Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects

MainTalkAstronomical objects
(Talk)Eclipses
(Talk)Article ratingsImage reviewPopular pagesMembersWikidata

4706 Dennisreuter

Another minor planet up for AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/4706 Dennisreuter. Some discussion is occurring regarding automated deletes. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

For reference, past discussions about automated redirection:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 21#Proposal: automated pruning
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 22#Straw poll: Automated stub redirection
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects#Feedback requested for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 50

--Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:49, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Note to whoever has some spare time (or an appropriate bot): After redirecting, now-circular wikilinks on the list of minor planets pages should be removed (as I already did with Chernyakhovsky above, but there seem to be many more). Also, most red-linked named asteroids on that list should probably be removed, since being named does not imply notability. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:24, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Just to be clear, they should be delinked rather than removed. I hope that is what you meant. Regards. RJH (talk) 21:27, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is; thanks for clarifying. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 18:17, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Unicode/extended ASCII Superscripts

Found this after seeing it in a discussion... WP:SUPSCRIPT recommends avoiding these as they reduce accessibility of articles, and searchability. Since I've noticed that many astronomical objects with superscripted names have been moved from the plain number character to the unicode superscripted number character (instead of using DISPLAYTITLE), this could affect us. I do note that I remember a discussion some years ago that stated we should not be using unicode superscripts in article titles, but I see quite alot of unicode-d superscripted pagetitles for astronomical objects, so this may have been superceded or just ignored since it was established.

Ofcourse the big problem with unicode superscripts is that they don't go up to 9 or include 0 in most fonts, whereas objects sometimes exceed 9 with superscripted Bayer designations, so already use up 1-9, and 0; meaning that our articles are inconsistently using two different character ranges to do superscripting; or will appear with missing character glyphs for unsupported unicode characters (or a blank space).

70.24.251.208 (talk) 13:30, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, an example is the Chi¹ Orionis article. It makes sense to use HTML superscripts, but this seems like a task for a bot. Or perhaps several bots; one to set the proper DISPLAYTITLE and rename articles with unicodes in their names, a second to convert the unicode superscript characters inside articles, and perhaps a third to create the appropriate redirects where needed. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:43, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I should at least be able to catch some of these as I update the star articles. Is the preferred astronomical naming convention Chi-1 Orionis, Chi 1 Orionis, or Chi1 Orionis? Regards, RJH (talk) 20:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I assume the latter, along with a suitable usage of {{DISPLAYTITLE}}. Modest Genius ^talk 20:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

It looks like that is the style followed by Pi4 Orionis. I'll go ahead and change to that style, although I suspect it may come up for debate later. Regards, RJH (talk) 13:51, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

As an experiment I modified the DISPLAYTITLE of Pi4 Orionis so it looks more like the unicode characters. I'm curious what you think of that approach? (It can always be put back later.) Regards, RJH (talk) 01:45, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, no. The look is inconsistent between IE and Firefox, so I removed the extra formatting. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:27, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

No idea what is the general preference between Chi1 Orionis and Chi-1 Orionis, but I usually prefer the latter because jamming a number onto the end of a word looks a bit weird in normal text. Superscript also looks weird, like a footnote. I generally use either Greek-letter and superscript (χ¹) or Latin with hyphen (Chi-1), but I admit that is my own preference rather than any kind of standard. 46.126.76.193 (talk) 19:35, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

The dash format probably makes sense for database entries, but I'm not so sure about a formatted publication such as Wikipedia. I looked for some IAU guidelines on the matter, but they primarily seem to focus on later star catalogues. Personally I don't care all that much which format gets used, as long as it is consistent. I'd rather avoid a belabored dispute like we had with the planet names. Regards, RJH (talk) 04:01, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Based on patterns I've seen so far, it would probably help if all of the "Stars of X" templates (where X is a constellation name) had their unicode characters fixed as well. (See {{Stars of Corona Australis}} for example.) That will help avoid having editors create new articles using those formats. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:43, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

This could and should be enforced by a bot. If someone can summarize what the bot should do with regards to pagenames, displaytitles, and redirects, then it would be a pretty simple WP:BOTREQ to make, and the bot would probably be an easy thing to code. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:37, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

This is perhaps most easily done with an example:

• The original article name was Sigma² Cancri. I could not rename it because the redirect Sigma2 Cancri to Sigma² Cancri already existed.
• An admin renamed it to Sigma2 Cancri after a WP:RM discussion.
• I inserted the following at the top of the article:
  {{DISPLAYTITLE:Sigma² Cancri}}

In a few cases I also needed to modify a category sort from the unicode character to the number.[1] Regards, RJH (talk) 17:31, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

For those star articles where I could identify this as a problem in the title, the issue has been addressed through WP:RM. Thanks to everybody for their comments. I also went through and modified the constellation templates to use the superscript format per WP:SUPSCRIPT. There may still be individual articles where the problem exists, but I'm attempting to resolve those as I continue my sweep through the constellation star articles (which is going to take a long, long time to finish...). Regards, RJH (talk) 16:17, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've decided I'm not going to be updating any more star articles. Time to move on to something else. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:11, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Omicron Aquarii

At its creation, the Omicron Aquarii article stated that the star is a Gamma Cassiopeiae variable. Given the description on the variable star article, I have no reason to doubt that. But I'm sure not having much success trying to confirm it. About the closest I can find is the GCVS entry, which lists it as spectral class B7IVe-sh;[2] presumably the "sh" means it is a shell star. Am I okay using the GCVS for a reference? (Similar concern for Pi Aquarii.) Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is OK, because the GCVS gives the variable type as "GCAS" (= Gamma Cassiopeiae variable), and similarly for Pi Aquarii ([3]). For ο Aqr you can also look at IBVS #4968. Spacepotato (talk) 01:48, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah okay, I missed that. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 03:14, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Jupiter family comet

Jupiter family comet has been nominated for deletion. -- 70.49.127.65 (talk) 05:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Now redirected to the obits section of Comet, which in my view is poorly organized. Help would be appreciated. Jim.henderson (talk) 11:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you could provide some clarification on the Comet article's talk page? Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:56, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

59 Andromedae

Apparently this binary star system has five planets. I can't find a reference to confirm this "finding".[4] Regards, RJH (talk) 16:56, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Nope, I can't find anything either. It would be highly unusual to have any planets a) around such early-type stars and b) in such a binary system, let alone five, so if true I would have expected it to be well documented. Remove unless it comes back with a reference. Modest Genius ^talk 18:43, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Done and done. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Star article quality ratings

Many of the stars in the Bright Star Catalogue only seem to have a limited amount of information available. An example may be 99 Aquarii, which now has a suite of references and some details, but only three small paragraphs of text. Depending on the interpretation, that article appears to satisfy the criteria for article quality ratings of Start, C, and possibly even B on the project's quality scale. It seems unlikely that this article will be expanded in the near future unless there is an unusual discovery such as a planetary system, so how do you think it should be rated? I'm tempted to set such articles to a 'B', but I'm not sure that is appropriate. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd probably say a 'C' - it is somewhat perfunctory and could do with some explanation/context, particularly for the lay reader - e.g. why was it (and now why is it doubted as being) considered a member of the Ursa Major Moving Group? What is its variable period? Where is it in its lifespan...? Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Casliber, that seems reasonable. Getting the article out of the graveyard of unsourced stubbiness was the primary goal. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:22, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Calisber's idea seems good, but I'd it have a bit more structure to achieve "C"-class (body and introduction should be separated) -- 76.65.131.160 (talk) 06:10, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I usually don't bother adding a separate lead until the article gets a little longer. Otherwise it just seems like padding. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:15, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes I know what you mean and tend to agree - until the article gets to a certain subjective size....Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:54, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

S/2012 P 1

I would like to see more votes and comments at Talk:S/2012 P 1 - Requested move. In 2015 we might be adding several moons to minor planet Pluto and we should have a reasonable consensus as to how to properly name them. Thank you. -- Kheider (talk) 08:43, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Whoops, I forgot to notify the project of my move request. Sorry about that -- 76.65.131.160 (talk) 06:28, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

11277 Ballard

11277 Ballard is at AfD. Johnuniq (talk) 10:02, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

The article failed WP:NASTRO and has been converted to a redirect. Modest Genius ^talk 16:08, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

List of stars in the constellation Andromeda

List of stars in the constellation Andromeda has been requested to be renamed -- 76.65.131.160 (talk) 03:55, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

5 Aquilae

Hello. I ran into an issue with a reference that has me scratching my head a little:

Mason, Brian D.; Hartkopf, William I.; Tokovinin, Andrei (2010), "Binary Star Orbits. IV. Orbits of 18 Southern Interferometric Pairs", The Astronomical Journal, 140 (3): 735–743, Bibcode:2010AJ....140..735M, doi:10.1088/0004-6256/140/3/735. {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

What I'm looking at is the information on WDS 18465−0058 (5 Aql). The orbital elements listed on p. 737 shows a = 0.2″ and a period of 33+ years. However, on pp. 741–742 is says the A–B pair have a separation of 12″.8, while the spectroscopic binary (which I'm guessing is Aa–Ab) has a period of 4.77 days. (I confirmed this period in Abt & Levy (1985).) This data looks very contradictory. Am I perhaps misunderstanding something? Regards, RJH (talk) 15:18, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

It means that 5 Aquilae is quadruple system: B+(Aa+Ab), where one of Ab and Ab is a spectroscopic binary itself. Ruslik_Zero 16:24, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Yes, I'm able to confirm that with Eggleton & Tokovinin (2008). Thank you! Regards, RJH (talk) 18:23, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Image check requested of History of Mars observation

They are requesting an image check of the FAC nominated article History of Mars observation at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of Mars observation/archive1. Please could somebody knowledgeable of the FA process do a check of criteria 3 (licensing, captions, alt text, and so forth) and see if everything is up to snuff? It shouldn't take too long. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 03:47, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

It's been promoted. Thank you to those who contributed to the FAC. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:14, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

starbox variants up for deletion

Several experimental starbox variants (which may or may not figure in the contribution history of the current templates) have been nominated for deletion. See WP:TFD for July 30. -- 76.65.131.160 (talk) 05:33, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Also linked from Template:Starbox astrometry experimental. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:13, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Gamma Arietis

I tried to clean up and reference the Gamma Arietis article, but I ran into some issues with different source seeming to designate one member or the other as the Ap star. The SIMBAD site lists gamma-1 as the B9V star and gamma-2 as A1p. I wanted to use North (1998) as a reference for some of the stellar properties, but it seems to list HD 11502 (gamma-1) as the Ap star. I thought this might just be a mislabeling, but then I discovered Renson & Manfroid (2009), whose database entry also lists HD 11502 in its catalogue of Ap and Am stars. OTOH, Glagolevskij & Gerth (2010) lists HD 11503. Now I'm not quite sure what to believe. Perhaps they are both chemically peculiar? Regards, RJH (talk) 20:41, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

New editor's zeal

Errr nice enthusiasm but....Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:29, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

That's clearly not his own work, and those are images of the Sun. They need to be nominated for deletion. Modest Genius ^talk 20:36, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and it looks like a picture of the Sun taken through an H-alpha filter, then colorized. Probably not quite what I'd call realistic. Regards, RJH (talk) 00:04, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

His image of Rigel will not be taken for 2489 years. -- Kheider (talk) 00:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Dang, that had me thinking for a bit there....I was musing on light years and distance....and it was something much simpler.... :P Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Category:HIP objects

Category:HIP objects has been proposed to be renamed -- 70.24.247.242 (talk) 02:30, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Phoenix galaxy cluster

Should this be a section within Phoenix (constellation)? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe we've been merging astronomical object articles into their associated constellation pages, probably because constellations are just artificial assemblages of mostly unrelated objects. Some other examples include Centaurus Cluster, Eridanus Group, and Perseus Cluster. Regards, RJH (talk) 00:41, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

No, constellations are just areas of sky, nothing more. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 05:54, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank folks. I learned something new. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The central galaxy of the cluster is making news headlines now... [5][6][7] -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 13:11, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

R136

R136 in 30 Doradus might need updating. According to some recent news, R136 is a composite star cluster caused by two clusters merging together... [8][9][10] -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 13:09, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

NGC 6304 Article

Stumbled on NGC 6304 while trying to help with the new page patrol backlog. It was already tagged as having zero references. I spent a couple of hours in Google, added an infobox and sources to the tiny stub... but I know nothing about globular clusters and little about astronomy. Please take a quick look to be sure I haven't done something very stupid and unencyclopedic? Thanks, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ) (cont) Join WER 04:37, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi DocTree. It looks fine to me. Here's a couple of pointers that I hope are useful:

• It isn't really necessary to individually cite every name in the Other designations section. I usually just put the references at the end of the list unless there is one specific name that is being cited.
• Although SIMBAD is a good place to find data, to me it is in certain respects a tertiary source (per WP:TERTIARY). I usually prefer to use the academic sources listed by SIMBAD because that gives a better idea of the origin of the data. (SIMBAD can list multiple sources that give the same value, some of which may have obtained that from other sources.)

An age estimate is available from Forbes & Bridges (2010) if you want to include that. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:11, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

54 Ceti naming issue

The name of this article may be an issue. The star is currently in the Aries constellation. Many older references from earlier epochs do list a star called "54 Ceti", even though it was located in the modern boundaries for Pisces. However, later sources no longer use that name and I haven't had any luck finding a source showing they are the same star. The SIMBAD entry doesn't even list "54 Cet". Should we just rename this article to "HD 11257"? Regards, RJH (talk) 18:28, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Prudent, yes. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:47, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I was able to confirm that HR 534 is 54 Cet using the online Bright Star Catalogue. Still not sure if it should stay at the present name, but a lot of web sites seem to use '54 Ceti' so an article move case may be a little weak at this point. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:23, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Galactic globulars

This table may be useful for building our articles http://physwww.physics.mcmaster.ca/~harris/mwgc.dat

It can also be accessed through a query interface http://gclusters.altervista.org/index.php

-- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 11:25, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

We could probably do with a page that's a guideline to building reliable articles about stellar objects. (Headbomb suggested this on the WP:AST talk page.) It could include an appendix of widely-applicable references such as this. I know there's a few citations I find myself using over and over. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:37, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

NGC 5427

Should NGC 5427 redirect to Arp 271 ? NGC 5426 currently does, but the opinion at AFC seems to be that we should write galaxies articles for each of them instead of having redirects to the galaxy-pair aritcle. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 05:12, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

We could always just redirect for now and let somebody create the separate articles when they have the motivation. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Image:Jup ganymede comp.png

File:Jup ganymede comp.png has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

List of most massive stars

I find the list in this article odd. Shouldn't each star be listed separately on the list, instead of combined listings by name? -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 12:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

image:172460 asteroidbelt.gif and (172460) 2003 RT11

file:172460 asteroidbelt.gif has been nominated to be deleted as unused. (172460) 2003 RT11 has been prodded for deletion as non-notable. Weren't we redirecting these to the list? -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 01:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

image:172460 asteroidbelt.gif has been renominated for deletion. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:27, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki and categories in lists of minor planets

Some of lists of minor planets have a lot of interwiki (for example, see List of minor planets: 16001–17000). The most part of them comes from a lesser lists (such as List of minor planets/16001–16100) that form this bigger list via transclusion. If there are no objections, I'd like to move all interwiki of the lesser lists into a tag <noinclude> with my bot that prevent them to penetrate into the bigger lists. --Emaus (talk) 21:39, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

{{JPL small body}} links

There's a discussion going on about whether or not to include links to discovery/orbit diagrams/physical parameters/etc... in the JPL database ext link template.

• 2867 Steins at the JPL Small-Body Database

i.e. [11] vs [12]. Please comment at Template talk:JPL small body. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

WP:STARNAMES

STARNAMES was recently modified, per comment at Talk:J0651, which also contains observations. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 06:18, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Category:SDSS objects

apparently, we have a Category:SDSS objects ... is this indiscriminate? Since most stars and most galaxies in the Northern Hemisphere carry an SDSS designation, AFAIK... and there are 500 million entries in the catalogue -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 06:33, 7 September 2012 (UTC)