Talk:Constellation family

The Bayer Family should be renamed the Plancius Family

The current text identifies the eleven southern constellations introduced in the late 16th century as the Bayer Family. This is incorrect and based on outdated information. Johann Bayer was not their inventor, nor did he claim this and nor was he the first to depict them.

They were first introduced on a 35-cm celestial globe published by Petrus Plancius and Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam in 1597 (or early 1598).

I propose to change Bayer Family into Plancius Family in this page and on all other linked pages. AstroLynx (talk) 11:01, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Örrk! That illuminates one deep trouble with this article (or possibly but not likely the Wikipedia policies): changing it to "Plancius Family" in order to make it factually correct would violate WP:OR (the original research prohibition), on the other hand keeping it as it is would be factually misleading, bordering to WP:HOAX. Contacting the one sole source to make them rename the group would create an information loop where Wikipedia verifies itself by creating external sources supporting it.

The article should be heavily remade to accomodate various groupings subdivision systems. I'm not sure the topic deserves an article: if there are no independent sources discussing the family subdivisions from an independent secondary perspective, the topic is too incoherent to be encyclopedic. Then the article should be deleted. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 07:37, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Link collection to perhaps use to make the article nearly encyclopedic:

• http://www.idlefolly.com/school/Science/06-07/orion.htm
• http://www.maa.mhn.de/Maps/Const/const_family.html
• http://www.al-azim.com/~smkayermolek/buruj.html
• http://edu-observatory.org/eo/constellations.html
• http://www.matessa.org/~mike/con-fam.html
• http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/stars/constellations.shtml
• http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/article_8361.shtml

Most of them are prob either copying SEDS subdivision, or this Wikipedia article, the original source being a book by a Menzel, "A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets". I estimate the article cannot be made encyclopedic: however we twist and turn the topic, there's only one arbitrary source without any analysis. The article will hopelessly remain WP:IINFO. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 08:37, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

If rewriting this article to make it factually more correct is not an option, then a possible solution would be to make explicit mention of the published source (Menzel's book) it is based on and also to point out that not Bayer but Plancius was the originator of the so-called "Bayer family" (the relevant sources are listed in the Talk page of Petrus Plancius). As soon as this talk page is archived, no-one will be be aware of the historical problem created by this article. AstroLynx (talk) 13:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely! Being a reserved inclusionist I think the article could survive, and then that that is the proper way to fix it. After Menzel is mentioned, we could give room for other groupings, if such exist. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 10:43, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Excellent! Unfortunately, I do not have easy access to Menzel's book, so perhaps it is best if you make the necessary corrections to the article if this is not too much trouble. AstroLynx (talk) 15:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion Objection

KEEP. Objection is raised to the proposed deletion. (1) It is interconnected with other articles related to constellations. (2) I do not think the deletion proposer is sufficiently knowledgeable about astronomy and may have made the deletion proposal from that lack of knowledge and bias. If those who are deeply involved and knowledgeable about astronomy as Wikipedia contributors chose to then I would consider it further. (3) "BlueEarth" created the article over 1 year ago, why now? (4) The sky has historically been divided since ancient times into asterisms, constellations, and groups of constellations - - sometimes with a separate identity for that collection. Teaching and mythological stories were taught in the past on constellations in groups or families, either by the lighted stars in the heavens or by the patches of darkness. It is only recently since the IAU in 1922 Eurocentrically redefined the constellations with Delporte specifying the boundaries with them in 1930. This has had benefits but also subdued other cultural depictions. I need not mention the Pluto fiasco. (5) It is true that Menzel mentions it, but so does Sir James Jeans note groupings before him. I will have to find my copy of Menzel. (6) Of particular note the Ancient Egyptians (several thousand years B.C.) had a particular area of sky with multiple constellations collectively known as the Duat (celestially speaking, not just the underworld) despite having those constellations separately named. This needs to be put in this article as well. (7) Other historic cultural groups need to be noted with their collective groupings as well, in addition to the Ancient Egyptians' stellar-based religion. (8) Just because it is less used now does not mean it is of value to researchers, current day users, and Wikipedia. Should we eliminate the knowledge of quadrant astronomy of the sky too? The astrolabe? I think not. Quadrant astronomy may still be important to a naval navigation course. (9) I readily admit this particular article could use more work, and also with references. I will work on it from time to time during the entire year of 2011. This will not be easy as this particular astronomical topic should be substantially more difficult as material on the subject of constellations as a whole is sparse and obscure. Thor Dockweiler (talk) 07:43, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no objection against keeping the article (I never suggested to delete it) but I would like it to be factually correct. Now it claims that Johann Bayer 'invented' the southernmost constellations which simply is not true — he copied them from a celestial globe made in 1597/98 by Petrus Plancius and Jodocus Hondius the Elder (see the discussion above). I have always believed that the mission of Wikipedia was to provide correct facts, not false and outdated information. AstroLynx (talk) 09:09, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

AstroLynx, you are not the one who proposed the deletion. TenPoundHammmer was the one who did so on 2011 January 22. I objected immediately when I discovered the proposal and made some modification ending the problem before the 7 day deadline was up. In apparent spite from my perspective, and most likely improper procedure, TenPoundHammer came back again and proposed it for deletion a second time 2011 January 27 in a more formal manner noting a synthesis problem. Basically, references. I am going to object again. He is clearly unfamiliar with the subject of astronomy or science and after a slight cursory review, he is in my opinion a vitriolic deletionist at the present time that has gone beyond the bounds of reasonableness. While he correctly nominates some articles for deletion he is clearly causing the destruction of many that are perfectly valid. If I had my choice I would remove him from Wikipedia. He does more damage than help. How many editors have we lost to people like him. I would rather lose 1 than a thousand any day. Respectfully, Thor Dockweiler - astronomer. Thor Dockweiler (talk) 06:09, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

AstroLynx, I further wish to note that you are quite correct re Plancius/Hondius. Yes, accurate information is what Wikipedia wants, but verifiability is more important to them in the rules than truth. Again, a question of citing proper sources, and worth noting within a Wikipedia article in situations such as in this case. I have noticed over the years that Bayer is credited in many sources. For example, "Bayer's constellations" is even cited in a respected authoritative tome by Academic Press entitled "Dictionary of Science and Technology" [1992, p. 232]. If memory serves me correct even the Encyclopedia Brittanica had problems with this, at least the New Encyclopedia Brittanica. By the way, let me congratulate you on your input in Wikipedia. I actually appreciate what you have done. People like you are what Wikipedia is supposed to be about. Kindest regards. Thor Dockweiler (talk) 06:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

AstroLynx, Mentioned Plancius in the Bayer section so that at least the reader becomes aware. Thor Dockweiler (talk) 05:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is true that even in recent publications Bayer often gets the credit for inventing the southernmost constellations, but even respected sources can be in error. There are several verifiable sources which do give the correct information. The most important ones (articles by Elly Dekker) are cited on the talk page of Petrus Plancius and one can add some more such as:

J.W.J.A. Stein, "The Celestial Globe of Jodocus Hondius of 1600", Specola Astronomica Vaticana: Miscellanea Astronomica, 3 (1950), 77--81.

Helen Sawyer Hogg, "Pieter Dircksz Keijser, Delineator of the Southern Constellations", The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 45 (1951), 215-220.

Deborah J. Warner, The Sky Explored: Celestial Cartography 1500-1800 (New York/Amsterdam: Adam R. Liss/Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1979) x, xii & 201-206.

Peter van der Krogt, Globi Neerlandici: The Production of Globes in the Low Countries (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1993) 152-168.

AstroLynx (talk) 14:04, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

A request

I'd just like to request that nobody make any edits for about the next half-hour or so. I'm doing a massive consolidation or sources, and it'd be best if I didn't have to deal with conflicting edits. After that everything with be okay. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Alright, sources are done. I would not add any more sources, Thor; the article has enough as is (thanks to your hard work), plenty to prevent deletion, and adding any more will just make it too cluttered. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 04:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Pi. Apparently we were both editing at the same time. Put back in 4 new refs. [Condos 1997, Young 1888, Schaaf 2007, and BOP/BOA 1890] done before you submitted your input. You saved me the effort of doing the clean-up (Menzel). Thor Dockweiler (talk) 05:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Sorry about the accidental deletion; glad you were able to add them back in. I'll do a bit more cleanup in a few hours, and then this will be one shiny article. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 13:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Menzel

The article intro needs to state explicitly that the source of this way of subdividing the constellations is based on Menzel's book. Any objections? -- Elphion (talk) 17:13, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I have no objection to this. It would also be helpful to point out that Menzel's scheme of grouping the constellations is not always historically correct - see the earlier discussions on this page in which it is pointed out (with verifiable references) that the Bayer family of constellations was actually first introduced by Petrus Plancius in late 1597 (or early 1598). AstroLynx (talk) 10:42, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I rewrote the article practically from top to bottom. This article was introduced primarily to talk about Menzel's groups, and I've restructured it that way. Other traditions can certainly be added, but just throwing references in to other traditions is not helpful (or honest, really). The references were mostly cruft; I've deleted several and moved most of the rest to the new "Other sources" section were others can mine them to add more detail about other traditions. There is no point in referencing every detail in Menzel; that information is included in the linked articles. -- Elphion (talk) 20:17, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Are there any secondary and tertiary sources for this? The entire article appears to be based on one book where someone invented the idea of constellation families, plus a little original research. Lithopsian (talk) 20:15, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

The scheme was invented by Menzel, who was Director of the Harvard Observatory, and was promoted in his popular book. I find his families pointless, but many don't. The Menzel family of a constellation shows up in several WP articles (many of which link here), as well as in several Commons images. I don't see any OR in the article (it all comes from Menzel's book, which is certainly a RS), though Menzel himself obviously wasn't terribly concerned about historical niceties. -- Elphion (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Added: I don't think either of the external links adds much. One (archived at the Wayback machine) has little more than we state here, and the other is a subscription site. -- Elphion (talk) 20:49, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

I saw this notion earlier of the families being referenced all over Wikipedia as some sort of reason why the article shouldn't be deleted, but if the only sources are one book and a Wikipedia article then it isn't notable no matter how many articles decided to link to it. If other people find it useful the presumably it will be mentioned somewhere, but I'm not coming up with much except stuff clearly sourced out of Wikipedia. Lithopsian (talk) 21:18, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Does anybody use this Menzel categorization? I have never seen it referred to by any modern writers. I would vote to delete. Skeptic2 (talk) 08:17, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

I would support such a vote (to delete it) but perhaps it could be briefly mentioned in the constellation page as one of many ways to group constellations. Its historical inaccuracies should, of course, be mentioned. AstroLynx (talk) 08:55, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

I generally agree with the comments above: I find Menzel's families pointless, and even misleading, since they group constellations that have no relationship with each other, and break the historical relationship between others. I see two main points to consider in a discussion of removing them:

(1) While the families are Menzel's own idiosyncratic system, they had wide exposure through his Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, which was (and still is) a best-seller. I don't know how much they get used today, since the current version of the Guide (taken over by Menzel's student Jay Pasachoff) no longer includes them, but I do see occasional references on the Web.

(2) I think the bigger issue, pace Lithopsian's comment above, is that they are pretty deeply embedded in Wikipedia, largely through the work of @Cmglee:, who ought to be part of this conversation. This is not an argument for retaining them; I simply observe that excising them cleanly will require a lot of work. Anyone removing this article should commit to doing that work.

Cmglee has contributed many images to Commons; see [1] and [2]. Many of these have migrated throughout various language versions of WP. See particularly the images

• File:Hipparcos_Catalogue_equirectangular_plot.svg
• File:Messier_objects_equirectangular_plot.svg
• File:Constellations_ecliptic_equirectangular_plot.svg

There are in addition many links or references, not all of them obvious, such as

• The "family" parameter of template:Infobox Constellation
• Template:Constellations ecliptic equirectangular plot.svg

Some of these images have earlier versions that don't include the families, and those (as independent images) could serve as replacements.

I think the goal should be to remove all references to Menzel's families, so that users are not left dangling when they find a reference (a text reference, a link, a parameter in an image). I think it is reasonable (at least for now) to retain an article about them (like this one, but specifically about Menzel's families), simply because they were once widely known and do occasionally still appear. I would be in favor of mentioning the families at Constellation, but not in going into any detail about them there. Any list of the families and their members would better on their own page, not cluttering up the Constellation page.

-- Elphion (talk) 16:45, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Added: It would also be reasonable to add a section on the Guide and its constellation families to our article on Menzel. -- Elphion (talk) 16:55, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

The fact that they were dropped from Menzel's Field Guide decades ago strikes me as sufficient argument to drop them here. As you say, they are pointless and even misleading and are best forgotten about. Skeptic2 (talk) 19:13, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

I've cut down the number of incoming links dramatically, by editing Template:Infobox constellation. The family field had previously been removed after a short discussion, but was replaced last year and nobody noticed. There are only a handful of remaining articles and a bunch of redirects. Lithopsian (talk) 20:29, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

It is worth noting, for anyone who hasn't noticed, that there was a previous AfD discussion. It became quite heated. Lithopsian (talk) 20:34, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

The earlier AfD discussion is here. AstroLynx (talk) 10:01, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi, cmglee here. I'm no astronomer and have no strong feelings about Menzel's families. However, having a way to categorise the constellations (other than zodiacal and non-zodiacal) is useful for a layperson reader who is otherwise faced with a flat structure of tens of constellations. If a "better" way to classify them can be agreed upon, I can update the images. Otherwise, I see nothing wrong with having a footnote that Menzel's families are retained for historical reasons, i.e. they were previously used in a popular field guide – whether we like it or not, they are part of amateur astronomy history. cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 23:07, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

cmglee says (above) "they are part of amateur astronomy history". No they're not, at least not in the UK– I have never known anyone use them. It was Menzel's attempt at a classification that never caught on. If you wish to classify constellations then the best way to do it is by their inventors, i.e. Ptolemy's original 48, the 12 of Keyser, de Houtman and Plancius, those of Hevelius Lacaille, and so on. Skeptic2 (talk) 11:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, let's not get carried away. "Part of history" is probably the best description for them. They are obscure to the point of being unheard-of, and now entirely obsolete, but they did happen. I'm not even opposed to having an article about them, with appropriate caveats for balance, but flagging every constellation article, and more, with references to them is undue prominence. Whether or not it would be useful to have a categorisation of constellations, this particular categorisation is not in use by anyone and shouldn't be promoted as such by Wikipedia. Lithopsian (talk) 16:43, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Following my suggestion above, I've added a much abbreviated account to Donald Howard Menzel. This could be moved to a stand-alone article, though it is by design quite short. I think it works well in that article, because that's probably what he's best known for (at least by American amateurs). -- Elphion (talk) 18:25, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Accepted. How would you propose splitting up Ptolemy's 48? 48 out of 88 is more than half. As for the others, is the list on http://books.google.com/books?id=UDR7lFV15T4C&pg=PA240 correct? Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 00:05, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I understand your desire to differentiate Ptolemy's 48 so that it's not such a large block, but there really is no generally accepted scheme, except maybe singling out the traditional 12 Zodiac constellations (for which bolding already works anyway). The question should be: what are you trying to convey in the image? The current version is so packed with information that some of it is hard to see. In particular, it's hard to see the association of the constellations by date. The earlier version of the image that uses the background color to identify the dates is far more effective in that regard. I think the date of origin is far more important than the Menzel family -- or any other artificial subcategories we're likely to come up with. -- Elphion (talk) 01:15, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

In the Almagest star catalogue the constellations are traditionally divided into three groups: the constellations north of the ecliptic (21), the zodiacal constellations (12) and the constellations south of the ecliptic (15). AstroLynx (talk) 06:17, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I invented my own groups of constellations—take a look in Caelregio. PlanetStar 03:28, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Cute, but probably shouldn't be added to Template:Infobox constellation just yet ;) Lithopsian (talk) 10:59, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Updated families

Hi all, I've updated the image as on the right. Any thoughts, besides the background shading not appearing in the thumbnail (don't know why; it works in browser)? If agreeable, I can update my other two maps likewise. Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 19:02, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I'll stop monitoring this page. Please leave a note on my talk page to get my attention. Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 09:32, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

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• Constellations ecliptic equirectangular plot.svg

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