Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy/Archive 6

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Talk:Supermassive_black_hole#New_letter_in_Nature

Comments/Assistance incorporating the information into the article would be welcome. NW (Talk) 01:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Spectral dispersion?

A group of us have been working to take the Betelgeuse article to FA. There's a technical phrase that has come up, spectral dispersion, which appears to be central to the whole issue of advanced telescopy, and by extension the angular measurement of astronomical objects. Is this a subject that merits its own article? Perhaps a subsection somewhere else?

I googled the phrase "spectral dispersion" and obtained 35,200 results. I read some of the articles, but most of them don't adequately define the term. Any thoughts on how to handle this issue would be very much appreciated.--Sadalsuud (talk) 18:56, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

P.S. This is the best external link I've found so far: Spectral Dispersion of Star Images at Low Elevation.

The phenomenon described in the external link is already covered at Dispersion (optics). I have no opinion on whether or not dispersion's effect on astronomy merits its own article (it's not my field). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:59, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. The article you reference is very helpful. I will delete the Red link and link to this article.

It seems to me that the only thing missing might be a new subsection in the Dispersion (optics) article that would address the application of this principle in terms of astronomy. What I'm wrestling with specifically is the Hernandez quote in the Betelgeuse article which states: "AMBER is one of the first generation instruments of the VLTI able to combine the beams of two or three telescopes simultaneously, and brings spectral dispersion" What does this phrase mean? It seems to imply that the bringing of "spectral dispersion" is a huge advance in telescopy. Is that the sense that you get? If so, how does "spectral dispersion" enhance the use of telescopes? Thanks again for any insight you can provide.--24.203.198.172 (talk) 22:31, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

That sentence is copied word-for-word from the abstract of the paper, so it should be modified regardless. Reading the paper, the whole thing seems to be badly-translated from a document not originally in English, or else written by someone whose first language wasn't English. What they seem to mean is that their instrument can make measurements in very narrow spectral bands, and so give a much more accurate plot of apparent radius vs. wavelength than previous efforts. I'll update the article accordingly. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:35, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Syzygy

FYI, Syzygy has been sent for deletion via AfD 76.66.192.49 (talk) 12:41, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The result of the discussion was keep.—RJH (talk) 18:30, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Expert assistance please

Folks, assistance is needed to review Low dimensional chaos in stellar pulsations and Stellar pulsation theory – Regular versus irregular variability. They are clearly scientifici/research papers (and may even be copyvios of material published elsewhere) but are not encyclopedic articles, at least not in their current form. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 18:03, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Black hole naming controversies

FYI, there is a discussion about this article at WT:physics

76.66.197.151 (talk) 05:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

That discussion is largely over. The presently active discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Black hole naming controversies. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 15:19, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Addition to dark matter

I've moved an anonymous addition to Dark matter (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to Talk:Dark matter#Additions by 97.103.48.87 for vetting. It looks like a good-faith addition, but it's a preprint discussing a slightly unorthodox variant of the galactic dark matter halo. If a couple of people with more experience in the field could glance at it to see if it's something that should be included, that would be helpful. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Messier 87 at GAN

Messier 87 was nominated at GAN, but I note the nominater has made few edits to the article. I am concerned the editor might not be able to address the concerns raised. Despite this, the article appears in not too bad a shape and with a bit of work could pass GA. I have left some queries needing addressing at Talk:Messier 87/GA1. I have not yet done a literature search for comprehensiveness. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I did a bunch of work on that article a while ago, but I didn't think it was quite comprehensive enough for GA/FA yet. Anyway, good luck with it. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 22:56, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Gah! I am supposed to be the one reviewing it...anyway. It is an intriguing subject and we are lacking in galaxy audited content.... Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Astronomy articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Astronomy articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 00:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

List of confusing astronomy terms

FYI, List of confusing astronomy terms has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 05:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Well personally I always got confused about the difference between dwarf stars and giant stars, it is so difficult to remember which ones are bigger... Icalanise (talk) 12:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

D'oh, I knew there was a reason I shouldn't have added a {{prod2}} when I wrote this notice! :) 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Commons NGC images

Since there's more of an astronomy community here than over at Commons, I wanted to ask people's opinions of what I've been doing over there lately in commons:Category:NGC objects. Please see commons:Category talk:NGC objects and comment there, if interested. - dcljr (talk) 23:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Astronomical calendar

Is there a calendar of astronomical events anywhere in Wikipedia that has a chronological list of phases, conjunctions, oppositions, transits, eclipses, solstices and equinoxes etc. - a "2010 in the Solar System", as it were ? I know there are lists for separate event types, such as Table of lunar phases, Aspects of Venus, List of solar eclipses in the 21st century, as well as lists in articles such as Solstice and Conjunction (astronomy and astrology), but I was wondering if there is a consolidated list somewhere - something like this maybe (but without the dayglo colour scheme) ? Gandalf61 (talk) 10:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

IIRC, there used to be something like that on WikiBooks, but it was deleted as an infodump.

Perhaps you want to ask Wikimedia Foundation to create a WikiAlmanac? I suppose a Portal:News/Astronomy could be created for that kind of stuff. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Holm designator

To what does "Holm" refer when saying, for example, that NGC 1 is also known as "Holm 2A"? - dcljr (talk) 22:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've found that it refers to "Holmberg galaxies and multiples", presumably a list of such objects compiled by someone named Holmberg. But I still don't know what WP article would be most relevant for linking the term to. Any suggestions? - dcljr (talk) 22:58, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Mauna Kea

I've been told that Observatory is not up to specks, and it's at FAC nom, and the commenter is out-on-travel, so...ResMar 02:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The observatory article is only rated Start-class, Talk:Mauna Kea Observatory. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 05:12, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't see the specific criticisms of that section. Was there further detail? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 16:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Apologies, I was not clear enough. Here is the link and the article under review is Mauna Kea, not Mauna Kea Observatory. Cheers, ResMar 15:07, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Miami Valley Astronomical Society

FYI, Miami Valley Astronomical Society has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 01:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

{{Catalogs}}

Did anyone notice the astronomical catalogue navigator?

76.66.200.95 (talk) 02:47, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

AstronomyOutreach network

FYI, AstronomyOutreach network has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:50, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Betelgeuse

...is at GAN if anyone wants to take a look and help out.Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Moons of Neptune

I nominated this article for Featured List status. The review page is here. Ruslik_Zero 18:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

ADS bibcode on articles about journals

Over at Template_talk:Infobox_journal#ADS_bibcode, we are considering adding the bibcode to {{Infobox journal}}. However we have a few options for where the link should take the clicker. Ideas welcome.. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects#starbox_template_issue

See discussion there....while I am thinking about it, am I the only person frustrated by there being an Astronomy discussion page and an astronomical objects discussion page? Are other folks happy or not-so-happy with it...? Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:07, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd be okay with a merge. At one time I think I objected, but I can see the benefit in reducing the number of cross-project message postings. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:43, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Anyone else? Anyone? Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:36, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I thought I had responded to this somehow. Anyway, I don't even really see the need for separate wikiprojects, so I would be all for merging. James McBride (talk) 01:40, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

All for, even though I did not take the time to read the discussion. Why have many when we can have one?! ;-) CielProfond (talk) 01:09, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been making similar point about the structure of Space-related WikiProjects elsewhere, WikiProject_Space & WikiProject_Spaceflight. In my opinion the whole organisation of these projects is currently poor and needs revision to breathe life back into many of them. Please add some comments if you're interested. ChiZeroOne (talk) 11:35, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd prefer to have separate listings, as there have been other suggestions for splitting WP:astronomy into separate workgroups/taskforces, keeping this one would be a good idea. 76.66.192.49 (talk) 10:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I will note that the objects talk page has some massive discussions that go on there, and having just one makes it that much more cluttered. 76.66.192.49 (talk) 10:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

It might be helpful if we have some type of tabbed discussion page layout, with separate tabs for each major sub-topic. That way it would be centralized, but still organized and manageable.—RJH (talk) 18:21, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

We can do that now... with the tabbar template, but we'd need each subproject / task force / work group / noticeboard to have a discussion page. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:28, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't find a tabbar template so perhaps it's been axed? If it does exist, perhaps we could just start with the projects that have discussion pages and add more later?—15:07, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Which ones do you suggest we include in the centralized discussion navigator? And we can always import the one used at FR.wikipedia, that one looks nicer than the one on EN.wikipedia anyways. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 09:41, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

There is a test tabbar at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy/tabbar . -- 76.66.196.13 (talk) 06:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I have a tabbar running at Portal:Tennessee that works very well; it's simple and doesn't require any parameters, but still detects what sub-page you are viewing. Let me know if you have any questions on it. — Huntster (t @ c) 06:28, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

NN Serpentis

Needs someone understanding exoplanets, or at least patient enough to trawl the references and make the story of discovery/refutation/discovery coherent. Rich Farmbrough, 18:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

• I'll take a stab at it. Reyk _YO! 01:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Units in astronomy articles

Concerning this discussion, what is the position of the project on using unit conversions (especially having km, miles and light years for all values, especially in GAs/FAs) in astronomy articles? Having a certain position would quench such disputes. Materialscientist (talk) 22:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I've pretty much been following the guidelines in WP:UNITS, particularly the "Scientific and technical units" section. Having too many unit conversions can make the page look cluttered, which is undesirable.—RJH (talk) 17:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we've ever actually written it down anywhere, but the convention of not using conversions (and sticking to SI for the most part) seems to have taken hold through editor habit and informal discussions. It seems to have begun with the planetary articles - at least that is where I came across it a few years ago - and the infoboxes. --Ckatz^chat_spy 22:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Astronomical_Society_of_Dharmaraja_College_(ASDRC)

FYI, Astronomical_Society_of_Dharmaraja_College_(ASDRC) has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 06:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

List_of_all_NGC_objects

FYI, List_of_all_NGC_objects has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 06:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I added a CSD-A10 to it for speedy deletion as duplication of List of NGC objects. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 06:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I've simply redirected it to the primary article. If you feel this is not enough, or if the original author tries to restore it, let me know and I'll protect it against editing. There's absolutely no point in such duplication of effort. — Huntster (t @ c) 06:50, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Johannes Hevelius

FYI, there's a dispute going on at Johannes Hevelius (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article and talk page for 7 years now, about whether this guy is German or Polish. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 20:28, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

File:Nlut galaxy.jpg

FYI, File:Nlut galaxy.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 05:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

"Official name"

I have a quick question. for the sentence "Comet Hartley 2, officially designated 103P/Hartley", for example, is there a reference available for the "officially designated" portion? I assume that the IAU is the source of authority here, but I can't seem to find anything about comet names on their web site. I'm not terribly familiar with their site though, so perhaps I'm simply missing something?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

That is because it is not dealt with on their main public site but at the dedicated IAU Minor Planet Center which houses the database. Specifically the pages you want to see (these kind of sites are always a pain to navigate!) are the Cometary Designation System and the Periodic Comet Numbers, which lists the official designation of periodic comets like Hartley 2. As you can see from the last link 103P/Hartley is in fact the second comet he discovered (100P/Hartley being the first), hence why 103P is often more commonly referred to as Hartley 2 to distinguish them. Hope that helps. ChiZeroOne (talk) 18:17, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Chi! Terrifically helpful reply there. I appreciate it!
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:46, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

No problem, happy to help. ChiZeroOne (talk) 19:56, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Thinking about it there is something I forgot to mention, I think the naming system used by the MPC is in fact not technically the same as the IAU's despite being an official IAU unit. As far as I'm aware the MPC's is almost the same as the one used by the Planetary Data System (sans number after the name). Technically the designation specified by the IAU for Hartley 2 is 103P/1986 E2 (year of discovery/half-month letter/comet number in that half-month), as discussed on the Cometary Designation System page I mentioned. Compare with Comet Hale-Bopp / C/1995 O1. This is all discussed at the Planetary Data System's Periodic Comet Names and Designations. So really saying 103P/Hartley is the official designation is incorrect, though it is a very common designation, along with the PDS's 103P/Hartley 2. I notice it is very common on other comet articles to claim the PDS system as the "official" one. Perhaps this is something that needs to be addressed. ChiZeroOne (talk) 21:42, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

As I was reading though the Cometary Designation System page yesterday, I was wondering if something like this might be the case. It's funny, after having been on Wikipedia for a while, whenever I see something like "officially designated..." that isn't followed by a reference, it tends to make me immediately suspicious that we're not getting the full story. That seems to have been born out, here.

Not that 103P/Hartley 2 isn't really official; all of the 245 comets named are using the same designation system rather then some series of colloquial names, so their "official" in that respect. I think that using the word "official" is what is problematic here, though. Could we change it to something like:

Comet Hartley 2, designated 103P/Hartley by the Minor Planet Center, is a small periodic comet with an orbital period of 6.46 years.

Maybe that sounds too... casual, though? I don't know, I'm on the fence here.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:51, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, and doesn't come across as too informal to me. Reyk _YO! 23:37, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that seems a fine solution. I agree over being careful with the use of "official", but that using the MPC designation is best (in the lead at least) for a number of reasons. The Cometary Designation System page specifically points out that retaining the version with discoverers name should be a valid alternative which is what the MPC seem to have done. It would be nice to have the systematic names like "103P/1986 E2" included in the main body of an article/infobox and have it as a redirect like the Halley one is though. ChiZeroOne (talk) 00:34, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Alright, thank you again, folks. I'll implement the changes on the 103P/Hartley 2 article now, and hopefully get to others in a while. Not that I'm at all territorial about this stuff. If anyone else wants to make the edits, please feel free (besides, my time on wiki is extremely limited, now). Regards,
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

There's a lifetime worth of work there if somebody needs a new career. ;-) RJH (talk) 20:18, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I have a feeling that a fair proportion of those are from CarloscomB. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 08:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Fearture article review of Herbig-Haro object

I have nominated Herbig-Haro object for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tom B (talk) 22:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

New planet

Just thought this would be of interest.

A planet, HIP 13044 b, which was formed in another galaxy has been discovered in the Helmi Stream. (BBC) Simply south (talk) 00:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Why not the WPSpace banner?

Hi, following some discussion here, I started to wonder why the {{WikiProject Astronomy}} banner is preferred over the {{WPSpace}} banner. After looking into it, I see there is some fairly complicated coding that has gone into this Astronomy banner, that I don't fully understand (it took me a while to figure out what a "hook" was). So, it appears the reason WPSpace isn't being used, is because it would be too difficult to implement the features of the Astronomy banner there. Is that correct? Or is there some other reason?

At the moment, some Astronomy pages use the Space banner while others only use the Astronomy banner; this appears to account for the difference between the Astronomy assessment statistics and the Astronomy assessment category statistics. Mlm42 (talk) 20:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Why would we want to use the WPSpace banner? 76.66.203.138 (talk) 08:16, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

In some cases the WPSpace banner didn't appear to be inter-operating properly with the counts for the WikiProject Astronomy, so I had to put in a separate WPAstronomy template. I care little about the WPSpace template, as long as it isn't in the way.—RJH (talk) 18:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

There seem to be a lot of editors (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Space/Members) who may be interested in Astronomy as well as Spaceflight, or the Solar System. For this reason, I'd think it may be useful to have the WPSpace banner on Astronomy articles (then lists of all Space articles, for example, would include Astronomy articles). RJH, I guess you have partially answered my question, confirming that a reason for not using the WPSpace banner is a technical issue (even though it's one that I don't fully understand..). Mlm42 (talk) 21:18, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

To me, the Space template should represent spaceflight, because everything else under Space is a subset of Astronomy. Certainly Space seems to be primarily focused on the Solar System, so I have little reason to use it on most the articles I edit. Shrug.—RJH (talk) 23:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hmm.. I thought "Space" meant pretty much anything related to Outer space. Also, something like Planetary science, might not actually be a subset of Astronomy (and indeed, that article is tagged with {{WPSpace}}). Furthermore, most articles about craters on the moon (articles you seem to edit, RJH) appear to be tagged with {{WPSpace}}. So, my point is that, with several banners out there, maybe there should be some consistency? Mlm42 (talk) 01:30, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Planetary science is a division of astronomy, one of the other astrosciences, along with astrobiology, etc. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 09:29, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes I created many of the lunar crater articles, but I did not add the templates. The Space template is cumbersome and is not always set up correctly to give useful numbers for WikiProject Astronomy, so I prefer not to use it.—RJH (talk) 15:39, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I see; I guess my question is, if the banner were better set up, would you be more inclined to use it? Mlm42 (talk) 17:11, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

My preferences would be to have a template that requires a minimum of typing to set up and insert the Astronomy class and importance and to show that data separately. The latter is because the importance to, say, spaceflight is not necessarily the same as the importance to astronomy. The template would also need to show the correct data in the WP Astronomy articles by quality and importance table, and to include links to the Astronomy importance and quality pages.

Having to micromanage the WPSpace fields is too much of a nuisance at present, and it doesn't work as well as a separate WPAstronomy template. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 19:47, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess at the moment you only need to type something like {{WPSpace | class=start | astronomy=yes | astronomy-importance=high}}. But I agree the two templates do slightly different things regarding assessment categories.. but that wouldn't take much to fix if there was a desire to. Mlm42 (talk) 21:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to address any of my concerns. It's more typing, doesn't include a link to the astronomy importance/class ratings page and has consistency problems with the Astronomy class and importance table. Sorry.—RJH (talk) 16:59, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Conjecturally, it might be possible to use some sort of subst template to simplify the creation of a WPSpace template based upon the WPAstronomy input fields. However, I think the other issues would still need to be addressed if the goal here is to do a merge.—RJH (talk) 22:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess this three year old discussion might be relevant.Mlm42 (talk) 01:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems like there is no consensus to merge into WPSpace banner, and since it's mostly not done anyway, it should be removed from the WPSpace banner, since it just causes confusion. If WPSpace members want to do wikipedia astronomy stuff, they could also join this project. As WPSpace is not a science wikiproject, it seems like it makes little sense to use a joint banner in any case. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 09:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, at the moment, the directory of wikiprojects (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Science#Space) lists Astronomy under Space.. and it's not clear to me that there's consensus the WPSpace should be removed. Mlm42 (talk) 17:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

We can always deparent from WPSpace. There is little overlap in content at the moment, no more than any two other wikiprojects in similar fields (like navy ships being both ships and military). WPSpace seems to be the equivalent of regional wikiprojects, except the region is "space" (instead of say Europe, for WPEurope), while this is a science wikiproject. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 13:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, but such a change should probably be supported by more than one editor (and preferably a non-anonymous one?). Mlm42 (talk) 15:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Uh Mlm42, 76.66 is the founder of WikiProject North America. 76.66 is allowed to support a proposal, he just doesn't want to create a account. He has submitted quite a few Articles for Creation articles, and has been around since 2008. Anyway, I support the deparenting of the two projects, it is sensible. --Alpha Quadrant ^talk 16:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Apologies to 76.66.. it wasn't clear to me the history there (I thought the IP might have been used by several different editors, or something). Mlm42 (talk) 17:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

University of Michigan Astronomy 533 grad class edits

Just a quick note to let everyone know. The Astronomy 533 graduate astronomy class at the University of Michigan is updating the following astronomy-related wiki pages:

• Galaxy merger
• Dwarf galaxy
• Oort Constants
• Satellite galaxy
• Lenticular galaxy
• Malmquist bias

The pages will be significantly changed; please feel free to check the pages when they come online in mid-December. EFBell (talk) 20:28, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

That would be nice with lenticulars and its subtypes... those need expansion. And most of the other articles listed as well. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 06:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

See A533jcis (talk · contribs) . 76.66.203.138 (talk) 07:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

EFBell appears to be the professor for the course, UMichigan course listing - Astro 533 - Fall 2010 - Structure and Content of Galaxies . 76.66.203.138 (talk) 12:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Antimatter comets

FYI, I have nominated antimatter comets for deletion (Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Antimatter_comet). James McBride (talk) 09:22, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Just merge it into comet so we can all witness the brilliant Wikiexplosion. --JaGa^talk 03:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Future role of WP:Space

There's a discussion going on over at WikiProject Space after concerns have been raised over a number of organisation issues, many of which have been laid out at WikiProject Human spaceflight. Feel free to provide any input as this concerns all projects currently within the scope of WP:Space. ChiZeroOne (talk) 22:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

At WT:WikiProject Space, it has been proposed that WikiProject Astronomy and WikiProject Astronomical objects be abolished; and merged into WPSpace. 76.66.194.212 (talk) 06:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of different proposals, and anyone can suggest a new one, nothing is definite yet bar the need for something to change re organisation. The discussion is a preliminary census of attitudes, and you'll note from the HSF discussion I suggested that WP:Ast members may have a different ones. ChiZeroOne (talk) 12:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

No-one is attempting to force anything on anyone, it's an attempt to gauge opinions; another suggestion, for instance, is to abolish WPSpace and have Astronomy and Spaceflight as top-level projects. If members of this and other astronomy-related projects would like to comment, it would be much appreciated. Colds7ream (talk) 10:54, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines

FYI, there is an open RfC at Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines about whether this is an essay or guideline. The scope of the page affects astrophysics, astrochemistry, and math. 76.66.194.212 (talk) 07:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Cephid variable

Anonymous IP 99.192.66.42 has rewritten parts of this article. "Cephid variable" has been changed to "Classical cephids" in the introduction, and throughout the article (see edit history) - along with supporting content. Then this anonymous IP has placed a requested move tag on the talk page. The move is proposed to be from Cepheid variable to Classical Cepheid variables. I have objected to the move because the rationale is misleading. First, they rewrote the article to suit themselves. Then they requested a move in such a manner, as if the content of the article were about Classic Cephid variables all along. This looks like some form of POV pushing. It also appears that some of the references have been changed to support this person's content, but I can't be absolutely sure about that. Someone familiar with this article could probably make that determination better than I. If the anonymous IP wishes to have an article on "Classical cephids", then the anonymous IP is encouraged to write one. I am inclined to undo this person's changes, mainly because of the alterations in the introduction from Cephid variables in general, to only Classical Cephids. The changes, and requested move don't make sense to me other than POV pushing. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 06:14, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with your statement, and think a reversion to previous version would be good, as a basis for splitting the article and a new rewrite, with a new article for classical cepheids created instead. 76.66.194.212 (talk) 06:34, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment I removed the classical cephid variable over writes of this article by restoring to the last edit by User:Kwamikagami. I then restored the small, non-trivial, edits of other editors that followed. This move request is probably no longer appropriate. In the edit history, and on the talk page, I requested that the anonymous IP please propose changes on talk page before attempting to re-orient an established article to some other topic. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 04:17, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Cepheid variable was rewritten again, this time by 142.177.21.25 (talk · contribs) ; making the article about classical cepheids. 76.66.202.72 (talk) 03:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

FLRC

I have nominated Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:59, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• A lot of work has already gone into addressing the concerns, and I do not see any huge remaining problems, but some more eyes and hands would be greatly appreciated. Reyk _YO! 03:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Reorganisation of space WikiProjects

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation regarding the future of WikiProject Space and its child projects. The discussion is aimed at defining the roles of projects, and improving the activity and coordination of the projects. The input of members of this project is requested as it is one which may be affected by the issue. --GW… 22:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

RfD: Macrocarpum laws of astronomy

Macrocarpum laws of astronomy is up for deletion here as OR.—RJH (talk) 20:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Loop in astronomical categories

I noticed that Category:Great Attractor is a subcategory of Category:Norma Cluster which is a subcategory of Category:Great Attractor. One of these relationships should be broken. The category system is supposed to be a hierarchy. So that if you keep selecting a subcategory, you eventually reach a category without subcategories. Another problem is that there seems to be confusion about which supercluster these belong to. Since I am not an astronomer, I brought these matters here rather than fix them myself. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I removed Category:Great Attractor from Category:Norma Cluster. Hopefully that is a suitable arrangement. Thank you for identifying the concern.—RJH (talk) 17:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

To RJHall: Thank you. JRSpriggs (talk) 10:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Abolition of WikiProject Space

The RfC over the fate of WikiProject Space came to the consensus of abolishing the project, removing it as a parent to the projects below it, with not a single comment in favour of its retention. As a result that project will be wound-down allowing Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight to become the lead projects in their area as has been pretty much de facto the case for some time on the Astronomy side. As a result it's probably a good idea if we modify some of this project, like the navbox for example, to fit this. ChiZeroOne (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you referring to Template:Spaceprojnav?—RJH (talk) 18:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it will be outdated and will need to be replaced to represent Astronomy and its daughters, like is being done over at Spaceflight. But not only that, for example the project page currently links to Astronomy templates currently hosted by WikiProject Space and not on Astronomy so it will need to be considered if they are wanted to be transferred here. ChiZeroOne (talk) 18:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I actually have no idea who maintains this WikiProject page.—RJH (talk) 17:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

As "Space" is still an organizational super-category on the main WikiProjects list, it might make sense to use the same layout and just remove the link(s) to the Space WikiProject.—RJH (talk) 16:47, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I took the liberty of replacing the previously included Template:Spaceprojnav with the new template Template:Astronomyprojnav.—RJH (talk) 15:41, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Hevelius and the sempiternal German/Polish battle…

The sempiternal German/Polish battle has risen again in the article about Johannes Hevelius. Someone with an IP address (User:79.131.146.7) keeps removing many if not all mentions of Hevelius being German or being considered German. It would take a certain deal of manual edition to revert back to the original article — I do not have time right now. Is there any way to somehow “protect” the page? Said user does not mention any reference.

I am Canadian with mostly French ancestry, so I have no national interest in the matter. I just find it very sad that this fight comes back periodically, on the pages of people who lived in that area. I understand Polish national pride (I had a Polish work colleague who explained it to me), but the fact is that some parts of Poland were German territory at some point or another, and I consider that people living there should be considered as Germans in that time period.

Mohawks and Crees and other Native Americans in Canada do not consider themselves as not Canadians because the new country was imposed upon them…

CielProfond (talk) 13:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Aren't historical revisionists annoying? You might try: Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. I've had some success there in the past.—RJH (talk) 16:04, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

If it's only one IP, or a definable range of IP addresses, try WP:ANI instead. 65.95.13.158 (talk) 07:26, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Eclipses / WikiProject Solar eclipses

At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation , there was a discovery of a wikiproject eclipses. 64.229.101.17 (talk) 06:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It just appears to have one member.—RJH (talk) 15:47, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

So, uh... Are you guys going to absorb it or something? Colds7ream (talk) 09:22, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be worth the bother. The only member is a sock puppet and it has been all but inactive for nearly a year. Unless somebody else wants to do it...—RJH (talk) 21:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy to delete it for you? Colds7ream (talk) 00:33, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Were you unable to contact the owner?—RJH (talk) 16:21, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I have two different accounts, still active, but working on geometry lately. I made some good progress on solar eclipses last winter, and I'd like to get back to improving lunar eclipses (catch up to solar eclipses!), but unsure when. I tried to document what I did, in case I died or something. :) Tom Ruen (talk) 21:41, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Did you ask around before creating this project? Because a WikiProject of one is in fact not a WikiProject - I'd have suggested you ask around at this project, see if there was some interest, and create a task force or working group (depending on interest) within it. Colds7ream (talk) 12:32, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Mostly too lazy. I didn't mind that I was mostly working alone. I didn't care if you want to call it a project or not, but at least there's a public place that describes the work done. Most of what I was interested in was graphics, and getting a framework out there. Tom Ruen (talk) 19:21, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that any such task force cover all sorts of occultations, transits and eclipses. Not just Sun-Moon-Earth/Sun-Earth-Moon ones, and perhaps conjunctions as well. 64.229.101.54 (talk) 05:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The solar/lunar eclipse data comes straight from NASA's many-century databases, and is the most complete, and deserve to be maintained together as a part of the same three-body problem. I'm not aware of sufficient sources to cover other transit events, but they would have very little in common with the eclipse cycles with the moon and sun. If needed, I'm content for Wikipedia:WikiProject eclipses be renamed to imply its scope as limited to solar-lunar eclipses. Tom Ruen (talk) 06:16, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

If you want it to be a public wiki project then I suggest it be properly catalogued as a task force under Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Science#Astronomy. Doing so would get the project more attention than it has at present. Otherwise, I think it would probably be best if you could "userfy it"; putting it under your own user page.—RJH (talk) 15:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I moved to User:Tomruen\Project_eclipses until I have more time to make it friendly to others participation. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:32, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Issues with Book:Caldwell catalogue

Greetings. As you may or may not know, Wikipedia has a collection of community books, which are pre-assembled collections of Wikipedia articles on a given subject, placed in a format (the Book namespace itself) that streamlines the process of converting them into single PDF documents or printed books.

This message is to inform you that one of these books, Book:Caldwell catalogue, has been identified by a bot to have several issues. After reviewing the bot's report, I can confirm that the report is valid, however I do not possess the knowledge or technical ability to remedy the issue myself. The issue is as follows:

The articles NGC 6541, NGC 6352, NGC 5286, NGC 5823, NGC 4609, NGC 6101, and NGC 4372 are redlinked; (meaning that they are listed for inclusion in the book, but lack corresponding articles.)

This issue does not make the book unprintable or unusable in any way, however it may be an indication that the book itself is incomplete.

If Wikipedia books are of interest to you or your project, or if you need logistical help in setting up or maintaining Wikipedia books, feel free to leave me a message on my user talk page or the talk page of WikiProject Wikipedia-Books.

Thank you, Sven Manguard Wha? 20:34, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It's not surprising really considering that there are 7,840 objects in the NGC. You could consider adding any such you find to: Wikipedia:Requested articles/Natural sciences/Astronomy and cosmology#Individual objects.—RJH (talk) 21:06, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Index Catalogue into New General Catalogue

I have started a merger discussion at Talk:New General Catalogue#Merger proposal. All input and opinions welcome. Reyk _YO! 01:33, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Help with designation abbreviations

Scorpius X-1 has a slew of ambiguous abbreviations in its infobox's Other designations section. If you look at this nifty tool, you see all the ambiguous abbreviations in red (2A, RE - twice for some reason, XSS, 3A, 2U, 3U, and 4U). Could someone help decipher these abbreviations? Thanks, --JaGa^talk 06:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

SIMBAD is a great tool for figuring astronomical object designations, while some others have internal links (i.e. here on Wikipedia). So here we go (I cover all abbreviations, not just those you pointed out, though those are first):

• 2A is from “The Ariel V SSI catalogue of high galactic latitude (|b|>10) X-ray sources” (all external links are to ADSABS, the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System abstract service);

• RE is from “The ROSAT Wide Field Camera all-sky survey of extreme-ultraviolet sources. I. The bright source catalogue”;

• XSS is from “RXTE all-sky slew survey. Catalog of X-ray sources at |b|>10°”;

• 3A is from “The Ariel V (3A) catalogue of X-ray sources. I. Sources at low galactic latitude (|b|<10 °.)” and from “The Ariel V (3A) catalogue of X-ray sources. II. Sources at high galactic latitude (|b| > 10 °)”;

• 2U is from “The UHURU catalog of X-ray sources”;

• 3U is from “The third UHURU catalog of X-ray sources”;

• 4U is from “the fourth UHURU catalog of X-ray sources” (surprised?!);

• V818 Sco means it's the 818th variable "star" to receive a designation in the constellation Scorpio (note that there are no V1, V2,... as they are replaced by R, S,...: see Variable star designation);

• 1XRS 16170-155 is from “A catalog of X-ray sources”;

• INTEGRAL1 21 is from “The First IBIS/ISGRI Soft Gamma-Ray Galactic Plane Survey Catalog” made with the satellite INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory;

• INTREF 685 is from “High-energy sources before INTEGRAL. INTEGRAL reference catalog”;

• X Sco X-1 seems to me like just a corruption of “Sco X-1”, the abbreviation of Scorpius X-1, or it may be for something like “X-ray source in Scorpio named X-1”;

• 2EUVE J1619-15.6 is from “The second Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer source catalog”;

• KOHX 20 is from “Correlation of hard X-ray source positions with globular clusters”;

• 1M 1617-155 is from “The MIT/OSO 7 catalog of X-ray sources : intensities, spectra and long-term variability”;

• and finally, 1H 1617-155 is from “The HEAO A-1 X-ray source catalog”.

The frequent repetition of 1617, 155, and anything similar (16170 or 15.6 for example) stems from the position of the object (right ascension 16h 19m 55.07s, declination -15° 38′ 24.8″) in the sky.

Hope this answers your question!

Best regards,

CielProfond (talk) 20:45, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

That was perfect. Thanks for all the info! --JaGa^talk 08:02, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

'X Sco X-1' is the SIMBAD designation for the object, and it means exactly what you said ('X ray source with the name Sco-X1'). Almost all SIMBAD objects have names that start with some sort of designation indicating the type of object e.g. * = star, V* = variable star, gB = gamma ray burst etc. Objects which are only detected at some wavelengths, or where it's unclear what the physical nature is (or it's a composite object), often have named derived from the wavelength at which they were first observed (hence the X here). The full list of object types is given here. Modest Genius ^talk 18:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Exoplanet articles

I suggest that extrasolar planet information be kept in their respective star's article. There are articles on planets that contain only 2 sentences, when they easily have more information in their respective star's article. I saw this on Kepler-9b and Kepler-9c. I am sure there are many, many more in the same boat. I suppose there are a few that merit their own articles, including HD 80606b, but alot only have a few sentences.atomic7732 04:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

• Support- I have seen this too, and I agree entirely. Reyk _YO! 06:36, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
• Comment—A problem with that approach is the clutter that occurs when you have multiple infoboxes in the same article.—RJH (talk) 15:33, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

You wouldn't need multiple infoboxes. Alot of the info is the same in the infoboxes. What may be needed is a revised infobox, but the planet data table seems to suffice. atomic7732 19:50, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

• I'd just like to throw this question up and see what replies it may garner: In your view, what is the issue with short articles? I've seen this argued to death for years, but I'd be curious to see the replies within the context of this project.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:43, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

  One issue is readability. For systems with more than one exoplanet, the reader is going to want to know about all of them and if they're separate articles they'll have to go back and forth between them. Reyk _YO! 22:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

  There is no use of having an article on something that has never been imaged, and never had any spectral analysis. There is so little information, it could easily be put into the star's article. As said above, it would also be easier to read if it was all in one place. atomic7732 16:52, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Date formatting

I'm having a concern with an editor regarding his understanding of a supposed "international date convention" that applies to astronomy articles. He's basically claiming that all astronomy articles should be using dates of the form "21 April 1990", rather than retaining whatever the author originally chose (the latter per WP:DATERET). Is anybody else aware of this? I have not seen such a convention and I don't recall a discussion on the topic taking place here. Thus far he has not identified the location of this Wikipedia convention, but in theory it could impact a lot of astronomy articles.

The article is History of supernova observation, and he has modified all date formats in apparent violation of WP:DATERET. After he twice reverted my reverts, I began a discussion at Talk:History of supernova observation#Change in date format and left a message at User_talk:Thorwald. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 16:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Kin Endate

The page on Kin Endate, a Japanese asteroid hunter, was deleted back in Feb 2010 for lack of notability. I'd like to bring it back - I definitely feel he meets the notability criteria. He's got 593 discoveries - in the top 25 - and recorded the first known images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Precedence has it that asteroid discoverers are notable because "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." Every other person in the top 50 has an article, so I'm pretty sure it'll pass.

I've created a draft at User:Pi.1415926535/Draft of Kin Endate; I've also got a bunch of external links and old versions there. I would love if anyone could offer improvements, especially anything that'll solidify notability. Thanks ! Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:01, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Here was the brief discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kin Endate. I'm not certain whether finding rocks in space merits notability by itself, but we seem to have a number of such articles anyway.—RJH (talk) 19:34, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't find the exact article right before deletion, but I've looked at the Wapedia article (copied from slightly before deletion) and old versions, and it appears that the old article was missing everything significant about him - his extremely high discovery total, the Mars-crossing and Trojan asteroids he found, and his SL-9 images. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:35, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Well I think you've made a good faith effort to build the article, and the Shoemaker-Levy 9 images probably make it sufficiently notable. The only citation that may be a little suspect is the MySpace link. You might want to move that to an external links section. Otherwise, based on past experiences with the AfD process, it should pass muster once you've got the citations formatted.—RJH (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll have to format the citations myself; apparently the {{Cite google book}} template is not yet bot supported. The "My profile" has useful bio information (it's a legitimate personal site, fortunately, not Myspace) so I relinked that under the name of the full site. I'll move it to article-space either tonight or tomorrow. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Nice work. I think the shopping list of sources you've got that haven't found their way into the draft article yet are more than enough to establish the notability of this person, as well as flesh out the article. Reyk _YO! 03:12, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Normally sources need to be independent for verification. Since the bio information is not from an independent source, you might want to clarify that in the wording. E.g. "Kin Endate says that he is...".—RJH (talk) 21:16, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Article has been created: Kin Endate. Thanks to everyone for the advice! Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Bitil Guilderstrone

Bitil Guilderstrone (talk · contribs) appears to be a number vandal, changing numbers willy-nilly and replacing one constellation with another, doing vandalous null edits (performing vandalism and then reverting it)

I caught some weird stuff in one article and then checked the history, saw some more of the same... This needs someone to verify every contribution of Bitil's. Good thing he/she is inactive now.

65.93.14.196 (talk) 12:08, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Hiroshi Kaneda

The article on Hiroshi Kaneda, a prolific discoverer of asteroids, contradicts itself on one point; please see the talk page for details. (An importance rating from someone with subject knowledge also would be appreciated.) Thank you, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 04:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

MPC is the official clearinghouse, and he hasn't had any discoveries in 10 years, so I'm thinking the giant list-table is just missing a pair of his discoveries. If we can find an official list of his discoveries than it'd take me 5 mins to find the missing pair, but I don't know where to find such a list. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 05:10, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd be tempted to just add an {{Expand list}} template. Tracking down the missing two objects would be a bear.—RJH (talk) 19:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, if I can get a list of all 705, then it would actually be pretty easy. Just copy-paste it into Excel, and compare entries with the list from the current article. Unfortunately, I can't find such a list on the IAU MPC site. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:18, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Yup, that's why it would be a bear. :-) —RJH (talk) 23:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Constellation family

I should have done this days ago, but it slipped my mind. There is an almost week old AfD going on over Constellation Family here. It is quite a discussion already, but I thought some of the editors in this project might be able to add new points of view. James McBride (talk) 00:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I've added my bit, and I just did some major consolidation of the sources in the article. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 04:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

hyphenating 'main sequence'

Usually proper names are not hyphenated when attributive, but common names are. I'd expect "main-sequence star", "O-type main-sequence star", etc. The refs seem to vary on this. Has there been a conscious decision to leave out the hyphens? (I've added en dashes to "pre–main sequence star", per WP:ENDASH, but if 'main sequence' is hyphenated, that would drop: "pre-main-sequence star".) — kwami (talk) 02:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"Type-O main sequence star" I don't think I've seen "main sequence star" hyphenated or dashed. And "Type-O" / "Type O" / "O-type" / "O type" / "O Type" / "Class O" / "Class-O" / "O-class" / "O Class" / "O class" is dependent on author. 64.229.101.119 (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

NOTE: There is a discussion at WT:Manual of Style on whether WP:DASH should be deleted, since it promotes WP:Original research by mandating forms not used in WP:Reliable sources. 64.229.101.119 (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"O-type"/"Type-O"/etc is a compound

"main sequence" is a noun, so "main sequence star" is a star on the main sequence, hence attributive use of "main sequence".

Using prescriptive English grammar will not work, since this is technical terminology. I've see the yelling and screaming when English-nitpickers screw up technical terms at WT:MOS. 64.229.101.119 (talk) 04:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

IMO this reeks of WP:FORUMSHOPPING combined with a deep lack of actually understanding grammar and WP:POV pushing. It's pre-main star, as in pre-fabricated, and it's O-type star, as in Tennessee -class battleships. "Pre–main" is just wrong, and WP:DASH does not in any way suggest this, hint at it, or otherwise endorse it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't right now, but before you took it out a few minutes ago there was a point 5 in WP:ENDASH saying that en dashes were to be used in "compounds whose elements contain hyphens or spaces", which is why Kwami put "pre–main sequence star".Spacepotato (talk) 07:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Kwami him/herself put that there about two days ago, and there's about 5 active threads on the WP:MOS about dashes (and there is no proposal to remove the section as the IP mentioned). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Before Kwami's edits, it was to be used "Optionally, in compounds whose elements contain hyphens or spaces", which was added, without the "Optionally", on 9 Oct 2010. The addition was based on the Chicago Manual of Style, which appears to specifically recommend the construction "Post–World War II" (with an en dash). Spacepotato (talk) 07:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I took out the hyphens part, as it seldom disambiguates and most style guides recommend against it. The use of an en dash to prefix an open compound, however, is standard typography (and not just according to the CMOS), and has been for at least a century.

"Pre-main sequence star" would mean a sequence star that's pre-main. I've seen several variants on this; several of our refs use "pre-main-sequence", which arguably is more standard. "Pre–Main Sequence star" would also be standard typographic convention. But there are plenty of idiosyncrasies in tech terms, so I figured I should ask here. — kwami (talk) 09:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Looking at a few refs, I see "pre-main-sequence star" (the most logical punctuation) in Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis (2010), Accretion processes in star formation (2000), Asteroseismology (2009), The Physics of Astrophysics: Gas dynamics (1992), etc. That would appear to be the most common punctuation. But when it comes to stars in the main sequence, both "main-sequence star" and "main sequence star" are common. (The latter of course literally means a main star, not a star in the main sequence, but there's little danger of ambiguity, so it doesn't matter much.) — kwami (talk) 10:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, "main sequence" seems to be the most common usage, but there are online dictionaries that use "main-sequence" and even one that mixes the two forms. Note that "zero-age main sequence" also appears, as well as "zero-age main-sequence" and "zero age main sequence". It's a jungle out there.

I do get a little weary of the endless style format flip-flopping that goes on. It doesn't add to the net level of useful information, so it feels a lot like background noise.—RJH (talk) 15:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Logically it's hyphenated, but hyphens are often dropped from set expressions. So it's a judgement call. Since one editor at least got upset about the en dash, any objection to me moving the article to pre-main-sequence star per what appears to be the majority of sources? The old illogical title was IMO too subject to misparsing as a "pre-main" star, as Headbomb apparently misparsed it. — kwami (talk) 20:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The literature has a mix of "pre-main sequence star" and "pre-main-sequence star" (also, "main sequence" is occasionally capitalized.) The expressions "pre–main sequence star" and "pre–main-sequence star", with an en dash, also occur but are rather less common. This shows you that astrophysicists do not spend their spare time reading style manuals. Spacepotato (talk) 02:55, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, no objections, so I'll go with logical hyphenation (main-sequence star). — kwami (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Habitable zone

I just clicked on the link to Habitable zone from the main page news item on the Kepler mission discoveries and I noticed that it is rated as "low importance" by this project. Time to upgrade to "Mid"? Anyone interested in astronomy who hasn't heard of the HZ must have been locked in their telescope dome for years... PaddyLeahy (talk) 13:06, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, a 'mid' rating sounds about right, since it is on a par with planetary habitability, and the higher level astrobiology, terrestrial planet and extraterrestrial life articles are all rated high in astronomy importance.—RJH (talk) 17:19, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Done Modest Genius ^talk 18:51, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Supernova candidate articles

Hi. Should potential future supernova candidates have articles on their respective supernovae containing details such as the expected luminosity and possible future time (range) of the explosion as well as the core remnant type or should such information be included in the star or candidate list article? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 02:27, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Definitely belongs in the article of the star, not a separate article. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:15, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Betelgeuse#Approaching supernova and supernova#Milky Way candidates are good treatments, but list of supernova candidates is not. That list gives essentially no context, with no information about either how soon the supernova is expected (in almost all cases, we simply don't know) or how bright it would be (which is pure conjecture). The list is basically just a load of coordinates and distances, which conveys no useful information. Modest Genius ^talk 18:48, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Mmm, well the list of supernova candidates was my doing, so you can blame me for that. My goal was to trim the every-growing list on the Supernova article, which was providing even less information. Note that I did include the estimated distances and the classes, which provides some data of interest (at least to me). But basically it's like the list of nearest stars; a set of redirects for interested readers.—RJH (talk) 18:29, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Bibcode cleanup

Cross-posted to WP:PHYS and WP:ASTRO. Please cross-post this on the other astronomy-related projects

Several citations are done like this

• Ezjak, L.M.; et al. (2007). "Terrestrial Consequences of Spectral and Temporal Variability in Ionizing Photon Events". Astrophysical Journal. 654 (1): 373. doi:10.1086/509106. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)

or like

• Ezjak, L.M.; et al. (2007). "Terrestrial Consequences of Spectral and Temporal Variability in Ionizing Photon Events". Astrophysical Journal. 654 (1): 373. Bibcode:2007ApJ...654..373E. doi:10.1086/509106. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)

AKA, the citations have a hard link to the ADSABS database (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...654..373E). I've asked some bot coders to cleanup the citations, and instead use the |bibcode= parameter in these templates instead of the hard link. Which would look like

• Ezjak, L.M.; et al. (2007). "Terrestrial Consequences of Spectral and Temporal Variability in Ionizing Photon Events". Astrophysical Journal. 654 (1): 373. Bibcode:2007ApJ...654..373E. doi:10.1086/509106. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)

This has the advantage of treating things as they usually would be for citations with doi (which use |doi=10.1086/509106 instead of |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086%2F509106 ). Additionally, this would cleanup the downloadable PDFs by removing low-value links; if you have (bibcode: 2007ApJ...654..373E), you don't need to see the url (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...654..373E).

Comments? Feedback? See also User talk:Citation bot#Bibcodes and User:Rjwilmsi/Bibcodes for details, especially User:Rjwilmsi/Bibcodes#Queries, as Rjwilmsi as some questions about things. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't the url= parameter be used for a direct link to the journal's website? Like this:

• Ezjak, L.M.; et al. (2007). "Terrestrial Consequences of Spectral and Temporal Variability in Ionizing Photon Events". Astrophysical Journal. 654 (1): 373. Bibcode:2007ApJ...654..373E. doi:10.1086/509106. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)

I agree bibcodes should use the intended parameter, but only if the url is already in use. Modest Genius ^talk 13:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

In the last example, the direct url is redundant with the doi link, so I think the direct url is unnecessary. In cases where there is a url to the ADSABS citation, I've been in the habit of substituting the bibcode for the url (and removing the access date) because it shortens the edit size. I prefer to have both the doi and the bibcode, because the latter can provide alternate viewing options and links to online data.—RJH (talk) 18:25, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Bibcode is certainly more useful, because it provides cross-links to arxiv, SIMBAD, Vizier etc. But the doi should (in theory) be more stable in the long term. I've just checked the template documentation, which specifically discourages using url if it goes to the same page as the doi points at, so I was wrong there. In fact it encourages using url to point to a free online version, so perhaps we should be filling those out with arxiv links and/or other self-archived copies? Modest Genius ^talk 19:10, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Arxiv links should be done through |id={{arxiv|astro-ph/0604556}}, aka a "clean" version of the above citation would be

• Ezjak, L.M.; et al. (2007). "Terrestrial Consequences of Spectral and Temporal Variability in Ionizing Photon Events". Astrophysical Journal. 654 (1): 373. Bibcode:2007ApJ...654..373E. doi:10.1086/509106. arXiv:astro-ph/0604556. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:10, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Are planet candidates notable?

I've just put an article up for AfD because the subject discusses a Kepler Object of Interest, basically a planet candidate. We are not talking about any of the 500 or so officially announced planets like those of the Kepler-11 system (note those actual planets don't even have articles yet!), we are talking about points of data no one knows yet are even real phenomena. The statistics of the candidates from the released paper are mentioned already in the Kepler article but does each candidate really deserve its own article? This seems to ridiculously defy notability standards. All sorts of scientific data are released to the public every day, is every datum verified or not notable enough for its own article? ChiZeroOne (talk) 19:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Definitely not notable until confirmed. If the parent star already has an article, it would be worth mentioning the candidate planet(s) in a couple of sentences, but there's no way each and every one of the >1000 candidates should have an article. Modest Genius ^talk 20:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Existing names?

This is only tangentially related to the issue directly at hand (which seems to be resolved anyway), but I've been wondering: aren't there existing names for all of the "Kepler stars"? For example, Kepler-11 was mentioned above... I see that the article doesn't mention any existing names for the star, and indeed the article actually states that the Kepler satellite discovered the star... an unreferenced claim that I find hard to swallow. This star has never been observed and cataloged prior to the Kepler satellite coming online? I understand that Kepler, being a space-born observation platform, has a much better view of the cosmos then we do (at least, that portion of the sky to which it is pointing), but... really?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Error on Uranus Atmosphere page?

Location, at Atmosphere of Uranus#Stratosphere, in the picture, it says, "... in the stratosphere and termosphere of...", is termosphere suppose to be thermosphere? Was not sure. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 20:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

The image is actually located in Atmosphere of Uranus#Troposphere, but that's neither here nor there. Seeing as how the image itself says "Thermosphere", I think that it's a fairly safe bet that "termosphere" in the caption is simply a typo. I've gone ahead and fixed it.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

New template, {{solar mass}}

Just created this because I was getting tired of not-being able to write "a star of 10 M_☉" effortlessly (a star of {{solar mass|10}}) or just the symbol by itself (M_☉ / {{solar mass}}). Usage should be straightforward, but if anything is unclear, the documentation is there. Anything else that would need such a template? {{Terrestrial mass}} / {{Jovian mass}} / {{Moon mass}}? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:JARGON, wouldn't it be better to say 10 solar masses than 10 M_☉?—RJH (talk) 18:10, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

The above is an example more than anything. In prose, the first use should definitely be "Bob's Star is a star of 10 solar masses (M_☉)" But subsequent uses can be "by comparison Eric's Star and Star X-1 weigh 15 M_☉ and 45 M_☉ respectively." The point of the template is to have a quick way to write M_☉ when desired. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

If you're up for it (or anyone else, for that matter. These are relatively simple templates, after all.), I'm sure that {{Terrestrial mass}} / {{Jovian mass}} / {{Moon mass}} each could be useful.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:49, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if it might not be useful to have a parameter that can be used for the first instance, which would spell everything out and maintain absolute consistency? Ex: {{solar mass|10|1st}} → 10 solar masses (10 M_☉). — Huntster (t @ c) 19:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Template:SkyTemplate

{{SkyTemplate}} has been nominated for deletion. 65.95.14.96 (talk) 05:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

"Van Allen radiation belt" -- a Wikipedia horror tale ?

Last night I removed an unsourced claim, attributed to Alex Dessler, that the Van Allen radiation belts may be due to volcanic activity. I think this is physically very unlikely, and not at all main-stream, though I am not an expert on Van Allen radiation. A little Google search found ~9000 hits on {'Alex Dessler' 'Van Allen'}, but looking at the top few I see only things that seem to quote our previous Wikipedia article verbatim — almost all having all or part of the phrase:

"while Alex Dessler has argued that the belt is a result of volcanic activity".

Most appear to be blogs & other lightweight material, nothing that looks like a reliable source. A full-text search of the Astrophysics Data System for {"ALEX DESSLER" "VAN ALLEN BELT"} found no hits between 1952 and 2003. (Where would one search for older space physics information, I wonder?)

At first glance it appears to me as if there may have been an avalanche or loop of citations stemming from that very early (~2002) Wikipedia mention. The editor who made the claim was blocked indefinitely in 2008 as a troll, although that was not at first enough to convict the edit. Although "Alex Dessler" is redlinked, he is a reputable worker in space science.

I looked around a bit for a proper source, and commented out the dubious claim, thinking that if there is a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal that supports the claim, we should probably restore it. But I now it looks like this is a classic Wikipedia horror story.

When I could find no reasonable sources (glancing at only 30 or 40, of course not 9000), I sent an email, to Dessler, who quickly responded:

I am (sort of) shocked that this is what is reported. It is true that I once made a verbal joke at a meeting where I was making fun of someone (Tom Gold as I recall) to make the point that correlations were not proof of physical causality. You need a viable theory to make the connection. For example, I like this quote, "It has been proven by thousands of experiments that the beating of tom-toms during an eclipse will restore the Sun." This is from E. Bright Wilsons's book (which I read as a graduate student in the early 1950s) Introduction to Research. Wilson did not believe this correlation was true, as I did not believe volcanoes could cause or have any effect on the Van Allen Belt. My point was regarded as funny enough that I believe Wilmot Hess, in one of his books, quoted me in the spirit of a physicist having fun. If he did, the book would have been published in the 1960s. I never put such nonsense in print -- OMG!

The edit that did the damage was:

07:44, 18 November 2002 Lir (talk | contribs) (7,275 bytes) (undo)

Lir made many many edits, often on other subjects, for over 6 years before being blocked, many of which probably need to be reviewed carefully. So it is potentially a more general Wikipedia problem. I think this case history needs to be reported (and discussed) on some of the project pages — physics, astronomy, space science,... as many as are relevant, and wherever Lir made many edits.

This is the first clear instance I have encountered of what appears to be an attempt to undermine the integrity of Wikipedia by deliberate covert fallacious editing. It is not trolling, which I think is defined as a deliberate attempt to create destructive conflict by stirring up conflict, outrage & emotion, etc — ie, not hidden.

Some points:

• Covert malicious vandalism is present on Wikipedia to some extent, and because people are so clever, in general it is likely not easy to detect, especially given our essential commitment to assume good faith. (So how much of this is out there? Has anyone done some serious investigation to quantify the extent of the issue?)

• The widespread use of Wikipedia as the reference of first resort means that errors here are likely to be disseminated very rapidly and widely into the Internet and the cultural "information atmosphere".

• Verbatim copying of Wikipedia material is very widespread, at least in some cases. (Probably especially bad where journalists with no deep understanding of a specialized subject are trying to summarize for the lay public.)

• As important as formal criteria for authenticity are, there is probably no substitute for significant understanding of, and expertise in, the subject matter by some minimum number of the editors contributing to any given article.

• The appalling thing is that at this moment there hundreds of "sources" out there on the Internet—and none of them are reliable. It will be interesting to watch the "decay" of this information now that the Wikipedia article has been corrected, but it seems likely that will be very slow, if it decays at all.

• Inaccurate, or even absurd, material may lie undetected for a very long time, and do great damage to our reputation, our project, and even to society.

• Given the central importance of information and the existence of strong political, ideological, and economic drivers, covert attacks on Wikipedia can be anticipated to sometimes be not just mischievous, but strongly motivated: sustained, determined, and even backed by the resources of wealthy and powerful entities, such as powerful authority figures, corporations, religious and ethnic groups, and even nation states.

Thus Wikipedia is at least potentially (and perhaps already extensively) threatened by its own remarkable success.

I am basically a wikignome, by no means very well qualified to address these issues. I am certain there are many other editors in our project who are much more aware than I am. I would appreciate it if they could perhaps give us (me) some advice about how a lay wikipedian can best respond to these challenges, or point to existing WP resources for doing better. Thanks to any who respond.

Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 03:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I have run in to this problem before, though not quite a case this bad. I am not really sure what the solution is. One step that might be useful is establishing the areas of expertise of frequent/significant contributers to the astronomy wikiproject. At least that way, if an editor finds something questionable, that editor can try to get in touch with someone who knows the subject and is likelier to be able to confirm the statement in question. Maybe this is not practical though. James McBride (talk) 03:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I've been thinking along the same lines. Certainly each major article needs to have a cloud of knowledgeable editors who keep an eye on it. I suppose that the project members who appear as frequent editors on the history page are the first ones to consult. It is interesting that the Van Allen radiation belt article was actually put up for FA review between 2002 and now --thank goodness it failed! Wwheaton (talk) 03:49, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

This is certainly the core issue most professional institutions and journals have with Wikipedia and it is certainly not a new one. I always try and remember to check the sources on a page when I am finished with editing. Sometimes, sources do seem to be amiss in context and fail to contribute the material some editor claims the citation performs. I don't think the edits are generally intended with malcontent however. There are a vast number of people that believe in a particular doctrine, regardless of coherence and factuality. One such instance I encountered myself recently was a user named Kazoomba, who added a claim by an unscientific source to the Pioneer anomaly article. Clearly, he feels the source is developing a factual basis for the claim but failed to consider the educational background of the source. For the vast majority of the content, especially quotes, I feel it is important to ensure the material is coming from a fielded scientific journal or an established and respected scientific news outlet and that the references redirect where they are supposed to; books are great sources of information as well, but are often more biased in my experience. This is certainly a task that a lay-editor will be able to participate in. Another suggestion is to simply use common sense; if a large addition/change to a watched article goes unsourced, comment it out until someone offers a valid citation. This along with the above mentioned suggestion of verifying information with consistent editors should yield positive results for the future. As for past edits on the majority of other articles, it will likely be a long road unfortunately, waiting for for the right knowledgeable editor to finally rewrite an article, properly sourcing it and removing the infactual and fringe material.--Xession (talk) 06:09, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Beyond just "checking sources on a page when one is finished with editing" this makes a pretty useful empirical point that perhaps we ought not accept so much unsourced material in the first place. While the various Wikipedia policies would seem to support getting rid of unsourced claims, the actual process of removing the chaff in many articles often meets with much disapproval from well-meaning editors and, sometimes, the non-assumption of good faith against the editor who requested the citation. N2e (talk) 07:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I would be hesitant to ever recommend deleting most/all unsourced material, especially if the person reviewing the article is a layperson. Surely discretion need be at the forefront of reviewing and not the haste of removing unsourced material. Options I would recommend instead are using {{fact|}} or commenting the entry out (<!-- -->). Deleting material can be just as damaging as the addition of bad material. This gives the information the opportunity to be vetted, without being buried under many other edits, and left in the past. Many edits can be easily viewed as infactual and unnecessary by editors with a more advanced knowledge of a topic and the addition of such content should certainly be deleted, so long as the editor is sure of the fault in the information. The last action I would advocate is for people, especially those who may be unfamiliar with a topic, to take a dogmatic approach to removing unsourced material. --Xession (talk) 07:22, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Note also that it was only possible to refute this instance because Alex Dessler was named, available, and responded quickly and clearly to email inquiry. Otherwise, we would have had to somehow search through the very large number of Google hits to look for a primary source, before deciding that there were none. There will surely be cases where we are not so fortunate. Wwheaton (talk) 06:53, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I've run across a few instances of what appears to be subtle vandalism, mostly by anonymous or new accounts; never anything this long-term though. About the only way I've found to guard against this sort of thing is to work to bring an article up to what the wikipedia community regards as a quality level (so that you can proof every entry and citation), then watch it like a hawk. Unfortunately, doing so brings its own set of problems. In instances where a dubious entry is added, it is easy to tag it appropriately then use the date field as a time stamp. If some number of months pass without it being addressed, we should feel free to yank it.

It might be interesting to indicate to the reader some measure of the reliability of an article, perhaps by a weighted rating based on the quality rating, the number of reverts per unit time, the type of sources used and the number of active accounts watching it. Doing so would require some inference though, perhaps based on a random sample of articles and a cross-check by reviewers.—RJH (talk) 21:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

• If I might chip in with a bit of an aside - this sort of "sneaky vandalism" is actually pretty common in the Aircraft project's articles. Somebody - usually an IP, but not always! - will sneak in and change a specification, or several. Sometimes this is easy to catch (as in one case this morning, where the HP value of an engine was changed but not the kW), but other times - especially if the original specifications in the article were uncited to start with - can be very difficult to spot, or even to determine if it's actually vandalism at all. Now, I'm not sure if this is truly "attempt[ing] to undermine the integrity of Wikipedia by deliberate covert fallacious editing", but it has the same effect. The answer is, as noted, to keep a sharp eye on things - and to WikiGnome around adding references wherever possible. Just adding references is sometimes as hard as writing from scratch, and has fewer tangible rewards, but can be very satisfying. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 19:53, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, intent is risky to guess. At first I thought my case above had to be malicious, but Dessler's email mentioning that he had actually made such a joke at a meeting >40 years ago, and that it might have been echoed in Hess's text (which I have not seen for 30+ years), does make it plausible that Lir might have been honestly in error, possibly even due to someone else's mistake. Wwheaton (talk) 18:12, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

While not directly pertaining to WP:Astronomy, I thought I would share another long-standing error I just noticed (and have since corrected). Here is a link to an image comparing 3 spacecraft; as labeled, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, and 2001 Mars Odyssey. Looking at the uploaded image, I noticed that the far left craft was most certainly Mars Climate Orbiter. The image has existed, uncontested since 2005, and because of this, I assumed possibly someone at NASA simply made an error. However, following the source link, one can clearly see that the image is almost identical, with exception to the correct image of 2001 Mars Odyssey being in place. This was clearly a deliberate attempt to alter the image, and while minor, is rather troublesome nonetheless. This problem may go deeper than I first imagined.--Xession (talk) 00:06, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

You cannot rule out that the error is on NASA's side simply because they at present have it correct. Njardarlogar (talk) 18:00, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

The corrective activity described above in this section looks like really good work, but the discouraging thing to me is that it seems like a drop in the ocean. I've come across a steady stream of edits that worsen astronomy or physics articles, whether in big or small ways. The specifics described in previous posts in this section amount to examples of a wider and more pervasive problem. Bad edits have come in several shapes and forms, and perhaps no more than a small proportion I've seen were actually malicious, but in view of what's been said above maybe I've overlooked a lot. Sometimes the bad edits I've seen were rather clearly based on preconceived ideas or prejudices, sometimes due to misunderstanding of a citation, sometimes due to the use of citations that were poor quality in themselves. Some have been clearly due to a degree of ignorance that could have been simply cured just by reading and understanding the article and maybe checking a few of its linked sources before actually editing it. Sometimes editors will vigorously defend poor edits of this kind. The whole effect seems to result in a kind of weathering erosion of article quality, and I find it discouraging, because I can see nothing by way of policy that effectively discourages it by preferring good-quality cited sources over bad ones. Terry0051 (talk) 00:17, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean WP:RELIABLE? There has always been an entropy effect on wikipedia that degrades article quality. Fortunately, most edits are either beneficial or easy-to-spot vandalism. However, it requires intermittent housekeeping to perform article upkeep and to maintain the quality articles at the current standard. —RJH (talk) 19:42, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

On the physics side, I think most edits actually end up degrading the article, but I agree that Wikipedia articles mostly operate as a balance between entropy and sporadic cleanup efforts. The days when the project was primarily about adding content are long-gone, for hard-science topics at least; now it's mostly about maintenance (though new material does turn up from time to time). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

True. Many of the core astronomy topics have been well developed so they are primarily in maintenance mode (with a few notable exceptions).

It would be good though if the Physics project could bring more articles up to GA and FA quality. (See Wikipedia:Good articles/Natural sciences#Physics and astronomy and Wikipedia:Featured articles#Physics and astronomy.) :-) —RJH (talk) 16:37, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I would like it if articles that have been quality reviewed, say to GA and FA status, could have some circles of internal protection, ideally informal and WP-cultural. For example, if there could be a loosely organized article committee formed when it gets to GA status, of editors who have contributed significantly, and who are committed and willing to keep an eye on it by regular patrolling. I think such a committee would need to have solid representation from people who have real knowledge of the subject matter of course, but also some people knowledgeable about the finer points of WP rules, manual of style, organization, and technology and tools (software). At the FA level maybe this could become more formal, with administrator and staff involvement. (The danger of course is that such informal circles could — would, sometimes — harden into circles of ownership, high priests or worse.) I think the entropy analogy is especially appropriate. Information (negative entropy) seems to evolve, rather like DNA. Constantly inevitably degraded, yet it gets selected, restored, and perpetuated if it is perceived to be "fit". In the best case here, "fit" would be "true"; but it could be merely interesting, funny, outrageous, or serving of some fringe agenda. One of the most interesting insights I have gained from WP editing is how deep and difficult these issues can be; just ponder Conservapedia. We are kind of a hive mind here, groping towards better ways to organize ourselves in pursuit of the core goal of making reliable human knowledge available to all. Wwheaton (talk) 18:05, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, in some respects, I think it might be better if the admins were not focused on maintaining specific pages because that could result in a loss of objectivity. Having a committed group of special interest editors would probably be a little better, with some allowance for oversight by independent ombudsmen to resolve valid but controversial revisions.—RJH (talk) 18:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)