Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 18

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This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 15

Archive 16

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Names of asteroid articles

The names of asteroid articles start with their number (49109 Agnesraab), with the side-effect that links like Agnesraab do not work. I'd like to create redirects per bot (except for cases where a page already exists, like Toutatis for 4179 Toutatis). Seeing that there is (or was) a discussion about deleting non-notable asteroid stubs, I want to ask whether this procedure would be welcome or counterproductive. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 15:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

There shouldn't be any harm in creating helpful redirects for common alternatives. The asteroid issue has never been satisfactorily resolved, and a consensus doesn't seem likely.—RJH (talk)

The bot has created 7650 redirects. Here is a list of redirects it could not create because of existing pages: User:PotatoBot/Lists/Asteroids without redirects. I don't suppose someone wants to go through the 6595 entries manually, but wanted to tell you anyway. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 09:04, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Starbox issues

(1) There appears to be some oddness with the starbox template series. I've been making some updates to the Spica article. However, now there are multiple blank lines between the "Otheruses" template and the infobox. It is not clear where this is coming from since the blank lines don't appear in the edit window. But perhaps one or more fields of the starbox templates are introducing extra blank lines into the table that then get pushed to the top?—RJH (talk) 16:48, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Through trial and error I narrowed it down to the temperature2 entry and the catalog list. Removing either fixes the problem.

The text starts here but it should be just under the "other uses" line...

It's a strange problem. I don't see anything in the template code that could explain it. The HTML code shows a "<p><br /></p>" entry.—RJH (talk)

(2) What do you think about changing the Distance wikilink to point to Cosmic distance ladder? The latter seems much more astronomical in nature and discusses the distance to stars.—RJH (talk)

(1): This problem is caused by newlines between the starbox subtemplates being interpreted as paragraph breaks in the main article. Commenting out intertemplate newlines as appropriate will fix the problem (e.g. [1].)
(2): Sounds good.
Spacepotato (talk) 23:20, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, the comment trick seems to help where the problem exists.—RJH (talk)

Earth citations needed

There are currently five figures in the "Orbital characteristics" part of Earth's infobox that are uncited. This shouldn't be the case on a Featured Article. If anyone could provide citations, that would very helpful. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:36, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Moons of Saturn

I nominated this article for Featured List status. The review page is here. Ruslik_Zero 12:30, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Cluster picture

NGC 6726, NGC 6727, NGC 6729, IC 4812 and NGC 6723

Hi,

I just wanted to tell that I uploaded one of the newest images of NASA's WISE project to WikiCommons. It shows NGC 6726, NGC 6727, NGC 6729, IC 4812 and NGC 6723. Unfortunately I forgot to give it a catchy name and to be honest I have no idea for a name either. Maybe one of you can rename it and has a great idea for use and name.

Hive001 Hive001 contact 18:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Flocculent Spiral Galaxy

I just built flocculent spiral galaxy through the WP:AFC process. Unfortunately, when it was moved to articlespace, it was named with capital letters, contravening MOS:CAPS. So I've initiated a WP:RM on the issue, see talk:flocculent spiral galaxy. As well, I used {{reflist}} when I built it, but when it was moved, it was switched with the bare <references/> Does anyone have an opinion on which should be used? I tried to switch it back to the "reflist" format, as most astronomy articles seem to use, but the AfC processor seems to object to using the template.

70.29.208.247 (talk) 06:01, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I prefer {{reflist}}, and I know it is widely used. It is in today's front page featured article, for example. I can't imagine why somebody would object.—RJH (talk) 15:37, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Tyche: potential solar companion?

Recently it has been announced that there is persistent evidence of a jovian mass solar Companion in the Oort cloud, and I find that worth mentioning here on Wikipedia. However, I do not wish to create an article for an object which has not been confirmed and just a speculation, and I have no real idea where mentioning this would be appropriate. I wanted to bring this to debate and form a potential consensus on how to mention Tyche. I wish to remain neutral on my ideas, because I have been known to overdo myself with issues such as these. --NuclearVacuum (talk) 23:48, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

It would be improper to mention such research that has not yet undergone the peer-review process. The article in question has, according to its arXiv page, only been submitted to Icarus. Iridia (talk) 00:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree. Such reports have been coming and going for years. The project scientist at JPL for the WISE mission told me a couple of weeks ago that WISE could detect Jupiter (by its internal heat) at a distance of a light year, so there is likely to be progress on this front quite soon (WISE's solid H₂ coolant will run out around November 2010, at which time it will have completed a little less than two complete surveys of the IR sky. Wwheaton (talk) 05:22, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it's probably worth discussing the history of the suggestion that there is a giant planet/brown dwarf in the Oort cloud, as I think there are probably some refereed papers dealing with this idea (see the references page of the arXiv article). There's already a small amount of material at Planets beyond Neptune#Source of long period comets. I'm not particularly sure the specific name "Tyche" is particularly notable at present though, nor that it deserves an article just yet. As for whether an arXiv article is a valid source, I think there's already a precedent for that across a wide range of astrophysics-related articles. The trick here is to exercise judgement. Icalanise (talk) 15:56, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

arXiv papers are definitely valid sources: but the difference is between an accepted and a submitted paper. The first is peer-reviewed and the latter is not. Iridia (talk) 00:15, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Such an object could not receive an "official" astronomical (IAU-certified, etc) name until it is a real, confirmed, body with a good orbit determination. Of course we do have articles about unproved theories and conjectures (Nemesis in particular), but I'd not heard of "Tyche". I notice now that the large (~65 km) main-belt asteroid 258 Tyche already has a name and an article. The conjectured "Tyche" could be mentioned in the Nemesis article, but the name would still have to go through a dab before a redirect, as there are several competitors. (Right now the bare name goes straight to a minor Greek goddess.) Wwheaton (talk) 18:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

This is not the first article that the authors wrote about this subject. They published a paper or two in 1999. Ruslik_Zero 19:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

All I can say is....wow. Best would be a line or two in parent articles such as Oort Cloud or Planets beyond Neptune (?) Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:21, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Lambda Caeli

The SIMBAD entry for HD 30202 does not list a Bayer name. However, a query of the VizieR IV/27 catalogue shows HD 30202 as 'lam Cae'. I haven't found any independent confirmation of this, so I'm not sure which is correct.—RJH (talk) 17:05, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Digitized Sky Survey NGC images

Looks like I have dug a hole for many pretty wiki NGC images. But wiki policy may require it. What is the current status on using DSS2 on Wikipedia? Can/should they be used under a fair use rule?

See: File:NGC 11 galaxy.jpg, File:NGC 12 galaxy.jpg, File:NGC 13 galaxy.jpg, File:NGC 14 galaxy.jpg File:NGC 15 galaxy.jpg, File:NGC 16 galaxy.jpg as examples.

I also notice that in Feb 2010, Betelguese uploaded the first 100 NGC objects with nice labels to commons under a "cc-by-3.0" license: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Betelguese -- Kheider (talk) 22:02, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Note in re-tagging, you might want to check that the source you are using has got it's licensing in order, In reading the terms linked there maybe an issue in relation to 'commerical' re-use, although I could be mis-reading those terms.

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 22:29, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I believe the DSS2 images are non-commercial only. As I understand it, raw Hubble Space Telescope, GALEX, and 2MASS images are PD via NASA/US-Gov. (NGC 45 and NGC 520 make use of all 3). -- Kheider (talk) 01:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is some DSS info: http://archive.stsci.edu/dss/index.html : http://archive.stsci.edu/dss/acknowledging.html : http://archive.stsci.edu/dss/copyright.html : http://gsss.stsci.edu/Acknowledgements/DataCopyrights.htm -- Kheider (talk) 03:09, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The last of those links seems to imply a possible copyright issue. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 23:59, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Attack of the DSS! Commons is being invaded! http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=100&target=Marcosm21 -- Kheider (talk) 08:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Unless someone comes up with a good reason I have started a MASS EXECUTION ORDER: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/2010/05/07#Wikisky-DSS2 -- Kheider (talk) 09:11, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Image use policy#Free licenses appears to prohibit their use. To even be considered for fair use, I believe they would have to be reduced in quality and size. Plus we would have to demonstrate that a suitable replacement doesn't exist. The images aren't all that great anyway, so it might be easier just to start over.—RJH (talk) 15:16, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for replying. Since the somewhat lower quality 2MASS images are public domain, I think the DSS2 images will need to go bye-bye. I have written a generic policy at SKY-MAP.ORG#Wikisky_image_use_on_Wikipedia. -- Kheider (talk) 16:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Letter from Scott Kardel from California Institute of Technology regarding DSS2 (POSS-II) images and Wikipedia: "all commercial use of this work remain prohibited". -- Kheider (talk) 17:46, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The past experience of M45_DSS2_WikiSky.jpg

Just in case anyone wants to know, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) also has a Non-commercial use rule.

Calculating north pole right ascensions and declinations

How can I calculate north pole right ascensions and declinations for planets, such as Mars? I think it can be calculated using axial tilt, inclinations, argument of periastron, and longitude of ascending node, but I don't know what's the equation and I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to find that equation on google, but I can't. BlueEarth (talk | contribs) 21:29, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually you can't do it with these parameters as you need an additional angle to fully specify the orientation of the axis. (On the other hand I think the argument of periastron is going to be irrelevant as what matters is the orbital plane). Unfortunately most sources don't seem to give this second angle (in Celestia it is termed "EquatorAscendingNode", not sure what the actual term is), however the NASA planet fact sheets (e.g. for Mars [2]) do tabulate the RA and Dec of the north pole of rotation. Icalanise (talk) 22:50, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Caldwell catalogue

I just created Book:Caldwell catalogue and {{Caldwell catalogue}}. Any feedback?

Also, I made a bot request so that Calwell objects are tagged with the navbox and the relevant categories. I doubt there will be any objections, but I'm mentioning it here just to be sure (and on WP:AST). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:25, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks interesting. This did come up before, and there was a negative response to doing it, I think four years ago? I may be mistaken. 70.29.208.247 (talk) 04:57, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Mars' FPR

Mars has been nominated for a featured portal review. Portals are typically reviewed for one week. During this review, editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the portal from featured status. Please leave your comments and help us to return the portal to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, portals may lose its status as featured portals. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. GamerPro64 (talk) 01:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Galaxy

Should we create a Portal:Galaxy? Template:Galaxy has a link to Portal:Star since we don't have one for galaxies; that looks just a bit odd. 70.29.208.247 (talk) 11:38, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Beta Cassiopeiae

(grunt, ungh) trying to expand for DYK - got from 105 to 358 words but heavy going. I am a novice on star material. Can anyone add to it? Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:37, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:ConstellationsByBartsch

Template:ConstellationsByBartsch has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Please have your say! Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 09:22, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies

Contributions to List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies are welcome. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:05, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be on Wiktionary? 76.66.193.224 (talk) 08:43, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Luminosity class for HIP 56948 being assumed

I'm having a concern about a star's luminosity class being assumed without a suitable citation, regardless of whether it may be correct or not. I added fact tags, but they were taken down. Please see: Talk:HIP_56948#Disputed. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 21:13, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Astronomy Magazine (June 2010) had an article on "Is the Sun an oddball star?" that called HIP 56948 the closest thing to a "solar twin". -- Kheider (talk) 21:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I'm familiar with this having built up the tables on the solar analog article. Nonetheless, the sources do not list a luminosity class for this star. Solar twin candidate HD 138573 has a luminosity class of IV-V, for example. So I think it is premature to just assume HIP 56948 will be a V. There's got to be some reason why the SIMBAD entry (and the other sources) just lists G5. (It's a puzzle to me why it isn't a G2 since they are nearly identical.)—RJH (talk) 22:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the G5 assignment comes from the Henry-Draper catalogue (i.e. way back when). I guess the spectral type determination has not been revised since then, despite the determinations of physical parameters. Bear in mind that the spectral type is a classification of the star's spectrum, not the physical parameters: the fact that there is a correlation between the two makes spectral types useful. (Interestingly enough the Sun itself is quite cool for a G2 star, probably due to the high metallicity.) Icalanise (talk) 18:24, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Expanding on previous point: using the Celestia standard star types which are either from Lang's Astrophysical Data: Planets and Stars or interpolated, G5V is assigned an effective temperature of 5770K. I believe G5V is one of the actual entries rather than an interpolated point judging by other tables I have seen from this reference. So an assignment of G5 to a star with Sunlike properties is probably not all that unreasonable. Icalanise (talk) 18:32, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. So maybe the Sun, with a temperature of 5,778 K, is the oddball?—RJH (talk) 15:49, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Guess it depends on how you do the classification really. The Sun is metal-rich compared to your typical star in this region of the galaxy, but there are a fair few examples of nearby stars substantially more metal-rich than the Sun. Incidentally there was a review paper about spectral classification posted on the arXiv a few months back which you might find interesting: [3] Icalanise (talk) 22:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll take a look.—RJH (talk) 18:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Eccentric Jupiter

FYI, Eccentric Jupiter has been nominated for deletion at AfD. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 10:20, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

The result of the discussion was a "keep".—RJH (talk) 18:16, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

hot Europa

FYI hot europa has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 06:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

It was deprodded. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 10:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI, hot europa has been nominated for merger into Goldilocks planet. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 10:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Someone removed the merger request, and instead started a WP:AFD deletion request on it. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 03:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Article was deleted. Icalanise (talk) 18:08, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Mean orbit radius

Several articles, e.g. Io (moon) have displayed in the infobox the quantity "mean orbit radius", which is used to represent the semimajor axis. However this isn't a particularly good term to use, especially since it is not clear what is being averaged over, e.g. the time-averaged orbital distance is $\scriptstyle a\left(1+{\frac {e^{2}}{2}}\right)$ , as described at Semimajor axis#Average distance. I think it would be best to replace "mean orbit radius" with the more correct term "semimajor axis" in these articles. Icalanise (talk) 21:23, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, though as I remember a lot of articles display mean radius. Ruslik_Zero 13:22, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

POTD/2010-06-18

The Picture of the day for June 18th will be the phases of the moon: Template:POTD/2010-06-18 -- Kheider (talk) 20:37, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Unassessed astronomy articles

Well I just went through a process of assessing 1,600 unassessed astronomy articles, which took many weeks to finish. Now it looks like another 1,300+ minor planet articles have just been tagged as unassessed virtually overnight by User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao. I can almost guarantee that these will be low priority stubs of no particular significance. Can they be auto-tagged that way?—RJH (talk) 20:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

The editor isn't a member of WPAstronomy, but he has kindly agree to update the templates so they won't show up as unassessed.—RJH (talk) 21:36, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Pleione (star)

A new editor, Sadalsuud (talk · contribs) has been buffing up Pleione (star). I have suggested he list it at WP:GAN, and I am sure input from folks here would be very helpful. He is interested in how editors collaborate here. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:57, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Nearest systems

User:Chermundy has been adding a template called {{Nearest systems}} to various star articles. This lists stars out to 30 ly.—RJH (talk) 20:56, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

He has unusual editing habits... until July 2, all he did were mammal articles... 76.66.195.196 (talk) 05:06, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that. I was wondering what the commonest distance out "stellar neighbourhood" was taken as in the astronomical community myself. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:59, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

The template is much larger than the List of nearest stars list article... 76.66.195.196 (talk) 04:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

There is the Local Interstellar Cloud... which could be considered our neck of the woods... 76.66.195.196 (talk) 05:03, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I removed all the "comets" and "spaceprobes" stuff, since the template doesn't seem to appear on any, and it makes the template an indiscriminate list of information otherwise. 76.66.195.196 (talk) 04:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

And now creating stub class articles for individual stars in multiple systems, using the Gliese names... Gliese 559 A, Gliese 559 B, Gliese 244 B... Icalanise (talk) 12:08, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

does the CMB cold spot mean we should rewrite a large part of cosmology? Must we stop thinking the universe is expanding?

Is this article about the CMB cold spot any good? It says weird stuff like that the universe isn’t expanding. Proxima Centauri (talk) 19:01, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

" A radical and controversial theory proposes " I should think that phrase in the intro paragraph to the news article would make it obvious. 76.66.195.196 (talk) 21:28, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

What the article says about VIRGOHI21 makes me highly skeptical about anything it says. Seems the author of the article is making things out of whole cloth. 76.66.195.196 (talk) 21:36, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

the exoplanets

i have 2 notes about the exoplanets articles:

there is a many obscure sentences in the exoplanets atricles, such as the "largest", "most massive" and "most distant" planet, and many others. we should to wtire at least the date which the planet was at it the largest known exoplanet (or any other record).
the known exoplanets increasing fastly, and discovery of them becoming more and more common. so, it would be good to create a category for the exoplanets in every constellation, and a major category: "exoplanets by constellation".

--Abbad Dira (talk) 11:06, 6 June 2010 (UTC).

We don't even have a Category:Stars by constellation, but we have more star articles than exoplanet articles... Currently stars are just categorized directly into the constellation categories.

Yes, your first point is a good idea. Now how to get people to do that is a different matter...

76.66.193.224 (talk) 10:04, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The first issue is covered by WP:DATED, but I'm sure many editors aren't even aware of the problem. Thus it'll just have to be corrected when we spot it. For the second, perhaps a bot could be used to auto-categorize both the stars and planets under each constellation?—RJH (talk) 18:14, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Talking of the most (or least) massive planet when all you have is m*sin(i) is suspect anyway, even if the planets are orbiting the same star, as illustrated by the rather nice reversal of the mass hierarchy in the Upsilon Andromedae system. Icalanise (talk) 21:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

You also have to worry if it is largest by mass or by volume. You have changes such as SuperWASP now suggesting things such as WASP-12b (1.83R_Jup) being larger in volume than WASP-17b (1.66R_Jup). Pages are never static, there are often overlapping error margins in the estimates, and there are only a handle full of people that update the articles. -- Kheider (talk) 22:01, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

A search for 'exoplanet' and 'largest' turned up these articles: TrES-4, WASP-17b, COROT-9b, Kepler-7b, COROT-1b and HD 40307 c.—RJH (talk) 22:26, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

i back again. how we should to edit these articles? i think this example is good: "COROT-9b is the largest of all known transiting planets (date: 30 nov 2009)", what do you think? --Abbad Dira (talk) 14:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC).
- Normally the {{as of}} template is used for this purpose. Ex.: "As of November 30, 2009^[update], COROT-9b is the largest of all known transiting planets."—RJH (talk) 15:20, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

i dealt with them. but it is still there the farthest, nearest, smallest, least massive and most massive exoplanets, and may be more! --Abbad Dira (talk) 09:56, 7 July 2010 (UTC).

GRB 970228 FAC

The article GRB 970228 has been nominated for an FAC.—RJH (talk) 19:00, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

If it fails, perhaps we should just promote it to A-class. 70.29.212.131 (talk) 04:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

It has a GA class rating, which I think of as an A+ class. Just needs a little more work to make FA, I hope.—RJH (talk) 21:01, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

A-class was discussed recently at one of the Village Pumps, where it was clarified as between GA and FA. 70.29.212.131 (talk) 06:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay thanks. In that case it would make sense to make it an 'A'.—RJH (talk)

The article was promoted to FA.—RJH (talk) 14:29, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

RfD: List of astronomical objects

There is an RfD here about changing the redirect list of astronomical objects to point to Astronomical objects instead of Lists of astronomical objects.—RJH (talk)

Hot Companion

FYI, hot companion has been sent for deletion at AfD. 70.29.212.131 (talk) 05:11, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hot companion - it survived AfD, now what to do with it? 76.66.195.196 (talk) 05:01, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Good question. I'm still of the opinion that it is basically a term without special meaning beyond the plain combination of the two words. It was a "no consensus" result, it might be worth relisting it if it does not get improved in a way that suggests the term has its own special meaning. Icalanise (talk) 11:46, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we could rename it to "List of hot companions", then tighten down the inclusion requirement to something like: "... the companion has a temperature at least 2,000 K greater than the primary"?—RJH (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Question is whether we can justify the 2000 K cutoff (or similar). Icalanise (talk) 18:11, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes it is arbitrary, but then so is the wording "much hotter". Alternatively, you could restrict the selection to stars that astronomers have labeled as "hot companions".—RJH (talk) 21:43, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the term "hot companion" could be characterized in terms of the ultraviolet emission? I.e. they are hot enough to radiate a detectable UV emission, and they have been discovered and studied by that means even when the separate components can not be resolved.—RJH (talk) 14:41, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that might exclude the KOI-74b and KOI-81b objects that led to this article's creation in the first place. (Really the only reason this article exists was that the Kepler media machine tried to sell the detection of low-mass white dwarfs in eclipsing binaries as representing a fundamentally new class of object). Icalanise (talk) 07:03, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

I do not think there is much to be done at this point without moving in to the territory of original research. That said, I think the term does have useful meaning for classification purposes, and hope that at some point it will be clearly defined to basically mean:

an evolved companion of a main sequence star, which, through mass transfer, has become the "companion" in that it is the less massive object in the system, and which
has the properties of being smaller, yet hotter, than its "host" and for this reason
has an interesting light curve, essentially mixing features of a planet transit and a typical eclipsing binary system

Certainly, imposing some temperature difference rule is not a good idea. James McBride (talk) 08:52, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately that doesn't reflect actual usage in astronomy. Taking a look at an ADSABS Search for this term, I come up with a wide range of objects being considered. Basically the only common feature is that it refers to the secondary of a binary system when it is hotter than the primary. That's it. It doesn't constitute a class of objects at all, it includes main sequence stars, white dwarfs, etc., so long as they are hotter than the primary. Utterly trivial adjective+noun combination. Icalanise (talk) 20:26, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

That is too bad. I have only encountered it in the sense I suggested, but I am also rather new in the field. I did not realize it had quite such a varied history, and am now inclined to agree with you that it is a trivial combination. James McBride (talk) 21:53, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It looks like most of the "keep" entries in the AfD were based upon the frequency of usage of the combination, which seems somewhat superficial. Perhaps it might be possible to do a merge with "binary star" and just add a couple of lines to the Evolution section of the latter article?—RJH (talk) 16:02, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation of star names

Apparently User:Thumperward has taken askance to having the pronunciations moved from the lede paragraph to the starbox template and begun unilateral reversions (because of some sort of unwritten convention). My preference is to just have the pronunciation in the infobox because the IPA notation in parentheses tends to significantly disrupt the flow of the first sentence. It seems to me this WikiProject has some say in the non-MoS conventions for astronomy articles. Do you have any particular preference? Thank you.—RJH (talk) 18:39, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Somewhat related to this, I have noticed that the articles for various Gliese stars (e.g. Gliese 876, Gliese 581) specify that the name of the star is pronounced {{pron-en|ˈɡliːzə}}. Maybe I'm being overly pedantic here, but that is of course just the pronunciation of the "Gliese" bit, not the full designation. Icalanise (talk) 20:45, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Yep, but I wasn't sure what to do about that. My personal sense on the pronunciation issue is that the linguistically-focused tend to go a bit overboard on the implementation, and some appear to be a bit insensitive to the impact on the readability of the article. But if I try to change things, they get very defensive and circle the wagons. I keep running into walls trying to adopt a friendlier approach such as moving it to the infobox. Ah well. These are the things that make Wikipedia less appealing to me these days. Grumble grumble...—RJH (talk) 23:01, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Those should just be removed, since they're obviously wrong. "Gliese" is not the name of the star "Gliese xxx" is. We should not promulgate incorrect information. (somepeople may assume that the number is not voiced... which is wrong). 76.66.193.119 (talk) 06:27, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I would much prefer to have pronunciations in the info box. If we do this though, there should be a page somewhere on the wikiproject that details any specific non-MoS conventions within this project. James McBride (talk) 23:29, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Me too. Working on Betelgeuse and I don't think the lead will be better off with a mass of phonetic spellings in it. Starbox is fine for me. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:38, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer them to be in the infobox, and that both IPA and SAMPA forms exist. If possible, could we run a bot that automatically creates the SAMPA form from IPA? 76.66.193.119 (talk) 06:27, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to note that RJH has started a centralised discussion for this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (pronunciation)#Could we have a guideline on pronunciation placement?. This discussion would be better served over there, as this project can't really opt out of a project-wide consensuse per WP:CONLIMITED. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:54, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Consensus is not a foregone conclusion, in which case WP:CONLIMITED wouldn't apply. But I agree that a consensus on this would be beneficial.—RJH (talk) 16:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Exo-planets

As more and more exo-planets are found, more and more stub articles will be written, and the amount of exo-planets stubs will increase greatly. Should we treat this any diffrently then we've treated the asteroid-minor planet stubs? Battleaxe9872 ^Talk 02:01, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

There was a proposal before to treat exoplanets like asteroids, like the asteroid proposal at the top of this talk page. See topical talk archive Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive table of exoplanets for the previous discussion.

I think that would be a good idea. 76.66.193.119 (talk) 03:29, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

There is our list article... List of extrasolar planets... but it is very long at the momemnt, 120kB+ ; I've made a suggestion to split it into two logical lists - the plain list, and the firsts list. 76.66.193.119 (talk) 03:58, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Template:Trans-Neptunian objects

FYI {{Trans-Neptunian objects}} has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.193.119 (talk) 05:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Informed editors requested

This is related somewhat to Global Warming, so I present you the "wikipolitics" disclaimer.

Recently on the biography of Robert Watson (scientist), a minor edit war broke out over Watson's use of Mars to illustrate what the lack of global warming might look like. He said "We only need to look at 3 planets: Mars, Venus and Earth and you can explain why there is such a difference, a frigid Mars planet, no greenhouse gases, Venus is absolutely boiling lots of greenhouse gases and earth is by luck somewhere in the middle." The editors seeking to include this quote also noted that Mars' atmoshpere is 95% CO2, and that Watson's statement is "in conflict with our basic understanding of Mars."

Other editors responded that Mars' CO2 might be high in %age, but the relevence to global warming was not in %, but in Mars' near vaccum atmosphere, and that Watson's statement is not in conflict with our basic understanding of mars. It appears that there is a dispute over this.

It would be useful if editors educated on Astronomical objects could comment on a straw poll at Talk:Robert_Watson_(scientist). Thanks so much for your time. Hipocrite (talk) 16:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)