Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 10

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Snickers (galaxy)

Snickers (galaxy) needs cleanup. It was built using data 30 years old. I don't know what this object is actually referred to in literature, so I've had no luck looking it up. 70.55.84.42 (talk) 08:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

The discovery article is available here. The paper has 20 citations, [1], which are probably worth looking through. Mike Peel (talk) 08:38, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Even before its identification as a supershell, the ACS or rather the region toward the Galactic anticenter was observed to be extraordinary. A jet near l = 197°, b = +2° with an associated extension toward lower Galactic longitudes and LSR velocities between −50 and −150 km s−1 was discovered by Weaver (1970, 1974). These were interpreted by Davies (1972) and Verschuur (1973) as a spiral arm and by Simonson (1975, 1993) as a tidally stripped external galaxy. Burton & Moore (1979) used associations between the high-velocity gas (HVG) and deficiencies in the low-velocity H i to argue that the jet and streams were local. Giovanelli (1980) discovered a stream of gas stretching between l = 140°, b = −5° and l = 190°, b = −20°, that has a nearly constant velocity of −115 km s−1. Tamanaha (1994) isolated intermediate-velocity filaments within the ACS that appeared to delineate a spherical shape.

According to the above excerpt from DOI: 10.1086/312975 The Anticenter Shell and the Anticenter Chain 1997ApJS..109..139T 1.000 03/1997 it's not a galaxy, but a supershell. Shall we delete the article? 70.55.84.42 (talk) 05:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

It may be worth merging it into Superbubble (apparently another name for a supershell), perhaps something like "Some supershells were originally misinterpreted, for example the "Snickers" galaxy, which was ...". I'd then have Snickers (galaxy) redirect to that page to make sure that anyone looking for that galaxy name in the future can find the superbubble article. Of course, this is assuming that this superbubble isn't worth an article on its own. Mike Peel (talk) 07:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Merge tag attached. I've stripped out the "nearest galaxy" bit, since even if it were a galaxy, it would not the the nearest (1/3 of a century leads to other discoveries). I've also rewritten it a bit with the above extract/reference... but the pagename is now inappropriate. 70.55.85.225 (talk) 06:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I see no reason to merge, it is a notable object in its own right. --George100 (talk) 12:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Does this object have a name (other than "Snickers")? Why not just rename the article? --George100 (talk) 04:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
It's called the anti-center shell in some papers. 70.55.87.10 (talk) 12:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I have renamed the article Anticenter shell, the non-hyphenated term seems to be the most common. --George100 (talk) 12:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Asteroid articles

I've just copied this fromthe Project Astronomy talk page, as it surely belongs here aleo. Wwheaton (talk) 02:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

User:Captain panda has been creating thousands of stubs on named asteroids, see Special:Contributions/Captain_panda. There's some discussion above about this, but can we reach a definite consensus? I'd think the lists like List of named asteroids (A-C) could be tables containing the information currently in these stubs. Having 10s of thousands of stubs about asteroids seems like an invitation to vandalism to me. Is anyone really going to watchlist all of these articles? I'd be OK with keeping them as redirects into the right line of a table in one of the "list of" articles, but keeping each one as an "article" seems well on the other side of pointless (to me). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:26, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I volunteered to watch a few, with some misgivings, under the hope that they would seldom change and not take much effort, but I really do think it is madness. Where do we stop? There are excellent tables at JPL and the Minor Planet Center that are maintained by professionals (and constantly updated by funded computer systems!), and how can or should we compete with those manually when tens of thousands of objects are at stake, and hundreds of thousands are obviously in store due to the NEO and LSST programs? We would not try to do this for stars. For asteroids, let us have some minimal criteria of notability, beyond being an entry in a catalog. If we just limit it to objects that require some words describing why they are interesting, and a reference or two, I think that will give us all the articles we need, and likely more than we can handle. I am sorry to undercut user:Captain panda's enthusiasm, but I really think it is necessary. Wwheaton (talk) 02:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The kind of table I'm suggesting would look like this (the exact content in the table is of course subject to discussion):

Name Alternate name Group Discovery date Discoverer More information
20813 Aakashshah 2000 SB274 Main-belt 2000-09-28 Lincoln Laboratory JPL Small Body Database
677 Aaltje 1909 FR Main-belt 1909-01-18 August Kopff JPL Small Body Database
2676 Aarhus 1933 QV Main-belt 1933-08-25 Karl Reinmuth JPL Small Body Database

Which includes anchors for each line, so links like #20813 Aakashshah, #677 Aaltje, #2676 Aarhus would work (meaning the articles could be redirects). With this format, in cases where there is substantially more information available than "this is an asteroid" the name could be a link to a non-stub article (to show the format, I've made the first entry such a link). The concept here is that the bulk of the thousands and thousands of stubs would be redirects into a table like this, without eliminating the possibility for articles to be developed about individual asteroids. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

What defines having an article being in the proposed table or being an article? I can still add infoboxes and things like that to the articles that I have created in order to add more information to them. I do not want the articles I have written to be deleted and I am willing to improve each and every one of them if it prevents them from being deleted. Captain panda 20:43, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
While I believe that we might be taking it a little too far, I also agree with Captain Panda that articles like this that are created have the potential (however slim it may be) to be expanded. They should not be deleted, as all of them are named. If I remember from the List of asteroids (the big one), it said that only 24,000 or so of all asteroids that have been discovered are named. What if we were to create the notability criteria that they have to be named asteroids in order to get them to stay on here? Would that work? Cheers, Razorflame 21:05, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
The last ten of these that were created are: 14834 Isaev, 14812 Rosario, 14104 Delpino, 14077 Volfango, 14032 Mego, 13643 Takushi, 13477 Utkin, 13176 Kobedaitenken, 12999 Toruń, 12838 Adamsmith which all say:
<insert name here> is a main belt asteroid with an orbital period of <insert period in days here> days (<insert period in years here> years).
The asteroid was discovered on <insert date here>.
References
<link to JPL Small Body database here>
The only content here is the name, the group (main belt), the period, the discovery date, and the link to JPL - all of which could be included in a tabular format. I'm suggesting changing articles like these ten to be redirects to such a table (not deleting them). The redirects would be replaced with articles for any asteroids about which an article could be written. Facts recited from a database, even with an infobox replicating all the information in the database, does not an article make. What's the problem with including the information content in tabular form? -- Rick Block (talk) 22:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
I like the table a lot, but I would like it even more if some additional data were given. Of course there is a column space problem, if it gets too wide. My personal favorite items to add would be semi-major axis a  (in AU), eccentricity e , inclination i , period (in years, but slightly redundant with a ), and either absolute magnitude or estimated size and albedo when IR data are available. I think the date of discovery might be reduced to just year, and the discoverer could be dropped, as the most famous ones will have a separate article anyhow. Also, the group (main-belt, etc) has some overlap with the orbit data, so maybe we would not need both, but spectral class would be nice. (For a complete definition of a Keplerian orbit, we would need six numbers: a , e , i , plus node, argument of perigee, & anomaly, all at some epoch time.) The "More information" link could be shortened to "JPL SBDB" or MPC, or even placed as a footnote if we do not need the option of both (but then to get the page or data for a particular object, we would have to put the link in the orbit data or somewhere else for that line).
Re notability, I believe asteroids get a number when the orbit is well-determined, before that they just have a year & letter code. Maybe a name is a reasonable criterion for a separate article. The the article could then at least tell the story of the name, which would seldom fit in a table. But I'm not really advocating mass deletion of the articles User:Captain panda has created. Even among the numbered ones (& maybe even some of the more famous pre-numbered variety), that have remarkable properties, or orbits, or appeared dangerous for a while, etc, whenever there is important information that does not fit into whatever table format we settle on, that would be a clue that a separate page may be called for. Also, if there is anyone in our project who has contacts at JPL or MPC, it might be a good idea to solicit input from them as to what would be most appropriate here in the light of what they are doing and their plans for the future.
This latter is an important consideration, I think, as what with the NEO concerns and the LSST on the way, there really will be an explosion in numbers that will likely tax our ability to keep tabs and maintain the information correct and up-to-date if we are not thoughtful. For example, I believe there is some provision at MPC for computer maintenance of the tables, including updating orbit computations based on recently submitted observations, with minimal human intervention. Even keeping the table current could be a chore in the worse case scenarios. (NB there may be copyright restrictions on actually reading external data automatically and putting it into our table.) Wwheaton (talk) 23:28, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think there's any reasonable way to include a,e,i,etc. without making the table overly wide or using a show/hide sort of approach. Using show/hide, this might look like the following (note there are 2 physical lines per entry since show/hide seems to introduce a 2nd line):
Name Alternate
name		 Group Discovery date Discoverer Orbital/physical characteristics More information
20813 Aakashshah 2000 SB274 Main-belt 2000-09-28 Lincoln Laboratory
Data table
H: 14.4
a: 2.6767409
e: 0.1117672
i: 2.98933
Node: 196.60418
peri: 307.92848
M: 164.07487
Epoch: 3871.4664786
JPL SBDB
677 Aaltje 1909 FR Main-belt 1909-01-18 August Kopff
Data table
H: 9.70
a: 2.9548394
e: 0.0497858
i: 8.48963
Node: 272.90478
peri: 280.18136
M: 123.27949
Epoch: 3965.1872566
JPL SBDB
2676 Aarhus 1933 QV Main-belt 1933-08-25 Karl Reinmuth
Data table
H: 12.8
a: 2.4032459
e: 0.1263205
i: 4.55345
Node: 289.75298
peri: 45.51728
M: 12.54766
Epoch: 4553.0696866
JPL SBDB
I'd be willing to write some code to construct tables like this (based on the data at JPL or some other available source). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


Here's my cut at a table, for the same three objects Rick Block has done above:

No. / Name Alt. Name Year H a e i Node Arg Peri Anom. M Epoch TJD Full data
20813 Aakashshah 2000 SB274 2000 14.4 2.6767409 0.1117672 2.98933 196.60418 307.92848 164.07487 3871.4664786 JPL SBD
677 Aaltje 1909 FR 1909 9.70 2.9548394 0.0497858 8.48963 272.90478 280.18136 123.27949 3965.1872566 JPL SBD
2676 Aarhus 1933 QV 1933 12.8 2.4032459 0.1263205 4.55345 289.75298 45.51728 12.54766 4553.0696866 JPL SBD

I have included the absolute magnitude H, and the six principle orbital elements. In order for the orbital elements to be meaningful, it is also necessary to give the epoch time when they apply, since M changes rapidly and the others may also change, though usually very slowly. In order to save column space I have given this as Julian Date - 2450000.00. The choice of 2450000 will work for epochs from around 1995 to ~2023. (I am just guessing all the data at JPL have been generated for epochs since 1995, but there might be a few with no recent observations that are earlier.) There would need to be an explanatory header at the beginning defining all these, or a footnote at the bottom.

I have just copied the values from the JPL pages, but I actually am in doubt whether we need to have quite so many digits. Anybody doing high precision work is likely to go to the JPL tables directly anyhow, and I suspect we could get by with about 6 digits for the six primary orbital elements, and 7 or 8 for the epoch. This would save ~12 to 15 spaces. I have omitted the nominal size and albedo because these are not available for the newer objects, since they need photometric observations in visual and IR. We could add them if we think we have the space, and don't mind leaving them blank when unavailable.

The orbital period is redundant with a, but so useful I think it might be added also, in years to say, 3 digit accuracy. It seems to me we have the space if we reduce the accuracy on the orbit elements a bit. I dropped Group as largely redundant with the orbital elements; if we want to re-instate it I think I would put it in as a 2 or 3 character code, (eg, "M-B"), with an explanation decoding it in the footnote. Spectral class could be treated in the same way; it is not available for most objects. I reduced date of discovery to just Year, since it seems to me that it really only tells us if an object may have lots of (likely lower-precision) earlier observations or not. I also thought the discoverer was of marginal scientific interest, and therefore punted that.

My goal here has been to put the data in a form that can be used quickly by anyone looking for moderately accurate information about the main properties, in a format that could be read by computer for some statistical purposes, or even to generate rough (arc minute?) ephemermis info, but not good enough for high-precision positional work. Anything that drastically breaks the table format we choose -- whatever it is -- should likely have an article with the details in any case.

Being unfamiliar with the coding, I have given no consideration to the difficulties in generating a table, for thousands of objects, in this format. It may be impractical, in which case I bow to the necessities of the case. Anyway, let me know what you think. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 16:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

A possibility for group is to have the lists be by group, in which case it would not be needed. I'm not an astronomer so don't really have any basis to comment on the information content - although truncating digits doesn't seem like a great idea. I've revised the show/hide table above to include the same content (in a data table that appears if you click "show"). I guess the question is what would be the intended use for these tables? Is anyone likely to want to print the tables for reference, or search for an asteroid with (say) some specific eccentricity? If yes, making the data always visible is probably a good idea. My goal is to obviate the need for most of the stub articles - in which case I think the content in the table entry should match or exceed the content included in these stubs. Another consideration is the accessibility of the wikisource. The show/hide version is considerably more wikisource (and fairly complex wikisource as well).
Regarding generating these tables - I don't think any well defined format would be significantly easier or harder than any other. Truncating digits would be slightly more difficult than not, computing epoch differences relative to some Julian offset would be slightly more difficult than not (and, unless this is very commonly done I'd think we probably shouldn't) - but overall neither of these would make a significant difference in the coding effort.
I think regardless of whether we change most of the stubs to be redirects it would be worthwhile creating data tables. Let's agree on a format and see where it goes. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:39, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Not much comment from others, let's wait a bit more on the format issues. I am working in astronomy, though not on asteroids. It would be nice to get some other experienced opinion. I do think it would be good if we could have the table(s) computer readable, so people could do searches and statistics. I think the full precision of the best determined orbits would only be necessary for someone doing long-term high-precision orbit calculations, as for collision prediction, and that requires such complex orbit extrapolation programs that anybody doing it will go to the horse's mouth for data anyhow. Truncation of Julian dates is widespread for convenience, the main question being what is the actual range of epoch times that occurs. I may ask David Morrison, Steve Ostro, or some of other experts to render an opinion if we don't get some more input here.
Anyhow, what about the issue of Captain Panda's 10,000 stubs? How do they get updated as new observations come in (and how do our tables, for that matter) and protected against vandalism? I think the tables should maybe be semi-protected, to restrain mischievous junior high students (bless them, of course), but I have no idea about the problems of doing that for so many articles. Otherwise I think I would be in favor of letting them be; some truly are notable, and will get filled out, others will perhaps wither unless we can figure out a way to update the data. I must say, I hope more than four people are thinking about this! Wwheaton (talk) 05:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm no asteroid expert, but I think the table looks fine. As for my asteroids, I am in the process of adding infoboxes to each of them, but I suppose that it will take a few months or longer to complete adding of the infoboxes for each article that I wrote. I've only written 1,000 (as opposed to 10,000) so it can be done. If necessary, I can add the articles that I have written to my watchlist and keep an eye on them for vandalism. The articles don't get edited much so it wouldn't be much of an inconvenience. Captain panda 12:57, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

It should be pretty easy to build a wiki template that links an asteroid name (on the list of asteroids pages) to the JPL Small Body Database entry, for those cases where an article doesn't already exist. That should be sufficient for 99.999% of the asteroids discovered.—RJH (talk) 18:30, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear. I was already in quiet despair about the over 10k of these that had already been created, I believe mainly by a run of CobiBot_II. Those were bad enough, but these seem to be seriously content-free. I can't see what purpose they serve as articles, and from a stub-sorting point of view they seriously swamp the much smaller number of stubs-with-possibilities, and what's more seem to be effectively "unsortable": lacking data like spectral type, there's basically no way to split these up into more manageable chunks, at least that I can see. (If someone has any ideas on this that are workable, I'll be their friend for life and biggest fan.) Put me down as being in favour of merging to some better-integrated format, though I have no strong opinions as to what that should be. I might also be able to help out on the automation front, once it's clearer what's required there. Alai (talk) 17:44, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I have been passively thinking about this and can not think of a great solution. But I think it is kind of pointless to have 10k+ form letters for asteroids. These form letters will not have current orbital data and are no match for the JPL Small-Body Database Search Engine. We still have major asteroids like 451 Patientia that still do not have an infobox.

When I start an asteroid article I do it like I did for 2007 VL305, 2004 VN112, 14827 Hypnos, and (137108) 1999 AN10. They are more useful than a form letter. -- Kheider (talk) 18:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

As just some dude who came hunting for this discussion after hitting one too many asteroids on random, I have to say that the proposed solution by Rick Block (or something very similar) is almost exactly what I had in mind when I stumbled in here. Whatever drawbacks this proposal has, I'm 100% sure it beats letting things go on as they have been. I am very pleased to see that this matter is getting the attention it deserves, and will be keeping an eye on this discussion. J293339 (talk) 21:58, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

We have at this point inputs from seven or so people. I am still hoping for more comments from interested editors. But before too long we need to converge to a definite proposal, with all the loose ends thought out, so it makes sense and actually works. It seems to me we are fairly well agreed we would like a table of essential information, for as large a number of asteroids as Wikipedia & practical folks like Alai (talk) can cope with, which I think should restrict us to just one line per object (? there will be over 10,000? lines already, and very likely 100,000 lines in five years or so), in order to avoid having an equal number of articles, one per object. I would like very much for the table to be in a format can fairly easily be read by computer, or which can easily be used to make a computer-readable one, on the theory that it is likely to be used for studies of asteroids as a class, rather than individually.
One concern I have is that even the table may be too big for Wikipedia to be able to handle easily. Another is that if we are going to put any precision information into it (eg, orbit data) then we have to be able to maintain it, which means updating thousands of entries as new observations come pouring in. Clearly we cannot do this by hand, and it would be a disservice to the community to make a static table, which was immediately out of date and therefore more and more untrustworthy with the passage of time. The same problem comes up for the 1,000 (or 10,000 ?) separate articles, of course: how are those data going to be kept up to date? Even without vandalism, this is a serious problem. If we cannot come up with a good solution to the maintenance problem, then I think maybe we should give up and try to provide instead the most useful possible links to JPL and Harvard MPC, where this is already done well by computers and full-time paid people. The maintenance problem becomes a bit less severe if we are willing to settle for slightly less accurate data (? 6 or 7 digits, I would think ?), because the more precise the data are, the more often they will have to be updated.
Re sorting (Alai (talk)'s bane...) I think we almost have to do it by asteroid number, because if we do it any other way, we will constantly be having to insert new lines as new objects are discovered and classified, and I think it would be vastly easier to only add to the end of the table rather than having to resort and rebuild it again and again. The only reasonable alternative I can see would be to sort by period (which is equivalent to semi-major axis a , of course), as that corresponds very roughly to orbit family, and is probably the most stable property with time (again as new observations come in) and will hardly ever change beyond the last digits. Low-precision things like size estimates, H magnitudes, spectral class, etc, will change much more often as better measurements are made, affecting and re-shuffling the entire table.
I really think we should ponder hard whether this is a reasonable thing to do at all, in an encyclopedia for general readership, if we only duplicate (& not as well) the professional work being done elsewhere. I hope everyone will think carefully about this scope issue. Once we have more clarity about what we want, then I think we should ask some professional folks from the asteroid community to look over our plan and tell us if we are about to do something useless, doomed, or really stupid, given the size and complexity of the problem. Wwheaton (talk) 07:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge them at best to a list. The 10K+ substubs about non-notable or barely-notable asteroids are really clogging up several parts of the encyclopedia. Stifle (talk) 08:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
How do articles interfere or clog one another? I don't see how the asteroid articles would negatively affect any other articles. Captain panda 14:40, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, just as an extreme example that may help make the point, suppose we were to try to have articles for stars. We could then go to the 2MASS or USNO catalogs and generate (hundreds of) millions of articles with a detailed map of the galaxy in 3d (4d actually, since stars move...), star by star. No doubt that will be what we will want to do in a century or a millennium, but right now it would crash our search engines and overflow our buffers. Wikipedia has "only" 2.4 million articles, after all. The problems are practical and tend to be rather grubby, yet very real. I do not have to deal with the practical problems personally, but experience suggests some caution is wise. We do not want to make Alai (talk)'s life miserable.
The first practical problem here, for articles or for a table, is maintaining the information current. For every asteroid there are a hundred or a thousand discrete observations of the star-like object, that are fit to a very complicated celestial mechanical orbit model to generate the set of orbit parameters that best fits those observations for that object. These orbit parameters would be strictly constant for pure Keplerian motion, of course, if we had perfect observations, but there are perturbations and the observations are not perfect. So if this week six astronomers call in with 20 new observations, you have to rerun the fit program and generate a new set of best-fit orbit parameters, taking into account the effects of Jupiter, and Saturn, and .... JPL & the MPC do this routinely, I think observers can send in new data electronically and it gets run almost without human interaction, and their tables are updated. So all these precision orbit elements are going to change in an erratic, irregular way. Most of them will not change very much (in the 5th decimal place?) very often; 99942 Apophis is certainly going to change radically in 2029; and a fair number (hundreds?) will be changing more than a smidgen but not so drastically. So the information in the articles is going to go stale steadily as time goes on, in a complicated and erratic way, but more and more like an avalanche in the next decade as the flood of new data comes in. Even for just the 10,000 objects we have, there will be many many new (and better) observations because there are faster and deeper sky surveys, both for science and Earth protection against NEOs. Spitzer sees some asteroids in almost every observation near the Ecliptic. LSST will crash us for sure. I am not saying we should delete all those new articles, at the least discretion is needed. But seriously, Captain panda, your effort has been quite heroic and even noble; but ask yourself how you propose to deal with this issue? And as Alai (talk) points out, there are other problems we have not even thought of. I suppose this is just the agony and the ecstasy of astronomy. I know for a fact that the 2MASS all sky survey was deliberately and carefully designed not to be too sensitive, lest it crash the computers that were available (when it was specified and designed) to analyze the 25 TBytes of data they took. Because computers are getting better so quickly there is great hope for the future in this direction, but still our plans for data presentation need to take account of current realities, in both human and computational terms, and advance together.
Apologies for this windy & no doubt tedious tutorial, but everybody here needs to have some understanding of these issues. Wwheaton (talk) 20:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if it sounded like I was being confrontational. Admittedly, it would be quite impossible to write an article on every star found currently. I think it would be enough to have articles on the named asteroids. What I had in mind is not very different from what everyone else is suggesting. I am fine with the idea of a table (although I am not sure how much info to put on it). I just think that each named asteroid should have an article. I am working on adding infoboxes to the articles that I have created and hopefully will finish eventually. Just clarifing my thoughts. Captain panda 01:54, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
And I apologize if I seemed to be beating you up, in any sense. I have no problem with an article for each named asteroid, as long as the human labor of updating the material does not make it impractical. That probably boils down to the question of whether we can devise a scheme for automatically updating the infoboxes from the JPL/MPC master files, and whether that is legal (I think MPC may have copyright restrictions, so there may be problems there, but I am not certain) and practical. Much the same problem arises with regard to the table(s). With either the issue could be made less severe by reducing the number of digits we give in the orbital elements, so that significant  changes are less frequent.
Or, we could just reduce the number of objects in the articles & table until we can maintain them manually with the human resources we have available. It seems to me that these issues need further research before we can make an informed decision. I am going to ask around here (IPAC) and JPL and see if I can get any advice from folks who really know the story. Best, Wwheaton (talk) 03:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Re comments on the difficulty of maintaining the asteroid articles, I must point out that all our other articles also pose maintainability issues. I see no reason to single out asteroid articles in this respect. Spacepotato (talk) 02:25, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
So to summarise where we are with these: no-one wants them, no-one is ever going to expand them with useful level of detail, no-one knows what to do with them once we have them, but Captain panda is continuing to create them anyway. Admittedly the situation was already so bad given Polbot's efforts that this makes very little difference either way, but it certainly dispels any possible illusion or hope of progress. I suggest we proceed on one (or both) of the following bases:
    • AfD a sample count of CP's articles, in order to get rid of the "inherent notability" argument. Then merge and redirect all the rest that are similarly content-free;
    • Retag the existing Category:asteroid stubs and Category:Main Belt asteroid stubs, not according to spectral classes and orbital groups, as I've been trying to do thus far, but on the basis of meaningfulness of content. If we get the articles that some meaningful editorial effort has gone into separate from the ones created by bot or semi-bot activity from database entries, then we can keep the former in the "real" stub category, ignore the latter for stub-sorting purposes, declare victory, and go home. (Precise terminology for these not-even-actual-stubs categories to be determined.)
Does that make any sense to anyone else? Alai (talk) 22:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Is it practical to delete articles that have never been edited (or created) by a human editor? I personally would hesitate to delete something a human has worked on. Re the sorting problem, the two viable candidates I think of are:
      • (1) object number (never changes; roughly corresponds to size and prominence, that is ease of detection; and finally to chronology--date that a good orbit was first established),
      • (2) orbital semi-major axis a  (essentially though not strictly constant; corresponds to orbital period, and also, roughly, to family, as main-belt, Trojan, resonance gtoup, etc; and also to orbital energy per unit mass)
It seems to me this may be essentially what you (Alai) are suggesting above? I still suppose we would like to make a summary article with a table if this is deemed practical. No response yet from my first (feeble) attempt to get suggestions from the asteroid community. Will keep trying. Wwheaton (talk) 00:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
It'd be doable in theory, but it'd require an adminbot that's aware of article history, of which mine is neither. Though just listing candidates, or turning such articles into redirects, wouldn't require an admin bot, of course. But the latter would make more sense to do after creating the merged/summary articles, I'd imagine. The actions of "Captain panda" create a difficulty here, since he's a human editor, but he's creating lots and lots of very "templatey" articles. Alternatively, it could be done by matching against article-text templates, to allow for redirecting articles that might have undergone very minor (or schematic) edits by humans, but are still lacking any significant individual pieces of text or data. And we'd have to get consensus for the bot doing such a thing, of course.
Regarding splitting by orbital number, over at WPSS, one of m'colleagues has suggested much the same thing. If no-one objects, then, what I'll start to do is to split the articles that lack any usable group, family, or spectral class data on that basis, and leave the somewhat more detailed articles, that hopefully have received and will receive more in the way of individual attention in the existing categories, or split them out by group/class as becomes feasible. Please comment over there on that aspect of the situation. Alai (talk) 20:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Returning to this discussion, I just found that these articles are doing a marvelous job of clogging up Special:UnwatchedPages, which only lists the first 1000 articles, bringing it up to 14708 Slaven. Unless you folks are volunteering to watch them, I'd strongly suggest batch deletion.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:10, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this piece of data speaks volumes for the 'inherent importance' of these topics. Delete/merge 'em all. Alai (talk) 03:12, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
The only bot created article that I can recall editing was 3754 Kathleen since it was the second largest object that Clyde Tombaugh discovered. Had the article not already existed I may have just made the article without an infobox like I did for Neptune trojan 2007 VL305 (though none of the Neptune Trojans have infoboxes). -- Kheider (talk) 03:43, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
That seems like an instance where a pattern-matching approach (or indeed a history-based one) would pick it up as having had non-schematic content added, so would be left alone by the sort of auto-merging process I suggested. Though it's still lacking the other type of data I mentioned, such as spectral class, so the solution I suggested for stub-sorting would place it in the "lower tier". I sense we're inching towards a basis to proceed on these, but we're perhaps not quite home and dry... Alai (talk) 17:09, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Pluto → Pluto (dwarf planet)

User:Electrical Experiment is proposing to rename the former planet, Pluto to Pluto (dwarf planet). 70.51.9.216 (talk) 08:47, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Since Pluto is no longer a planet, I would have to agree that Pluto should be renamed to something else, but to what is what I am not sure of. Cheers, Razorflame 21:05, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Even as a dwarf planet, it still could be the most notable Pluto. Just because an object is reclassified doesn't mean it loses any notability or status. Besides which, this discussion has happened before, and the current situation is the consensus result. shaggy (talk) 21:39, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh God, not again. What is wrong with the current title? --GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 21:43, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
I guess that my comment above was kind of thin, and the comments that you guys have brought up is making me believe that I was wrong to have it renamed. I don't see any reason why it should be renamed. Cheers, Razorflame 21:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Where is the main discussion for this? it seems to be answered by the Pluto article talk page. I'll be happy to oppose renaming the article.—RJH (talk) 17:44, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Discussion on Pluto talk page has been archived, but consensus was against. Wwheaton (talk) 20:32, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
No need to change the name or move it. This is a solution looking for a problem. Stifle (talk) 08:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

In any case, even if disambiguation were needed, it might be better to go to the full designation with minor planet number rather than use a parenthetical designation. Though judging by the articles on Ceres and Eris, the consensus seems to be that we don't like numeric designations. 131.111.8.96 (talk) 12:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedian consensus has pretty much always been that the article title should be what most people would be looking for when they search for that topic. Pluto may be a minor planet, but people are still going to search for it using "Pluto" alone, so that's what the article should be titled.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 02:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

B1359+154 → QSO B1359+154

I have initiated a request to move B1359+154 to QSO B1359+154 because a set of raw coordinates makes no sense, especially considering that this quasar is gravitationally lensed, and therefore, four other galaxies share the same coordinates. Bare coordinates should never be used as an article title. 70.51.9.191 (talk) 09:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Category:QSO objects

Is Category:QSO objects really necessary? Every quasar is a QSO object, and could be categorized there. Instead perhaps it should be Category:Quasars known by their coordinates instead of a catalogue or survey entry or somesuch... if at all subcategorized. Right now it just categorizes the prefered article name that uses QSO. If we keep this, will we be making Category:PSR objects next for pulsars which have articles preferentially named with PSR and a sky coordinate? 70.51.9.191 (talk) 09:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

User:CarloscomB

We need to examine CarloscomB's categories. I've just tried to correct several that claim to be stub-type categories, and claim to be populated by {{star-stub}}, which is totally wrong, and they're singular and not plural. I've also noticed that he inserts random copied sentences into his articles that make no sense out of context of wherever he copied them from. 70.55.86.37 (talk) 14:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

An example (and uncorrected) of one of these screwed up categories that CarloscomB makes is Category:Ellipsoidal variables 70.55.86.37 (talk) 14:12, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

CarloscomB has made a category Category:X-ray source... what do we do with it? It needs to be pluralized, and placed somewhere in the heirarchy... 70.55.86.37 (talk) 14:13, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Ofcourse, an X-ray machine is also an X-ray source, as is radium... so a rename is in order. 70.51.8.196 (talk) 05:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

CarloscomB also seems to be duplicating categories. I've sent Category:RS CVn variables to WP:CFD because it duplicates the older by three years Category:RS Canum Venaticorum variables category. 70.55.86.37 (talk) 14:29, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

And again with Category:Eclipsing binary of Algol type of the two years older Category:Algol variables 70.55.86.37 (talk) 14:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

CarloscomB has created Category:Radio source Stars... which is badly named. I suppose it should be called Category:Radio stars, if we choose to keep it... 70.55.86.37 (talk) 14:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps not radio stars... thinking about pre-TV age stars of home entertainment... 70.51.8.196 (talk) 06:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

We should examine CarloscomB's new-creation articles, since they are named shorthand, and we've been using longhand names as article names. ie. EQ Vir and FL Vir should be EQ Virginis and FL Virginis. Most of them also need to be wikified, and corrected for proper english grammar. 70.51.8.196 (talk) 06:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

17 Lep should be renamed to 17 Leporis... 70.51.8.196 (talk) 06:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I think CarloscomB is a portuguese speaker, judging from the number of pt interlang links in his articles, and that pt:User:CarloscomB has temp pages. And his non-English grammar.70.55.90.22 (talk) 14:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

PSR J1951+1123

Can someone rename PSR J1951 plus 1123 to PSR J1951+1123? It uses the format used before WikiMedia was upgraded to support the "+" sign in article titles. 70.51.8.196 (talk) 06:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Category:DQ Herculis variables

Should we keep the name Category:DQ Herculis variables or rename it to match the article Intermediate polar? 70.55.86.37 (talk) 15:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

PSR 1829-10

I have issues with the PSR 1829-10 article. CarloscomB has inserted information into it to make it appear at a glance to have a planet. However the claim for there being a planet was retracted. I have removed the categories associated with there being an actual planet but I have left the table. If this is how CarloscomB has been inserting information, then there may be alot of corrections necessary. I think that the planet table should be deleted, along with the entire planet section as it exists now (a blank section with a table).

I'd like to know what project members say about leaving such misleading information but accurate to what was an incorrect claim and historically significant. 70.51.8.196 (talk) 06:14, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

In cases where the information is dubious, I sometimes just move it wholesale to the article's talk page and ask for clarification and/or better citations.—RJH (talk) 15:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I've excised the planet box that places undue emphasis on a incorrect claim and at a superficial glance makes it appear as though the pulsar has a planet, and moved it to the talk page. It now looks similar to what the article looked like before CarloscomB added the planetbox. 70.55.87.49 (talk) 04:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

1806-20

Star cluster 1806-20 should be renamed, as of now, it is just a sky coordinate, so could refer to LBV 1806-20 or SGR 1806-20 or anything else located at that patch of sky. 70.51.8.196 (talk) 06:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

But neither of those suggestions are star cluster names, LBV 1806-20 being a star, and SGR 1806-20 a soft gamma-ray repeater, or burst source, both probably associated with sources in the cluster. The cluster is visible in the NIR, bright at 2 microns in 2MASS. We should not change the name until we know a correct name for the cluster, I think. Wwheaton (talk) 16:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I didn't suggest a name to move the cluster to, I just said that two other objects share the same sky coordinates, and have articles. If I had a name to suggest, I would have placed it on WP:RM and asked people here to discuss my proposal. As of now, I'm trawling for a good name. Star cluster 1806-20 doesn't have the best ring to it. 70.55.87.49 (talk) 04:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Right, I don't know either. I'm hoping somebody else will know a good answer. I wonder if the IAU has any wisdom? They do nomenclature, and must have groups devoted to star clusters as well. Though possibly nothing generic, including both globular and open clusters. I suppose 1806-20 would be considered open? Wwheaton (talk) 19:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Just noticed our list of open clusters, and I find no help there. That is, there are Messier clusters, NGC clusters, named clusters, etc, but no generic for "cluster", as QSO identifies quasars or LBV luminous blue variables. See also the IAU Specifications for Nomenclature, which we should presumably observe, and which I had not known of. A search on "star cluster" at CDS shows nothing useful. Wwheaton (talk) 22:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Looking around a bit more, see Object classification in SIMBAD for a list of identifiers Simbad recognizes. For generic star clusters, "Cl*" seems to be the thing, but I do not know if it is compatible with Wikipedia naming. Wwheaton (talk) 23:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
OK, I have created a Cl* J1806-20 article as a test, and the name format is acceptable to the Wiki s/w. It should be merged with 1806-20, or possibly deleted, depending on what y'all think. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 23:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
And now having realized that 1806-20 is B2000, the default, I moved Cl* J1806-20 to Cl* 1806-20; apologies for confusion. (Well, at least this has been a lesson in nomenclature for me!) Cl* 1806-20 is certainly ugly, and I can't imagine that anyone would use it in a search. If anyone knows a better choice I would probably favor it. Wwheaton (talk) 17:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
You can merge the old 1806-20 into the new article, and rebuild the 1806-20 page into a dab page; or you can do a {{db-author}} on your article, rename the old article, reimplement your edits onto the article, and then turn the redirect into a dab page. Or you can request a WP:SPLICE history merge from 1806-20 to the new article, and merge the content after the histmerge is done, then build a dab page ontop of the redirect at 1806-20. Either way, only one article should exist, and if 1806-20 still exists, it should be a dab. It depends on how you'd like it done. 70.55.85.114 (talk) 03:54, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Well... SIMBAD also lists OpC for open clusters... so this is OpC B1806-20, OpC 1806-20, OpC J1809-20... ; from [2] [3] , it could be named using galactic coordinates as [G010.00-00.24]. 70.55.85.114 (talk) 04:20, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, I have already merged the content of the old 1806-20 into the new Cl* 1806-20, and turned 1806-20 into a redirect. I guess Cl* and OpC are about equally opaque. I fear I may have lost the history for 1806-20 though. Wwheaton (talk) 05:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
I rebuilt 1806-20 into a dab page. 70.51.8.117 (talk) 11:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Category:Mira Cet variables

I've proposed merging this newly created duplicate category into the pre-existing category for the same subject, Category:Mira variables. Discussion is here. Spacepotato (talk) 07:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Insertion of spaces into XO, WASP, HATNet exoplanet designations

User:Metapsyche has been adding spaces to various exoplanet designations such as those from XO, HATNet and WASP to make them, e.g. "XO-3 b", "WASP-4 b", etc. when almost universally in the literature they are rendered without the space between the star designation and the "b", i.e. "XO-3b", "WASP-4b"... I tried discussing this matter with Metapsyche but he/she has not responded and has instead reverted back to the nonstandard designations claiming that the designations that the discoverers are using are the "wrong naming convention". I'd fix it but I can't move the articles back, and in any case at this point if I fixed it it would probably count as a revert war. 131.111.8.102 (talk) 10:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

You can bring it up at WP:ANI.
Well... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=Metapsyche&month=&year= that's quite alot of page moves... 70.55.87.10 (talk) 11:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've put up a WP:RM request on the affected articles: the main discussion is at Talk:XO-1 b. 131.111.8.96 (talk) 11:51, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Did you remember to list your rename proposals (and MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b → MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb as well) at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects/RDLog#Article renames ? 70.51.11.239 (talk) 06:51, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I didn't know about that list - it isn't shown at WP:RM... have now listed them. 131.111.8.96 (talk) 19:47, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
It's not part of WP:RM, it's part of this WikiProject. It's on the project page, for members of the project and interested others to consult. 70.51.8.167 (talk) 08:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

some more catalogue cats?

From (Sky&Telescope article), it seems to me that we should add a category for another astronomical catalogue... Category:MOL objects for Master List of Nonstellar Optical Astronomical Objects (MOL) by Robert S. Dixon and George Sonneborn (Ohio State University Press, 1980) 70.55.86.142 (talk) 11:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

There are countless catalogs in the astronomical literature, almost all going back to one or more publications by some author or authors. Many of these have been superceded by later, more inclusive catalogs, and are mostly of historical interest. I think it would be a mistake to include them unselectively, without some notability criteria in mind. It would be a good idea to include the reasoning in the article talk page if the grounds for notability are not apparent in the article itself. I think we should strive to be complete in Wikipedia only for the larger, newer catalogs that are currently in active use, plus older catalogs that are currently widely recognized in names (eg, M13, NGC 4151, HD163588, etc). Wwheaton (talk) 17:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
It should be noted that CarloscomB has been adding categories for several catalogues and surveys, and even discoverers' self-named objects. We have Category:ESO objects (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and Category:LEDA objects (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) by CarloscomB that were recently created. Though without a description in ESO objects, I'm not sure which ESO survey/catalogue CarloscomB is referring to (unless its just "ESO ###").
I brought up MOL because of the amateur astronomy angle, as it's the only catalogue from the first portion article that we don't categorize with, that was recommended as targets for amateur astronomers. (we have UGC, NGC/IC, and Messier, that only leaves MOL)
As for major catalogues, we have UGC, NGC/IC, Messier, Henry Draper, 3C, Hipparcos, Arp, PGC, Abell, and some others categorized. (though they need have articles populating them more)
We do not categorize for SDSS, 2MASS, GSC, and several other fairly commonly encountered catalogues, at the moment.
70.55.87.49 (talk) 04:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

CarloscomB's quasars

CarloscomB's quasar articles all claim to be the first quasar discovered , so it appears that all his infobox edits should be examined 70.51.9.251 (talk) 07:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

A second problem is that any AGN seems to be a quasar, according to CarloscomB... so these articles are also otherwise problematic, if we use the classical definition of quasar, and not the "all AGNs are quasars" definition. We seem to have been using the more restricted definition of quasar to categorize things so far...70.51.9.251 (talk) 08:03, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Apparently, the data in the tables are bad for all the quasars that he added tables to... someone commented earlier about vastly wrong distance measurements on his talk page... 70.55.87.113 (talk) 10:22, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

QSO B0040+517

QSO B0040+517 or 3C20/3C 20 or 4C 51.02, what's the most appropriate name to use for this object? 70.51.9.251 (talk) 07:12, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

QSO B0104+321

QSO B0104+321, NGC 383, NGC 384, UGC 689, LEDA 3982 ; what's the most appropriate name for this object? 70.51.9.251 (talk) 07:16, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

QSO B0109+492

QSO B0109+492, 4C 49.04, 3C 35/3C35 - what's the most appropriate name for this object? 70.51.9.251 (talk) 07:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

3C 47 & QSO B0133+20

CarloscomB is duplicating his own articles, not just other existing articles... with slightly different content, these two were created within a day of each other. And both list each other as an alternate name. 70.51.9.251 (talk) 07:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

QSO B0307+169

QSO B0307+169, LEDA 1524618, 3C 79/3C79, 4C 16.07, PGC 1524618 - what's the most appropriate name for this object? 70.51.9.251 (talk) 07:56, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

QSO B0316+413

Can someone go over this article? It's actually referring to Perseus A, of which we've had a longstanding and pretty good article for... do we need to merge anything? The articles conflict, since CarloscomB claims this is a quasar, while the NGC 1275 article uses the more restricted definition of quasar (ie. does not include Seyferts) 70.51.9.251 (talk) 08:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

QSO B0410+110

QSO B0410+110, 3C 109/3C109, 4C 11.18 - what's the best name for this article? 70.51.9.251 (talk) 08:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Merge Gliese 436 c into Gliese 436

I proposed merging the Gliese 436 c article into Gliese 436 as the planet in question has been retracted: an entire article about the properties of a planet not currently thought to exist seems to me excessive. Anyone with opinions on this should comment at Talk:Gliese 436. 131.111.8.96 (talk) 23:03, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

stellar renames

User:NuclearVacuum has proposed to rename some stars.

70.55.84.228 (talk) 05:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

HD 202206

Hello, I made a revision to the HD 202206 article [4] which improved the accuracy of the article (using the correct designation of HD 202206 b as it appears in the literature) and added the orbit of the substellar companion to the system's configuration. This was reverted without comment by User:NuclearVacuum who characterised the edit as "vandalism" when asked on the talk page. I feel this is an unfair characterisation of the edit, could some third party come along to give their opinion? Thanks. 131.111.8.98 (talk) 16:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

There's a discussion on the article's talk page, Talk:HD_202206.—RJH (talk) 20:22, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Use of Template:PlanetboxOrbit for super-planetary objects

User:NuclearVacuum has added the restriction that the {{PlanetboxOrbit}} template should not be used for brown dwarfs, apparently as a response to my edit of the HD 202206 article where I included the inner companion's orbit as a possible "superplanet", a possibility which has been considered in the literature [5]. However it is often unclear where the dividing line lies (the 13 Jupiter mass limit/deuterium fusion criterion is not universally accepted), indeed the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia lists brown dwarf-mass objects in its system summaries [6]. I am not sure whether User:NuclearVacuum's dogmatism regarding this issue is really helpful to article summaries of system configurations. 131.111.8.98 (talk) 16:22, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Considering the fusor proposal and the IAU draft resolution on exoplanets... brown dwarfs should not use planetbox, it should use starbox. Also, brown dwarfs have spectral types, and the planetbox does not have such an entry. Our current practice of listing planets on the planet lists also excludes brown dwarfs, so to be consistent with existing Wikipedia practice, so by extension, it should not be using the planetbox. 70.51.8.167 (talk) 08:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Hypothetically, if two brown dwarfs formed in the manner of giant planets were to collide and ignite as a red dwarf, wouldn't this be a planet by the definition which uses formation based separation of brown dwarfs? 70.51.10.30 (talk) 09:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

NuclearVacuum is not permitting article edits

Hello, User:NuclearVacuum has reverted my edits to the articles Gliese 436 and Upsilon Andromedae where I removed the planet Gliese 436 c (which is not thought to exist as it has been retracted by the discoverers) and Upsilon Andromedae e (which is hypothetical, and even if it existed it was ejected from the system billions of years ago), claiming that the "consensus" was to include these articles in the table. I am not entirely sure if by "consensus" NuclearVacuum means that "what is currently in the article must remain in the article forever", or if it just means that "articles must conform to NuclearVacuum's view of the world", but it appears that progress cannot be made with these articles while NuclearVacuum is around. Advice on how to proceed would be nice. Thanks 131.111.8.97 (talk) 17:53, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Apparently, from his talk page, this person takes owernship of articles, and is very possessive of articles he has so taken. If user:131.... 's experiences extend to other astronomical articles, this could prove problematic. He has several 3RR violation warnings on his talk page. 70.51.8.115 (talk) 05:38, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Super Galaxy

Super Galaxy has been nominated for deletion. 70.51.8.167 (talk) 08:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Stellar encounters with the Sun

Somebody might find this paper of interest for Wikipedia purposes. It gives a table of stars that are have passed or will pass within 5 pc of the Sun inside of ±10 million years.

  • García-Sánchez, J. (2001). "Stellar encounters with the solar system". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 379: 634–659. Retrieved 2008-06-12. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

In particular, see Table 4 in the PDF version.—RJH (talk) 21:06, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Might be good as a basis of a list article of stars that could have affected the solar system's oort cloud 74.15.104.182 (talk) 06:16, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Looks like that is mentioned on the Gliese 710 page, which is the star with the closest approach.—RJH (talk) 21:36, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

PSR B1257+12's planets

User:NuclearVacuum has renamed the planets of PSR 1257+12 when he created articles for each of them. He named them PSR B1257+12 b, PSR B1257+12 c, PSR B1257+12 d, when they are actually called PSR 1257+12 A, PSR 1257+12 B, PSR 1257+12 C. User:Jyril has iniated a WP:RM requested move to rename these planets to their proper designations. 70.55.88.44 (talk) 04:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

NuclearVacuum has removed the planetbox for the cometary object D from the article page. I rather think it should be in the article. What do you guys think? 70.51.8.115 (talk) 05:40, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

FAR for Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is undergoing a featured article review. See Wikipedia:Featured article review#Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Worldtraveller was the original nominator but doesn't edit here anymore. If folks could help address the reviewers concerns (referencing) that'd be wonderful. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:31, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

NAME NOVA RJC99 Sep-95

User talk:CarloscomB has just created this redirect NAME NOVA RJC99 Sep-95... do we really want this kind of redirect? NAME??? 70.55.87.113 (talk) 10:20, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

He also added that to the alternate designations infobox in the article S Andromedae... 70.51.8.117 (talk) 10:32, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I speedied the redirect and cleaned up the infobox.—RJH (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

CarloscomB's misnames

Here's some more...

70.51.8.117 (talk) 11:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed.—RJH (talk) 20:14, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
There's also another weird redirect... GLXY G113.8-83.5+144

70.51.8.117 (talk) 11:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

article name

Galaxy RXJ1242-11 should probably be RXJ1242-11, as all the other articles so named have had their "galaxy" etc stripped (ie. Spiral Galaxy xxy, Galaxy yyy) 70.51.10.4 (talk) 06:14, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Done and done. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 20:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


Category:Orange-red giants

Should we use Category:Orange-red giants? It's another one of CarloscomB's categories, and as such is not one of the categories previously determined by this wikiproject for the organization scheme worked out, um about 2 years ago, IIRC. 70.55.84.105 (talk) 05:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we use something consistent with the consensus at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects/Archive_7#Star_spectral_class_article_renames#Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects/Archive_5#Star_spectral_class_article_renames, although I hate to think we'll have "K IV", "K III", "K II", ... articles. So perhaps just "K giant stars"? It looks like we currently have Category:Type-K stars, Category:Giant stars and Category:Orange-red giants. Confusingly, we also have Category:Yellow dwarfs and Category:White dwarfs, for example. So the categories may need a cleanup/overhaul.—RJH (talk) 15:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Should we use a category organizational structure like the following?

  • Stars by spectral type
    • ...
    • Type-G stars
    • Type-K stars
      • Type-K giants
    • ...
  • Stars by luminosity class
    • ...
    • Bright giants
    • Giant stars
      • Type-K giants
    • Main sequence stars
    • White dwarf stars
    • ...

—RJH (talk) 16:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

For basic categorization, we would require spectral types and luminosity classes. Since all stars are cross classified into these two schemes, this would be the minimum required. As stars are also frequently associated with locations on the Hertzsprung Russell diagram (beyond luminosity classes), the classifications from that (ie. Asymptotic Giant Branch) should also be included. "K IV" is Type-K Class-IV, and we have categories for both K and IV, but we don't have category K2IV, or other more fine-grained divisions of spectral type or luminosity class. So it would probably be a good idea not to subdivide these too much. Might we K-IV consider an undesirable intersection, and overcategorization, were it a separate category? 70.55.87.49 (talk) 04:31, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
True. I'm not sure how useful it would be to have Type-K Class-IV sub categories, for example, unless somebody wanted to use those category for comparisons. However, it could be that the categories for spectral type and luminosity will grow to a significant size that would necessitate a sub-division.—RJH (talk) 17:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I certainly think "Orange-red Giants" is generally quite undesirable, except possibly as an informal description in casual talk. It has no status as a generally recognized type, I believe.
Furthermore, I think it may be a mistake to have 2-parameter spectral categories at all, eg, not "G V", but rather "G star" and "Main sequence dwarf star", separately. That saves us endless obsessive-compulsive trouble, categories with no stars in them, etc, etc. Note also that a lot of spectral subtypes are not even defined (eg, G1 I think) in the main classification systems, so don't go too far in fine-graining these.
Also, try to keep observational classes, like spectral type, distinct from physical or theoretical classes, like "AGB star" (which is burning He in its core). Sometimes there is a clear one-to-one correlation between observed categories and theoretical categories, but often not. Wwheaton (talk) 08:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Agreed.—RJH (talk) 17:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like the consensus would be to just have separate spectral class and luminosity class categories, eliminating "Orange-red giants", etc.—RJH (talk) 17:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

As there has been no objection, I'm going to treat this as the consensus and begin systematically re-cataloging the star pages.—RJH (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:16, 27 June 2008
I disagree. We actually have a very large number of star articles, and I believe it would be preferable to classify stars by luminosity type together with spectral class (e.g., Category:G V stars, etc.) In fact, this is the current system, albeit with different names (Category:G V stars is called Category:Yellow dwarfs, Category:B II stars is called Category:Blue-white bright giants, and so forth.) So, I think the obvious solution is to rename the existing categories to use clearer names. Spacepotato (talk) 17:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
I'll hold up further revisions of the categories until the discussion is resolved.—RJH (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Putting aside categories recently created by User:CarlosComB, and the category Category:White dwarfs, we have the following categories with names of the form "color, size":

I would suggest renaming these as shown above. Another possibility would be to use Category:K-type giants instead of Category:K III stars, and so on.

The categories Category:Red dwarfs, Category:Red giants, Category:Red supergiants, Category:Yellow supergiants, and Category:Blue supergiants have names which are frequently used in the astronomical literature. So, if these categories are renamed, I would suggest recreating categories with these names to correspond with their use in the astronomical literature (which is not the same as our use to denote the combination of a certain spectral class and luminosity class.) [The term "blue dwarf" is also used in the literature, but usually refers to galaxies, not stars.] Spacepotato (talk) 18:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I think Spacepotato's proposed category names make sense. Note that the term red giant includes both K III and M III stars, so I think keeping one category for all red giants (perhaps with K III and M III as sub-categories) makes sense. ASHill (talk | contribs) 18:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
For consistency, I think it's best to keep Category:K III stars and Category:M III stars. I agree that we should have a Category:Red giants as well. Since at present Category:Red giants is designated as being for M III stars, which, as you point out, is not the definition in use outside of Wikipedia, I think it's best to rename the category as above and create a new red giant category. Spacepotato (talk) 22:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree. I didn't realize that the red giants category currently only includes M III stars. ASHill (talk | contribs) 03:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I continue to favor a two-category system:
{O,B,A,F,G,K,M,L,T} × {I, II, III, IV, V}
(the latter being synonymous with {super giant, bright giant, giant, subgiant, dwarf}), where each star is usually categorized separately for both spectral type (ie, color) and luminosity class, but some stars may be uncategorized on either system. But if others are heavily favor a single system incorporating both spectral type and luminosity class in one system, I can live with it. Wwheaton (talk) 05:24, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
The two category heirarchy system would not be replaced by the new system proposed, or should not be, since they would aggregate the other categories into a smaller higher level. As far as I'm concerned. 70.51.9.241 (talk) 06:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I think the new system being proposed is good, if it is categorized underneath the existing spectral-type and luminosity-class categories, since it'd be messy otherwise. ie (Category: Type-F stars, Category:Class-III stars) {{categoryredirect}} should be use on the more common names. I also support subcategorizing red-giants. 70.51.9.241 (talk) 06:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with this. These categories should be under the existing categories for luminosity classes (Category:Supergiant stars, Category:Bright giant stars, Category:Giant stars, Category:Subgiant stars, Category:Main sequence stars and Category:Subdwarf stars) and spectral classes (Category:Type-O stars, Category:Type-B stars, Category:Type-A stars, Category:Type-F stars, Category:Type-G stars, Category:Type-K stars and Category:Type-M stars), so that, for example, Category:G II stars is a subcategory of Category:Bright giant stars and Category:Type-G stars. Fortunately, this is already the situation, except for the different names. Spacepotato (talk) 07:19, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Not really wishing to stir the pot here, but I hope it is apparent to the lay reader what is meant by Category:G II stars. (As compared to Category:Type-G luminosity II stars, for example.)—RJH (talk) 14:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't think either of these names will be very clear to someone unfamiliar with astronomy. Names of the form Category:K-type giants, Category:G-type main sequence stars, etc., might be better for this. Spacepotato (talk) 18:58, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that would be clearer. However, it would be more consistent with the current category heirarchy to use, say, Category:Type-K giants.—RJH (talk) 17:27, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
In the astronomical literature, O-type star, B-type star, etc. are used much more frequently than Type O star (with or without dash), Type B star, etc. (You can do a Google Scholar search to confirm this.) So, I think that it would be preferable to rename Category:Type-O stars, etc., to Category:O-type stars, etc. Spacepotato (talk) 18:20, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Whether or not this passes CFD, should {{categoryredirect}}s be created at Category:G II stars etc? 70.55.86.39 (talk) 04:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
I think we forgot luminosity class 0 / hypergiants... 70.55.86.39 (talk) 05:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:CFD

Since opinions were generally favorable, I have listed this renaming proposal at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. You are invited to comment here. Spacepotato (talk) 00:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Category: Red giants

My understanding was that the consensus was to keep/recreate Category:red giants as a combination of Category:M-type giants and Category:K-type giants. However, the category has been re-deleted, citing the CFD discussion. If there's no objection, I'll contact the deleting admin about re-creating the category. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 16:15, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I recreated Category:Red giants and Category:Red dwarfs following the rename, but these categories were subsequently depopulated by bot action triggered by the rename. As a temporary measure I recreated these categories with the slightly different spellings Category:Rеd dwarfs and Category:Rеd giants. Owing to the unusual spelling of these names they have now been proposed for renaming to Category:Red dwarf stars and Category:Red giant stars, respectively. The discussion at CfD is here. Spacepotato (talk) 19:18, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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