Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 9

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Draft notability guidelines

For the purpose of discussion, I put together a draft document regarding the notability of astronomical objects:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects/notability

As an arbitrary example, I believe these guidelines would exclude 985 Rosina because it satisfies none of the listed criteria. That asteroid does get 636 ghits, but most of those appear to be just general lists of asteroids, including those on wikipedia.

Your comments would be appreciated. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't any potential dwarf planet, subject of only trivial publications, be considered as notable? Or all supernovae, novae, dwarf novae, red novae, GRBs, SXRs, RRATs, pulsars, quasars, blazars, BL-Lacs, LBVs, hypergiants, free-floating planemo, superclusters ? 132.205.44.5 (talk) 23:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to pick one of your examples for the sake of discussion... The Supernova article states "Professional and amateur astronomers find several hundred supernovae per year (in recent years: 367 in 2005 and 551 in 2006)." If we were to work backwards and create articles on all of the supernovae that have ever been discovered it would be an unmanagable task. Most of these are not even considered important enough by astronomers to write a paper on, which leaves us with a lack of reliable sources to create articles. It makes sense to me that there should be some notability guidelines. --mikeu (talk) 00:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

How about basing it on quantity of information - an article on an object requires that at least a paragraph of information (say 4-6 facts) is known about it, this would exclude very minor things, where only a name and an orbit or date of discovery is known. Also have guidelines about merging to next level of classification up rather than deleting per secheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately the quantity argument doesn't hold much water in the AfD discussions. I've seen pages with an extensive amount of work done get summarily flushed. But yes some text about performing a merge rather than a delete (for valid information) is often a good idea.—RJH (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Often notability criteria are not useful—they're a solution to a non-problem—and this one doesn't seem to be an exception. Spacepotato (talk) 02:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Notability criteria are frequently brought up during AfD discussions, so they are useful. If a page can be shown to meet a consensus notability criteria, that can save a lot of hand waving arguments that often get shot down by experienced deletionists. The criteria are also useful for clarifying specific areas for page improvement.—RJH (talk) 17:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

This cuts both ways—a notability criterion can be used to argue for deletion ("delete, it's non-notable") as well as keeping ("keep, it's notable".) At any rate, astronomical object deletionism doesn't seem to be a big problem at the moment. Spacepotato (talk) 23:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Astronomy collaboration of the week

Hi. I've noticed that the astronomy collaboration of the week, currently under the jurisdiction of this project, has had the same collaboration since July 2006. I am therefore proposing that it be expanded to cover space as a general topic, and be moved to the jurisdiction of the space WikiProject. Please discuss this proposal on the collaboration talk page. Thanks. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 23:52, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

That has now occurred. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 10:41, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Star formation

What happened to the star formation page and the template box? Last year it had much more information? The information relating to PMS, Class 0-III are now difficult to find, if existing in Wikipedia. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 08:50, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I reverted the template back to the 1 January 2008 and left a note on Template talk:PhysicsNavigation#The collapsed subsections look terrible as I couldn't see how to make all the navlinks visible. -Wikianon (talk) 22:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

An acticle that needs attention

The article for J Centauri requires someone to look at an edit of an IP user to figure if it even makes sense. I came across the article via randon article and in looking at the history, I am unsure if this [1] edit is correct or even reasonable. I do not know anything about space and stars and figured this would be a good place to post the request.

Also, on the same article, I an unsure of why there is a link to HD 102776 with the notice "For j Centauri, see..." which is the name of the current article. The data on the two pages are different, so I don't know if it is some naming issue, factually incorrect or some other issue. Thanks. --Jordan 1972 (talk) 21:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Both uppercase and lowercase, and greek characters are used in naming stars in the Bayer designation scheme, so "alpha x", "A x" and "a x" are three different stars. A quick skim of the simbad results seems to hold up what's there. 132.205.44.5 (talk) 23:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

There was however an obvious typo in the B-V color, which was already fixed earlier (on 6 Jan). I do not know why the magnitude range (+6.16 to +6.27) and magnitudes (~4.45 for both B & V) disagree, however; this still appears to be an error? Wwheaton (talk) 08:04, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

List of asteroids/7201–7300 at AFD

List of asteroids/7201–7300 is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of asteroids/7201–7300 because it is a directory (see WP:NOT). 132.205.44.5 (talk) 22:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Sirius peer review

Hi all, I am working up the Dog Star for FAC sometime soon and feel reasonably happy with content. Don't mind too much about modern pop cult refs at bottom, what I can't ref will go. The rest of the article I'd be happy to see what folks thought of it. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:11, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Sirius became a featured article on Feb. 1st. Congratulations to the editors!—RJH (talk) 20:08, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Aw..gee thanks, couldn't a' done it without a lot of ground work from alot of folks more knowledgeable than me though...cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:31, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Ganymede

The article has been nominated for peer review. Please, participate. Ruslik (talk) 19:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

There's also a peer review underway for Triton (moon) that could use some more eyes. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 20:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Astronomy versus Astrophysics

Please come join the discussion about Astronomy vs Astrophysics articles here. WilliamKF (talk) 16:57, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Binary asteroids up for renaming to Category:Asteroids with moons

Category:Binary asteroids is up for renaming at WP:CFD. Note that there also exists Category:Asteroid satellites 132.205.44.5 (talk) 22:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

The discussion is here. Spacepotato (talk) 23:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Ganymede's FA

The article is now FA candidate. Please, participate. Ruslik (talk) 14:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

TfD on Template:Moons of Neptune

Template:Moons of Neptune has been nominated for deletion, because of redundancy with Template:Neptune. 132.205.44.5 (talk) 20:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The decision was to keep. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 February 18.—RJH (talk) 21:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Planet

The {{Infobox Planet}} template includes several temporary categories that have apparently been there since at least last October. These are showing up on nearly every planet and moon article that is using this template, and they don't appear to be serving a useful purpose.

Temp test category for InfoboxPlanet
Temp category InfoboxPlanet-magnitude

Is there any objection to removing these "temporary" categories?—RJH (talk) 21:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Planet - move proposal

User:Sardanaphalus has proposed moving Template:Infobox Planet to Template:Infobox Nonstellar body (or some other generic term). Please join the discussion at Template talk:Infobox Planet#Template's name. --Ckatz^chat _spy 05:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Notability of named asteroids

Cross-posted from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Solar System#Notability_of_named_asteroids.

Naerii has asked for the red links on the following pages to be filled in with relevant information. I have created several of these stubs, but recently someone has asked me about the notability of these rocks. And, before continuing creating these stubs, I would like know whether or not these are notable and whether or not they should have articles. The lists of pages is as follows:

Thanks for your time. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 06:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There has been discussion of asteroid notability before, but there was no consensus. (See also "Draft notability guidelines" above.) I think a reasonable case can be made for perhaps a few hundred or thousand of them, but the problem (as always) is where you draw the line. Only listing the etymology, discovery date/site and orbital elements doesn't seem like enough to demonstrate notability. It needs something more: historical importance; composition; flyby photos; published papers; radar mapping, or some such.

Regarding the red links, I'm not sure I'd want to tackle that monster. The lunar crater articles were enough of a bear. ;-)—RJH (talk) 21:08, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The mind boggles that this discussion was felt to be sufficient to determine consensus for creating tens of thousands of asteroid stubs. However, created they have been, and with no useful categorisation. Anyone have any idea as to how to subdivide these for stub-sorting purposes? Alai (talk) 03:23, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

AfD on Moonlet

Moonlet has been nominated for deletion. 70.51.8.110 (talk) 05:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The result was "keep".—RJH (talk) 16:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

PR on Cygnus X-1

The Cygnus X-1 article is up for peer review. Please take a look and post your comments. Thanks!—RJH (talk) 19:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

GRB 080319B

GRB 080319B is a gamma ray burst, and I hope that it is correct to use the Supernova infobox for it. However, what do we put in the distance field? I'm not at all sure about this. As of now we only have the info that the Light tool 7.5e9 years from the event to here. -- Sverdrup (talk) 14:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The redshift z was measured as 0.97, from which the distance can be estimated. There are subtleties about the definitions and cosmological models that make this calculation complex and ambiguous for z larger than a few tenths however; see [2] Ned Wright's Cosmology calculator for details. Wwheaton (talk) 17:09, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I mispoke, it is z=0.937, according to the VLT; see the GRB 080319B & ref [3]. Wwheaton (talk) 20:54, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't calculate anything myself, so I put it in what we have, 7.5 billion ly LTD (light travel distance) diff, linking to the appropriate article. -- Sverdrup (talk) 01:45, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Nebular hypothesis

The article has been nominated for peer review. Please, participate. Ruslik (talk) 09:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

AfD on Radio Source

radio source has been nominated for deletion. 70.51.9.57 (talk) 05:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

... and was speedily kept. Mike Peel (talk) 10:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

merge proposed on interstellar cloud and nebula

Interstellar cloud and nebula appear at WP:PM as a proposed merge. 70.55.84.42 (talk) 04:11, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably not a bad idea. Otherwise I'm not sure how we'd distinguish between the two.—RJH (talk) 16:12, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I would think that nebula would have a historical background that deserves a separate article (ie, things like galaxies), aside from that, modern nebulae are a subcategory of clouds, and I'm not clear on whether extra/intergalactic / extra/intercluster clouds are also classed as interstellar clouds. 70.55.84.42 (talk) 08:12, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

CarloscomB

We seem to be having a growing problem with user CarloscomB inserting astronomy images that do not have a valid copyright status. See:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User_talk:CarloscomB

These are getting regularly tagged for removal and the user is doing nothing to address the issue. Perhaps it's not a concern if the images will all be deleted, but meanwhile that results in a lot of cleanup of the modified pages.—RJH (talk) 16:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

This user has had about 70 astronomy images challenged (and probably deleted) since November 2007, however I see that these are only a (fairly) small fraction of his contributions. So it appears that he is well-intentioned. I have put a level 1 improper image template on his talk page with some words explaining the problem, and followed it with the welcomeg template. Let's keep an eye on it and see how he does, he seems very energetic. Wwheaton (talk) 17:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I looked at a number of his recent contributions, but none of them showed a valid copyright status tag. All such will undoubtedly be challenged at some point; by a bot if nothing else.—RJH (talk) 17:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

7001 Noether

Hello, astronomy people. I'm currently working to bring Emmy Noether up to FA status, and I've come across the asteroid 7001 Noether. According to Meanings of asteroid names (7001-7500), it's definitely named for her and not her father Max Noether (who was also a noteworthy mathematician). However, the source listed as a reference has lots of info about the asteroid, but doesn't indicate Emmy or Max. I wonder if anyone can help me out. Thanks! – Scartol • Tok 23:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Try the Wiki article on Emmy Noether. She is a famous mathematical physicist of the first half of the 20th century, known for Noether's Theorem, which I think says that whenever you have a symmetry in physics, there is a corresponding conservation law. Examples are invariance of physics against (shift in time origin) <=> (conservation of energy), (space origin) <=> (linear momentum conservation), (invarience under rotation) <=> (angular momentum conservation), etc. Wwheaton (talk) 00:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

As Scartol (talk · contribs) is working on that article, I think they already know all that... :)

There should be something in the Minor Planet Bulletin from when the asteroid was named, which should explain who it was named after, but I can't find it online... Mike Peel (talk) 06:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I think so too, duh.... :) :) Wwheaton (talk) 06:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all for the responses, and – yes – I have stumbled across a few things about Frl. Noether while writing her biography. =) I'll see if I can track down the Minor Planet Bulletin from the time of its naming. Thanks again! – Scartol • Tok 11:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

PS: The reconstructed article is being built on my drawing board, in case anyone wants to make comments or offer other feedback. (I've not reached the math/physics part yet, but I expect to require great mounds of help on that.) – Scartol • Tok 11:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

According to the Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, 5e, 7001 Noether is named after Emmy, not Max. (p. 570, Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Lutz D. Schmadel, 5th revised and enlarged edition, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-540-00238-3.) Spacepotato (talk) 01:02, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic. You just saved me a trip to the library. Thanks so much, Spacepotato! – Scartol • Tok 23:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Asteroid/Minor Planet merge

In order to facilitate bring the asteroid article up to FA at some point into the future, I was "bold" and took the initiative to merge the asteroid and minor planet articles. The majority of the minor planet article concerned "asteroid groups", so that has been moved into a separate article, asteroid group. What little remained was heavily redundant with the asteroid article and I saw little reason to keep them separate. But the content can be readily moved to the minor planet page, if that is the preferred direction. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 19:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Since the IAU made minor planet deprecated, it's probably the way it should go. Small solar system body would be the other hcoice. 70.55.89.134 (talk) 06:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks.—RJH (talk) 19:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

BY Dra var

Category:BY Dra variables has been proposed to be merged with Category:BY Draconis variables. 70.55.89.134 (talk) 07:14, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Mercury Featured Article Review

Mercury (planet) has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Kaldari (talk) 21:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

M-100

At Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rocketry, there is discussion on moving M-100 (rocket) on top of M-100 at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Rocketry/Titles. 70.55.85.177 (talk) 05:52, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Copyright violation in Gliese 570 article dating back to 2006

Hello, it looks like the Gliese 570 article contains lots of copy+paste of SolStation - the copying was apparently done in 2006 by a user called "Hurricane Devon". 131.111.8.103 (talk) 10:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Hurricane Devon left alot of copyvios around... 70.55.84.13 (talk) 06:41, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Nebular hypothesis

I have nominated this article to featured article. Ruslik (talk) 10:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change on starboxes

Template:Starbox begin and others says that I shall discuss template changes here first. I'll increase the "padding" from 0 to about 3px. Nobody would have realized anything have changed, if I had said nothing. If discontent with what you see, please revert. Said: Rursus ☻ 10:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Checked. If anyone can see anything, please report! Said: Rursus ☻ 10:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Cygnus X-1 FAC

The Cygnus X-1 is up for FAC. Please take a look and leave a comment if you have an interest. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It was just promoted last week. Thank you to those who provided feedback.—RJH (talk) 22:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Where should minor planet redirect?

At present, minor planet redirects to asteroid group. The IAU is going with the term Small Solar System body.[4] I wanted to get input before taking action. Novangelis (talk) 14:24, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually it redirects to Asteroid. A redirect to Small Solar System body works for me.—RJH (talk) 01:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

To me, the term small solar system body is ugly and shouldn't be used at all except to record the IAU definition. I interpret minor planet as referring to all bodies going around the Sun other than the eight major planets, so perhaps it should be a disambiguation-type article listing the different articles we have on these bodies. The way, the truth, and the light (talk) 01:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

When I posted, it redirected to asteroid group, apparently due to a merge. It was changed since. I, too, hate SSSB, but it is the current term. A disambiguation page with pre- and post-2006 meanings might be of use, since SSSB is not a strict synonym. I almost suggested it at first, but was trying to avert unnecessary expansion. Perhaps it is necessary. Novangelis (talk) 02:02, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The history of this page is as follows:

Merges between Asteroid and Minor planet were discussed in the past at Talk:Asteroid and Talk:Minor planet, but there was no consensus.
On April 11, 2008, User:RJHall merged Asteroid and Minor planet. As one would expect, he redirected Minor planet to Asteroid. He also moved most of the material in Minor planet to a new article, Asteroid group.
On April 19, 2008, administrator User:Bryan Derksen was dissatisfied because the history for the text in Asteroid group was at Minor planet. He therefore performed a history merge between Asteroid group and Minor planet.
A side-effect of the history merge was that Minor planet was redirected to Asteroid group, which made no sense. Therefore, I restored the status quo of April 11 by re-redirecting Minor planet to Asteroid.

As for where the redirect should point, the IAU has introduced the terms dwarf planet and small solar system body, but it has not changed the definition of asteroid or minor planet. The terms minor planet and small solar system body do not mean the same thing. Ceres is a minor planet but not a SSSB; comets are SSSBs but not minor planets. Minor planet and asteroid on the other hand are approximately synonymous.[5][6][7] Therefore, minor planet should continue to point to asteroid. ("Asteroid" may or may not exclude TNOs and other distant objects, but this can be discussed at asteroid.) Spacepotato (talk) 06:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I've replaced minor planet with a summary/index article. I think this is more useful. The way, the truth, and the light (talk) 07:12, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I like what you wrote. To be encyclopedic, I've added SSSB to the see also section, even if it is about as inelegent a term as is possible. Thank you. Novangelis (talk) 14:35, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

That works for me as well.—RJH (talk) 17:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Astronomy day

May 10th is the 2008 Astronomy day. It's too bad we didn't nominate an astronomy FA for that date. Maybe next year...

Note also that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.—RJH (talk) 01:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

"Circumstellar discs" category

Membership in Category:Circumstellar discs category currently imposes a restriction that the star not have a planet. However, this limitation seems arbitrary. Removing this restriction would allow a viewer to go to one category to find all stars with debris disks, rather than also having to search all the stars with planets for disks. (An example of a star that would be included is Epsilon Eridani.) What do you think?—RJH (talk) 16:58, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a subcategory Protoplanetary discs which contains stars with dics and planets? 70.51.9.170 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 04:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
- "Protoplanetary" implies that the disc is in the process of, or at least is capable of forming planets, but not all circumstellar discs are of this nature, particularly around older stars such as the planet host HD 69830. Collisions between objects in asteroid belts can also produce discs... would anyone seriously want to call the dust associated with our own solar system's asteroid or Kuiper belts "protoplanetary"? 131.111.8.97 (talk) 09:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
- Possibly there could be a cross-categorization of 'Stars with planets and belts', or some such appropriate name. But adding that sub-category under the 'Circumstellar discs' category would still require lifting the restriction. So I'd like to know if somebody has a good reason not to eliminate it. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 20:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  - The text of the category reads "It is assumed that stars with planets will still have debris discs of some sort." - this is unproven speculation, in fact studies seem to suggest there is no correlation between (massive) planets and circumstellar discs (see, e.g. [8]). The rationale for not including systems with planets thus seems to be flawed. 131.111.8.103 (talk) 01:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    - It is not an unreasonable speculation, since it should be impossible to incorporate every single gas atom/molecule or dust grain into planets. The Sun has such a debris disc, it's even visible, see Zodiacal light. 70.55.88.176 (talk) 06:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
      - Who said that the grains would have to be incorporated into the planets? Actually there are processes which remove dust particles on short timescales compared to the lifetime of the system (e.g. Poynting-Robertson drag), which means there has to be a source for production of the dust grains in the system. While our system has asteroid and Kuiper belts in which collisions between SSSBs produce dust, it is not clear that such belts are a feature of all mature planetary systems. Observationally there is no evidence for such a correlation, so we shouldn't assume there is one. 131.111.8.96 (talk) 12:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
        But planets themselves are sources of debris. Assuming that a close interaction with a passing star strips the Kuiper disc and Oort cloud of the star having planets, the planets themselves will generate gas and dust in their orbital plane. Hence, not every grain of dust or atom of gas will be incorporated into planets. The bombardment of the solar wind on a planet's surface or atmosphere will produce such. 70.55.88.176 (talk) 10:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    - My sense on this is that the category is for stars where a circumstellar disk has been detected, which would mean that the disk has a sufficient density and distribution to make detection possible. Not all stars with a planetary system have had a debris disk detected, and I would prefer to make detection the criteria for inclusion, rather than excluding planetary systems based on conjecture.—RJH (talk) 16:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
      - I was "bold" and changed the selection criteria, also leaving a note on the talk page. Hope that's okay.—RJH (talk) 17:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

A related issue: circumstellar disc should NOT redirect to protoplanetary disc, since not all circumstellar discs are protoplanetary. 131.111.8.96 (talk) 02:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I redirected it to debris disk, although perhaps that is also not the best solution. Would it make sense to merge debris disk and protoplanetary disc into a single, over-arching article on the topic? Neither is especially large at present.—RJH (talk) 17:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

List of Mercury-crossing asteroids was prodded then unprodded

List of Mercury-crossing asteroids was prodded by user:Jeepday after an exact-phrase search did not turn up "Mercury-crossing asteroid". Cited WP:OR, WP:N, and WP:V. It was then deprodded by user:Phil Bridger because an exact-phrase search was unreasonable way to search for the topic. 70.55.88.176 (talk) 09:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

List of quasars

List of quasars was PRODded, I deprodded it, though it could use some inclusion criteria. 70.55.86.17 (talk) 08:36, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I proposed it for deletion. Without any guidelines for inclusion, it just appears to be a random list of objects that someone bothered to make a stub-page for. There are >100,000 quasars known (>1,000,000 if we include photometric identifications), and none of them are "common knowledge". People have generally heard of galaxies, planets and asteroids, but very few have heard of quasars. If the page is to serve a purpose, we need a clear rationale for why a given quasar should be included (or not). - Parejkoj (talk) 12:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The current list provides no information beyond what is already in the Quasar category. It doesn't even include red links. If it were a list of high red-shift quasars or the most active quasars, then perhaps it would make sense to keep it. Even a list of historically important quasars would seem more useful. Otherwise, I suspect an AfD of the current would result in deletion.—RJH (talk) 17:18, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought it could be useful if there were some comments annotating the entries, or some criteria stated at the head of the list for inclusion. A move to "List of notable quasars" might help. Anyhow, I commented 3C48 & 3C273 (? Though I thought 3C48 was the first, spectrum by Greenstein?, about 1963? The history could be improved in those two articles....) Wwheaton (talk) 17:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

What constitutes high redshift? Maybe the few that are above z~6.2? If someone wants to propose some "notability" guidelines on the talk page, we can try and come up with something. We should probably remove most of the "random" quasars, and their respective pages. Wwheaton: what's wrong with the 3c273 article? I'm tweaking the 3c48 article somewhat: see if it is better. - Parejkoj (talk) 22:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Probably nothing, I just couldn't quite recall the historical sequence involving Schmidt, Greenstein, & Bev Oke. I had thought 3C48 was the first, then 3C273, but now I'm guessing that Jesse Greenstein got a weird spectrum for 3C48, but didn't identify the redshift until Schmidt & Oke got it for 3C273? I assume they were all talking in the halls excitedly at the time. (If I recall, the accurate position for one or the other of them was associated with a lunar occultation? If so, it must have been 3C273, or maybe the Crab, as 3C48 doesn't occult.) Wwheaton (talk) 23:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems to depend on the source. Various sites use z>4, 5 or 6. The highest measured quasar redshift is z = 6.4.—RJH (talk) 18:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it can't be redshift alone, because we cant really exclude 3C273, etc, unless we want to call it "High redshift quasars"—which would not be unreasonable I guess. I would think z > 5 or 6 might be OK to keep the numbers manageable, until JWST pushes us much deeper. Of course if we claim to be complete, all quasars with z greater than anything, we'll be in trouble pretty quick, so it still has to be "selected quasars" or some such. Wwheaton (talk) 18:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

True, but there's no reason it couldn't have different sections for historically important quasars, high Z quasars, &c.—RJH (talk) 21:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

First supernova seen exploding

News alert: SN 2008D is the first supernova seen while its explosion began. -- SEWilco (talk) 02:55, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Astronomical coordinates?

The {{coord}} template is being used for geographical coordinates, with one effect being the ability to view those locations on Google Earth. So I was wondering if there is a similar template for astronomical coordinates and a crosslink to tools such as Google Sky? -- SEWilco (talk) 18:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

There used to be a variant for lunar coordinates (globe:Moon). However the site that was supporting it never responded to requests for addressing known problems. So I have become a little dubious about the whole concept.—RJH (talk) 21:07, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Please can you claim these pages?!

Hi, a few days ago, User:Keeper76 kindly began helping me with a small project to hopefully improve content - starting to offload the list of pages on Wikipedia that are not being watched by anybody. This means not only are they prime targets for vandalism, but they are also unlikely to improve. In the course of the first couple of dozens articles, I found these, which are tagged as being within your scope:

10004 Igormakarov 10007 Malytheatre 10009 Hirosetanso 10021 Henja 10024 Marthahazen 10029 Hiramperkins 10034 Birlan

Could some people from this wikiproject please watchlist these, as I am currently the only person watching them! Also,I hope to be able to continue this work in a few weeks, and I expect that the early stuff will include a lot of asteroids, etc. Can I ask if I am able to continue trying to offload these onto you? Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 22:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I have watchlisted them for you. I am a member of this project and will keep them watchlisted. Cheers, Razor flame 14:52, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Fritzpoll (talk) 14:59, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

As to your second question, I am unsure about this. I am not one of the main users that edit this Wikiproject, but I guess that we can allow you to continue offloading. Cheers, Razor flame 16:07, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I got 'em too, with some more general thoughts on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy. Cheers, B Wwheaton (talk) 16:57, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

International Year of Astronomy 2009

2009 has been proclaimed as the International Year of Astronomy. It would be great to tie in with this, both to help with the aims of the international year and to spur extra improvements to Wikipedia's coverage of astronomy. I've started a thread about this over at WikiProject Astronomy; please have a look and join in with the conversation. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:36, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Rings of Uranus

I submitted this article for a peer review. You can comment here. Ruslik (talk) 08:48, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Greek language and/or transliteration?

We're having a discussion at Talk:Mercury_(planet)#Greek_letters about whether the original Greek word should be included in the Mercury article if a transliteration is available. Several other astronomy articles include both, so I'd like to find out if there are any good reasons to continue with that policy. Please contribute if you have an opinion on the subject. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 19:13, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Minimum mass has been prodded

Minimum mass has been placed at WP:PROD. This article is about exoplanet minimum estimated detected mass. 70.51.11.156 (talk) 04:32, 26 May 2008 (UTC)