Talk:Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy

Very on the ball! User:Wetman

I got some information for the table at [1] --BrendanRyan 14:41, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Dwarf galaxy?

The opening mentions that it's a Dwarf galaxy, but that article says a dwarf galaxy consists of around 10 million stars (compared to the Milky Way which has 200-400 million), whereas this article states Canis Major may contain 1 billion (10 million × 100) stars, which is considerably larger than the Milky Way itself, let alone a "dwarf" galaxy. — Vystrix Nexoth 08:13, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that the Dwarf galaxy page needs some serious cleanup and contains factual errors. The Milky Way has 200-400 billion stars, not million, and there are globular clusters that contain more than 10 million stars; I'm not sure, but I imagine a dwarf galaxy could range up to 10 billion stars. Neurophyre 18:19, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Request for Additional Information

Some additional information on this galaxy - especially on the Monoceros Ring, briefly referred to in this article - would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Brasswatchman July 31, 2005. 11:23 AM EST.

Where's that line?

The table has the line Constellation {{{constellation name}}} and I can't see it when editing the article.--BrendanRyan 08:36, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

New Dwarf Galaxy mergeing with Milky Way

Does the January 2006 discovery of the drawrf galaxy merging with ours count as a closer galaxy? See Milky Way article. WilliamKF 20:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

This refers to the Virgo Stellar Stream

overdensity is a warping of the disc and not a dwarf galaxy?

• Deriving The Shape Of The Galactic Stellar Disc (SkyNightly) Mar 17, 2006

Images?

• http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031117.html
• http://astro.u-strasbg.fr/images_ri/canm-e.html
• http://astro.u-strasbg.fr/images_ri/image1sun_big_nocap.jpg

Dubious

A major recent paper on the outer galaxy and especially on the Canis Major region rejects the idea that there is a dwarf galaxy in this direction. Instead the "overdensity" of stars in this region is caused by the extension of the Orion Spur in this direction. See:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ...672..930V

I suggest that this article be deleted.

Kevin Jardine

Galaxy Map

http://galaxymap.org

80.61.70.22 (talk) 16:41, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Specific rejection of there being a dwarf galaxy, is not given in the text of the abstract linked to... so will need someone else who has access to the full article to comment further (but generally notable secondary sources trump single primary sources - wikipedia being about knowledge, which may be flawed, rather than scientific truth - ie not WP:SPOV). Are there any other refs for this view being more widely accepted ? David Ruben ^Talk 17:33, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Quite frankly a great deal is claimed of the CMa Dwarf in this article, with no citations given, including supposed associated Galactic Globular Clusters. Just about the only place a citation is stated as being needed is when someone points out there have been several papers saying it is an overdensity of stars, and even if not such, that the papers saying it is a dwarf galaxy do not sufficiently show it to be so.

That's a bit rife in wikipedia for astronomy though, it occurs in the exoplanet sections too. Any "gee-whizz" claim gets plenty of airing, any nay sayers get deleted or requested for hard citations, and then like here, the conjectural positive stuff is apologised for and the evidence of negative stuff pedantically dismissed with nitpicking.

Science is about testing. The onus is upon the claims to be substantiated, reasonable doubt is still reasonable doubt, but in the earlier comments here it seems there are different rules for the nay saying evidence compared to the yay saying evidence.

Here's a citation, btw. http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.1509 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.166.130.187 (talk) 16:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Still dubious

A quick search of the recent scientific literature on the Canis Major "overdensity" shows at least 8 scientific papers concluding that this phenomenon is not a dwarf galaxy or at least is more consistent with other explanations. I'm sure that a more thorough search would find more. I suggest that this article should either be deleted or at very least needs to be thoroughly rewritten to explain that a dwarf galaxy is simply one of several possible explanations for the overdensity.

See:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009AJ....137.4412M

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008MNRAS.390L..54P

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ASPC..393..251L

http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.2084

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007A%26A...472L..47L

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006MNRAS.368L..77M

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006A%26A...451..515M

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ...672..930V

Kevin Jardine

Galaxy Map

http://galaxymap.org

86.93.21.227 (talk) 14:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)