Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy

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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.— Preceding unsigned comment added by GamerPro64 (talk • contribs)

User Box

I put together an alternative userbox ({{User WPAST}}) that employs the same graphic we use in the WikiProject template. The original User:Icez/User Astronomy, which uses the astrological symbol for Saturn, is included (bottom) for comparison:

Userboxes

This user participates in
WikiProject Astronomy.

This user is a member of the Astronomy WikiProject.

Does it need further refinement? Regards, RJH (talk) 19:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I like it. Can you widen the picture, or make the border black so it blends with the background? Just my 2 cents, but I think it could look more attractive that way. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 21:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

It had a black border originally, but seemed a little stark to me. Shrug. I tried changing it to a dark gray so you can barely see the border, but it should still match up with neighboring boxes. Is that okay? Regards, RJH (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I like it this way, too, and with the new image it's more quintessentially "astronomy" than the astrological symbol. I'll use it! Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 23:08, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the astrological symbol one should be deprecated and removed from the project page, the new one is much better. Modest Genius ^talk 14:10, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

One other thought, shouldn't it read 'is a member of WikiProject Astronomy' rather than 'is a member of the Astronomy WikiProject'? The former sounds a lot nicer to my ear. Modest Genius ^talk 15:14, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

The other user boxes at Wikipedia:Userboxes/WikiProjects flip back and forth quite a bit. There doesn't seem to be any consistent rule to apply. I went ahead and changed it. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:34, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Glossary of astronomy terms

While going through some recently-rated astronomy articles, I'm finding quite a few may not have much potential for expansion. A couple of examples are Morning width and Starfield (astronomy). I thought it might help to set up a glossary article, Glossary of astronomy terms (as has been done with a number of other fields: cf. Category:Glossaries on science). Regards, RJH (talk) 04:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

We also need to improve coverage on Wiktionary. It's rather poor there, perhaps a satellite WikiProject at Wiktionary for Astronomy would be good? 70.24.251.71 (talk) 07:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The glossary in the Astronomical Almanac could be a start. It is in the public domain in the US, but maybe not elsewhere. The copyright statement on the reverse of the title page reads "© Crown Copyright 2010 This publication is protected by international copyright law. No part of this publication may be reproduced...without the prior permission of Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office...

"The following United States government work is excepted from the above notice and no copyright is claimed for it in the United States...M1–M18...." M1–M18 is the glossary. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

That may as be, anon. I haven't spent much time with that project, since there's just so much that needs improving upon around here. :-) Regards, RJH (talk) 20:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we should also have glossaries for subfields and subtopics? glossary for astronomical objects , glossary for constellations , glossary for telescopes etc... 70.24.251.71 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:45, 1 March 2012 (UTC).

For the first, we do have Astronomical object, where I suspect the big table might work better as a hierarchically-organized glossary. I'm not sure what you'd put in a glossary of constellations, but a glossary of telescopes (telescopy?) would be good. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

RFC at Big Bang

There is now an RFC at Talk:Big Bang on the subject of the degree to which religious interpretations of the Big Bang should be mentioned in the article. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Planetarium software

I am sitting at a lecture about how to enter comets into your program, and am shocked to fail to find a general article about this kind of software. Just a bunch of individual articles about individual products. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:09, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I use various planetarium software packages on a regular basis, so I'm fairly surprised too. Turns out the relevant page was redirected to Planetarium some time ago. I removed the redirect and started a stub. You're welcome to expand. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 02:11, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

JSTOR

Heads up, apparently JSTOR is offering free access to some articles. Since some astronomy articles are available through JSTOR, this might be useful.

See http://about.jstor.org/rr

70.24.251.71 (talk) 05:54, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

No astronomy journals are currently included in the scheme. And I'm not sure how useful it would be even if they were, given the limitation of only 3 articles every 14 days, restricted to digitisations of old journals only. Since almost everything from the last 30 years - plus most significant older material - has been digitised already, there's only really going to be items of historical interest. Modest Genius ^talk 10:07, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I had noticed a couple of physics journals there, and since some astronomy articles are published in physics journals, I'd expect there might be some. Probably not exceedingly useful though. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 10:39, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, JSTOR does have a number of history articles that I wish I'd had access to, so hopefully those will be beneficial in the future. Now if only Icarus would allow free access to their articles after a couple of years... Regards, RJH (talk) 14:44, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

astronomy categories being speedy renamed

Several tens of categories are being nominated for speedy renaming at WP:CFD, see WP:CFDALL in the speedy section.

If you categorize objects into constellations, this may be of interest to you, since constellations will no longer be consistently named.

There's also an issue with conflating the two definitions of Milky Way (we have unified article, but categorization is for the galaxy, we're missing a categorization for the nebulosity) 70.49.126.147 (talk) 05:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Is there a new doctrine that says a category must match the name of its primary article? I don't see one, so this just seems like pedantry. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

No there is not (indeed, frequently, when the name of the main article is ambiguous (it has a dab page associated with it), the category is disambiguated), it's just bureaucratic actions based on a speedy renaming criterion. There's a recommendation that they should match, so there's a speedy rename criterion, but it's not a "must". 70.24.245.141 (talk) 04:31, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

astronomy categories

some more have come up at CFD, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 March 14

70.49.126.147 (talk) 05:43, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

And more, at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 March 15

70.24.245.141 (talk) 04:40, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Help with GLOBE at Night article

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I'm looking for someone to help improve the GLOBE at Night article, which I recently wrote and nominated for DYK: Template:Did_you_know_nominations/GLOBE_at_Night. It was reviewed as sounding like an advertisement and needing more neutral language. I get (now) that the lede wasn't ideal, but I don't really see the problem (from a neutrality/advertising perspective) in the rest of the article, so I'm not sure what I should change. I could really use someones help in making it more neutral (or else weighing in if you think it's ok as it is). Best wishes, Anotherdoon (talk) 19:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I've gone through, cleaned up the prose, expanded the lede, and neutralised. Anyone else want to take a look? This was a really nice little IYA program and it's great they've kept it going. (And yes, this was the right place to come ask, Anotherdoon. Thanks for your work!). Iridia (talk) 04:52, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

ALMA image caption

Could someone do a sanity check on this edit? That was where I corrected the image caption as the source for the image doesn't mention other telescopes being used and I think someone got confused by the credit line. The original image caption at that article was here, later modified here, then changed again and changed back here. Looking at the article as a whole, there is a fair amount of information out there about ALMA, not all of which is in the article, so it could be expanded and fleshed out a bit if anyone is interested. Carcharoth (talk) 01:37, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

That is quite odd. In the original ESA press release, it's pretty clear that it's an HST image in the visible, combined with ALMA bands 3 and 7 (millimetre/submillimetre). I think you're right that the credit lines got confused. Iridia (talk) 03:23, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

ESO, not ESA... :-) But yeah, I thought it was a bit odd. Thanks for that check. Carcharoth (talk) 03:27, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Merge comment needed - NGC 246

Merge NGC 246 with BD-12° 134? Please comment at Talk:NGC 246 D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:00, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Ugh, it's a CarlosComB article... (BD-12° 134 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)) 70.24.245.141 (talk) 04:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I have redirected BD-12° 134 to NGC 246 because the former had no content that wasn't already in the latter. Reyk _YO! 20:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Can we please get rid of this astrology stuff in the conjuction article?

Why is this page not split? The two subjects are simply too disparate to be lumped together. Readers don't need material presented to them in a scientific article that has no evidence and isn't even believed by most people, as if it were equally true. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:23, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I assume you mean the Conjunction (astronomy and astrology) article? As long as astrological beliefs are not being stated as fact, I don't see it as a problem. See WP:WEIGHT. That being said, the list of conjunctions should probably be split off into a list article. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:30, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Don't you mean split it in twain? Conjunction (astrology) and Conjunction (astronomy) ? List of conjunctions would also be good to split off. 65.92.181.184 (talk) 03:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

If you split the article, you might be able to get support from WP:Astrology. 65.92.181.184 (talk) 08:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

New template {{cite sbdb}}/{{cite simbad}}

I just created this for citing entries in the JPL Small Body Database (which surprisingly enough, lacks an article).

Basically, writing

• {{cite sbdb |title=433 Eros (1898 DQ) |id=2000433 |accessdate=2012-03-19}}
• {{cite simbad |title=NGC 104 |accessdate=2012-03-19}}

will give

• "433 Eros (1898 DQ)". JPL Small-Body Database. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. SPK-ID: 2000433. Retrieved 2012-03-19.
• "NGC 104". SIMBAD. Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 2012-03-19.

It should prove useful to everyone here. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:03, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

naming of astronomical catalogues

Apparently, we will soon be receiving a wave of nominations to rename the astronomical catalogue catagories (either through speedy renaming request, or full CFD requests) see the comment at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 March 15 for NGC objects by the nominator. 65.92.180.130 (talk) 04:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Not to denigrate the process, but these fall into my "Yeah whatever" rating category for article edits. At least it's out of the way down at the bottom of the article. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I am somewhat concerned that the bottom of all astronomical articles will become excessive wordy for describing the categories section, ie stars (in space, not in Hollywood). There is no reason to spell out the long name of common astronomical catalogs like NGC. If anything they can put (astronomy) next to the terms that they do not understand. -- Kheider (talk) 17:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, in terms of interface design principles it seems like a poor approach. Those category lists can become quite bloated and long category names only make it worse. It quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns; possibly even having a negative effect on the user. The result is an increase to the users mental workload and a reduction in relevance, both of which are undesirable features for an interface. I have the same issue with bloated hatnotes, which I think harm the useability factor. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:22, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Horribly out-of-date to-do pages

Hi, I'm new to the astronomy project. I'm looking for a single (or any) place to find all astronomy pages needing citations, for example, and any other categorized type of work. After looking around on the project page and the astronomy portal I found a few wilting links (for all intents & purposes, though, ...they're dead):

• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Astronomy - last edit August 2010
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Cleanup listing - last edit March 2010
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Worklist - last edit November 2009

These seem like really useful pages to have and to keep up! Plus it looks like they were semi-/automatically maintained. Why did that stop? If there are newer pages, could someone please point me in the right direction and update the project and portal pages by replacing (or removing) the old and unused links? That'd be good to have whenever I (or anyone else) gets in the editing mood :) Thanks, Tom.Reding (talk) 04:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I think that the cleanup listing and attention listing should be autogenerated by a bot... if a WPAstromony bannered page has (yellow) cleanup templates, it gets autolisted, if it has more serious orangebanners it gets listed for attention. 70.24.248.7 (talk) 05:13, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

The cleanup listings are generated by the toolserver now. See [1]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:03, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! So, I'm guessing the reason that link to the cleanup listing isn't as prominent as it should be is because of load issues on the toolserver.org server? It should definitely be more intuitively visible otherwise. -- Tom.Reding (talk) 09:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Well the worklist is a voluntary effort, so the upkeep is only as good as those willing to perform it. Personally I go by the assessment categories table on the WikiProject main page, which are directly representative of the current article ratings and hence don't require spending time maintaining a separate list. There's also a more up-to-date list at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded/Physical sciences#Astronomy, 225. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:01, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

OsirisV

While doing some article cleanup, I noticed that articles created by OsirisV (talk · contribs) in 2008 and 2009, have alot of typographic errors, incorrect categorizations, and incorrect references. (typos like having a 5 instead of a 4) (using references for other celestial objects, instead of the correct link, but the thing being refd on the page is from the correct link not the wrong one) (using the wrong data from the wrong ref) (categorization under some other key (copypasted articles?) instead of the topic's key) Someone might want to do a more detailed comb of the articles.

70.24.248.7 (talk) 08:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Can you direct us to the articles please with a link? Pass a Method talk 08:19, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot moving all of the "X constellation" categories to "X (constellation)"

Does this seem completely daft to anybody else? An impartial observer must think we spend a tremendous amount of time "fixing" trivial things that don't need fixing. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:39, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, if you hang around some of the process pages, there's alot of "makework" things going on. Hell, a common thing with categories is, it doesn't matter if the article has a stupid name, we have to rename the category, then we'd rename the article, then the categories get renamed a second time... Why not rename the article in the first place? because the user doesn't work on article names, only category names! 70.24.248.7 (talk) 04:00, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I guess I shouldn't care so much because it is just categories, but it creates a big problem on the watch list where the haze of mass bot changes is concealing potential vandalism that may remain undiscovered for a long time. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:26, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

You can select 'hide bot edits' on the watchlist. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 17:02, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

True, but unfortunately bots can make a mangled mess of things sometimes, so they also need to be checked. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:03, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Since all the categories were deleted ( Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_March_14 ) can we rebuild them as categoryredirects? If not, I will never again categorize anything by constellation, since it's just too much work, as there's no consistent naming pattern anymore (not all of the categories contain "(constellation)" only some of them ). 70.24.248.7 (talk) 06:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Big fucking mess after a bunch of page moves and CFDs

X-posted from WT:ASTRO

Armbrust (talk · contribs) just recently starting moving a bunch of pages willy-nilly, and then made CFD nominations based on the page moves. Nearly all of them don't make any sort of sense, and there's a lot to revert and cleanup. Help would be appreciated to cleanup that mess, as [2] s/he aren't listening to reason. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:43, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I tried to revert one of the nonsensical moves, but was prevented from doing so. Hmm, must be another change. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

god what a mess. He can't seem to be able to see that "moon images" (any moon) is ambiguous with "Moon images" (The Moon). or these weird nominations [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] that were withdrawn (robotic application of the naming recommendation that categories match articles is very bad practice...) 70.24.248.7 (talk) 04:18, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Yep. More Wikipedia goofiness. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:23, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

main sequence star types articles

Armbrust (talk · contribs) has completely messed up the entire set of "x-type main-sequence star" articles. The all got moved to "x-type main sequence", and now alot of them are all over the place, some of them called "x-type main-sequence star", others called "x-type main sequence star" . Since IIRC we had an RM discussion that set up these names (when we hyphenated "main-sequence"), this seems to have violated an existing consensus. (and I guess this is why he nominated all the related categories to be named "x-type main sequences" (ugh!) before withdrawing those ) but now the articles need to be checked for consistency in naming. 70.24.248.7 (talk) 04:22, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

categorization keys by User:Armbrust

Armbrust (talk · contribs) has made a massive change of our categorization keys, such as this edit [12] when one of the main articles for that category is "blue giant". We need to examine all the star type articles for categorization key removals or additions. 70.24.248.7 (talk) 04:26, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Jesus hell, can that guy stop making drastic unilateral changes for two seconds? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

In typical fashion, dialogue is impossible. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:39, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

If Armbrust refuses to discuss the matter, an admin should send a stern warning to discuss further changes with the project. -- Kheider (talk) 14:16, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

A glance at their talk page and contribution history yesterday suggests that this is not a new problem. If attempts at dialogue continue to fail, the next step is to start a thread at WP:AN/I asking that they be given a short block to pause the disruption while people with admin powers explain to them that WP:BRD isn't a license to skip the "get consensus for changes" step in the editing process (non-admin discussion attempts don't seem to have helped, based on the talk page history). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:09, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

He has proposed a large number of stellar classification article name changes here: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 March 21#Stars by spectral type. Hopefully that means he is responding to the comments. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:11, 22 March 2012 (UTC)