities and maintain cash reserves to accommodate shareholder purchases and redemptions.

Stockbrokers may charge different commissions, if any, for the purchase and sale of ETFs and mutual funds. In addition, sales of ETFs in the United States are subject to transaction fees that the national securities exchanges must pay to the SEC under section 31 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which, as of February 2023, is $8 per $1 million in transaction proceeds. Many mutual funds can be bought commission-free from the issuer, although some charge front-end or back-end loads, while ETFs do not have loads at all.

Taxation
In the United States, ETFs can be more attractive tax-wise than mutual funds for transactions made in taxable accounts. However, there are no tax benefits to ETFs compared to mutual funds in the United Kingdom and Germany.

In the US, whenever a mutual fund realizes a capital gain that is not balanced by a realized loss (i.e. when the fund sells appreciated shares to meet investor redemptions), its shareholders who hold the fund in taxable accounts must pay capital gains taxes on their share of the gain. However, ETF investors generally only realize capital gains when they sell their own shares for a gain.

ETFs offered by Vanguard are actually a different share class of its mutual funds and do not stand on their own; however, they generally do not have any adverse tax issues.

Trading
ETFs can be bought and sold at current market prices at any time during the trading day, unlike mutual funds, which can only be traded at the end of the trading day. Also unlike mutual funds, investors can execute the same types of trades that they can with a stock, such as limit orders, which allow investors to specify the price points at which they are willing to trade, stop-loss orders, margin buying, hedging strategies, and there is no minimum investment requirement. ETFs can be traded frequently to hedge risk or implement market timing investment strategies, whereas many mutual funds have restrictions on frequent trading.

Options, including put options and call options, can be written or purchased on most ETFs – which is not possible with mutual funds, allowing investors to implement strategies such as covered calls on ETFs. There are also several ETFs that implement covered call strategies within the funds.

Many mutual funds must be held in an account at the issuing firm, while ETFs can be traded via any stockbroker. Some stockbrokers do not allow for automatic recurring investments or trading fractional shares of ETFs, while these are allowed by all mutual fund issuers.

The most popular ETFs such as those tracking the S&P 500 trade tens of millions of shares per day and have strong market liquidity, while there are many ETFs that do not trade very often, and thus might be difficult to sell compared to more liquid ETFs. The most active ETFs are very liquid, with high regular trading volume and tight bid-ask spreads (the gap between buyer and seller's prices), and the price thus fluctuates throughout the day. This is in contrast with mutual funds, where all purchases or sales on a given day are executed at the same price at the end of the trading day.

Transparency
Issuers are required by regulators to publish the composition of their portfolios on their websites daily, or quarterly in the case of active non-transparent ETFs.

ETFs are priced continuously throughout the trading day and therefore have price transparency.

Index ETFs
Index ETFs - Most ETFs are index funds: that is, they track the performance of an index generally by holding the same securities in the same proportions as a certain stock market index, bond market index or other economic index. Examples of large Index ETFs include the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (nyse arca: VTI), which tracks the CRSP U.S. Total Market Index, ETFs that track the S&P 500, which are issued by The Vanguard Group (nyse arca: VOO), iShares (nyse arca: IVV), and State Street Corporation (nyse arca: SPY), ETFs that track the NASDAQ-100 index (nasdaq: QQQ), and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (nyse arca: IWM), which tracks the Russell 2000 Index, entirely composed of companies with small market capitalizations. Other funds track indices of a certain country or include only companies that are not based in the United States; for example, the Vanguard Total International Stock Index ETF (nyse arca: VXUS) tracks the MSCI All Country World ex USA Investable Market Index, the iShares MSCI EAFE Index ETF (nyse arca: EFA) tracks the MSCI EAFE Index, and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (nyse arca: EEM) tracks the MSCI Emerging Markets index. Some ETFs track a specific type of company, such as the iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (nyse arca: IWF), which tracks the "growth" stocks in the Russell 1000 Index. State Street Corporation has issued ETFs that track the components of the S&P 500 in each industry: for example, the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (nyse arca: XLK) tracks the components of the S&P 500 that are in the technology industry and The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund, which tracks the components of the S&P 500 that are in the financial industry. The iShares Select Dividend ETF replicates an index of high dividend paying stocks. Other indexes on which ETFs are based focus on specific niche areas, such as sustainable energy or environmental, social and corporate governance. Most index ETFs invest 100% of their assets proportionately in the securities underlying an index, a manner of investing called replication. Some index ETFs such as the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, which tracks the performance of thousands of underlying securities, use representative sampling, investing 80% to 95% of their assets in the securities of an underlying index and investing the remaining 5% to 20% of their assets in other holdings, such as futures, option and swap contracts, and securities not in the underlying index, that the fund's adviser believes will help the ETF to achieve its investment objective.

Factor ETFs are index funds that use enhanced indexing, which combines active management with passive management in an attempt to beat the returns of an index. Factor ETFs tend to have slightly higher expense ratios and volatility than strictly passive index ETFs.

Synthetic ETFs, which are common in Europe but rare in the United States, are a type of index ETF that does not own securities but tracks indexes using derivatives and swaps. They have raised concern due to lack of transparency in products and increasing complexity; conflicts of interest; and lack of regulatory compliance. A synthetic ETF has counterparty risk, because the counterparty is contractually obligated to match the return on the index. The deal is arranged with collateral posted by the swap counterparty, which arguably could be of dubious quality. These types of set-ups are not allowed under the European guidelines, Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities Directive 2009 (UCITS). Counterparty risk is also present where the ETF engages in securities lending or total return swaps. The difference between the performance of an index fund and the index itself is called the tracking error; this difference is usually negative, except during flash crashes and other periods of extreme market turbulence, for index funds that do not use full replication, and for indices that consist of illiquid assets such as high-yield debt.

Actively managed ETFs
Actively managed ETFs include active management, whereby the manager executes a specific trading strategy instead of replicating the performance of a stock market index. The securities held by such funds are posted on their websites daily, or quarterly in the cases of active non-transparent ETFs. The ETFs may then be at risk from people who might engage in front running since the portfolio reports can reveal the manager's trading strategy. Some actively managed equity ETFs address this problem by trading only weekly or monthly. The largest actively managed ETFs are the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (nyse: JEPI), which charges 0.35% in annual fees, JPMorgan Ultra-Short Income ETF (nyse: JPST), which charges 0.18% in annual fees, and the Pimco Enhanced Short Duration ETF (nyse: MINT), which charges 0.36% in annual fees.

Thematic ETFs
Thematic ETFs are ETFs, including both Index ETFs and actively managed ETFs, that focus on a theme such as disruptive technologies, climate change, shifting consumer behaviors, cloud computing, robotics, electric vehicles, the gig economy, e-commerce, or clean energy.

Bond ETFs
Bond ETFs are exchange-traded funds that invest in bonds. Bond ETFs generally have much more market liquidity than individual bonds.

Commodity ETFs
Commodity ETFs invest in commodities such as precious metals, agricultural products, or hydrocarbons such as petroleum and are subject to different regulations than ETFs that own securities. Commodity ETFs are generally structured as exchange-traded grantor trusts, which gives a direct interest in a fixed portfolio. SPDR Gold Shares, a gold exchange-traded fund, is a grantor trust, and each share represents ownership of one-tenth of an ounce of gold. Most commodity ETFs own the physical commodity. SPDR Gold Shares (nyse arca: GLD) owns over 40 million ounces of gold in trust, iShares Silver Trust (nyse arca: SLV) owns 18,000 tons of silver, Aberdeen Standard Physical Palladium Shares (nyse arca: PALL) owns almost 200,000 ounces of palladium, and Aberdeen Standard Physical Platinum Shares ETF (nyse arca: PPLT) owns over 1.1 million ounces of platinum. However, many ETFs such as the United States Oil Fund by United States Commodity Funds (nyse arca: USO) only own futures contracts, which may produce quite different results from owning the commodity. In these cases, the funds simply roll the delivery month of the contracts forward from month to month. This does give exposure to the commodity, but subjects the investor to risks involved in different prices along the term structure, such as a high cost to roll. They can also be index funds tracking commodity indices.

Currency ETFs
Currency ETFs enable investors to invest in or short any major currency or a basket of currencies. They are issued by Invesco and Deutsche Bank among others. Investors can profit from the foreign exchange spot change, while receiving local institutional interest rates, and a collateral yield.

Leveraged ETFs
Leveraged ETFs (LETFs) and Inverse ETFs, use investments in derivatives to seek a daily return that corresponds to a multiple of, or the inverse (opposite) of, the daily performance of an index. For example, Direxion offers leveraged ETFs and inverse exchange-traded funds that attempt to produce 3x the daily result of either investing in (nyse arca: SPXL) or shorting (nyse arca: SPXS) the S&P 500. To achieve these results, the issuers use various financial engineering techniques, including equity swaps, derivatives, futures contracts, and rebalancing, and re-indexing. The rebalancing and re-indexing of leveraged ETFs may have considerable costs when markets are volatile. Leveraged ETFs effectively increase exposure ahead of a losing session and decrease exposure ahead of a winning session. This is called volatility drag or volatility tax. The rebalancing problem is that the fund manager incurs trading losses because he needs to buy when the index goes up and sell when the index goes down in order to maintain a fixed leverage ratio. Leverage possesses a dual nature, as it has the potential to result in substantial profits, yet it also carries the risk of substantial losses.

Cryptocurrency ETFs
Cryptocurrency ETFs invest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or a basket of different cryptocurrencies. There are two types of crypto ETFs. Spot crypto ETFs invest directly in cryptocurrencies, tracking their real-time prices, and their share prices will fluctuate with the prices of the cryptocurrencies they hold. On the other hand, future-based crypto ETFs refer to equities that do not invest directly in cryptocurrencies but rather in crypto futures contracts. These contracts are agreements to buy or sell cryptocurrencies at a predetermined price in the future. As a result, the share prices and price fluctuating trends of funds in these two types could be different, even though they hold identical cryptocurrencies and amounts.

Arbitrage mechanism
ETF shares are created and redeemed when large broker-dealers called authorized participants (AP) act as market makers and purchase and redeem ETF shares directly from the ETF issuer in large blocks, generally 50,000 shares, called creation units. Purchases and redemptions of the creation units are generally in kind, with the AP contributing or receiving securities of the same type and proportion held by the ETF; the lists of ETF holdings are published online.

The ability to purchase and redeem creation units gives ETFs an arbitrage mechanism intended to minimize the potential deviation between the market price and the net asset value of ETF shares. APs provide market liquidity for the ETF shares and help ensure that their intraday market price approximates the net asset value of the underlying assets. Other investors, such as individuals using a retail broker, trade ETF shares on the secondary market.

If there is strong investor demand for an ETF, its share price will temporarily rise above its net asset value per share, giving arbitrageurs an incentive to purchase additional creation units from the ETF issuer and sell the component ETF shares in the open market. The additional supply of ETF shares reduces the market price per share, generally eliminating the premium over net asset value. A similar process applies when there is weak demand for an ETF: its shares trade at a discount from their net asset value.

When new shares of an ETF are created due to increased demand, this is referred to as "ETF inflows". When ETF shares are converted into the component securities, this is referred to as "ETF outflows".

ETFs are dependent on the efficacy of the arbitrage mechanism in order for their share price to track net asset value.

History
ETFs had their genesis in 1989 with Index Participation Shares (IPS), an S&P 500 proxy that traded on the American Stock Exchange and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. This product was short-lived after a lawsuit by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was successful in stopping sales in the United States. The argument against the IPS approach was that it resembled a futures contract because the investments held an index, rather than holding the actual underlying stocks.

In 1990, a similar product, Toronto Index Participation Shares, which tracked the TSE 35 and later the TSE 100 indices, started trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) in 1990. The popularity of these products led the American Stock Exchange to try to develop something that would satisfy regulations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Nathan Most and Steven Bloom, under the direction of Ivers Riley, and with the assistance of Kathleen Moriarty, designed and developed Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts (nyse arca: SPY), which were introduced in January 1993. Known as SPDRs or "Spiders", the fund became the largest ETF in the world. In May 1995, State Street Global Advisors introduced the S&P 400 MidCap SPDRs (nyse arca: MDY).

It is a frequent topic in the financial press that ETFs have a quick growth. These popular funds, with assets more than doubling each year since 1995 (as of 2001), have been warmly embraced by most advocates of low–cost index funds. Vanguard is the leading advocate of index funds.

Barclays, in conjunction with MSCI and Funds Distributor Inc., entered the market in 1996 with World Equity Benchmark Shares (WEBS), which became iShares MSCI Index Fund Shares. WEBS originally tracked 17 MSCI country indices managed by the funds' index provider, Morgan Stanley. WEBS were particularly innovative because they gave casual investors easy access to foreign markets. While SPDRs were organized as unit investment trusts, WEBS were set up as a mutual fund, the first of their kind.

In 1998, State Street Global Advisors introduced "Sector Spiders", separate ETFs for each of the sectors of the S&P 500. Also in 1998, the "Dow Diamonds" (nyse arca: DIA) were introduced, tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In 1999, the influential "cubes" was launched, with the goal of replicate the price movement of the NASDAQ-100 – originally QQQQ but later nasdaq: QQQ.

The iShares line was launched in early 2000. By 2005, it had a 44% market share of ETF assets under management. Barclays Global Investors was sold to BlackRock in 2009.

In 2001, The Vanguard Group entered the market by launching the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (nyse arca: VTI), which owns every publicly traded stock in the United States. Some of Vanguard's ETFs are a share class of an existing mutual fund.

iShares issued the first bond funds in July 2002: iShares IBoxx $ Invest Grade Corp Bond Fund (nyse arca: LQD), which owns corporate bonds, and a TIPS fund. In 2007, iShares introduced an ETF that owns high-yield debt and an ETF that owns municipal bonds and State Street Global Advisors and The Vanguard Group also issued bond ETFs.

In December 2005, Rydex (now Invesco) launched the first currency ETF, the Euro Currency Trust (nyse arca: FXE), which tracked the value of the Euro. In 2007, Deutsche Bank's db x-trackers launched the EONIA Total Return Index ETF in Frankfurt tracking the Euro. In 2008, it launched the Sterling Money Market ETF and US Dollar Money Market ETF  in London. In November 2009, ETF Securities launched the world's largest FX platform tracking the MSFXSM Index covering 18 long or short USD ETC vs. single G10 currencies.

The first leveraged ETF was issued by ProShares in 2006.

In 2008, the SEC authorized the creation of ETFs that use active management strategies. Bear Stearns launched the first actively managed ETF, the Current Yield ETF (nyse arca: YYY), which began trading on the American Stock Exchange on March 25, 2008.

In December 2014, assets under management by U.S. ETFs reached $2 trillion. By November 2019, assets under management by U.S. ETFs reached $4 trillion. Assets under management by U.S. ETFs grew to $5.5 trillion by January 2021.

In August 2023, a three-judge US court panel for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington overruled an SEC decision denying Grayscale Investments permission to launch a bitcoin-focused ETF. The court's decision sets the path for a first bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the US.

In October 2023, ProShares, VanEck and Bitwise Asset Management launched the first ETFs tied to the value of Ethereum.

Earlier that year. in June, the asset management company BlackRock filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch the first spot bitcoin ETF, with Coinbase as a crypto custodian. In January 2024, the SEC approved the creation and trading of 11 spot bitcoin ETFs. By May 2024, BlackRock’s ETF had amassed $10bn in assets. It also emerged that ETF issuers had come into ownership of NFTs and other tokens – known as “dust” – as part of their bitcoin holdings. BlackRock alone was said to have $20,000 worth of non-bitcoin tokens. However, the firms could not sell or pass on such dust because that could imperil an ETF’s legal status and force investors to file complex tax paperwork. Blackrock’s policy was to hold unexpected virtual assets in a separate wallet where they could stay in perpetuity or be donated to charity.

In November 2023, BlackRock and Fidelity filed applications with the SEC to launch the first spot Ethereum ETFs. These were allowed the following May, though the SEC set the condition that the funds were not allowed to claim rewards on their coins from the proof-of-stake process. However, not staking tokens meant that the funds would lose about 3% of potential returns a year. Buying 1,000 ether at the start of 2023 (costing $1.2 million) would have netted a gain of $217,000 from staking, according to the Financial Times, so a fund with ether worth $10 billion would lose out on rewards worth millions of dollars. That might result in fund issuers charging higher fees to customers to compensate.

History of Gold ETFs
The first gold exchange-traded product was Central Fund of Canada, a closed-end fund founded in 1961. It amended its articles of incorporation in 1983 to provide investors with a product for ownership of gold and silver bullion. It has been listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange since 1966 and the American Stock Exchange since 1986.

The idea of a gold ETF was first conceptualized by Benchmark Asset Management Company Private Ltd in India, which filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in May 2002. In March 2007 after delays in obtaining regulatory approval. The first gold exchange-traded fund was Gold Bullion Securities launched on the ASX in 2003, and the first silver exchange-traded fund was iShares Silver Trust launched on the NYSE in 2006. SPDR Gold Shares, a commodity ETF, is in the top 10 largest ETFs by assets under management.

Effects on price stability
Purchases and sales of commodities by ETFs can significantly affect the price of such commodities.

Per the International Monetary Fund, "some market participants believe the growing popularity of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may have contributed to equity price appreciation in some emerging economies and warn that leverage embedded in ETFs could pose financial stability risks if equity prices were to decline for a protracted period."

ETFs can be and have been used to manipulate market prices, such as in conjunction with short selling that contributed to the United States bear market of 2007–2009.

New regulations to force ETFs to be able to manage systemic stresses were put in place following the 2010 flash crash, when prices of ETFs and other stocks and options became volatile, with trading markets spiking and bids falling as low as a penny a share in what the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigation described as one of the most turbulent periods in the history of financial markets.

These regulations proved inadequate to protect investors in the August 24, 2015, flash crash, "when the price of many ETFs appeared to come unhinged from their underlying value". "ETFs were consequently put under even greater scrutiny by regulators and investors." Analysts at Morningstar, Inc. claimed in December 2015 that "ETFs are a "digital-age technology" governed by "Depression-era legislation".

Perception and adoption of ETFs in the European market
The first European ETF came on the market in 2000, and the European ETF market has seen tremendous growth since. At the end of March 2019, the asset under management in the European industry stood at €760bn, compared with an amount of €100bn at the end of 2008. The market share of ETFs has increased significantly in recent years. At the end of March 2019, ETFs accounted for 8.6% of total AUM in investment funds in Europe, up from 5.5% five years earlier.

The use of ETFs has also evolved over time, as shown by regular observations of investment professionals’ practices in Europe. EDHEC surveys show an increasing propagation of ETF adoption over the years, especially for traditional asset classes. While ETFs are now used across a wide spectrum of asset classes, in 2019, the main use is currently in the area of equities and sectors, for 91% (45% in 2006 ) and 83% of the survey respondents, respectively. This is likely to be linked to the popularity of indexing in these asset classes as well as to the fact that equity indices and sector indices are based on highly liquid instruments, which makes it straightforward to create ETFs on such underlying securities. The other asset classes for which a large share of investors declare using ETFs are commodities and corporate bonds (68% for them both, to be compared with 6% and 15% in 2006, respectively), smart beta-factor investing, and government bonds (66% for them both, to be compared with 13% for government bonds in 2006). Investors have a high rate of satisfaction with ETFs, especially for traditional asset classes. In 2019, we observed 95% satisfaction for both equities and government bond assets.

The role of ETFs in the asset allocation process
Over the years, EDHEC survey results have consistently indicated that ETFs are used as part of a truly passive investment approach, mainly for long-term buy-and-hold investment rather than tactical allocation. However, over the past three years, the two approaches have gradually become more balanced, and, in 2019, European investment professionals declared that their use of ETFs for tactical allocation is actually greater than for long-term positions (53% and 51%, respectively).

ETFs, which originally replicated broad market indices, are now available in a wide variety of asset classes and a multitude of market sub-segments (sectors, styles, etc.). If gaining broad market exposure remains the main focus of ETFs for 73% of users in 2019, 52% of respondents will use ETFs to obtain specific sub-segment exposure. The diversity of ETFs increases the possibilities of using ETFs for tactical allocation. Investors can easily increase or decrease their portfolio exposure to a specific style, sector, or factor at a lower cost with ETFs. The more volatile the markets are, the more interesting it is to use low-cost instruments for tactical allocation, especially since cost is a major criterion for selecting an ETF provider for 88% of respondents.

Expectations for ETF future developments in Europe
Despite the high current adoption rate of ETFs and the already high maturity of this market, a high percentage of investors (46%) still plan to increase their use of ETFs in the future, according to the EDHEC 2019 survey responses. Investors are planning to increase their ETF allocation to replace active managers (71% of respondents in 2019), but they are also seeking to replace other passive investing products through ETFs (42% of respondents in 2019). Lowering costs is the main motivation for increasing the use of ETFs for 74% of investors. Investors are especially demanding further developments of ETF products in the areas of ethical, socially responsible investing, and smart beta equity and factor indices. In 2018, ESG ETFs enjoyed growth of 50%, reaching €9.95bn, with the launch of 36 new products, compared to just 15 in 2017. However, 31% of the EDHEC 2019 survey respondents still require additional ETF products based on sustainable investment, which appears to be their top concern.

Investors are also demanding ETFs related to advanced forms of equity indices, namely those based on multi-factor and smart beta indices (30% and 28% of respondents, respectively), and 45% of respondents would like to see further developments in at least one category related to smart beta equity or factor indices (smart beta indices, single-factor indices, and multi-factor indices). Consistent with the desire to use ETFs for passive exposure to broad market indices, only 19% of respondents show any interest in the future development of actively managed equity ETFs.

Notable issuers of ETFs

 * AdvisorShares: issues actively managed ETFs only, majority owned by Fund.com
 * ARK Investment Management: issues actively managed ETFs that invest in companies involved in disruptive innovation
 * Banco Itau: issues ETFs in Brazil
 * BetaShares: issues ETFs in Australia
 * Bips Investment Managers: issues Bips (Beta Investment Performance Securities) in South Africa
 * BlackRock: issues iShares
 * BNP Paribas: issues EasyETFs in Europe
 * Boost ETP: issues short (inverse) and leveraged exchange-traded products including 3X equity and commodity products in Europe
 * Charles Schwab Corporation: issues ETFs
 * Deutsche Bank: issues Xtrackers ETFs, and manages PowerShares DB commodity- and currency-based ETFs
 * Dimensional Fund Advisors: factor-based ETFs
 * ETF Securities: issues ETFs primarily in Australia
 * Franklin Templeton Investments: Issues LibertyShares® ETFs
 * Global X Funds: issues ETFs
 * Guggenheim Partners: issues specialty Guggenheim Funds ETFs
 * Indo Premier Investment Management: issues Premier ETFs in Indonesia Stock Exchange
 * Invesco: issues Invesco ETFs, as well as BLDRS based on American depositary receipts
 * Lyxor Asset Management: issues Lyxor ETFs in France
 * Natixis Investment Managers: issues Active International Minimum Volatility ETF (MVIN) and Active Short Duration Income ETF (LSST)
 * ProShares: issues a variety of ETFs including leveraged and inverse ETFs for the NASDAQ and S&P 500, as well as a bitcoin futures ETF
 * Standard Life Aberdeen: issues commodity ETFs
 * State Street Global Advisors: issues SPDRs
 * The Vanguard Group: issues Vanguard ETFs, formerly known as VIPERs
 * United States Commodity Funds: issues commodity ETFs such as the United States Oil Fund
 * VanEck
 * WisdomTree Investments: issues specialty ETFs

title: Exchange-traded fund


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Talk:IGNCB

Common Lingo and Regular Contributors is perhaps going a bit too far. These start to shift the entry from encyclopedic to personal. Elde 22:40, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Rather than IGN Boards redirecting to IGNCB directly, I have now made its own small page with links to both here and The Vestibule. - ff_cid, 24 June 2004

title: Talk:IGNCB


text:
South Padre Island

South Padre Island is a barrier island in the U.S. state of Texas. The remote landform is located in Cameron County, Willacy County, and accessible by the Queen Isabella Causeway. South Padre Island was formed when the creation of the Port Mansfield Channel split Padre Island in two. The resort city of South Padre Island, a popular vacation destination, is located on the island.

Before the arrival of European settlers in North America, the island was inhabited by native tribes. Western settlement is considered to have been started by Padre Jose Nicolas Balli, who set up a cattle ranch early in the 19th century. He and his family were driven out by the Mexican–American War and were unable to return because of the American Civil War.

Most of the island was closed by the National Park Service until 1962, after which settlement was not allowed, and incomers began to establish an economy on the island and neighboring Port Isabel. By 1978, the island had a population of around 314; a decade later, it had a population of 1,012 and 111 businesses. Being mainly coastline, the island's main source of income is tourism, with tens of thousands of college students flocking to the island every Spring Break. In winter, the island hosts "winter Texans": people (often retirees) from colder states who winter in the warm Texas climate. Isla Blanca Park, a preserve and recreational park, is located at the southern end of the island.

title: South Padre Island


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Talk:List of Solar System objects by mass

Trustworthy sources for data
I started this page with the expectation that it would be relatively easy to find masses for the planets and their moons, and a few of the major asteroids and planetoids and so forth. The masses of the planets are fairly well known, but I had a ridiculously difficult time trying to find good, reliable sources for the masses of moons (especially those of Uranus and Neptune). I tried NASA's Solar System Exploration page, which appears to give pretty good values for most moons. As I started updating the masses to match those given by SSE, however, I noticed that the masses of many moons (31, in fact) are given as 8×1017 kg. It appears that SSE is using this number to indicate an uncertain or unknown mass rather than simply saying "unknown," which makes me question the accuracy of the other numbers. Until I can resolve that, I'm going to avoid using SSE values, so if anyone knows of other reliable sources, please post them here or update the page yourself. --Bkell 22:42, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I think those moons are listed at that number because they're all rounded to around the same size. Most of the newly discovered moons have very little known about them. I've seen orbit sizes changed by more than ten million kilometers in months. At this time, we only have very rough estimated of thir size, and the masses are probably inferred from estimating the mass of a sphere of that size with a guessed density. Anyway, I admire the effort put into this page, I've always wanted to try something like this myself, but I'd never been able to find enough reliable info on objects under the size of Ceres. --Patteroast 00:00, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Formatting
I originally started this page as a table, and then moved to an ordered list, since it seemed to me that it would be nice to be able to quickly ascertain a given object's rank in the solar system. Curps changed it back to a table today, which has its benefits, among them the fact that the masses are nicely aligned. The problem is that now the ranks are gone.

I realize that assigning rankings to some of the objects lower in the list is somewhat misleading, since it's very likely that there are larger objects in the solar system that just aren't in the list because their masses aren't well known. But I think it would be nice to have rankings for at least the first few objects; after all, I think we're fairly certain that Earth is the sixth most massive object in the solar system, so it would be nice for it to be labeled "6".

Perhaps we can just add another column down the left side of the table for the rank. Any opinions out there? —Bkell 03:50, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Other sources, cutoff size for mass, and capitalization of "Solar"
While looking for masses for 31 Euphrosyne and 65 Cybele, I found some interesting sources which I will not be able to wikipediate all the useful content from today. These masses are given in terms of Solar masses, not in kilograms, and so will need to be converted. --Arkuat 23:33, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)
 * Masses of the largest asteroids
 * Determination of mass of Jupiter and that of some minor planets from observations of minor planets moving in 2:1 commensurability with Jupiter

 * My impression was this page is not supposed to list all bodies in the solar system, rather those with mass greater than 1 billion metric tons (1015 kg). If you think that lighter bodies should be added, start with Jupiter's natural satellites, Saturn's natural satellites, Uranus's natural satellites and Neptune's natural satellites. Smartech 8 July 2005 14:42 (UTC)

1015 kg sounds like a good cutoff to me, in that we really shouldn't add anything less massive than that until we're all confident that the list is complete for more massive objects (which seems unlikely given the recent discovery of objects such as Sedna). And by the way, oughtn't this article be titled "List of Solar system objects by mass"? It's only a case quibble, so I hesitate to do a "Move this page" without discussing it on the talk page first. --Eric Forste 9 July 2005 08:19 (UTC)

 * Yes, well technically the article should be named "List of known Solar system objects", because obviosly, we dont know all of them and most likely never will, or at least it looks like we never will now. But the point is, that applies to all articles more or less, because things are not fixed. Smartech 00:49, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I just meant that Solar ought to be capitalized instead of spelled "solar". --Eric Forste 04:23, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * The capitalization is fine, I had already gotten it the first time ;) If you read about the (assumed) Zipf distribution of bodies in the solar system, it is clear that the smaller the dimensions, the lower the percentage of total bodies that we know of. Smartech 05:03, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Why should "solar" be capitalized? It isn't capitalized in the solar system article. Yes, we're discussing a particular planetary system, but we aren't saying "the Sol system". Words such as "solar" and "lunar" usually aren't capitalized. —Bkell 20:59, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

It shouldn't be capitalized; I was wrong. Someone will have to put up a request for deletion on the redirect at List of solar system objects by mass, and I haven't gotten around to that yet. This shouldn't be fixed by a copy-and-paste between the two articles because of the effects that will have on page history. --Eric Forste (Talk) 02:14, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki .fr
The French version of this article has added several large TNOs that may not have independent articles in the English wikipedia yet, and in any case probably don't have masses listed yet. Personally, I'm more interested in the missing large asteroids, but I may get around to working on these TNOs someday. In the meantime, I thought I'd mention it here in case someone else would like to do that. --Eric Forste (Talk) 02:14, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Pallas
Hi Arkuat/Eric,

Concerning minor planet Pallas: it is typically depicted as non-spherical, and roughly football-shaped (N. American football, obviously). Wikipedia lists its dimensions as 570×525×482 km, which is egg-shaped rather than spherical. Ceres is the only asteroid which is known to be round. Cheers!--Firsfron
 * Actually to a lesser extent Vesta is also a sphere.
 * Shape of (2) Pallas

Minor correction
I have change the listed mass of Icarus from 1.0 to 2.9, as this is the mass listed on the "Icarus" page both in Wikipedia and on "http://www.answers.com/topic/1566-Icarus". I have never changed any-thing in Wikipedia before and is therefore not accustomed to the procedure, so I would like to apologize beforehand if this correction has been unwarranted...

allan N
 * No worries, you did the right thing. Thanks for noticing and correcting the problem! DenisMoskowitz 19:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I have changed the listed mass of 243 Ida to reflect the value given on article 243 Ida. Also moved it to the appropriate place in the list. I have changed the listed mass of 90482 Orcus to reflect minimum estimated mass as listed in the article 90482 Orcus. Also moved it to the appropriate place in the list. I have changed the listed mass of 704 Interamnia to reflect value given in the article 704 Interamnia. Also moved it to the appropriate place in the list. I have changed the listed mass of 22 Kalliope to reflect value given in the article 22 Kalliope. I have changed the listed masses of 1620 Geographos and 1862 Apollo to reflect value given in respective articles. Also they have been moved to new appropriate place in the list. Abyssoft 21:35, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Spheroid or not?
I have changed some of the Zettagram range table. If we give the dimensions of a body in descending order as a×b×c, then a characteristic feature of the  so-called irregular-shaped bodies which have not relaxed due to gravity is that b is significantly less than a. If a and b are much the same, but c is significantly smaller, it is indicative of an oblate spheroid with an equatorial bulge. You get this for all the planets e.g. Saturn has a big bulge. A classic case is Vesta (578x560x458 km) v.s. Pallas (570x525x500 km), where Vesta mainly has lots of flattening because it rotates fast, but Pallas seems to be clearly irregular around the equator. Proteus is apparently another oblate spheroid being about 215x213x197 km. [stuff I learned reading Slyuta et al, Icarus Vol. 129, p. 401 (1997)]. Deuar 11:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Here is the problem with classifing objects such as Proteus and Vesta as 'oblate spheroids': they aren't round! Objects such as Saturn and Ceres are roughly rounded: they're oblate spheroids because two of their axes are fairly close in size, and the third axis is fairly smaller, like a slightly deflated ball.

 * Vesta and Proteus, on the other hand, are only as spherically oblate as smashed-in pumpkins: Proteus has three giant craters which cover the majority of its surface: in the accompaning article, you can see it looks more like a slightly rounded brick than a sphere. Compare to the photographs of Mimas or Miranda, which are spherically oblate.

 * Vesta is also not really spherically oblate: take a look at the HST photo. At first appearances, it does resmble a very deflated ball, but take a look at the color spectrograph, which reveal giant irregularly shaped craters, one of which covers a huge portion of the surface.

 * These two objects are like floating potatoes in space: they aren't spheres and they're not oblately spheroid, any more than your average rock is.--Firsfron 20:35, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Neptune's moon Proteus is one of the largest non-spheroids in the solar system. Kheider 19:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Naming of sun
Is there a reason the sun is listed in Spanish instead of English? (sol) | Phaldo 16:56, 1 January 2006 (UTC) |
 * See the Sol article. Ardric47 02:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

cutoff mass for TNOs
I would suggest cutting off all trans-Neptunian objects at the 1020 kg point, barring something really notable. The suggested cutoff corresponds to a diameter of 457 km (assuming the usual density guess of 2.0 g/cm 3 ). While the population of TNOs is poorly sampled at all size ranges, this cutoff at least corresponds to about the size at which icy satellites compress to a spheroid from self-gravity. Deuar 18:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, this defeats the purpose of this list. I think at a minimum all known objects in the 'zettagram range' should be included. This would include dozens of TNOs not listed. On a related note, I'd like to suggest that related rows (planets, satellites, asteroids, TNOs, etc.) have different colored shading to help distinguish them from each other. HunterTruth (talk) 20:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

 * The simply truth is that we have very little idea as to the diameter (within a factor of about 2) of your average TNO, and unless a TNO is a binary object we know nothing about its density. If we do not have an accurate diameter and only a "wiki-guessed density", the resulting mass will be a wild guess.  We still do not know the correct size of 2060 Chiron and for many years Pluto was assumed to be several times more massive than the Earth.  Most of the masses on this list are best guesses (with hopefully a reviewed paper backing them up.) -- Kheider (talk) 12:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

2003 UB313
Added information on this "10th planet". Mass is estimated on the basis of size measurements and assuming it is very similar in composition to Pluto (ref: http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/index.html):

Estimated mass of 2003 UB313 = Pluto's mass * [(2003 UB313's diameter)/(Pluto's diameter)]3 = 1.305*1022*(3000/2306)3 = 2.873*1022 ~ 2.9*1022 Aquirata

 * Updated mass estimate on 2003 UB313 to reflect latest diameter estimate (2400 km vs 3000 km). However, I notice that the mass for Pluto in this article and the Pluto article aren't in agreement: 12.9 Yg vs 13.05 Yg. I used the 13.05 Yg value (same as the original mass estimate and the Pluto article) and rounded up 14.0 Yg, but thought I'd bring the discrepency to everybody's attention. --Pfhreak 02:13, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Aren't they saying now (i.e. since the revised size measurements) that the composition of 2003 UB313 is different from that of Pluto? Ardric47 03:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I think the revised size estimate is simply based on a new measurement by the Hubble Space Telescope (http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/index.html#size). With that, the new estimate for how much sunlight the planet reflects was upped to 86%, but composition is still thought to be similar to that of Pluto: "Pluto, we know, has a density about midway between ice and rock, thus we think that it is made of about half and half ice and rock on the inside. The new planet, being about the same size and the same surface composition as Pluto, is probably close to the same." (http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/index.html, under the heading 'What is the planet made out of?' - about halfway through the article) Aquirata 23:59, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Using Pluto's mass as 13.05 Yg, I get 14.7 Yg. Hence, i'm rounding up to 15 Yg. Deuar 12:26, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Graph showing relative masses
Added graph showing relative masses of selected objects today in the front matter. It is very revealing to see this in graphical form rather than trying to get a feel from the actual numbers. The list includes all objects listed from the Sun to 3 Juno. The decision to have the cut-off at Juno was made for the following reasons:
 * The list includes the four major asteroids
 * The graph is roughly symmetrical to the Earth as the Sun is just about as many Earth masses (330,000) as the Earth is Juno masses (200,000)
 * This list divides nicely into three approximately equal sets: 1) Sun to Moon, 2) rest of the objects in Yg range, 3) Ceres to Juno
 * It's hard to include more objects without sacrificing legibility

The graph will need to be updated only in case of a major change in the main lists. It is an Excel chart, which is relatively simple to update. Aquirata 14:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Looks great! Graphs like this shouldn't be uploaded in the JPEG format, however; please see Preparing images for upload for more information. Could you make a PNG version of this graph and upload that? —Bkell 07:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Will replace the file with a PNG version today. Aquirata 10:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I have replaced the bar graph with what is known in the business as a "dot plot", while keeping, I hope, to the spirit of Aquirata's original. Del C 17:27, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

fantastic work, wikipedians!
I just want to say that this article is so much more helpful than the last time I edited it. You folks make wikipedia fun for me. --arkuat (talk) 04:53, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Mass vs delta-vee
Is anyone else interested in working on a list of solar system objects ranked by the quotient of mass/delta-vee-from-Earth? Respond here or on User_talk:Arkuat --arkuat (talk) 05:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

 * So this list looks interesting to work on, but I'm wondering about several issues:
 * PR: I can see that this is roughly a ranking of "How interesting is it for the effort required to get there". Do you have by any chance a catchy title for the list, and any ideas on where to link it up with other solar system articles?
 * Technical 1: How would we go about calculating the delta v? is it for a flyby, orbit (if so, how close), do we include getting out of Earth's gravitational well, or just the Sun's gravity, what about the gravitational well of a gas giant when it comes to calculating Δv to their moons. Also, delta vee will tend to depend on the date that you set out, for example if the bodies are nicely aligned with their perihelion, Earth's aphelion, etc. delta-v may be smaller. It starts to look complicated ;-) (which is not necessarily a major discouragement).
 * Technical 2: This is a somewhat arbitrary quantity. On what basis do we prefer M/Δv to M/(Δv)^2 or R/Δv, say. This might bear some thought...
 * Deuar 15:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I made User:Arkuat/Asteroids for my own browsing pleasure in the meantime. You could call it an extremely rough approximation to the zettagram range of what we're talking about here. --arkuat (talk) 17:06, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

petagram range
I notice that some of the objects in the "Petagram range" table are actually smaller than 1 kg. Perhaps we should rename this section or change the blurb at the top to be consistent with what we want there. Matter of fact, what do we want there? Currently there is a couple of NEOs distinguished by either being the first of their orbital class or by being radar imaged from Earth. Deuar 12:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

 * The petagram section of this list is the only list of NEOs ranked by mass on wikipedia that I know of, so I think what we want here is a short list of the most massive known NEOs in that order. It's true that there are lots of petagram-range objects in the main asteroid belt that would be ignored, but is that so wrong? (The objects that turn out to be less than 1 kg ought to be removed, of course.) --arkuat (talk) 23:50, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. No tears will be shed for the main belt asteroid hordes either (you might notice that run-of-the mill asteroids are excluded even in the exagram range). A final issue is should a "Teragram range" be made for those objects of interest below 1 kg, or should they be left out. Personally, I reckon just give them the chop. Deuar 13:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I don't think we want a teragram range. The list sections we do have are all incomplete, as it is, what with all the TNOs popping up. (This is why I want a list ranked by mass divided by delta-vee-from-Earth.)  If it weren't for the "near-Earth" aspect (I am interested in keeping track of the most massive NEOs!), I'd get rid of the petagram range list too.  --arkuat (talk) 06:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Minor Planet Removals
52 Europa

Concerning minor planet 52 Europa (1948 LA), due to the large uncertainty as to the actual mass; I move to have it removed from this list until it's mass is in better confidence. Abyssoft 21:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

951 Gaspra

Concerning minor planet 951 Gaspra (SIGMA 45; A913 YA;1955 MG1), due to the large uncertainty as to the actual mass; I move to have it removed from this list until it's mass is in better confidence. Abyssoft 21:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

2060 Chiron

Concerning minor planet 2060 Chiron (1977 UB; 95P/Chiron), due to the large uncertainty as to the actual mass; I move to have it removed from this list until it's mass is in better confidence. Abyssoft 21:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

2685 Masursky

Concerning minor planet 2685 Masursky (1950 VO; 1973 QF;1975 XJ5; 1977 KU;1981 JN) due to the large uncertainty as tot he actual mass; I move to have it removed from this list until it's mass is in better confidence. Abyssoft 21:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * You know, there are actually dozens of bodies in the list whose mass comes from various estimates rather than accurate measurements. These are all those whose mass value is preceded by a tilde "~". Their true mass is likely to vary by about a factor of two both ways. The largest of these is Sedna, all the way up at number 22 on the list.
 * I do not think that it is a good idea to remove them.
 * While their exact values are uncertain, their true position on the list is not going to be far from the present "provisional" one. Unless someone cares a lot whether, 52 Europa, say, is number 30 or 35 on the list, this uncertainty is not a problem. Note how teh Zettagram and lower ranges do not have a rank column, for this very reason.
 * The objects in question are unambiguously marked. Perhaps this marking could be made more conspicuous than just the the tilde, and a explanatory note placed somewhere prominent. This would reduce some possible confusion.
 * Most importantly, in my opinion, this is possibly the most complete list of solar system objects on the wikipedia that includes a physically meaningful and visually appealing comparison for them. As such it gives a good and fairly unbiased comparison of the types of objects, their relative sizes, and gives some idea regarding their numbers. At present, it is pretty complete at least down to about 1 kg, and still quite representative much further down. Removing objects with uncertain masses will bias the list towards moons, against asteroids, and very much against TNOs, giving a skewed impression of the denizens of the solar system.
 * In brief: it is more misleading to remove some objects, making their presence invisible to a reader, than have them close to their true position but with a little uncertainty. Deuar 22:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The above 4 contained large uncertainties listed in the main articles associated with them. Albeit, there are several in the list that are estimated, these estimates are indicated in the respective articles and do not state an uncertainty. This expresses confidence in the figure listed.

List of uncertainties in %: 52 Europa, ~34.6; 951 Gaspra, ~33.3; 2060 Chiron, ~7.7; 2685 Masursky, ~37.5

Of these 2060 Chiron is the only one with an uncertainty of less then 10%. I would not be opposed to the idea of keeping a body listed should it have a confidence greater then 90%, and the mass listed be the median of the uncertainty. Abyssoft 00:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

 * How about just listing the uncertainty, so that the reader can be aware that the given mass might be substantially wrong? —Bkell (talk) 10:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

 * Writing the uncertainty would be more professional, although I worry that it may turn out messier for the reader. That's why the tildes have been used. Deuar 19:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

 * I completely agree with Deuar, if anyone cares. Any object more massive than an exagram, the mass of which is known within a factor of two, ought to be listed, and I think the ~ is sufficient notification, since the actual error bars will be found on the linked article describing the object in question. --arkuat (talk) 19:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Should we have artist's impressions?
Until recently, all the images in this list have been "real" data taken by cameras or gleaned by other methods, however since a recent edit we now have artists impressions for three bodies:, (136472) 2005 FY9, 90377 Sedna, and 50000 Quaoar. Before the number of artist's impressions grows it would be good to come to some consensus on whether we want them or not. Off the top of my head, some arguments for: and against: As for me, as you can probably guess, I much prefer having an empty space to indicate very little available data because it arouses a strong sense of curiosity about the object in me. However, what does everyone else think? Deuar 14:42, 23 August 2006 (UTC) I have no qualms about having artists' impressions given that they are properly documented as such. Abyssoft 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * eliminates ugly white space
 * Artist's impressions tend to be misleading -- they have rarely turned out to be close.
 * Having only real data gives a good indication at a glance of how much is known about the object: good images, rough pixelly images (e.g. 1 Ceres, Himalia), not properly resolved (e.g. ), very little (all the empty image boxes). With the artist's impressions, one could be forgiven for thinking we know as much about Quaoar and Sedna as about Saturn's and Uranus's moons which are right next to them on the list.
 * I've gone and distinguished them from the other images by a dark grey bakground (with a note in the header). Deuar 18:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

would it be possible to have a grams column ?
wonderful page there are two columns for mass: yotta and kilo. Would it be possible to have a column in plain old grams, which, after all, is the unit of weight before we start with metric prefixes or scientific notation to scale it. This would make direct plugins of these numbers into other formulas more likely to be accurate. Thanks.
 * I believe the mass unit that is the widely used standard (at least in astronomy) is kg, rather than g. Deuar 12:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, the kilogram, not the gram, is the SI base unit of mass. The gram is actually a derived unit. —Bkell (talk) 13:01, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

spurious brackets and units
Just wondering − why do we have brackets around all the numbers in the mass column, and why do we repeat "kg" despite pointing out in the header that it's in kilograms? I'm tempted to remove this, but don't want to charge off into such a tedious business if its going to be reverted ;-) Deuar 17:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

 * I haven't figured out the reason for all the parentheses (brackets) yet either, so go ahead and remove them. I'd say hold off on removing the "kg"s.  My experience with teaching science to adolescents is that we must abhor naked numbers, and taking away the kg's would render all those numbers absolutely nude. Besides, it would be prejudicial against those of us who prefer daltons as a unit of mass. I'm still ruminating over your excellent remarks about the mass-vs-deltavee proposal. --arkuat (talk) 07:53, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah then, with luck I'll attack those parentheses on a day when I need some tedious fiddling to calm the mind :) Thanks for a reply to such a stale post; by the way, I'm still finding m-Δv kind of interesting. Deuar 18:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Done. :)  I'm still thinking about your questions about how to do the m-Δv table. --arkuat (talk) 04:19, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Solar System Mass
In the Solar System article, it says: "Jupiter and Saturn account for more than 90% of the system's remaining mass"

However, with the figures in this article you can calculate that Jupiter and Saturn account for less then 10% of the solar system's mass (not counting the Sun).

LEitK 03:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)LEitK

 * The figure for the whole of the solar system mass does look a bit too high. If you add up all of the figures barring the Sun, you'd get something like ~92% for Saturn & Jupiter combined - with Neptune & Uranus making up ~7% of the remaining. Richard B 03:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed "Solar system" from table until this discrepency is resolved. The difference is far too vast for the information to remain until verified. Serendipodous 13:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I would say the previous Solar system mass (2,019,390,000 Yg) was almost certainly the error. The Jupiter mass in the Jupiter article is, rightly, about 0.1% of the Sun's (makes sense since J has a tenth of the radius of the Sun, and a similar density). We should just be able to add them all up. Incidentally, there is a discrepancy between the solar mass given here and at Sun. Both, predictably, without a reference − Aaaargh! The largest component whose mass is unknown is the weight of all the Trans-Neptunian objects. This should be of the order of around ten Pluto masses i.e. about 1e23 kg. Since this is apparently less than the uncertainty in the solar mass, it can be completely ignored. Before we add them, up, though, we should check for consistency with the individual articles. Deuar 13:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

→ so I get 1.991104 kg Deuar 14:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Google Calculator will return 1 solar mass = 1.98892 × 10^30 kilograms; however, Mathworld [ http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/SolarMass.html ] and NASA's fact sheet [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/sunfact.html], as well as Wikipedia's own Solar mass article disagree with teh values given by the Solar System masses and the mass on the Sun page. Thus, until someone improves the data with a citation, I will use the NASA factsheet value. Tigerhawkvok 21:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Xenaandgabrielle-cropped.jpg
Image:Xenaandgabrielle-cropped.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 08:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

another source
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/asteroid_masses.php --arkuat (talk) 22:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

52 Europa
Should we list 52 Europa by the Baer/Chesley (2008) estimate of 1.9 kg placing it below 9 Metis or should we leave it at 3.6 averaging it with the old Michalak (2001) estimate of 5.2? -- Kheider (talk) 19:59, 16 November 2008 (UTC)