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starbox template issue

In the Astrometry and Details sections of the starbox template, the inline references come before the units of measurement. I think I prefer them to come after, how do other folks feel about this? Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed it would be better for units to come afterwards. Question is how best to go about doing this: specify a references parameter for the whole block or references for each parameter, e.g. {{ref_mass}}, {{ref_luminosity}}, etc. Icalanise (talk) 20:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am useless at code...but I can ask someone...hang on a sec.Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The templates for anyone wanting the links are Template:Starbox astrometry and Template:Starbox detail. Since you only pass a single parameter to each line and the template appends the units, it's simplest to have an extra parameter for each line that may use a cite (e.g. | radial_v_ref = ), a total of 7 extra parameters for 'astrometry' and 8 extra for 'detail'; or to have a single extra parameter for each template to hold all the references for that template. I suspect that as in Betelgeuse, most of the refs are the same, which would argue for the latter option. Either of the options are not difficult to encode into the template, but you'll have to agree first which of them is preferred. As an afterthought, I think it would be possible to parse each parameter's value and split it into the value and the reference, then output the two parts with the units between, but you still might want to consider bundling the ref(s) for each starbox. --RexxS (talk) 02:35, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)'d with ya...
Hmmm. If the extant invocations can be left alone and the parms parsed, it would ease deployment a *lot*. Just edit the template. I know just who to point at this, too; Thumperward and Plastikspork. These boxes seem all cluttered with inline refs; should be pushed forward to WP:LDR to de-clutter things ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 03:11, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think there are cases where a single ref. can serve for a block (orbital elements) and cases for individual cites. Personally though I'm fine with the way things are now. Fixing this seems like excessive attention to detail, when time could be better spent on improving article content. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Refs coming after the units would make sense. I'm looking at Alpha Centauri as an example; What's happening there is that the ref is being passed as as a part of the number; for Alpha Centauri A's mass:
  • | mass = 1.100<ref name="eso">{{cite web | author=Kervella | first=Pierre | coauthors=Thevenin, Frederic | date=March 15, 2003 | url=http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2003/pr-05-03.html | title=A Family Portrait of the Alpha Centauri System | publisher=ESO | accessdate=2008-06-06 }}</ref>
The template emits the 'mass' as '1.100[5]' with the '5' linking to the ref section; the template then auto-appends the appropriate unit. Well, appropriate from a Solarian POV. I very much doubt that the template could be adjusted to parse these and emit stuff in a different sequence. A better route would be a references parameter, or really ambitiously, discrete ones for each field, as Icalanise has said. Which looks messy. I've no idea of the history of these templates, or just how many are involved; I do see a bunch in just that page. The details template is used on most of 1500 articles, so this is a major thing to be talking of changing. The key thing to consider is whether one ref filed (which could have a fistful of refs passed into it), will be clear enough to readers and editors. Refs done as discrete sibling parameters would be able to appear after the unit; a catch-all ref param would likely display in their own field at the end of the subsection, not near the data cited. As is, it looks odd, some very odd: see 'age' 4.85 × 109[5] years, which can be misread as much larger number. Cheers, Jack Merridew 03:04, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The algorithm for parsing the value passed could just be: (1) Search for the position of the sub-string '<ref' in the string; (2) If the position is greater than 1 /*ref exists*/, split the string at that position, otherwise /*no ref*/ the first part is the whole string and the second part is empty; (3) output {first part} units {second part}. Searching for '<ref' is preferred to searching for '<' in case somebody has used a value like '< 1' (less than one). I'd normally implement that as a common function call, but I'm insufficiently well-versed in wiki-script coding to know whether that degrades performance. Also, I'd echo Jack's call for WP:LDR; it would make the boxes sooo much more readable. --RexxS (talk) 04:15, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I get the idea, but am less familiar with just what parsing is really available in the MW:Parser functions. Seems there would be some. I'm not familiar with enough of these pages to know what it really going to be passed. There are also templates such as {{ref}}, {{note}}, {{sfn}} that could be passed-in and they would have to be detected as 'refs' even without the '<ref'. I doubt we could key-off just '{{', as there are likely places using some other templates and parser functions on the main 'data' prior to the optional 'ref'. Mostly I would expect few with refs. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:52, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, the effort (both in terms of initial implementation and of the resulting increase in code complexity) in implementing conditional parsing of each of the attributes in question to filter out the refs isn't justified by the increase in value to our readers (a minor aesthetic improvement). Adding new attributes for each reference and then using a bot to fix the current articles would be trivial to implement, backwards-compatible and wouldn't result in a significant increase in code complexity. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 07:02, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Chris. It is technically possible to use str functions to split the reference from the number, but these are generally expensive for the server to execute, complex in terms of coding, and somewhat fragile. Creating a second field for the reference seems to be the better way to go. This is how it is done for things like elevation, area, density in templates like {{Infobox settlement}} for example. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 14:19, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Going to agree that string parsing is not the way to go, once you throw in the possibility of multiple references (e.g. if there is a reference and a note), etc. it becomes unwieldy and difficult to maintain. Better to use the individual fields and code a bot to do batch updates if desirable. Icalanise (talk) 18:27, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

New user renaming star articles

Supposedly new user Metebelis has been renaming a number of star articles to use Gould's Uranometria Argentina designation (with a "G"). While technically correct, in many of the cases I don't believe the new name is the most common. In many cases it is very obscure. For example: HR 5568 (or Gliese 570) is now 33 G. Librae. What do you think? I suspect this account is a sock puppet because the editor looks experienced.—RJH (talk) 19:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

He's not a new user as he's been editing since 2005. Looking at the logs, I see three star articles moved:
  1. 41G. Arae to 41 G. Arae. This is only a formatting change.
  2. 82 Eridani to 82 G. Eridani. This is not a change to the Gould designation as the article was originally titled with the Gould designation.
  3. Gliese 570 to 33 G. Librae. This is I think not a good move as the Gliese designation is much more common. For example, a Google Scholar search gives 14 hits for "Gliese 570" and only one for "33 G. Librae". (Do not confuse 33 G. Librae with 33 Librae = HD 137949, which is a different star.)
Spacepotato (talk) 20:40, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While it is probably more technically correct to use the "G.", what is the current usage. I have usually seen HD 156274 and HD 20794 referred to as just plain 41 Arae and 82 Eridani respectively. Not sure how much that would conflict with the actual Flamsteed designations though. I definitely agree that Gliese 570→33 G. Librae is a bad move though. Icalanise (talk) 21:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, maybe the red-linked user name just threw me off with regard to his status. He also renamed several star name links on List of nearest bright stars, which made me suspect he might have more moves in mind. Anyway I left him a note. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 21:52, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Supermassive_black_hole#New_letter_in_Nature

Comments/Assistance incorporating the information into the article would be welcome. NW (Talk) 01:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed wikiproject merge

Please take a look at the following discussion about a proposed merge of Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects into Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy:

Thank you.—RJH (talk) 18:31, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a bad idea, considering the amount, size and length of discussions on this talk page, it would just make the main talk page much more difficult to navigate, as this is already topic separated. 76.66.197.248 (talk) 04:24, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

NGC 3603 & John Herschel

NGC 3603 is an open cluster of stars which it is claimed was discovered by John Frederick William Herschel in 1834. Does any know how this can be verfied (or not)? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:02, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, it's documented in the following: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1965JRASC..59...67S —RJH (talk) 18:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks, that is an excellent source. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:06, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of extrasolar planets

There is a request to split List of extrasolar planets with two sections suggested as becoming standalone lists. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 05:12, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Astronomical Objects articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

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We would like to ask you to review the Astronomical Objects articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

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For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 00:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cold Neptune and Cold Jupiter categories

FYI, Category:Cold Neptunes (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and Category:Cold Jupiters (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) have been nominated for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:55, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ESO Image use question

Hi, I've ended up with a disagreement with User:SchuminWeb about ESO image credits on the Beta Pictoris article. The image license for ESO images [1] states that the image credit must be clearly visible. I interpret this to mean that the image credit should be placed in the image caption in the article. User:SchuminWeb disagrees and has removed the credit, stating that it is enough to put the image credit on the file page and that such image credits should not appear in articles. Any advice on this matter would be appreciated. Thanks. Icalanise (talk) 08:33, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I read it, WP:CREDITS is particularly applicable to GFDL or Creative Commons licenses. It says nothing about other licenses. I've had a similar issue with NASA credits for images, although their current wording is not as strict as it used to be.[2]—RJH (talk) 18:22, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Large number of problematic edits

An anonymous user (72.254.128.201 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)) has been making a very large number of changes to astronomy-related articles (neutron star, active galactic nucleus, quasar, and several fusion process articles, to name a few). At best these are benign but not very useful typesetting changes. More often, they're problematic (replacing words with less-appropriate or outright wrong synonyms throughout the article). In several cases, the anon changed temperature values in the fusion process articles, without citing a source to back up their claimed values.

I've cleaned up the damage down to their 19:2x 25 Sept. edits to carbon burning process, but there's a lot more to be vetted (and possibly reverted). Help would be appreciated. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 22:45, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like (64.34.172.46 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)) is the same user: they've been re-reverting the same articles. Just a head's up to everyone. --Parejkoj (talk) 16:37, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks; I just noticed that as well. I've reported them to WP:AIV so that someone with rollback privileges can handle the cleanup. It turns out they're an indef-blocked user coming back via open proxies, so this should get through the system pretty quickly. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 17:59, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quasar references

An IP editor just added a couple of "citation needed" tags to Quasar. If anyone would be willing to dig up appropriate references, that would be handy, as the requests were attached to statements about a topic that's turned ugly in the past (evaluating quasar distance and Hubble's Law). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Appending planetary system info to starbox

I propose integrating in to starbox a detail area describing its planetary system. Can be as simple as

Planets WhateverStar A, WhateverStar B, WhateverStar C

roughly speaking. It is increasingly clear that it will be more a rarity to find stars without planets rather than vice versa, and as the planet hunt progresses it is likely that more stars will become worthy of articles.

If there are no objections I'll begin work on the template to add in such a feature soon. It should be easy to implement and will be designed to follow standard lettered nomenclature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rockatship (talk • contribs) 00:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Considering that we are expanding catalogued stars into other galaxies, detecting planets around them would be hard... Though I get your point on having stars with planets more likely to become articles. 76.66.200.95 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:08, 30 September 2010 (UTC).[reply]
It may be better to make such planet sections collapsible to prevent overly huge infoboxes. At least this may be worth an experiment. Icalanise (talk) 06:20, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To first contrib, it would certainly be an optional starbox entry, or default to 'Unknown'. To Icalanise, I imagine this detail would only take one line based on alphabetical classification, i.e. Known Satellites: A,B,C,D,E,F for example. rockatship (talk) 12:02, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Articles missing WPAstronomy templates

It looks like there are more than a couple of hundred star articles that don't have a completed {{WikiProject Astronomy}} appraisal template yet. Many of the articles are stubs from our old friend CarloscomB that are in need of cleanup (including an unnecessary image entry in the infobox, the use of periods instead of commas for the stellar properties, overly long name lists, and confusion about double vs. binary stars). I'm still slowly working my way through the star articles list, and I'm sure there are probably other astronomy sub-categories with articles that are missing wikiproject templates.—RJH (talk) 20:13, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If history is any indication, atleast a few of those are actually the same star, under different names, some of those not actual properly named anyways. I really hated rebuilding his articles, what with information below the categories, below the references, below the see also, below the external link sections, stupid floating tables that took full width for no reason, and needing total rewrites to place elsewhere... 76.66.200.95 (talk) 05:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps there is a tool or script to look for articles under a specific category with content containing matching pattern strings fitting a particular regular expression? That would allow us to look for articles about the same star.—RJH (talk) 18:10, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, as I recall, some of his infoboxes are completely wrong, being copies of some other article... or not completely about the current article. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I was wondering where he had come up with some of the values for the physical properties. They don't always make much sense.—RJH (talk) 20:36, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Huge "nearest stars" templates

I guess I've only noticed this because I have been browsing with JavaScript turned off, but the {{nearest systems}} and {{nearest bright star systems}} templates are really really big. They're also full of redlinks. (It isn't entirely clear what the "bright" criterion is, there are a lot of awfully dim red dwarf stars listed there). Not sure what to do about them really. Icalanise (talk) 18:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably impacting the download times of all the pages where it is posted. When I look at Gliese 623, for example, almost 70% of the lines come from that one template. Not sure if that is a significant issue though. Perhaps it should be broken down into a series of smaller templates with links to the prior and next template in the series? (Maybe by RA and/or Dec. range?)—RJH (talk) 21:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, they've been enormous since they were created... how about restricting nearest stars to 10ly, and nearest bright stars to 25ly? Otherwise, they just replicate what should be on the lists. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 03:33, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Being too large and having red links violates two of the guidelines on Wikipedia:Navbox#Properties.—RJH (talk) 15:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

File:Gliese 581GG.PNG

FYI Image:Gliese 581GG.PNG has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 05:37, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding material deleted from Proxima Centauri

After this article came to the front page (which I always dislike) it underwent a few useful changes and one I had a concern about by a WP Administrator. This edit removed some content from the Possible Companions section that had been contributed by other authors. This material was fully cited and it concerned the topic; therefore it satisfied WP:TOPIC. Out of respect for the authors of the material, I restored the content and left a discussion topic on the article's talk page. I would appreciate it if you could contribute your thoughts on whether to keep the material or let it be deleted. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 20:09, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say keep in, as habitability and comanions of nearest stars have certainly been discussed extensively, and by the subject's very nature much of it is speculative. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:15, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I had some concern about the material myself, at least at the beginning. But I think this is a special case since Proxima is the nearest star. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 14:43, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does citing the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia violate WP:BLP?

On Talk:Gliese 581 g, User:Viriditas is claiming that citing the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia note on the Gliese 581 system that the HARPS new data does not detect planet g [3] violates WP:BLP because we cannot absolutely verify that is what exactly was said at the conference. Is this correct? Extra opinions would be useful. Icalanise (talk) 12:43, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have Ray Jayawardhana on my Facebook, who wrote on his own wall: “‎"We cannot confirm it [Gliese 581g] in our HARPS data" - Francesco Pepe (Geneva team) at IAU 276 in Torino.” I’m afraid, however, that we can not use this as a source… :-/ CielProfond (talk) 13:51, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But more to the point. Can EPE be used as a source to claim this? Why isn't anyone else covering this? I don't rely on one source as a rule. Viriditas (talk) 14:00, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you're going to use it, my suggestion would be to clarify the source of the information within the article body. I.e. "According to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, ...". The EPE article itself could use more citations to demonstrate that it is a notable source.—RJH (talk) 14:48, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I'm faced with a solitary source like this, I always check against a quote or transcript from the original. Since I don't have anything, I'm not going to use it. If it is notable, other sources will cover it. Viriditas (talk) 15:28, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That works too. Better not to report it than to report potentially unreliable data as fact.—RJH (talk) 15:21, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Then again... Doubt Cast on Existence of Habitable Alien World.—RJH (talk) 22:01, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's the kind of secondary source we wait for, and when it comes, we use it. This isn't the first article I've waited for sources on, and it won't be the last. Viriditas (talk) 11:20, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, you're welcome.—RJH (talk) 18:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is not related to BLP. (You probably meant WP:V?) Ruslik_Zero 19:02, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Photos of outer irregular moons of Saturn

I'm by no means an expert, but I noticed that a couple articles (Tarvos and Thrymr) have recently had photos added... sourced from Cassini's raw image site. However, when I've browsed that site in the past, I've found that small objects can easily be completely lost among cosmic ray hits and stars, even for the inner small moons. Considering that these moons are much more distant, I doubt that the photos really contain the moons they claim to be photos of at all. Can anyone help confirm or deny this? --Patteroast (talk) 04:49, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they do contain the moons they reference. We regularly image distant moons in order to measure their phase function (how their brightness changes wrt phase angle) and rotational period (by measuring a lightcurve over 4-24 hours). However, the photos on the raw images site DO NOT identify which of these bright spots is a moon, a star, or a cosmic ray hit, since as you said, they are so distant and faint that there isn't much to distinguish say, Kiviuq, unless you blink multiple images and can tie the images to known stars. --Volcanopele (talk) 22:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting! Do the image crops used on the articles for Tarvos and Thrymr contain the right spots? I have a feeling they were simply zoomed into the brightest spot near the center. --Patteroast (talk) 17:32, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Sun" and "sun" in Earth's shadow

Hello members of Project Astronomical objects. I am helping prepare a new article to be submitted for DYK. The article is about the Earth's shadow as it is visible from Earth at sunset and sunrise. I am checking to see when in this article we should use "Sun" meaning the astronomical body, and when to use "sun" meaning the everyday use of the term. If someone has a moment can they please take a look, please feel free to change the usage or tweak the content as seems appropriate. Many thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 14:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a complication in astronomy topics, "sun" also means the star of a planetary system that is not our Solar System... whereas "Sun" always refers to our star of our Solar System. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 05:25, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, good, thanks for your note. It has been accepted as a DYK. I am more concerned with the fact that in an everyday context people just write: "The sun is up now", or "no sun today". Would you take a look and see if you agree with the wording of the article? Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 17:14, 20 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moons of Neptune

I nominated this article for Featured List status. The review page is here. Ruslik_Zero 18:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

JKCS 041

Can someone clean up JKCS 041? Someone turned it into a {{quotefarm}} back in May 2010. I'd personally delete the entire quote section, but I'd get cited for vandalism, since edit patrollers seem to do that whenever massive amounts of text are removed by IP editors. 76.66.198.128 (talk) 04:59, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Abell 2218

Abell 2218 needs cleanup, it seems to use out of date science to claim that the most distant galaxy occurs in a gravitation lens image created by the cluster. However later galaxy discoveries with lower redshift claims have been acclaimed the most distant galaxy known. 76.66.198.128 (talk) 05:10, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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