Talk:Extrasolar planets in fiction

Wolf 359 (CN Leonis)

Mentioned several times in Star Trek,
Example:
Star Trek Voyager S05E07 Infinte Regress. Minute: 25:40

i´ve heard this several times in Star Trek, and maybe also in Alien movies..
maybe also in the movie: Passengers (2016)
maybe in Prometheus (2012)
a Wolf asteroid is named in the movie: Deep Impact (1998)
maybe also is mentioned in: The Arrival (1996)
maybe also in: Contact (1997)

Star Control II

Nothing from Star Control II is included here even though Rigel, Delta Pavonis, Alpha Centauri feature in the game 76.10.167.187 (talk) 01:33, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Spectral Type

It may be worthwhile to mention to spectral types of the listed stars with or under thir names as this would tell those readers who understand a bit of science a lot about those systems at a glance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.148.43.180 (talk) 21:01, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Navi

Should be added since used in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and others 174.30.211.58 (talk) 01:47, 29 September 2010 (UTC) soupy

Merope

Should be added since used in Harry Potter: Half-Blood Prince 174.30.211.58 (talk) 01:32, 29 September 2010 (UTC)soupy

Used as a character's name. This is not an appearance of the star itself. 2.25.142.67 (talk) 18:24, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Alphabetised the list

I found it inconvenient that you had to look two places to see if a star had details, so I merged them. Improved the description as well. --GwydionM 15:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Recent changes

I made the following changes to the list:

1. Standardized entries so that they all begin with title, date (where available), genre, by author (or company), followed by the description.
2. This list should only contain references to the actual stars, so I moved references to people, places, or things that only shared the name of a star to the list Star names in popular culture.
3. Deleted some links that led to promotional or advertising material.
4. Removed references that are not fiction-related, e.g., to references to stars in UFOlogy.
5. Removed references that had no source other than "some fans say...".
6. Added the material from the "Procyon in fiction" article, because it was short enough to fit on this list and too short to justify its existence as an independent article.

RandomCritic 23:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

1. Further added material from "Arcturus in fiction", which was even shorter than "Procyon in fiction". RandomCritic 21:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Deletion

I removed this addition, for a couple of reasons:

• AdventureQuest (2005-200_) online computer role-playing game by Artix Entertainment. There have been many instances to to Zeta Reticuli in the first year of the Destroyer Saga. These were leaked during the Into The Future war, where Adventurers and Guardians fought Makkisar, who created mutated clones of our largest foe to date, Carnax, at a whopping 275 million HP

1. Because I don't know what it means (though it seems to contain a lot of extraneous information).
2. Because it's unverified: Zeta Reticuli isn't mentioned anywhere in the AdventureQuest article, nor in connection with AdventureQuest elsewhere on the web.

Until this information becomes verifiable, it doesn't belong in this list. RandomCritic 14:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

TOC

Would {{tocright}} be less intrusive than {{tocleft}}? - ∅ (∅), 10:44, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's see! RandomCritic 15:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

The Galilean Satellites

There's a band named Rosetta. Their first album is The Galilean Satellites. The main theme in their lyrics is Europa, the Jupiter Moon, and several songs are named after stars and moons eg: Ross 128, Deneb, Beta Aquilae, etc. Thought it might enrich the article a tiny bit. Here's the link [[1]]

--I1100a 21:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The star in _The Arrival_

I think the aliens' home star in The Arrival in Wolf 336, not 424. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.30.202.20 (talk) 01:00, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's right. Only problem is, Wolf 336 doesn't actually exist -- so it doesn't belong in this list at all. RandomCritic (talk) 02:43, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Barnard's Star

Cherryh uses Barnard's star in one of her books, but I'm not sure which one. Could some one add it in if they know it, or I will when I can find the reference.--C.J. (talk • contribs) 23:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Barnard's Star is also the name of a weapon in the video game "Diablo II". Not sure if that counts as fiction for the purposes of this article though... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.89.215.42 (talk) 21:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Arcturus

Could also have been referenced in Starcraft. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.251.229.188 (talk) 15:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Eta Cassiopeia (Achird)

I won't post it in the main article under the original content rules, but a story called "Payback" in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July-August 2009, uses Achird as the seat of a civilization that attacks our solar system with an interstellar ramjet starkiller. The author is named Tom Ligon. Tomligon (talk) 03:06, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Procyon

Was the original destination for the generation ship in Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.205.107.122 (talk) 22:51, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

107 Piscium

Contact with Chaos -- Micheal Williamson (Baen Books) 69.23.124.142 (talk) 08:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The Alien Encounters

There was an old B Movie I saw on TV back in the late 70s/early 80s, I think it was the one to do with Native American or "Alien" mummies and some young guy in a wheelchair who was possessed by some intelligence. Anyway, the alien intelligences in this cheesy film were said to come from Bernard's Star. I have no idea what it was, probably not even in IMDB since it was one of those silly little Saturday Afternoon films they show sometimes. EDIT: I just found it, it was called "The Alien Encounters" from 1979. Mind boggilingly dull and silly but totally watchable to a 10 year old boy (me) who was stuck inside in rainy Oregon :-)Yanqui9 (talk) 22:36, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

The movie Cocoon does not mention Antares

In fact, the aliens refer to themselves as Antareans and they say they come from a planet called Antarea. SourceDevil Master (talk) 16:35, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Fomalhaut

It's frequently mentioned in S. P. Somtow's "Mallworld", IIRC usually in reference to an animal called a "gaboochi" which is presumably from a planet orbiting that star. I've no idea where my copy of the book is or I'd look it up to be certain. Over 200 hits on google for gaboochi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.232.94.33 (talk) 10:13, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

In Forever War, the battle mentioned in the article happened on a regular planet in the Eplison Aurigae star system, not Formalhaut. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.200.91.99 (talk) 10:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

40 Eridani

In the OMNI Book Astropilots by Laura J. Mixon the main male character Jason Stiletto and his friend Sssrei are both from 40 Eridani II. Jason is from the colony world around 40 Eridani II, and Sssrei is a native of that world.

I don't know if info should go into this section or another section. Feel free to move or add it. (cyalknight@gmail.com) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.177.226.79 (talk) 09:35, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Changes on 01/08/2011

I added entries for Arcturus (Book of Dreams), Beta Aquarii (Rhialto), Capella (Emphyrio), Gamma Orionis (Blade Runner, Babel-17), Phi Orionis (Space Opera).

I attempted to put the added books in the correct chronological "spot" under each star, but for some stars there are so many undated existing entries that I could not be sure I got it exactly right.

I also fixed the formatting of several existing starnames to fit the convention <linked name> (<unlinked name in parentheses>). I fixed one broken line.OperaJoeGreen (talk) 07:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

List Cleanup Project

Background of the Project

In February of 2007 RandomCritic made the following changes to the list:

1. Standardized entries so that they all begin with title, date (where available), genre, by author (or company), followed by the description.
2. ...

It's been four years since then, and many - perhaps most - of the entries no longer conform to this standard. In particular, many entries lack a date.

Capella Prototype

I decided to see if it was practical to clean up the sub-entries under Capella (Alpha Aurigae). In fact it was possible to use the links provided in each one of the sub-entries to get a date from the relevant Wikipedia articles.

Using this information, I:

1. Re-ordered the information in every sub-entry to conform to RandomCritic's standard above.
2. De-bracketed links to articles that no longer exist.
3. Bracketed links to plaintext items where an article now exists.
4. Fixed entries where contributors had mistakenly used double-quotes instead of paired single quotes for italics.
5. Made all planet names boldface.
6. Improved the flow of some descriptions without altering the meaning.
7. Added a date to every sub-entry. After this, I reordered the sub-entries to chronological order. I think there is value to be gained by showing the historical progression of references to a star/planetary system.

You see the result on the article page.

Cleanup Project Plan

Continue the cleanup process demonstrated on the Capella prototype with other stars, starting at the top of the star list. This will probably take some time (I do have a day job!). Comments welcome. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 21:05, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for Clarification

This article is flagged as

    This article needs additional citations for verification.

What type of citations are desired?

It seems to me that most of the entries in this list are self-verifying. For example, to verify the information about Jack Vance's Emphyrio:

• For the Title, Date, Genre, and Author, click on the Emphyrio link to go to the Wikipedia article on that novel, where this information is all given.
• For the Description, sometimes the given links verify that too, via Wikipedia articles. Sometimes, however, this is not the case. Should ISBN or other information and the location in the work be given in these cases?

OperaJoeGreen (talk) 21:14, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Move from Stars and planetary systems in fiction to Planetary systems in fiction

I doubt it had been a good idea to move the article to Planetary systems in fiction. There are also depicted stars in fiction without planetary systems. I have just inserted such an example into the article Alpha Centauri in fiction. In this case—in Edmund Cooper`s Seed of Light—, a crew of astronauts hopes over years to find planets around Alpha Centauri and is then disappointed when they see that the star does not possess a planetary system. That is a decisive event in the novel, and should be counted worthwhile being described in Wikipedia due to the great importance of Seed of Light in science fiction (Seed of Light is counted Cooper`s possibly best novel—see Hans Joachim Alpers et al: Reclams Science Fiction Führer. Reclam, Stuttgart 1982, p.106). The article Alpha Centauri in fiction is, at the moment, in the table of contents of the article Planetary systems in fiction so that there arises a clear contradiction. I assume there will also be many other, similar cases. I don`t think it would be very useful to set up a new, separate article on Stars [without planetary systems] in fiction. The user who has moved the article to Planetary systems in fiction has also not yet adapted all double links, for example not that from Stars in fiction nor that from Procyon in fiction. I therefore plead the move should be reverted. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 00:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Moving an article to a different catchword can, of course, be justified. In this case, I do not see sufficient reason for the move that has been undertaken, and even count this harmful. The user who has moved the article has not motivated this. I, therefore, would like to announce that I am going to revert the move, should there not be given convincing reasons for it within two weeks. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 21:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Hans that the article should be reverted to Stars and ... I have been working on a "Cleanup project" for this article for a while now, and am quite familiar with the contents — at least through Arcturus as of this writing. In the first quarter of the article (through Arcturus) I count (conservatively) the following: 12 cases where a star is referenced solely as the home of an alien race (planets can be inferred but are never explicitly mentioned); 8 cases where a star is mentioned solely as a location in space (for example, as the source of radio communications, or the destination of a failed interstellar mission); 1 case (Antares in Frotier Elite) where a star is described explicitly as a location in space that has no planets; and 3 cases where a star is described as being orbited by a deep-space station, but not planets. It is clear to me that restricting the article title to "Planetary Systems" only is an oversimplification and inaccurate. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 18:24, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

As a historical note, this article used to be called "Star systems in fiction" -- with the intent of including both references to the stars themselves and to any planets they might have -- but it was changed due to the concern that it might be interpreted as referring to only those systems which contain multiple stars. The problem with "planetary system" is, of course, that it seems to exclude the stars themselves. The intended terminology is one that would, of course, refer to extrasolar analogues of the Solar system, including both the central star or stars, and any accompanying planets. I think that "star system" or "stellar system" is the best terminology for that meaning, and it used to be the ordinary one in fiction (next to "solar system" used generically) but WP has endorsed the usage of "star system" to refer to multiple stars. Failing that, I think "extrasolar system" might be used (i.e., Extrasolar systems in fiction). It is rather odd that no agreed-on terminology for "extrasolar planetary system + star" exists, analogous to "solar system", despite such objects being now commonly observed. RandomCritic (talk) 00:56, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

One could fear that "Stars and planetary systems in fiction" might exclude star systems (multiple stars). But the very plural "Stars" already includes that, doesn`t it? Regarding the proposal "Extrasolar systems in fiction": would that not be a little unclear, because one could misunderstand it as also including systems of galaxies? --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 16:14, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I`d like to add that "Extrasolar systems in fiction" would, again, exclude stars which have no system at all. This might be rare throughout the universe, but is, obviously, quite common throughout literature (a big part of which has been created, when there weren`t yet any extrasolar planetary systems known). To be absolutely correct, one could also say "Stars and extrasolar planetary systems in fiction". But then, one would, again, get the problem that there might occur some lonely comets, asteroids, and so on. The problem is to get a catchword that, practically, hits the subject of the article and, moreover, allows to include certain special cases without palatable inexactitudes. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 17:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

After all the above discussion, it still seems like "Stars and planetary systems in fiction" might well be the best title for this article. Another point: The article Lists of stars#Other star listings contains a link to "Stars and planetary systems in fiction." While that link properly re-directs here, it seems that a reader interested in various lists of stars would expect "stars" in the title of an interesting further article. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 07:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Correct. "Planetary systems in fiction" simply does not hit the subject of the article. Regarding the smaller, and bigger, astronomical objects that I mentioned: There are own articles on Asteroids in fiction, Nebulae in fiction, and Comets in fiction. These can easily be found on Category:Astronomical locations in fiction.

I`d say it would not be a problem to list a page Stars and planetary systems in fiction in Category:Planetary systems in fiction. In this category, there are not yet many—to be exact: not yet any—real extrasolar planetary systems that would already have been reviewed by authors of fiction. There are, so far, only the three pages Planetary systems in fiction, Solar System in fiction, and the Leigh Brackett Solar System. I`m not sure if this latter should really be listed, there, because this fictitious system seems very widely to be our usual Solar System, which have been added to certain fictitious traits. That might, at the end, not be anything different than what any other author of fiction might do with our usual Solar System so that the page would probably rather only belong into Category:Solar System in fiction, where it is, actually, already listed. To hint to the special difficulties of this case, I`d like to cite from the beginning of the article:

The Leigh Brackett Solar System is a fictional analogue to the real-world Solar System in which a majority of the planetary romances of Leigh Brackett take place. Although Brackett's stories do not form a series with a consistent chronology and causally-connected incidents, more than half of them are recognizably set in the same universe: a Solar System of the near future, with space travel and distinctive alien and human cultures on Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Asteroids, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The stories of the Brackett Universe are bound together by shared terminology, place-names, "facts" about biology and culture, and occasionally shared characters. For instance, Brackett's Mercury is a nightmare world of extremes, where powerful storms rack a narrow habitable twilight belt; her Venus is a place where the liha-trees grow in the swamps around embattled outworld cities; and Mars is a place where you can drink thil at Madame Kan's in Jekkara of the Low Canals, or wander among barbarian warriors in the northern Drylands of Kesh and Shun.

--Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 09:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I have just realized that there is the great Category:Fictional planetary systems, and put the Leigh Brackett Solar System page into it.

The Leigh Brackett Solar System page is as well in Category:Solar System in fiction as in Category:Planetary systems in fiction. I`d say the redundancy should not be a problem, because different users of the Wikipedia might approach the Leigh Brackett Solar System page either from a search among planetary systems and how they have been dealt with in fiction, or from a search for works of fiction dealing with the Solar System.

In Category:Fictional planetary systems, there have, so far, been no pages at all, apart from Planets in science fiction, which, for sure, belongs there. I am now wondering how far one should add novels etc. to this category which deal with merely fictional planetary systems of real stars. That would, for sure, not be a problem just because such fictional systems should orbit stars that really exist, in all the cases of systems that have been thought out before there have, really, been discovered extrasolar planetary systems, since 1990: the likelihood that such a fictional system should, coincidentally, look just like a system that has, later, really been discovered, or could still be discovered, in the future, around the respective star is minimal. I only have doubts adding articles on works of fiction to Category:Fictional planetary systems, because these articles deal with the artworks as a whole and not only with the fictional planetary systems described in the artworks. That is, but, probably no problem, is it?! --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 10:08, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Editing an other page, I have just found that it is impossible to revert an edit after other edits have been made, in the meanwhile. I am not an administrator and can, therefore, not delete the current redirect page with the catchword Stars and planetary systems in fiction. As long as this redirect page exists, one cannot move any other article, to that catchword. It is also not possible just to paste the text of the present page into that redirect page, because one would lose the history of the page since the move to the current catchword, thus. Although I still would like to wait a little to let speak everybody who might be interested in the issue, I`d, therefore, like to ask, already now, if anybody here was an administrator or knew how one could proceed, here. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 10:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Hans, it appears that the title of this article is again "Stars and planetary systems in fiction." I'm not sure if you did this - you seem to be saying above that you are technically unable. However, it is done. I do believe this is the best outcome. I am satisfied. Thanks. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 06:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

From the View history tab I see that the change was made by RandomCritic. Thank you. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 21:32, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

I would like to draw readers' attention to the ongoing discussion of a proposal to delete a large number of articles similar to this one, at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Aldebaran_in_fiction. RandomCritic (talk) 13:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I have made a somewhat lengthy contribution to the discussion cited by RandomCritic. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 18:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup project complete

I have completed the cleanup project for this article (see the details in the next section).

There are a number of stars in this list (Aldebaran is the first one of them) that send the reader to independent articles. These are stars that have too many fictional references to fit conveniently into the main list. The "child" articles (Aldebaran in fiction, etc.) all need the same kind of cleanup as the "parent" article (Stars and planetary systems in fiction).

Having finished the main list, I will next proceed to extend the cleanup project to:

Aldebaran (Completed on 6-3-2011)

Alpha Centauri (in work)

Altair (not done)

Betelgeuse (not done)

Deneb (not done)

Epsilon Eridani (not done)

Rigel (not done)

Sirius (not done)

Tau Ceti (not done)

Vega (not done)

Watch the ten stars above for a continuing record of my progress in cleaning up the child articles. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 15:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Keeping it clean: Standards and formatting for adding items to this list

The general format for items in this list is:

Title (date), genre by author or company, followed by the description.

1. Title The title should be italic for stand-alone works, and roman face with quotes for smaller works within a larger stand-alone work (for example, short stories in a book, or episodes of a television series). The title of a work can almost always be informatively wikilinked to some other Wikipedia article, ideally an article dedicated wholly to the work. Even if it does not have its own article, there is often a bibliography or other list section in the author's article that contains references to the work.
2. Date You should always be able to find a date for your item. The date, in parentheses, follows the title without other punctuation, and it is always followed by a comma. Under each star, all items should be in chronological order. Dates can be single years (1934), or spans (1934-1936), or open-ended (1934- ). For chronological ordering using the dates in this example, 1934 would precede 1934-1936, which in turn would precede 1934-. For items having the same date, I have not applied any particular ordering rule.
3. Genre There are a number of possible genres — see the list for examples. It's best to be simple here. For example, a certain game is referred to in its own article as "a critically acclaimed science fiction computer game." For this list, it's enough to refer to it just as a "computer game."
4. Author This can be "written by" (for print media), "developed by" (for games), or "directed by" (for films), to name a few possibilities. For print media, "by" is enough. Almost all authors, developers, directors, and so on can be wikilinked to their own articles.
5. Description Be concise, and make only claims that can be verified, either by wikilinks to articles in good standing, or by citations in the Reference list. Include a physical description of the planet if possible, and tell why it is relevant to the story. Star names in the description are normal face; spaceship names are italic; planet names, when available, are boldface. Roman numerals may be used if the position of a planet in its system is known: For example, the third planet of Canopus (i.e. Dune) is Canopus III.

Examples

The proper form of items is efficiently explained by examples. Several types follow.

Books

• Mission of Gravity (1953), novel by Hal Clement. The binary 61 Cygni star system is home to the supermassive planet Mesklin, which rotates rapidly and is highly oblate, with a gravity of 3 g at the equator and 700 g at the poles. A human explorer lands at the equator and ... [3 citations attached]

Films

• Alien (1979), film written by Dan O'Bannon et al and directed by Ridley Scott. The spaceship Nostromo receives a mysterious transmission from a nearby planetoid. It sends an expedition to the surface where they find a derelict alien spacecraft. The worldlet is named Acheron (Alien) and LV-426 (Aliens, 1986); in both cases it is located in the ζ² Reticuli system ... [citation attached]

Games

• 2300 AD (1986), role-playing game designed by the Game Designers' Workshop. Montana (Spanish: Montaña) a habitable garden world, is the second planet of o² Eridani (omicron two), and it houses the joint Argentinan-Mexican colony of Montana. While Argentina and Mexico originally placed two separate colonies within cooperating distance of each other, the distinctions have long since vanished ...

Short stories and television episodes

• "The Soft Weapon" (1967), Known Space short story by Larry Niven published in the collection Neutron Star (1968). Two humans and their Puppeteer companion have possession of a Slaver stasis box. They are ambushed on a planet of the Beta Lyrae system by Kzin pirates, who sequester the box only to discover that it is actually of Tnuctip provenance. It contains a weapon that can morph into several forms. Taking advantage of this, the trio trick the Kzinti and escape with the weapon ... [2 citations attached]
• "The Slaver Weapon" (1973), episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series written by Larry Niven, as part of the film and television franchise originated by Gene Roddenberry. In this version of the Slaver story set on an ice planet orbiting Beta Lyrae, the trio of spacefarers comprises Mr. Spock, Uhura, and Sulu. The Tnuctip weapon self destructs and kills the Kzin pirates (compare Sheliak: "The Soft Weapon" above). Mr. Spock has described Beta Lyrae as "one of the rare spectacles of the galaxy," ... [2 citations attached]

Citations

Where possible, use citations to substantiate your item. Primary references to the work itself, including page numbers for books, can facilitate verification of assertions you make. Secondary references (eg critical analyses for print and film, review sites for games, and/or Wikis such as "Memory Alpha" for Star Trek and "Halopedia" for Halo) that discuss or analyze the work help establish the "notability" of your item (that is, help show that it is not trivial). When you create citations, do not attempt to compose them yourself. Learn about and use the "Cite book", "Cite news", and "Cite web" templates that are available to editors.

Trivial items

I have removed a number of trivial items from this list. For example, under the star Beta Hydri I removed the item:

• A Canticle for Leibowitz, (1960), novel by Walter M. Miller, Jr.. A planet of Beta Hydri is colonized by humanity and is mentioned briefly in the last part of the novel, "Fiat Voluntas Tua," chapter 26.

This is a shame, really. The book is a science fiction classic, and the location of the planetary reference is fairly well documented. But the story of the novel takes place wholly on the Earth. Nobody is going to Beta Hydri, nobody is from Beta Hydri, none of the action takes place on Beta Hydri. If a planet is only mentioned in a work, or appears only briefly without a real part to play in the work, that's not substantial enough for this list. Avoid trivial items!

Thanks everybody for your help in keeping this list healthy!

OperaJoeGreen (talk) 16:59, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Forbidden Planet

In the 1950s film "Forbidden planet", starring Walter Pigeon, Lesley Neilson, Anne Francis and Robby the Robot, the action took place on the planet Altair 4, presumably a planet revoving round the star Altair.AT Kunene (talk) 17:54, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

It does indeed! Note that certain stars are so often mentioned in works of science fiction that they were split off from this main article and given articles of their own. You will find a discussion of Forbidden Planet in the article Altair in fiction.

OperaJoeGreen (talk) 23:11, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Proxima Centauri was moved to a separate article

Mlindroo moved the Proxima Centauri items out of this article to a separate article of their own, as has been done in the past with other stars that accumulated an excess of items. Those other stars, with their current numbers of items, are:

• Aldebaran (30)
• Alpha Centauri (44)
• Altair (29)
• Betelgeuse (29)
• Deneb (27)
• Epsilon Eridani (34)
• Rigel (38)
• Sirius (45)
• Tau Ceti (42)
• Vega (36)

RandomCritic did some of the early organizing of this article. My guess is that his criterion for moving stars out to their own articles was 25 items or more.

Proxima Centauri currently has 17 items. That's greater than average, but not yet enough to merit its own article. It is not clear why Proxima Centauri attracted Mlindroo's attention in this way. Arcturus (18), Barnard's Star (18), Fomalhaut (23)(!), and Procyon (18) all have more items. And no! I'm not suggesting that they be moved out to their own articles!

I'd like to propose that we formalize the "25-and-out" rule. In line with this, unless there are strong arguments to the contrary, in two days I will revert the Proxima Centauri change and bring those items back into this article.

Please tell me your opinion!

OperaJoeGreen (talk) 06:16, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Sigma Draconis

The IP edit 2013 August 27 to add the Outpost reference (the order of references appears to be chronological, so I put it in the proper place) was me. My login didn't take for some reason. Featherwinglove (talk) 07:04, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Overzealous Star Trek Accreditation

Is it really necessary for every mention of Star Trek to include the line "as part of the film, television, and print franchise originated by Gene Roddenberry?" It gets fairly distracting, especially since the other entries don't list such accreditation, and it really reads like the whole thing was combed over and rewritten by an overzealous copyright lawyer for the Roddenberry estate or something. RyokoMocha (talk) 03:20, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any need for this at all. I would support taking it out — possibly retaining the very first mention (for 40 Eridani). — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 17:17, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed all but the first mention of Gene Roddenberry's ties to the Star Trek franchise (see this edit). — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 06:45, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Gliese 754

Gliese 754 is NOT the same system as HD 36395/Wolf 1453; the Gliese listing of HD 36395/Wolf 1453 is Gliese 205! Could someone please edit the particular section accordingly? http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=Wolf_1453 Wackelkopp (talk) 13:20, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, did it myself. Wackelkopp (talk) 13:31, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

"Northern Celestial Hemisphere" not equivalent to "Northern Sky"

Added clarifying link to the section on the novel "Justine" because the brightest star in the Northern or Southern sky is Sirius, whereas Arcturus is only the brightest star in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. See those articles for further information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:985:C100:1BFD:5D10:6482:D739:37D4 (talk) 15:55, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

You're using your own definition of northern sky. As you can see, Wikipedia (not a reliable source!) regards "northern sky" as exactly equivalent to northern celestial hemisphere. I could show you many other usages, for example to mean only the circumpolar constellations for "mid-northern" latitudes. The edit is fine, it adds a link and is less ambiguous. Lithopsian (talk) 16:56, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Liu's "3-Body Problem" trilogy missing?

Liu's "3-Body Problem" trilogy seems to be missing from the list, in spite of Trisolaris being an obvious reference to the Centauri system. Perhaps some people argued that the 3 stars of Trisolaris orbit each other chaotically, whereas the Centauri system is stable, with the two stars in Alpha Centuri orbiting each other closely and Proxima orbiting the pair from afar? I'm just speculating on the reasons for not including it. If my guess is right, I would argue that scientific inconsistency in fiction is nothing new, and the fact that in the novel this system of three stars is said to be the nearest system to our Solar System pretty much eliminates any doubts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.129.51.184 (talk) 16:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)