Talk:Star

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WP:URFA/2020

Hello star editors! I’m reviewing this article against the FA criteria as part of an effort to check all old featured articles (Wikipedia:URFA/2020). The core of the article is quite neat, but upon further inspection there are quite a few statements that need to be assessed using more recent sources, and there are too many examples of sentences or even paragraphs that are uncited.

1. The paragraph starting with “With the exceptions of supernovae” makes various claims about which types of stars have been observed using sources that are around 20 years old. I think this paragraph contradicts the paragraph starting with “in April, 2018”
2. the last three paragraphs of observational history are WP:proseline. These new discoveries should be written as normal prose, or deleted if they are and that important.
3. In designations, the International Star Registry is probably given undue weight with very old sources
4. in units of measurement, the sentence “however, one can combine”, should be rewritten omitting the word however and omitting the word one.
5. It seems like the classification in formation and evolution is based on the seminal paper by Swartzschield. Surely there has been some change in this since 1958
6. is there more known about whether QCD matter is present in the core of neutron stars?
7. is more known about post main sequence evolution of binary stars?
8. “While it is often believed that stars only exist within galaxies”, cited to a source more than 20 years old. Is it still believed, and by whom?
9. An updated source for whether most Milky Way stars are single from birth is probably needed, as observations must surely have improved since 2006.
10. Maybe an updated estimate of the oldest star is available, now sourced to a 2013 paper
11. the subsection on mass starts with example from in 1998 source. Surely, we’ve observed way more stars since. A more general first sentence would be an improvement.
12. Prose: the sentence “note that the effective temperature…” Is directly speaking to the reader, which we’re not meant to do.
13. As of 2006, the star with the highest known absolute magnitude… Update needed

If these issues cannot be addressed via the talk page, the article can be taken to the WP: featured article review process to find more editors to help. If the problems cannot be solved at FAR either, the article will probably be delisted. Time and help is always granted to editors who wish to improve the article. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:51, 2 February 2021 (UTC) (updated 08:30, 3 February 2021 (UTC))

I've done a couple of quick ones. Definitely more changes needed, but I'll have to look up some sources. Might help to number the issues so it is easier to track fixes or which is being discussed? The mass subsection is largely representative of current thinking, but the highest absolute magnitude definitely needs changing. Lithopsian (talk) 22:08, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

I've updated the highest (really lowest, because magnitudes are dumb!) known absolute magnitude and stars being single from birth (that claim was never widely accepted and was really speculation in the 2006 reference extrapolating from an observational fact that most current low mass stars are single, I think, and more recent research suggests the opposite). I think the subsection on mass is good as it is; nothing has changed with regards to Eta Carinae being one of the most massive stars (the article didn't say it is the most massive star), nor has its estimated mass changed much. Eta Carina remains the canonical example of a very massive star (since it's just about the closest and best-studied), and I think it's a good way to lead off that subsection. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 00:13, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Also cleaned up the proseline at the end of observation history. I incorporated one into the text better and deleted two. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 00:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Re classification: the section cites Kwok (2000), not Schwarzschild. The descriptions are modern and haven't really changed since 2000 (or 1958, I think). —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 00:36, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Great to see two experts here! That 1958 source was a mistake on my side indeed (in printing the article, the numbering got scrambled up a bit).

#1. I've updated that paragraph with newer references. The same basic idea is still valid, but a few tweaks. The most distant star observed is definitely an extreme outlier. "Barely detected" vs "primarily been observed", so not really a conflict. Lithopsian (talk) 16:24, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

#7. I've expanded the binary star section a little and added some references (it had none!). This is a busy field at the moment and far from consensus, but certainly important. The mention in the lead probably needs work, it looks tacked-on. Lithopsian (talk) 20:15, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Going fast :). Just a quick note. With books, page numbers are expected for verification purposes. (referring to the Beccari book just added to binary stars). Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:16, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Tricky. I sort of summarised half the book in one paragraph. Read closely and you'll see I was very vague with a lot of hand-waving. Maybe I can find specific references for individual parts of what I wrote. Lithopsian (talk) 20:27, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough... That's what I usually do with papers, and always annoys me when people ask for page numbers there. If the paragraph isn't controversial, this will do for me.

I don't quite understand a part of the next paragraph. So possibly stupid question from layperson.

Mass loss in massive single-star evolution may be insufficient to form the stars that we see . Is 'that we see' referring back to the three previous types of stars? Those are quite heavy stars, right? Why would Mass loss in massive single-star evolution be the alternative?? If that's what 'what we see' refers to, replace with 'these',? as WP:MOS doesn't like the word 'we'. Femke Nijsse (talk) 20:39, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I see the confusion. I was trying to say too much in too few sentences. I tried again. Lithopsian (talk) 21:14, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

#6. I think the consensus is coming to the idea that neutron stars do contain QCD matter. I added a reference since there wasn't one. I also removed a throwaway sentence about black holes from the same paragraph. It didn't seem very informative, possibly not necessary, and was uncited. Lithopsian (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

#3. I shortened the hitjob on ISR a little and added a better ref to the IAU's own name list. I think the mention deserves to stay even though this is no longer the only company doing this. We get people pretty much every week trying to add the star names they bought. Lithopsian (talk) 14:49, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I gave it a further trim; I don't think we need to even mention any specific company that engages in this deception. (Of course, happy to be reverted if you think it's important; to me, mentioning a specific company in this context borders on advertising for them, even though the text appropriately slams the practice.) —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 17:20, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

#14 Update further reading? Newest book is from 2001. Femke Nijsse (talk) 15:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Why do we have further reading at all? It's impossible to sensibly choose a small number of specific suggested further reading, I think, since there are so many possibilities. I'd just cut the section. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 17:07, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

It's optional, per the MOS:FURTHER. Praemonitus (talk) 17:59, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

For sure. I meant why for this particular article. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 18:09, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the fact that it's a high level featured article means it gets accessed more frequently, and a set of good reads may be useful for the curious visitor. I have no issue with it being removed, although it may get added back in later. Praemonitus (talk) 18:15, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the existing further reading list is not especially useful, certainly not a set of must-reads for the topic. I have no objection if important and relevant books or such are listed, but I'm happy to drop the section until then. Lithopsian (talk) 16:14, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

#15 I've added citation needed tags in the article. If that's done, I'll mark this article as satisfactory :). Thanks again for all your work. FemkeMilene (talk) 18:59, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Possible suggestion for further reading and/or citations for basic astronomical facts: the OpenStax Astronomy textbook is a free online textbook at the level of an introductory general astronomy course for non-science majors. It meets the criteria for being a reliable source and has the advantage of being freely accessible unlike most academic textbooks. Aldebarium (talk) 19:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Re this in the Algol paradox sentence: "and stripped stars such as helium giants and possibly some Wolf-Rayet stars where the outer layers of a star have been completely removed by a companion". That's not familiar to me. I found one ref (Kleiser et al 2018 MNRAS) that mentions them, but there are only 16 papers in the entire academic literature with the term "helium giant" in the abstract (and it's not in the index of the textbook I have in front of me or that common in a web search either). Seems too obscure to get a mention here? —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 21:30, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I've added refs for the remaining citation needed tags except this one about helium giants. I mostly used the academic textbook I have in front of me, but they could be swapped for a different text; most of these uncited points are standard, uncontroversial things that most texts would mention. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 21:45, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Marked satisfactory. There is an cite book error with the non-existing co-author parameter. Seems like a good idea to remove helium giants. FemkeMilene (talk) 21:56, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia review

• There are three different date styles in the citations: dmy, mdy, and ISO dates. RJHall established ISO dates in the featured version; the mdy and dmy that have been subsequently introduced need to either be converted to ISO dates, or the script can be run on the entire article to switch to either dmy or mdy with consensus. User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates. I am not aware of how to use the script to convert all to ISO, so will leave this for others to sort.
• The "See also” section looks like it could benefit from pruning; as FAs are supposed to be comprehensive, are all of those necessary, or do some of them need to be worked in to the article or removed?
• MOS:DTAB, tables need captions.
• Layout issues: tables, images, and equations are causing MOS:SANDWICH issues.
• MOS:BOLD issues, eg, the image caption in the "Structure" section.
• MOS:CAPTIONS, no punctuation on sentence fragments, needs attention.
• However and also prose review needed. Also' is almost always redundant. See overuse of however and User:John/however. User:Tony1/How to improve your writing has good information on these plagues of Wikipedia.
• You can install User:Evad37/duplinks-alt to review WP:OVERLINKing. Some duplicate links can be justified in highly technical articles, but I found a duplicate link within the same section, suggesting a review is needed.

Unwatching, please ping me when ready for me to take another look with an eye towards marking Satisfactory at WP:URFA/2020. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:05, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I have switched citation access-date and publication dates to ISO format. These may be a year or an exact date; date/month dates are not allowed to be in YYYY-MM format and remain in MMM YYYY format. I only found one date in the body and left it alone. Table and image captions should be OK now, including bold issues. I and others have addressed the sandwiching issues and it looks OK now. Lithopsian (talk) 16:54, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

One of the extraneous see alsos is to Fusor (astronomy). Should that article even exist? Apparently one person proposed it in 2003, but I see no evidence that it's ever been adopted by anyone. Might be an AfD candidate. If anything, we could add a sentence to the introduction of brown dwarfs saying "A researcher has proposed the term 'fusor' to describe an astronomical object which is capable of fusing hydrogen" (which is the entire substantive content of that article) and redirect it here, removing the see also entry. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 18:50, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I looked at that with a view to incorporating a link in the article, but the topic is so non-notable that I didn't bother. It is essentially a one-man idea that never went anywhere. I agree the article is probably superfluous. Just to be clear though, Fusor refers to an object capable of fusing anything and so includes brown dwarfs. Lithopsian (talk) 19:01, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

If someone could do a review here for uncited text, that would advance towards a “Satisfactory” mark at WP:URFA/2020. Some of the text now missing citation may be cited in preceding sources, and I didn’t want to mar the article with tags. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:59, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

FA mission creep

At the risk of muddling the ongoing work to confirm FA status, there is something that has been niggling at me about this article for a while. The lead is rather long, perhaps appropriate for a lengthy article, but the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs say essentially the same thing. Certainly they cover the same ground. I can see merging them to say what they need to just once, perhaps still as two paragraphs. The slightly tacked-on bit about binaries might also be merged, possibly with a mention of multiple systems going earlier in the lead and a piece about the influence on evolution (mass transfer, mergers, supernovae, etc.) going with the description of the life of stars. Lithopsian (talk) 16:48, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I think you are absolutely correct about the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs. Especially the detail about energy transport mechanisms and degenerate cores really isn't needed in the lede. I took a stab at merging those. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 20:21, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I like it better now. I tweaked it a bit more but basically it seems sound. Lithopsian (talk) 16:01, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Getting deep into nitpick land, the statement that stars return material to the interstellar medium by stellar mass loss is absolutely correct, but the linked article says mass loss is observed in some massive stars. In fact all stars undergo mass loss (solar mass stars contribute most of the carbon), so something's not right. I think it's the stellar mass loss article, not the wikilink or text here. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 16:45, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Stellar mass loss is a really poor article. All stars lose mass, some faster than others. Very massive stars extremely quickly, but also red giants, and especially post-AGB stars (eg. to planetary nebulae). Very massive stars tend to lose hydrogen, perhaps helium, and are very rare. The much larger numbers of post-AGB stars and the loss of heavier elements mean they are the dominant source of many elements. Followed by supernovae. Neutron star mergers may be the dominant source of very heavy elements, still being debated exactly how much. Massive stars barely rank in that respect until they explode. Lithopsian (talk) 17:04, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Just looking in the body of the article, there is very little on mass loss, just a brief mention from massive stars and quickly-rotating stars, certainly not good support of what is written in the lead. Lithopsian (talk) 17:08, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. I just added a few sentences to the AGB section. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 20:11, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Most stars do not shine and they are called exoplanets/planets

Most stars do not shine, they consist of non-luminous gas, rocks and minerals. In fact, old stars are planets. All stars lose their mass at different rates as they evolve. This has been known by thousands of scientists and researchers for about a decade now. https://vixra.org/pdf/1711.0206v5.pdf and here https://vixra.org/abs/1303.0157Airpeka (talk) 14:14, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I would not consider anything posted on vixra.org to be a reliable source. That view is not supported by reliable sources. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 16:07, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

All stars shine. Like you said when they don't we call them (exo)planets, stellar remnants or something else. I don't see what the problem is. Kardoen (talk) 17:16, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 March 2021

There is a typo in the "Nuclear fusion reaction pathways" section, the word "because" in "but becuase enormous numbers" is misspelled. DustyDonkey (talk) 18:27, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

All set. Thanks for the heads up. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

"Kwerralye" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Kwerralye. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 26#Kwerralye until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Certes (talk) 17:04, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 January 2023

Change the title from Star to Star (astronomical object) Rest in peace Technoblade you were a legend (talk) 07:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: page move requests should be made at Wikipedia:Requested moves. Lemonaka (talk) 08:34, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Please read WP:PRIMARYTOPIC first. Praemonitus (talk) 20:39, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

add a picture of the night sky

taken with a camera to represent how the naked eye sees it. Rguyr (talk) 20:32, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a 'Night sky' article with such pictures if that is what you want to see. Praemonitus (talk) 04:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

how do you remove a topic? Rguyr (talk) 16:17, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

If you mean this one, I don't think you should. Others might have opinions on the subject that they want to express. Praemonitus (talk) 17:44, 19 February 2024 (UTC)