User talk:Dr. Submillimeter/Archive Nov 2006

RA and DEC templates

Thanks for catching that, I managed to not notice. The issue was the <noinclude> needed to immediately follow the template definition, whereas, I had it on a newline, which was inserting a newline after each template usage. WilliamKF 16:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Galaxy Groups

It appears you have some books that you have been referring to on the groups. Are there any on-line sources which are better than NED?

For the Abells and Hicksons, I'd suggest a single "Compact Galaxy Cluster" which can be used for both. I like adding the z and angular size for ones further away and agree that a more precise RA/DEC is appropriate for those. However, why not provide the number of members? For example, the Stephan's Quintet has a clear number of members. I'm not understanding why the template would not include number of members, it could always be left blank when not known. WilliamKF 19:07, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think a third template would be required. It would suffice to have the membership number be an optional field, which when not provided, causes the whole line to be omitted instead of showing a line with a blank value. WilliamKF 20:48, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Significant Digits

I notice that in several papers I have read, for example this one: Distances and metallicities for 17 Local Group galaxies the distance and error are not rounded as you suggested. For example, they show NGC 205 to be 824 ± 27 instead of what I understood you to suggest as 820 ± 30. It seems to me that the 824 ± 27 is okay, as it clearly gives the margin of error and is more accurate since the error is not overstated. I think that if there were no margin of error given, and it only have 824 that would be misleading and one would instead want to write 820 so show that the error includes the tens digit, whereas 824 implies the error is in the ones digit.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks. WilliamKF 22:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Subcategories

In reading WP:SUBCAT I wonder if Black Eye Galaxy should be in both Category:Spiral_galaxies and Category:Unbarred_spiral_galaxies. I'm thinking just one, unbarred spiral. WilliamKF 21:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Survey Q

Have you ever been to the southern hemisphere, click here to reply.AstroBoy 01:46, 11 November 2006 (UTC) Deadline for entries is December 15th Hey! I like astronomy too!

W cloud

Are you aware that the W cloud article is included in Category:W Cloud cluster? You might want to take a look at this, if there's ever been a category in need of deletion, it's this one. W cloud is the only article in the category as well so if it is deleted (which I hope will be the result), the category will be completely empty. --Nebular110 16:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

• I agree with you on the whole "galaxy clouds" thing. As for Field of the Nebulae, I've never heard the term used myself but perhaps it was a term in use well before the 1930's? It sounds rather like something you would read in a Messier or Herschel logbook. After all, M31 used to be referred to as the "Andromeda Nebula" before the whole idea of other galaxies was conceived by the likes of Slipher and Hubble. --Nebular110 18:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is a paper that refer to the W Cloud (I think I saw another one today too, but am not finding it now): WilliamKF 00:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• Structure, mass and distance of the Virgo cluster from a Tolman-Bondi model

Field of the Nebula

I would not mind a redirect with mention in the other article. 132.205.44.134 23:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Distance measurements

I generally look at the dates and figure that if the alternatives are several years older that the science has progressed enough to outright favor the newer one. I was preferring eclipsing binaries on the basis that it is a direct measurement and less susceptible to errors carried over from base assumptions that could have their own errors that get compounded. It certainly is a tricky subject, but I would be hesitant to combine distinct results, and instead perhaps list more than one with their basis TRGB, cephid, etc. But you are probably much more experienced in these areas since this is your full time focus, so I am happy to follow your lead. WilliamKF 00:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

UGC and PGC categories

I wonder why NED lists PGC numbers as being 6 digits? That was my basis for doing 6, so if you certain it is wrong, I will use 5. WilliamKF 19:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Halley and his comet

Thanks for your comments. I definitely see your point about Halley's comet being the historical use and Comet Halley being the technical use. I myself am not keen either way on the debate, but I do think we need to make it clear that we are setting something of a precedent by choosing between the two options. I respect your opinion absolutely and can see the argument for calling it "Halley's comet". However, I can also see the other side and I don't think that there was enough analysis done when the move was decided last time. I just want to make sure that everyone knows what the consensus is on this subject. Cheers, --ScienceApologist 22:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Galaxy list

Hello.

I did none of the data-gathering for the list (although I did write that long, dull warning), still it seems wrong to eliminate someone else's work that isn't hurting the page. Yes, it's long. Yes, it overlaps other articles. And, yes, the distance-estimates are shaky for the bottom half of the table. However, I can think of one simple reason to leave all the entries in.

As better values for the distances are produced, the order of the entries may well change. Let us say that #102 moves up to #88. With #102 on the list, whoever does the update need merely change the distance and cut-and-paste the item. Without it, the whole thing would have to be typed in all over again.

In any event, when I wrote that intro, I also created a reformatted version of the list itself. Having waited a month to see if there were any complaints about the warning, I was about to substitute the new table, so I'll be putting that in anyway. Hopefully, you'll think it's an improvement. (I do, but results may vary.) My layout is physically shorter, as I've fairly well managed to kep each item to one line. Anyway, I hope that you find it less "unwieldy."

B00P 08:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:American League All-Stars added

Before I had a chance to add the subcategories of Category:American League All-Stars to the CFD list, you've added your opinion. Since I'd like these to be discussed together, perhaps you could edit your comments to reflect both sets of categories. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 23:53, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Your sig

Hi George: just a reminder to substitute {{time}} if you want to use it when signing talk pages, as otherwise the time continually updates and the time you signed the page is unknown. —Mets501 (talk) 00:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Otherwise, you can just use "~~~~" (four tildas) to sign your messages as most of us do. It gives both your user-id and the time-stamp. Three gives just the user-id. Five gives just the time-stamp. JRSpriggs 05:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Magnitude sign

I was just following what I saw elsewhere. What do you see done in the literature, is it mostly with or without the sign? I'll go with whatever the scientific literature uses predominately. Please let me know. Thanks. WilliamKF 21:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll leave them out of both magnitude and redshift.

For the info boxes, I am manually adding the content from NED together with the automatic edits with AWB. Thus far my sophistication with AWB is limited to simple searches and replaces (not even using regular expressions yet.) Adding the new info from NED is still tedious.

I am finding an issue in one page and when possible adding it to my bag of tricks for AWB to do automatically, then running them on the galaxies based upon their categories.

If there is a pattern you want replaced, feel free to drop me a note and I will try to incorporate it. WilliamKF 21:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

NGC 6872 and IC 4970

The NGC 6872 and IC 4970 article might be worth splitting in two since I saw you do this to another. WilliamKF 00:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Some more: NGC 7752 and NGC 7753, NGC 5257 and NGC 5258, NGC 4656 and NGC 4657 and NGC 5090 and NGC 5091. WilliamKF 03:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

More: NGC 2207 and IC 2163 and NGC 7318. WilliamKF 23:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

M83 Group

I'm thinking that all the members of M83 Group not cited as being members should be moved to a different group (perhaps the one mistakenly given in the prior NED search?). Do you agree? WilliamKF 19:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and do your edits on this one. WilliamKF 16:36, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd say go ahead and do the rename (to your proposed new name) without messing with the formal process you allude to since this is not controversial and if someone objects we can always address that later. WilliamKF 19:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Rename Canes II Group

Seems NED doesn't know either group by those names. I guess M106 per our norm of Messier names taking precedence. WilliamKF 19:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

External links

Hi there, yes essentially I reverted as spam. The IP came up as a spam alert in the IRC channel #wikipedia-spam, as having added over 40 external links to articles (and these were their only edits ever). So I posted a spam warning telling them to stop or they'd be blocked for spamming. I came back an hour later and they'd just continued, ignored the warning and not tried to contact me. By that stage we were up to 60 links with no discussion at all (with myself nor on the talk pages), the IP was blocked for a day and all edits reverted. Hope this helps?  Glen  22:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I've put them all back  Glen  23:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Status of Spitzer and SINGS data

Hello George. I'm currently making some pics of galaxies from Spitzer data. I'm really fond of SINGS enhanced data which are really wonderful, the usual artefacts being cleaned. However i'm a bit unsure about their legal status. Those are public data but do i have the right to use them for any purpose? Especially to produce new pics to put on commons. I'm not talking about scientific work here, Rob Kennicutt made it clear that we could use them for that at the last IAU meeting, but just pics for the general public. For instance i've made this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:M63_3.6_8.0_24_microns_spitzer.png . If you don't know, is there a kind of "legal" point of contact? I'd like to be sure the data are release in public domain (or alike). The spitzer site isn't clear about this aspect. Thank you very much. Med 11:34, 26 November 2006 (UTC) P.S.: as i work at CEA/SAp i was looking for your talk on tuesday, unfortunately i will be away for the week.

Actually there is a notice on the Spitzer site: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/mediaimages/copyright.shtml . However i don't know if they include FITS images. The site is rather a communication site about spitzer and its results. So when they talk about the images i am not sure what they mean actually. I could interpret this as really any image so the SINGS FITS would be included. I also wanted to ask you, are the ancillary data also part of the SINGS project. Making an optical or near-infrared image along with a spitzer mid-infrared image would be nice and it would show the tremendous differences to the reader. Anyway, being certain about the legal issue would ease the work a lot. I would be sad to have to erase the images i've made due to incompatible license. Astronomical images are always a headache, so many institutes are involved, each one with a different policy. Med 13:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. I'll keep adding new images then. About your page actually i already had found it before as i was looking for SINGS pages on google. It is very useful. For now i'm going through your page and for the galaxies which have an article i check if there is a spitzer image already on commons. If not i see if i can make pretty images quickly from IRAC and IRAC+MIPS and i upload them on commons. I just skip harder images for now. Some are quite hard to make. By the way, do you have scripts to automatically build a galaxy infobox querying data from NED and also a script to convert the ADS bibtex entry of an article to the wiki template? Med 14:26, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

About the legend, i agree that one like in the Messier 74 is much better. However i don't see how to put one in a galaxy infobox without making it look ugly. Any idea? Med 16:12, 26 November 2006 (UTC)