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Straw poll: Automated stub redirection

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Straw poll closed as "no consensus". "2 support plus 2 weak support" is probably not enough to make a case to the bot approval group for something that redirects 10k+ pages and makes occasional mistakes while doing so. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Per the discussion in the WT:ASTRO#Phase three pilot can start thread, The pages in Category:Main Belt asteroid stubs are being used as a trial for applying the WP:NASTRO guidelines. The vast majority of these seem to be bot-generated stubs that do not presently meet the notability guidelines, and that describe objects that are unlikely to meet the notability guidelines in the near future.

As things presently stand, we have a list of about 19,000 stubs tabulated in pages indexed at WP:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Stub processing. Manually sifting through these is a huge task.

What I am proposing, and seeking yes/no indications on, is writing a bot that goes through the autogenerated list, makes note of stubs that were flagged as having at most 1 reference or external link and being "short", and automatically redirecting these back to one of the appropriate asteroid-list pages.

  • Plus side: This would get rid of about 90% of the stubs, leaving a number small enough to process by hand in a reasonable length of time.
  • Minus side: Some stubs may be redirected that shouldn't be, either because the statistics script missed a few references or because the object in question is actually notable.

The rationale for automated processing is that even if we have to un-redirect a few stubs, that's still far less work than manually going through 19k stubs by hand.

That said, WP:BOT indicates that this sort of automated processing should only happen if there's clear community consensus for doing so. What do the WP:AST and WP:ASTRO crews think about this proposal? Worth it/not worth it? --Christopher Thomas (talk) 09:30, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Will redirected stubs get an edit note saying that the article can always be reinstated if redirection was a mistake? I think this is, in principle, a good way to handle these stubs, but I'm still a little wary. I would like to see the bot go through some "field testing" first. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 12:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – the Pareto principle seems to apply based on the gathered data. Hence, I think it's a good approach. The brevity of the listed pages will make them easy to individually re-create (or to roll back the redirect) in the event that an editor wants to expand on a particular entry. The only minor drawback to this approach may be that the redirect will only be linked to the matching list page, rather than the specific entry in the list. Implementing the latter would require more coding and testing, which may not be worth the effort. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:39, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Interesting. I thought perhaps this step might be more controversial than it is proving to be. In one sense it's unfortunate that we're doing this; it seems almost needlessly destructive. But in another sense it may focus more interest on a smaller number of minor planet articles that are in need of improvement. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:00, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Actually, I'm planning to close this as "no consensus", if nobody else comments after a week. Two responses means that discussion isn't actually happening about it (odd, since I'd thought there were more currently-active members of WP:AST and WP:ASTRO, but that happens). In order to get a bot approved, especially since its actions won't be perfect (just an improvement), I'd have to demonstrate (on the application) that the overwhelming majority of affected editors think this is a good idea. Right now, that's far from clear. I'll take another look on Monday. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:59, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Weak) Support. But I still have mixed feelings about it. I often think the first ~2,000 numbered asteroids should be grand fathered in at this point. -- Kheider (talk) 07:46, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Are any of those objects actually in the list of stubs, above? How many would actually be affected by the proposed selection criteria (i.e. how many did the script flag as short and having too few references)? --Christopher Thomas (talk) 09:10, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, there are some objects below 2,000. The lowest I found in the first five lists was 36 Atalante, which has three references and seems like a reasonable article to keep. The stub processing page shows it as having zero references, so Christopher might want to figure out why before proceeding. It looks like Kheider recently added some content. Asteroid 2000 Herschel was discovered in 1960, which is relatively recent in the history of astronomy. But I think that Kheider's suggestion would still allow the removal of most of the sub-stub articles. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:10, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • In that case, I can manually remove anything with a number of 2000 or lower from the "to redirect" list when/if the redirect script gets the go-ahead. That said, the optimal approach would be to un-stub those articles instead :). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 16:27, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support, but suggest a trial run of say 500 articles first. Run the bot, wait two weeks, and see how many of those 500 get reverted / recreated in that time. If it's less than 10, go ahead and do the full list. Modest Genius talk 14:45, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There will certainly be at least one trial run, where it spits out a list of changes it would have made without actually doing redirection, and we all comb through the output. That's actually one of the requirements for passing the bot appprovals process (having at least one "supervised" test run). With regards to running on a subset and seeing how much gets undone, that's certainly doable, but bear in mind that the people undoing the bot's edits will probably be us. Problems of that sort would hopefully be caught sooner (either right now by examining the stub list by hand, or during the dry run described a few sentences ago). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 16:27, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Un-closed

You have quite a bit of support here. Please address the concerns of the weak supporters and to persuade those whose concerns you have addressed to strengthen their support. In this context, it is unrealistic to expect all who are concerned and likely aware of this proposal and who have not weighed in to do so. It seems clear to me that they must simply prefer to obstain for complicated but not very hard to understand reasons. This should not be interpreted as opposition. Also, few people care about this issue, so anything but a small number of people will be interested enough to comment. If you really need more support, you may have to take it to the general notablity community, but that doesn't seem necessary and I seem to understand that you all would rather keep this "in house" as it were, but if you want I'm confident I could find people concerned with notablity in general as opposed to simply astro notablity to support this. But again, you're very close to sufficient consensus already, please don't give up just yet. Chrisrus (talk) 17:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Four people is not "quite a bit of support". As a fraction of the number of _active_ people on WP:AST and WP:ASTRO it's small. As a fraction of the _total_ membership, it's miniscule. That is not anywhere close to enough support to make the case that this bot should be allowed to break the usual bot guidelines.
The guidelines at WP:BOT clearly spell out an expectation that a bot should make no mistakes - and this is borne out by the bot approvals page, where people are picking apart one or two errors made in trial runs of a hundred edits, for bots in trial periods. My bot would not work that way - it'd have a false positive rate on the order of 1% (at a guestimate), with the premise being that it's easier to clean up _that_ mess, than to manually fix the much _larger_ mess that presently exists (tens of thousands of bot-generated stubs). That will be hard to get permission for, and there's no way to automate it (or at least, I'm not going to; it'd take more work to make an ironclad bot, or to stand over the bot's shoulder during redirects, than it would just to redirect everything by hand).
Do you understand why I closed this, now? We're asking for a bot that will have (a small amount of) collateral damage, and we have to be able to demonstrate beyond any doubt that a large number of people support this move. We have nowhere close to the support needed to show that, in this thread. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 18:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm satisfied with your reasons for closing this, Christopher. Thanks for your efforts. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to the first part (Four people...guidelines."), if four supports is not enough, please state how many more you will need.
With regard to the guidelines at WP:BOT, please point out where it "clearly spells out" that expectation. Chrisrus (talk) 15:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's in WP:Bot policy; first occurrence is point number one at WP:Bot policy#Bot requirements, and it's elaborated on in the text. To see that they do take that seriously, go to WP:Bots/Requests for approval and read the applications yourself. I already told you that they nit-pick any mistaken edits the bot makes, out of trials of 50+ edits. Any bot doing automated redirecting on the above criteria would make mistakes, that they'd object to.
For number required for consensus, go to WP:WikiProject Astronomy/Members and WP:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Members and count. There are on the order of 160/100 members, respectively. Many are inactive, but I'd want at least 10% to speak up. This is consistent with my previous statements to User:Modest Genius that I'd want at least a dozen people supporting, with no substantial objection, before going over to WP:BRFA with application in hand saying "the wikiprojects involved endorse this bot, even with the collateral damage".
I'm closing the voting portion of the thread again, as two people other than you have accepted my rationale. If you want to make a bot, do it yourself, and start a new thread for it, because arguing with you got tiresome weeks ago. I'll make one if and only if overwhelming consensus is demonstrated for doing so (in this context, a poll with at least a dozen people responding and at least 90% endorsing the creation of such a bot).
Am I making my position sufficiently clear? --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think so. You have given this a good faith try but it's just not going to work. Thank you for trying. But please, one last thing, may we show the work you'd done, just as far as you'd gotten, to the WP:BOTREQ people? It may help when me do as you suggest. Chrisrus (talk) 20:01, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I did not file a bot application. I looked at several existing applications, at the link given above, and determined that an application that I could file would not be likely to pass. If you want to make your own pitch, carefully read all relevant pages (starting from WP:BOT, and look at present and past bot requests. That should give you enough information to make your attempt. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 21:32, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I know you didn't file one, but I seem to remember you'd done some work toward that end. Ok, I think I found the script you'd been writing, here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Stub processing. Is all of it? Chrisrus (talk) 22:29, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No. That is a completely different script. As described above, that one spiders a category's pages and compiles statistics (which I put in the tables, also given above). That script does not count as a bot, because it makes no changes at all to the Wiki.
A script that performs redirection would be written from scratch. My version was going to take a manually-supplied list of pages to redirect. More advanced scripts could be written that combined the functions of both (spidering a category and then automatically redirecting anything sub-like that it found), but I wasn't going to bother with that for my version.
If you want sample code for actual bots, read the entire page set linked from WP:BOT. There are many libraries listed, many sample bots listed, and several other useful resources.
Please understand that the fact that you have to keep asking about this sort of thing, does not inspire confidence in me of your ability to implement any of it. Good luck. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:51, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry. I'm not doing it myself. Chrisrus (talk) 00:07, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Project image

Helix Nebula - 16,000 × 16,000 pixels (246.9 MB)
Saturn - 8,888 × 4,544 pixels (6.93 MB)
File:Saturn from Cassini Orbiter - Square (2004-10-06).jpg
Square version

I propose the logo of the Wikiproject be changed to File:Iridescent Glory of Nearby Helix Nebula.jpg as it is of better resolution of the current image. It wouldn't make a difference in terms of the display of the logo but it would promote the better quality image over the older lower quality image. -- A Certain White Cat chi? 03:20, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

HR 8938

We have an article on a song called HR 8938 Cephei. This suggests that we should have an article on the star the song is named after, HR 8938/HR 8938 Cep/HR 8938 Cephei (star). [1][2] ; any thoughts? -- 70.24.247.54 (talk) 09:35, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it meets the criteria of Notability (astronomical objects), then by all means, write an article :-) Keep in mind that just because there's a song with the star's name, it doesn't necessarily meet notability requirements. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 12:38, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
SIMBAD doesn't show much notability - it's used as a spectrophotometric standard, and is included in various surveys and compilations (because it's a bright star), but that's about it (unless I missed something). Oh and the correct name for any article would be HR 8938, the other names (including that of the song) don't make sense. Modest Genius talk 13:37, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The song page is at AfD, too. AstroCog (talk) 13:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to suggest that we not make an article about that star. We already have enough dross articles of that sort that are uninteresting and virtually non-expandable. (Sorry if I sound like an old curmudgeon. ;-) Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:53, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that someone has now created HR 8938 Cephei (star). Surely that fails WP:NASTRO? Modest Genius talk 16:01, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, as a naked eye star it would pass NASTRO. -- Kheider (talk) 16:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I got confused about the magnitude. I'll move it to the correct title instead of prodding for deletion then. I have the feeling that the location in the image is wrong too, but am not sure. The image also appears to have an invalid copyright tag. Modest Genius talk 20:53, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct, File:HR 8938 Cephei (star).jpg is wrong and copyrighted. HD 22701 (HR 1107) is circled. -- Kheider (talk) 09:12, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Commons' problems with some astronomical image

There is an ongoing effort by some admins on commons to delete all MESSENGER and New Horizons images. (See here and here). I think this is not justified because they use very specious interpretation of their image use policies. I think the astronomical community needs to know and participate in all those discussions. Ruslik_Zero 09:00, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I almost think that needs to be managed at a higher level by determining whether the wording constitutes a copyright assertion. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't read it that way. The argumentative nom. is, as you say, taking a narrow interpretation. But that person also does not appear to be a lawyer so I find his arguments dubious at best. Regards, RJH (talk) 00:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm very unimpressed by this. Commons is not wikipedia but surely it should still work by consensus. There was clearly no consensus for deletion of that image. It is rather inconvenient that files in use in wikipedia can be deleted by commons in this way. Polyamorph (talk) 13:47, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. A very questionable result. I wonder though whether it would be possible to seek clarification from the NASA source on the matter? Regards, RJH (talk) 03:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So every single !vote was to keep, but the closure decision was delete? That's very odd, and a clear case for deletion review (presuming such a thing exists on Commons). It would indeed be nice if Commons images could be transferred back to Wikipedia for discussion in such cases, though there seems little chance of that actually happening. Modest Genius talk 15:14, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Commons wikiproject?

It seems to me that we need an astronomy wikiproject on Commons. I note that both WPAviation and WPCanada established branched at Commons, so we could as well, considering the note above on Commons deletions. ( Commons:Commons:WikiProject Aviation, Commons:Commons:WikiProject Canada )

70.24.247.54 (talk) 04:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Probably wouldn't be a bad idea, if there was enough participation. We've had enough problems with astronomy image licensing in the past that a centralized discussion point may be helpful. I'm not sure how many of this project's members are regulars on the Commons though. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:51, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question about Epsilon Geminorum and SIMBAD

I sometimes run across data entries at the SIMBAD site that seem like obvious errors. One I found today is for the star HIP 32246 (Epsilon Geminorum) in the VizieR database entry for Tetzlaff et al (2011). VizieR lists a spectral type of A3mA6-A9, whereas SIMBAD lists it as G8Ib. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but those seem to be completely different. I was wondering how much reliance I should place in the other VizieR information for this star? It's not listed in the paper so I can't do a cross-check. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is always a peril with using SIMBAD for spectral types or colours, because the data is so inhomogeneous and mistakes do occur in large catalogues. I think this is an error in the Hipparcos catalogue, which Tetzlaff presumably used as their source. All the older spectral types I can find agree that this is a G8 Ib. But the Hipparcos catalogue gives it as A3mA6-A9, with the unhelpful reference 'updated after publication of the HIC', and there's a known error in the photometry for this star. The HIC (Hipparcos Input Catalogue) itself gives it as A3m, referencing volume 4 of the Michigan catalogue. Except the Michigan catalogue hasn't got that far north yet, and volume four was for stars between -26 < dec < -12, whilst eps Gem is at +25. The CCDM, which formed part of the Hipparcos input, lists the primary as a G5 (and the secondary as K). Something's obviously wrong here somewhere; a mistake in the cross-matching perhaps? 1973ARA&A..11...29M list eps Gem as G8 Ib, and I reckon Morgan & Keenan knew what they were doing. I'd go with that. Modest Genius talk 21:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thank you. Hopefully they didn't compute the mass from that spectral type. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I hadn't looked at that. The paper actually says 'effective temperature', but they presumably got that from the SpT. 19 Solar masses seems *very* high if they did; A dwarfs have masses between 1.4 and 2.1 solar masses (at least according to our A-type main-sequence star article). On the other hand, it's perfectly consistent with a yellow supergiant, which would line up with the G8 Ib classification. Modest Genius talk 23:15, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that makes sense. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have submitted an annotation to SIMBAD about this. Modest Genius talk 15:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rapid reply from the SIMBAD people; it's a potential mixup between two similar HD numbers. Modest Genius talk 19:07, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also be aware, sometimes SIMBAD has entries for the star system and the stars.
  • ie. System X is composed of Star A and Star B.
  • So Simbad may list it as the following:
    • System X = spectra A2.
    • Star A = spectra A5.
    • Star B = spectra G2.
    • What happens is that System X's spectra is the combined spectra if the Star A + Star B. So some of the entries may seem incorrect but they are blended and some even includes background star's spectra. And then there are some that are an error.

Thanks, Marasama (talk) 18:50, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I've run into that. Sometimes I've been fortunate and found a paper where they untangle the two spectra. To determine the multiplicity I've been using Eggleton & Tokovinin (2008) (where no other more specific source exists). They list Epsilon Geminorum as a single star, although the BSC lists an optical companion. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Exoplanets

I found this at the WP:Council... Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Exoplanets -- someone has proposed a new wikiprojects on Created an Article on Each Exoplanet... 65.92.182.149 (talk) 08:52, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I created a new proposal on the same subject matter, because I feel that the other proposal is taking the wrong approach. My proposal for a sub-WikiProject for either Astronomy or this project can be found at [[3]], and the goal of this one is to enhance coverage on, and to keep up-to-date, information regarding exoplanets on Wikipedia, rather than just to make an article for all planets (which may not even be notable, there are 7,026 planets out there already). I think that the members of this WikiProject may be interested in joining. Wer900 (talk) 01:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OTS 44

I've got something of a puzzle regarding the brown dwarf OTS 44. This was covered by Luhman et al (2005a) and Luhman et al (2005b), where it was described as a solitary brown dwarf with a disk. SIMBAD associates this with 2MASS J11100934-7632178 and has a link to Stelzer & Micela (2007), who describe it as a wide binary brown dwarf system. I think the Stelzer & Micela article could be used to usefully expand OTS 44, but now I'm not sure if it is the same system. Neither of the Luhman et al papers list the 2MASS number. Might I ask if somebody could suggest which way to go with this? Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oasa et al 1999 give B1950 coordinates of 11:8:38.2 -76:15:55, which works out to be 8 arcsec away from the 2MASS source. The uncertainties in both sets of positions are probably 2-3 arcsec. Luhman et al 2007 identify the two sources as being the same object. I really don't know what to conclude from all this. Modest Genius talk 15:35, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for checking. Maybe it's just a mix-up somewhere. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:50, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Epsilon Sagittarii

I've been working to expand this article, but it's starting to looking a little odd and it seems like there's a study I'm missing somewhere. It's categorized as a giant star, yet it has a huge rotation velocity of 236+ km/s and the little HR diagram on the Wolfram site spots it in the main sequence. Both Wolfram and David Darling list it as a shell star, but none of the journal articles seem to do so. (The secondary was apparently responsible for the earlier spectral peculiarities.) The Eggleton+ 2008 entry for HR 6879 appears to list the secondary as the source of the X-rays, but I think Hubrig et al (2001) seemed to suggest it was not. There's also a circumstellar disk that seems to be orbiting outside the secondary, which I wonder if the emission from that ties in with the shell star identification in some way? Anyway, an interesting object. I was just wondering if anybody had some interesting insights they could share? Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Stub redirection redux

As an experiment I ran through the sparsely populated list of minor planets on List of minor planets/100001–100100. First I added 'div' pairs to each of the linked minor planet names. Then I went to each of the linked minor planet pages and looked to see if it met the automated script criteria for a redirect. I added redirects to just those articles. In all it took about 15 minutes.

There are more than 1,300 list articles in total. At 15 minutes a pop, we're talking 325 hours. Say an editor provides 1.5 hours of contributed time per day, that's 217 days (or 7 months) of useless, mind-numbing scutwork. I don't find that prospect particularly appealing and I'm not sure many others would either. :-) Hence, I don't think we can expect this to happen. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

File:ISS009-E-7622- Zambezi river near Mongu.jpg

This image is almost certainly PD-NASA but I was unable to find source. Any help is welcomed. Bulwersator (talk) 22:09, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The original is located here. The image on wikipedia has since had a new version uploaded which appears photoshopped. ChiZeroOne (talk) 22:54, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! BTW, it may be a good idea to extend article alerts to files tagged with Template:PD-NASA Bulwersator (talk) 06:25, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And next image in this situation File:James H Trainor NASA Badge 1.jpg Bulwersator (talk) 06:36, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Eubot etc

I noticed that not all of the stupid Eubot redirects have been deleted/fixed yet... (I just fixed A centauri right now... it did not point to A Centauri... as Eubot things A=Alpha for some weird reason)

From RFD, there's a notice of another bot doing weird character substitution redirects... RjwilmsiBot (talk · contribs) ... so we might be getting more of these wrong redirects... 70.24.251.71 (talk) 06:00, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I do occasionally see a bot do something a bit odd. As the quip goes, a computer can now do in mere minutes what once took a team of four hundred people a full decade to totally screw up. Have you raised the issue on the Eubot discussion page? Regards, RJH (talk) 22:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Eubot has not edited since 2008. Modest Genius talk 11:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

File:Epsilon Tauri b and Hyades.png

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2012_February_28#File:Epsilon_Tauri_b_and_Hyades.png about the possible deletion of this image. Thincat (talk) 09:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Transferring it to commons would also work... but the heart of the issue is whither Original Research in illustrations... 70.24.251.71 (talk) 05:10, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Related discussions are currently occurring at WT:OR and Commons:COM:VP . 70.24.251.71 (talk) 06:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Extrasolar Planets

A different proposal has propped up to create a WikiProject for extrasolar planets. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Extrasolar planets (this is not the same as the one from last month) 70.24.251.71 (talk) 06:11, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe WP:ASTRO should be a task force under WP:AST? Regards, RJH (talk) 19:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The structure of subprojects and task forces is all a bit confusing, though the demise of WikiProject Space made things a bit clearer. Is the constellations task force still active? It does seem to me that Exoplanets belongs somewhere within WP:AST, but quite how things should be organised I don't know. Modest Genius talk 11:25, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm not quite sure what the benefit is of turning a project into a task force. To me it just seems to (perhaps) discourage participation. I haven't noticed much work on the constellations articles of late and the Taskforce discussion is stale. The last posting was back in 2010. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:53, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Constellations task force was set up after the Constellations Project itself died of inactivity and was merged to WP:Astronomical objects... (I think there was a gap of two years between the merger and the setting up of a new taskforce)... so constellations was never all that active. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 05:23, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Illustration of the Tau Geminorum brown dwarf companion

The illustration on the Tau Geminorum article (File:Tau Geminorum and brown dwarf.png) seems at least a little questionable to me. If the brown dwarf is not radiating any significant light, at a distance of roughly 1–2 AU I'd expect it to at least be reflecting a lot of light from the giant primary; hence showing a crescent. Am I way off base there? I mean it shouldn't be much different than Jupiter/Saturn in terms of albedo, unless the atmosphere is choked with soot. :-) (I've studied some illustrative art, so I'm a little conscious of light, shadows and reflection from objects, &c.) Regards, RJH (talk) 03:10, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The Bond albedos for brown dwarfs are between about 0.3 and 0.6. They're not made of charcoal. Even if the albedo was as low as that image suggests, the day side would still be significantly brighter than the night side. But this is all a bit WP:SYN. Modest Genius talk 11:20, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
True it is WP:SYN, but I'm not sure that having an inaccurate representation in an article is good either. :-) Shrug. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:46, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This seems related to some things I asked about at Commons:COM:VP and WT:OR, on WP:SYN/WP:OR/WP:OI/WP:PERTINENCE . 70.24.251.71 (talk) 06:10, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think we could do with an inline tag (or multiple tags) to flag image captions in Wikipedia where the artistic interpretation falls into one of those categories. None of the current inline tags seems quite suitable for that purpose. (But then again, I'm guilty of that myself {File:View epsilon eridani c.png} so maybe I shouldn't complain too loudly. :) Regards, RJH (talk) 17:28, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the description for your image is much more descriptive that the file I had issues with recently, and more fitting of known planets. Creating a template sounds like a good idea, and another one for file pages as well. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 22:12, 11 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 02:52, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Stellar Spectral Oddities

I think I found the answer to the odd spectra (ie. kA5 hA8 mF4). On page HD 15082, the star's spectra is kA5 hA8 mF4, with...

  • kA5 = calcium II K line resembles that of an A5 star
  • hA8 = The hydrogen lines and effective temperature of the star are similar to spectral type A8
  • mF4 = metallic lines are more similar to an F4 star

However, I do not know if this is the case, just saw the pattern. If this is correct, Stellar classification definately needs an update if verified correctly. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 16:50, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Marasama. Yes I'd kind of picked up some of that. The problem is in finding an available source to cite the explanation. None of the journal articles I checked were very clear on the notational interpretation. It almost seems to be a type of tribal knowledge. I did pick up a copy of Stellar Spectral Classification per an earlier suggestion, but it's a lengthy read and I'm still trying to wade my way through it as time permits. Hopefully that'll have more information (plus it's kind of interesting stuff). Regards, RJH (talk) 17:25, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What does that even mean? What makes the Ca K line of an A5 star particularly different, for example? Anything with H lines and effective temperature similar to an A8 star will be by definition be an A8 star. Odd. Modest Genius talk 22:42, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the reference actually states "Grenier et al. (1999) classify HD 15082 as an A5mA8F4 star, i.e. A5 from the Ca ii K line, A8 from the H lines, and F4 from the metal lines. This would suggest that HD15082 is a classical Am star with overabundances of iron-group metals and underabundances of Ca and Sc (Wolff 1983)." Note the important difference in the notation, and the relevance of Am star. Modest Genius talk 15:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've run across a number of similar classifications in papers like Gray et al (2001_). Regards, RJH (talk) 16:24, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can find out, the kA5 hA8 mF4 notation is specifically intended for Am stars, or at least that's what it says on p. 178 of Stellar Spectral Classification by Gray and Corbally. The book doesn't give an original source, but after a some checking around I suspect it may have originated from p. 306 of Gray & Garrison (1989). Some other sources use a slightly different notation: (A5/A8/F4). Regards, RJH (talk) 02:51, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

SIMBAD

The SIMBAD entry for Pi Herculis may have an oddity. It lists the star as type K3Iab:, whereas nearly every other source lists it as K3II. The nearest match I could find is Eggleton & Tokovinin (2008) who give it as K3IIab. I also wonder what the "C ~" notation in SIMBAD is supposed to mean? Shrug. Regards, RJH (talk) 04:06, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay I found the origin: Franchini et al (2004). Hmm, I'm almost not sure what to use as a definitive source any more. RJH (talk) 04:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
C is a quality flag (on a scale of A being good to E being bad). The ~ is a blank 'peculiarities' field. SIMBAD's MK measurements for this star agree that it's a K3II, mostly listing it as variable as well. No idea why they're using the Iab: from Franchini. Modest Genius talk 10:40, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the SpT listed by Franchini et al is taken from SIMBAD, not derived by them (that paper is on Lick indices). So that's not the original source of that classification. Might be worth querying. Modest Genius talk 10:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. It's unfortunate that SIMBAD doesn't reference some of the data they present in the object header. Perhaps it is internally generated by the University? Regards, RJH (talk) 17:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I alerted SIMBAD about this, and they have now updated to K3II, with a reference. Modest Genius talk 13:15, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice. Thank you. I did find an older source for the IIab, which I made mention of in the article. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:16, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Category:NGC objects

Category:NGC objects has been nominated to be renamed. 70.24.251.224 (talk) 04:22, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Object categorization

with the cleanup of the unclassified categories, I've noticed that we might need to create WP:Topic category and WP:Set category pairs... it would ease separation between categories containing objects, and articles about the science surrounding the topic. Like Category:Galaxies with a subcategory Category:Galaxy (or Category:Galaxy astronomy (this cannot be called "galactic astronomy" since that is the study of the Milky Way Galaxy))... or Category:Nebulae and Category:Nebular astronomy (or Category:Nebula or Category:Nebula astronomy)

Since we are missing categories for more obscure subtypes of general types, I'm going to need to move some of the unclassified into the main categories, so an astronomy field category for each type of object would be useful. 70.24.248.7 (talk) 06:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IC 1059

IC 1059 doesn't seem all that well studied. SIMBAD lists only three articles, though NED shows a few references.

This page is very stubby, what should we do with the article? I found it during the ongoing classification drive of the unclassified cats. 70.24.248.7 (talk) 07:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it doesn't satisfy WP:NASTRO, then we could try the WP:PROD approach. That usually works if we provide a sufficiently compelling argument. If it fails, then it would need to take it to WP:AfD. For now I tagged it for notability concerns. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IC 1517

IC 1517 is a similar ultrastub article. However, our data doesn't match NED or SIMBAD. But it is apparently little studied... 70.24.248.7 (talk) 07:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Big fucking mess after a bunch of page moves and CFDs

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 [4] s/he aren't listening to reason. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:27, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know what you mean, but none of the nomination is based on a page move by me. If you disagree with a page move, than just revert it. I don't care! Really. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 18:38, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was unable to do so for reasons that are unclear. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:00, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was at first going to say that the strong language is uncalled for, and then I looked at the CFD page. Much of the requests are really silly and the user doesn't appear to have a firm grasp of English. If only by shotgunning requests, a few seem reasonable, while the rest are just frivolous.AstroCog (talk) 02:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Common envelope binaries

Category:Common envelope binaries has been proposed to be renamed to Category:Common envelopes. 70.24.248.7 (talk) 04:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup listing

I was wondering if anyone wanted to ask Svick to create cleanup sub-listings for us (astronomical objects) and constellations (and exoplanets, if that TF gets off the ground), to get shorter lists than the main one for WPAstronomy?

See User:Svick/WikiProject cleanup listing/Add (WPAstronomy's listing)

70.24.248.7 (talk) 06:05, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried https://toolserver.org/~svick/CleanupListing/ListingAdd.html ? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
According to Svick's page, only authorized users are allowed on that. 70.24.250.156 (talk) 05:51, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delaware Diamond?

I can't figure out what star Delaware Diamond is. See Talk:Delaware Diamond where a couple other users are also thinking about it. (this is part of the unclassified cleanup) 70.24.250.156 (talk) 05:50, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Super Nova 1054 Evidence From Europe

Coin #1831 from David Sear's "Byzantine Coins", probably minted in 1054 depicts two very large stars in the back ground.  It is probably a reference to SN 1054. I have located a nice picture of that coin.  I think it should be included in the discussion of this topic.
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