Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 1

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General

Nice. Me likes. However it might be easier to read if there were some type of fill color for the headings. Or was that you idea all along? I guess it wouldn't be too hard to assign colors to each plant/moon system. Earth (green perhaps), Mars (obvious), Jupiter (orange would work nice), Saturn (yellow maybe?), Uranus (lightblue), Neptune (blue), pluto (gray). Just some random thoughts, do with them what you see fit. --mav

Yeah, I was wondering about that. Perhaps I could classify bodies by their general composition? Rocky bodies brown or maybe grey, icy ones cyan, gas ones yellow? That way the color gives a little "at a glance" summary information. Only downside is that the vast majority of objects would be rocky or icy, with only four gassy ones, so that doesn't leave a lot of variety. Bryan Derksen


I would change the word moons to satelites. - fonzy

Second that. As for the colours, they are nice, but since they are only one of each kind, it's not really identifying, like with the Elements or Tree of Life pages.
Some further notes:
  • maybe we can make another template for stars/constellations?
  • the current planet articles use perhelion and aphelion iso pericentron and apocentron (are these really the same?)
  • use less scientific terms, or at least explain them in a link (lithosphere f.e.)
Jeronimo
"perihelion" means "closest approach to the Sun", which isn't correct for moons. "perigee" means "closest approach to Earth", which would only be useful for Earth's moon. I don't know what the corresponding terms for the various other planets would be. So I went with "pericentron", which means "closest approach to the center" and is the generic term for such; see orbit (I'll make pericentron and apocentron into redirects once this template is finalized, of course). Bryan Derksen
I see. I suppose you could go for the appropriate names in the appriopriate articles. So use -helion for planets, -centron for moons, possibly -gee for "our" moon. No need to have all tables exactly the same. Jeronimo
Good idea, added to the guidelines. :) Bryan Derksen

What your saying makes no sence too me :-s - fonzy, that also gives me an idea have a link to a simpler form of the table for younger children etc.

Explanations of the terms can be found in orbit, perhaps that article could be edited to be a bit clearer.

Just a related question: in the solar system articles, asteroids an comets are present as if they're part of the system. However, asteroids and comets are not (I assume) limited to the solar system. Shouldn't they be presented in a more general way, and listing the proper names of the belts of asteroids (which have escaped me for the moment)? Jeronimo

from what i know some orbit are sun hence are part of our system :_s i'm not a great astronomer though. - fonzy

It is almost certain that there are asteroids and comets orbiting other stars, and possibly in interstellar space as well. However, none have ever been detected as far as I am aware, and it will be a very long time before we're able to see that well (we just started being able to detect larger-than-Jupiter extrasolar planets a few years back). The articles should mention this possibility, but there isn't much else to say on the subject right now I suspect. Bryan Derksen
Guess you're right. Still, it may be better to say Asteroid belt at the bottom of the "Solar System" articles than simply Asteroids. Jeronimo
Ah, I see; I didn't know that was the specific asteroid link you were talking about. Hm... You're probably right, but I hesitate to change the link from a nice hefty article like asteroids to a one-line stub like asteroid belt that probably won't grow a whole lot larger. I guess I'll have to think about how to beef it up after I finish with these factsheet tables. Bryan Derksen

Okay, here's a question I'm currently pondering. Should the lithospheric composition of a body be broken down by element or by compound? ie, for an icy body, would it be best to list it as 50% water ice, or as 40% oxygen and 10% hydrogen (numbers pulled out of thin air)? I haven't searched around yet to see which manner of breakdown is more common in the astronomical resources yet, so it may simply come down to availability of source information. Bryan Derksen

BTW, would it be interesting to list in which direction the planets rotate? I think Venus is a retrograde planet, and there may be some moons that have the same property (?). Jeronimo

Triton (moon) also has that property, in fact it orbits retrograde as well. And Uranus (planet) also rotates retrograde, from a certain point of view. This can be indicated easily enough by just adding a minus sign to the duration; that's how I did it in Neptune (planet)'s moon summary table. Alternately, an axial tilt of more than 90° indicates retrograde rotation. Or, more explicitly, one could just add "(retrograde)" after the rotation period. That will possibly make the table wider, though, so I'd rather go with the negative sign. Fortunately, there aren't a lot of planets where this is an issue, so it can be worked out on a case-by-case basis what to do. Bryan Derksen

RE:surface temprature should it be celsius of kelvin? - fonzy Also before we added the table to artciles, lets be 100% shore its what we need. tehr wise it'll be like the wikiprodject countries where there are some tables with older layouts and some with newere ones.

I think using Celsius (though not the SI standard) would be more useful. Not many people even know the Kelvin scale, let alone they know how much 100 K is.
Heh, edit conflict. Here's what I'd written in response to fonzy: "I considered Kelvin, and decided to go with Celcius for two main reasons: first and foremost, it's more familiar and intuitive to most people (not counting Americans :), and second it's trivially easy to convert to Kelvin if necessary just by adding 273.15. But the conversion can go either way, so that second point isn't really important. Also, the element factsheets already work in Kelvin. Hm... I'll think about that some more. Anyone else have an opinion or other thoughts on this matter?"
I think the only thing making me hesitate from committing to Celsius at this point is that the element tables use Kelvin, but since we both brought up peoples' general familiarity with Celsius I think I'm leaning in that direction now. Bryan Derksen
Another idea I had, which I think would be really cool, is to add a simplified overview of the solar system as an image under the table title, and highlight the discussed planet. Moons could have something similar, showing their position around the planet. But I realise this is quite advanced. Jeronimo

-not really just need a person good at computer graphics - fonzy

Fortunately, I fiddle around with raytracing (POVRay program) occasionally as a hobby, and there's a site out there somewhere which has "skins" for all the planets and some of the moons. I should be able to whip up decent original graphics if need be, especially since most of the planets and moons would be pretty small and low-res in such images. I could even do animations pretty easily, though I'll have to read up on some of the maths involved.
But I think I'd like to think about that later, after I finish with the tables. :) Bryan Derksen


I vote for simply breaking down composition by compound and link each of those compounds to articles and then state and link the elements in the compound articles. Compounds have emergent properties that are oftentimes far different than their bits and pieces so I don't think it would be too useful to list the elements. Kelvin should be used instead of celcius because this is the SI standard and is used a great deal in astronomy. Kelvin is also always positive values and tells you far more useful information about space objects -- it is a measure of the average heat content of the body. Celcius also has its 0 and 100 based on the melting and boiling points of H2O at standard pressure -- which is only found on Earth at sea level. Celcius therefore has limited utility. However, Kelvin should be linked and conversion factors placed on that page (just like with the element tables). I also like the idea of simply using a negative sign to indicate retrograde motion however this will be non-obvious to the vast majority of our visitors so I suggest we sublink retrograde under the minus sign. Then a person viewing the table could simply pass their mouse pointer over the link and presto! The word "retrograde" pops up in a mouse-over text box. Then if they need additional info they can click through (this is similar to the link; kJ/mol in the elements table). --mav

Good advice and ideas, all. And if all else fails, there may be room in the data column to have both Kelvin and Celsius, with Celsius in brackets. I imagine the table cells containing distance information will get somewhat large (in fact, it may be prudent to remove the AU parentheticals to keep the width down). As an experiment, I'm going to do up a planet with this table shortly to see how it looks with real data in it. Bryan Derksen

Also maybe next to the body name put the astronomical symbol for it (if its got one) - fonzy

As for the proposed colours, I have some different ones:

  • rocky: grey - that's the colour most people associate rocks with
  • ice: white - that's the colour of water ice (I know there are others)
  • gas: lightblue (as it is)
  • stars: yellow

I propose to use the real predefined HTML values for these. Jeronimo

I don't think white makes a good header color, since the default background color on most browsers is white; there'd be nothing to distinguish it. As for the grey, that was actally my first thought for rocky bodies so I'm game. Bryan Derksen

Yes, so the table is in fact transparent, that shouldn't really matter? Well, I guess it's just personal preferences here, so it doesn't really matter. I would however really prefer to use "color="yellow" " in stead of this one for the stars. Jeronimo


I think we will have to create a completel different table for stars. - fonzy


I just added a filled-out copy of the table to Venus (planet) as a "live" example to work with. As I had suspected, the (AU) information in the orbital radius cells added a lot of width to the table, so I'm going to take those out. Also, I couldn't find a convenient source of lithospheric composition, so I temporarily removed that from Venus' table. I'll put it back once I find a source. Bryan Derksen


The format of this table seems to have stabilized, there haven't been any new points raised in a few days now. I think the only outstanding issue is whether to go with pink or grey for the terrestrial planets (and maybe change the ice planet color, too). If there are no further problems or suggestions, then, I think I'll probably pick one of those colors and then start creating these factsheet tables in various articles around thrusday. Bryan Derksen 16:07 Aug 20, 2002 (PDT)

Oh, I have one: over on the Venus article the parenthetical (Gs) for gravity and (atm.) for atmospheric pressure are now the width-determining extras. It might be a good idea to just get rid of those and stick with the SI units, in the interest of saving a little more space. Bryan Derksen

Before we go too crazy about adding the table to many articles we may want to consider adding images to the top of the table of the bodies being described. This seems to work very well for the organism articles and saves valuable horizontal area. Another thing to consider is somehow tweaking the table to more distinctively distinguish planets from moons. Perhaps this can be done by having planets have a wider (or otherwise different) table border. The countries' template was applied way too fast after initial creation and the result now is that there a number of countries with a format that is not in sync with the current (hopefully mostly final) table and heading format. --mav

No problem. I've deliberately been adding the tables very slowly, both because I don't have a lot of time and to give room for ideas to show up thanks to wider exposure. So far there's only a table on Mercury (planet), Venus (planet), Earth, Mars (planet), Luna and Phobos (moon). I'll respond to your specific suggestions tonight, when I get home from work. Bryan Derksen

I don't think adding the templates right away will hurt. The application of the country template has led to a lot of changes and different versions around, but it has also attracted more people to the discussion as when we were only working at the Netherlands article, and they have brought good additions or at least discussion. Since there is no rule for a fixed structure among articles in a group at Wikipedia, it's not a problem if the now highly structured country articles have some minor differences in style and layout with other country articles. It will eventually be fixed.

Also, I think its impossible to agree upon a template that will never change. If somebody thinks the Flora or Fauna in a country deserve a special paragraph or that the national telephone prefix should be in the table, the template may be changed. And if man starts landing on other bodies than earth and the moon, we may want to add a table entry: man set foot on: (date), etc. Even if nothing would change, most objects in a group do not all have the same properties: not all moons have an atmosphere, not all countries have a capital city (or more than one), etc.

The only thing that should be taken care of when there is at least a basic form of a template is that nobody starts to modify the template at will (well, everybody can do what he/she wants of course), but rather should make a proposal at the page where the template is maintained. Right now, this is mostly done by the originators of the templates, who "guard" the templated pages. Jeronimo

I think a Table Row saying Discoverd by... is needed. If its say Jupiter right unknown etc. If it was discovered by a satelite (Voyager 1/2) rigth that down - fonzy.

I don't think it is needed and frankly looks very out of place along with the physical and chemical data. Who discovered the body and where is something that is best covered in a history section. But I will let Bryan decide since this is his baby. --mav

I think it is needed maybe put it somewhere else in the table. Bt ts good quick reference. - fonzy

Hm... an interesting idea, and right now I'm not really sure which way I think is best. On the one hand, every item in the table describes purely physical qualities of the body in question except for the discovery items. Also, five planets and one moon don't have discoverers or discovery dates, at least not ones recorded by history; those rows should be omitted from those tables. The "atmospheric composition" section is going to be omitted from a lot of the outer solar system moons, and the lithospheric composition thing has been omitted everywhere because I can't find a good source for it, but I'd prefer to keep such omissions to a minimum in order to make the table as consistent as possible. Tough decision. I'll think about it some more; I've been adding tables at a pretty slow rate, so there's no rush to finalize anything yet. Bryan 01:42 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

I do realise that some planets were discoverd bt the aceints and its unkwnown who discovered them. But you can just ommit it or right unknown or put earliest recording. - fonzy

Yeah, I think I'll probably go with that. Bryan 13:23 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

I have added it to Phobos and Deimos - fonzy

about the photos. I am not really shore about thsi. Should we move the photo on to the top of table. Or have a standard place for it. - fonzy

I'd suggest not, since there's going to be all sorts of different photos available for these objects (or in the case of some of the outer planet moons, none except for a pixel-wide streak). If we leave the photos to the main body of the article, then there's a lot more flexibility. The table also isn't as tall that way, allowing the layout of the article to adapt better to various browsers. I'm not wedded to the idea, though, so if anyone feels strongly about adding pictures to the table I won't stop it. Bryan 18:36 Sep 28, 2002 (UTC)

Well what i really meant or wnat is som,e basic standard. Standard size,type of picture and a standard placement. - fonzy

Back when I was adding a bunch of planet photos, I used the general standard of having a thumbnail with a maximum dimension of 200 pixels and centering it in the page with the caption underneath. But I didn't stick to that if there were some reason not to. Bryan 18:44 Sep 28, 2002 (UTC)

I'll jsut have a test go at 1 or 2 of them on postiing pictures etc. - fonzy

Something you might want to try is enclosing the image in this:
<div style="float:right">[[Image]]</div>
instead of using a single-cell table. It's a much tidier way to align images, and better style. Bryan 18:55 Sep 28, 2002 (UTC)

ok I'll try that. but do you think the layout is better iwth having image on the left?

Yup, the only reason "right" was in that sample code is because I cut and pasted it from Smiley. Bryan 18:57 Sep 28, 2002 (UTC)

Now thats sorted should we decide on re organizeng how the article is written.? - fonzy

I'm a little dissatisfied with it, actually. Where did the caption and the link to the larger version of the image go? I preferred the old layout over the current one. Bryan 19:15 Sep 28, 2002 (UTC)

the caprion went into teh image page. I just think a standard shoudl be put down as there seems to be none for the images, or atcual article on the planets. - fonzy What do you suggest? - fonzy

If there is a standard for images, I think it should be very flexible since the sorts of pictures that are available for planets vary quite a lot. I think the captions are important, other than that one should use whatever images seem appropriate to the particular article. Bryan

You see I like having things the same in a standard way, maybe its because of my AS. But I really think there should be a standard article. = fonzy altough its onyl you and me talking here. and its abit hard to judge withe 2 ppl.

Yeah, perhaps we should find some other talk: page to discuss the planet articles in general. This one's focus is just the factsheet table. Bryan

I have just taken out from the library the 2000 Cambridge Planetary Handbook. It is packed with tons of lists of numbers for the various planets and moons; I'm going to probably go on a massive factsheet binge sometime in the next few days. Before I do so, however, I'm considering tweaking the factsheet a little. A couple of ideas I'm kicking around:

  • temperature range as well as mean temperature
For some of the moons and planets, this is quite significant. Unfortunately, the book only lists temperature ranges for the planets, so some additional digging will be necessary to complete all factsheets.
All of the major sources of information I've found about the orbits of moons only lists eccentricity, and this book also lists error ranges for eccentricity which would be a pain to translate into peri/apoapsis. Also, it saves space, reducing two rows to just one without losing any information.
  • Albedo
It's listed in the book for almost all the moons, so why not?

Any thoughts or feelings on these additions? I'll go through and update all the existing factsheets myself, so no extra work for anyone. :) Bryan

Sounds OK. However, I think having a temperature range is much more informative than an average - in fact, we should have all. Also, make a link to albedo, it's not a common term. Jeronimo
Yeah, I'd been planning to list it as "max/avg/min". That way I can still fit it all on one "temperature" row still and hopefully save some space. Also, I was planning to look up the formula for figuring out peri/apoapsis from mean radius and eccentricity, and put that at elliptical orbit; that way I can have a link to that as well. I don't suppose anyone knows it offhand? Bryan
Maybe the formula at eccentricity is of use (haven't checked)? Jeronimo
Unfortunately, I don't think it is; it allows you to find the eccentricity of an ellipse given its semimajor and semiminor axes, and what I need is to be able to go from a mean radius and an eccentricity to a closest-approach and farthest-approach. I'm not much of a math whiz, so I have no idea how to derive this myself; I'll probably try asking one of the sci.space newsgroups if nobody here knows offhand. Bryan
Just found the formulae, and put them over at elliptical orbit. They're pleasingly simple, so I think I'll update the factsheet formula to only include eccentricity alone and omit the apo/periapses. It's almost trivial to convert. Bryan

Maybe its to early to discuss this yet. But I think we should start thinking about the asteroids\meteors\comets table. - what things should be on it? - fonzy

Depends on the sources of information we can find. For asteroids, I suspect orbital radius, period, eccentricity, inclination, diameter and spectral class would be a good set of data to look for. Diameter information is likely to be sparse for the smaller asteroids. For comets, much the same, but with the addition of last known date of perihelion and probably without diameter - only a grand total of two or three comets have been studied closely enough to have good diameters available, AFAIK. But I'm not going to touch this until I'm done with the planets and moons, so it'll be at least two weeks and possibly more before I do any significant work on comets and asteroids. Feel free to put together a template without me, I'll make comments and stuff. :) Bryan


I dotn really know much about atseroid data. Now should the colour scheme remain as i think was originally planed so atseroids that pinky colour and light blue for comets. - fonzy

You bet! Now how are we going to deal with the fact that your max/min temps on Earth are different than what I have. Lir 05:04 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

Hi, some days ago I lifted the planet table from Jupiter and created the asteroid one, and didn't even know about this page! :-) Table had some different "revision" going from asteroid to asteroid, but now I think it's quite stable. I read above some debate about the discoverer, but it should stay there. At18 1 Feb 2003

Hi! I haven't done much with this wikiproject in recent months, real life sucked away much of my free time, but I'd always intended to one day come up with a table for minor planets. Your approach looks quite good, thanks for kickstarting it. My only suggestion offhand would be to move the "discoverer" row up to the top of the table, since that's where it is in the planetary tables. I'll do that myself, if there's no objection, next time I've got a chunk of free time. Bryan
No problem, change it as you wish. I'll look at some more asteroid and some stars too At18

Hi, Any suggestion for the table in List of meteor showers? -- looxix 23:34 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

At18, nice table for galaxies but probably too wide. -- looxix 19:21 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

Seems to be wide mainly from the text fields - keep them short and it should be OK. At18 21:56 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

Galaxies

The table for galaxies should specify what mass is being measured: mass of stars from visible light (with a mass-to-light ratio assumed or calculated), mass of atomic hydrogen (radio observations), or dynamical mass (from doppler shifts of stars on opposite sides of the galaxy).

I would also like to see what type of galaxy it is; i.e., Hubble or deVaucouleurs type, spiral, elliptical, and all the subcategories.

Zandperl 19:22, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The category Galaxies contains articles and subcategories entitled both 'Galaxy (thing)' and 'Galactic (thing)'. Although I can't spot any duplication, a standard naming convention might assist... Ian Cairns 17:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)



It has been proposed that every WikiProject choose a single article which represents what the Project members hope each article will eventually look like, so that interested onlookers can see where a Project is heading. If this project is ready to choose such an article, please do so and link to it after the Project name at Wikipedia:WikiProject. If there are no articles ready for this yet, you may wish to focus as a group on an article which is close and/or will be relatively easy to research.


Naming conventions of stellar objects

There is a concern of what naming convention should be used for the article's name of certain stellar objects. In specific, the concern is in relation to asteroids, messier objects and certain small stars (not galaxies nor planets). For example, NASA uses the convention Asteroid Number Name to name asteroids on their website: [1] [2] [3]. However, it doesn't use the same naming convention for messier objects: [4] [5] [6].

IMHO, we should use the convention Type_of_object Number Name, but there are other concerns regarding this convention. Obviously, for objects like galaxies, planets or moons, stating the name is sufficient (like Earth, Moon, Jupiter, etc).

--Maio 21:07, Mar 11, 2004 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that we should use the simplest and shortest reasonable name, when no change of cofusion exists. It's just that simple.

Hence the articles in question in the dispute between me and Maio should be 4769 Castalia and M13. Articles should be titled so as to aid in "accidential" linking; I can't ever imagine someone linking to asteroid 4769 Castalia or globular cluster M13; that's not intuitive. Furthermore, the "type" of the object is often in debate (and therefore cannot be assigned reliably). Descriptors in article titles also tend to be contentious (recall September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks vs. September 11, 2001 attacks) since they oversimply the often lively and contentious debate over the nature of things. Not to mention that this would go against our conventions in any other number of fields. We wouldn't (I hope) title an article "Aircraft Boeing 747" or "Firearm AK-47."

Let article titles be simple and straightforward -- call things what they are, with no superfluous description. -- Seth Ilys 22:41, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've moved them back. Maio's argumentation doesn't make much sense to me. — Timwi 23:21, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
NASA [7], Scott Hudson [8] (scanned Asteroid 4769 Castalia) and Steve Ostro [9] (discovery team of Asteroid 1998 KY26) use the convention Asteroid Number Name. Why should we use Number Name and make it more difficulty for those who are not astronomy-oriented? I'm sorry, I utterly fail to see your reasoning. How can 1998 KY26 be more attractive than Asteroid 1998 KY26 for a 7th grader who is looking for information about the asteroid? Again, I utterly fail to see your reasoning. You see, when search engines link to pages they use the page title, in this case, having the word 'asteroid' on it implies that no confusion whatsoever will be created for those who are not familiar with astronomers naming conventions. This is the same reason why we never, ever, use an acronym for an article's title. Again, I utterly fail to see your reasoning. Just try to convince me please, I'm here to help in the project.
For a web user it is much more intuitive to click something named Asteroid 4769 Castalia than 4769 Castalia. In the example that you stated, everyone calls them 747, however we use the naming convention Boeing 747.
Let me give you an excellent example of my reasoning. When you describe automobiles in papers, you never state something like Celica 2004 GT, you always use the convention Toyota Celica 2004 GT. Toyota is redundant, as they are the only manufacturers of the Celica, however you always state the manufacturer. The same thing happens with guns (don't have an example right now, sorry).
--Maio 02:20, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)
But we do use acronyms as the titles for some articles, most notably NASA, because it's overwhelming known by only its acronym. :) -- Seth Ilys 03:48, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Forgot to add (sorry had a phone call) that obviously no one uses the term Firearm AK-47, however all military personel and news reporter always use the term AK-47 rifle although it is obvious to them that an AK-47 is a rifle. This is not a matter of being superflous or simple, it is a matter of providing a detailed and precise link to visitors who are not familiarized with the subject at hand. Obviously, for you it is not intuitive to state Asteroid 4769 Castalia as you are fammiliar with the subject and state 4769 Castalia instintively, neither it is normal for me to write something like C++ programming language, however I must do so when I'm writing a paper. --Maio 02:36, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Seth Ilys, only when the most straight forward name isn't possible (isn't there a M13 highway in Britain) we have to find an alternative. andy 23:25, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maio has also created Asteroid 1620 Geographos - Seth Ilys 23:44, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I also created Asteroid 1998 KY26, Asteroid 2063 Bacchus, and Asteroid 4179 Toutatis in case you didn't notice. --Maio 02:20, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

I think the Messier number is sufficient, as most searching for these articles would put in the shorter title, or could find it if they didn't see it at the longer title. However, I have an additional concern: when do we call Messier objects by name, and when by number? Why is M13 the article and not Hercules Globular Cluster, when Crab Nebula is the article and not M1? If we decide to do it based upon how well known the name is only, then we should make corrections to the links in the table of Messier objects. It could also be helpful to create a list of asteroids page. --zandperl 01:05, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I think that articles should use the most "human-readable" name possible that doesn't result in ambiguity; when I see a link to "M1" I have no idea what is being referred to, but call it "Crab Nebula" and I immediately remember. As for the list of asteroids, there's already List of asteroids in our Solar System (the "Solar System" qualifier being useful for when the first extrasolar asteroids are discovered in July of 2074 :) Bryan 02:28, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There's another possible alternative, which seems to me to bridge the gap between the desire for putting the designation first and the desire for "human-readable" article titles: label the pages as if there were disambiguations, e.g. M13 (globular cluster) or 4179 Toutatis (asteroid). This, too, has its drawbacks, but at least it's another option to consider. -- Seth Ilys 02:16, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A small point - but in the template for the factfile table: if "radius" is wikified, then surely "mean" should be as well, does anyone object to this? Ed g2s 02:13, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Bryan 05:26, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Seth - I think you ought to stick by your guns here. I find Asteroid 4179 Toutatis entirely too clunky, and while 4179 Toutatis (asteroid) is a step in the right direction, it is still a totally non-intuitive title from the amateur astronomer's persepctive. Moreover, I feel we ought to assume some level of competence in a user's ability to use a search engine effectively, and some basic understanding of naming conventions. For instance, there is an article on Phalaenopsis. If I stumbled across it and I were not an orchidhound, this title would give me no information at all about the contents of the article. However, that should not be a concern, given that my arrival at this page was essentially a random act. On the other hand, if I were looking for info about orchids, I might have arrived here either by a Google search for 'phalaenopsis', or by a Google search for 'orchid', which then directed me here. The ability to carry out a purposeful search on the presumption of adequate forwarding links removes, I feel, any need to pre-digest title info for users. I also worry about dumbing-down things to the point where no one can find anything for the flashing neon arrows (your info here your info here your info here). While I appreciate Maio's concern that information should be as easy to locate as possible, I also believe that article titles should be as consistent as possible, and if there is a naming convention already in place, it be used, with disambig articles as necessary, M1 for instance. Denni 18:25, 2004 Mar 16 (UTC)

We should also note that not all objects are well known - some end up double numbered like Comet 95P/Asteroid (2060) Chiron. Or is it Asteroid (2060) Chiron/Comet 95P? Another reason not to add "type" prefixes to objects. Rmhermen 05:42, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

Minor planets

Asteroid Physical Properties

User:Michaelbusch: I've noticed some confusing and at times inaccurate estimates of the properties of various asteroids. A case in point is 99942 Apophis. I've worked on this object and I can say that we do not know the mass to anything better than a factor of ten. Would it be useful to construct an article discussing the how various properties are estimated and the uncertainties in each? If there is interest, I can post such an article.

Fully agree! The same potential confusion applies to TNOs (and subcategories). Rare, more precise data are quoted occasionally but a casual reader may be confused about what is currently known and what is simply assumed. IMHO, an article about the methods for determining/constraining physical parameters would be most welcome! Eurocommuter 13:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The predominant style for naming Wikipedia articles about minor planets right now seems to be minor planet number followed by name, e.g. 1 Ceres. The predominant convention I'm seeing in general astronomical works, both on-line and off-line, follows this standard, but additionally puts the number in parentheses, e.g. (1) Ceres. My personal preference would be to see us move toward the latter style. —LarryGilbert 19:30, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

The convention of 1 Ceres as opposed to (1) Ceres was already in place when I started, I'm not sure how it was decided.
Parentheses are better for numbered-but-unnamed asteroids, such as (66391) 1999 KW4, to avoid confusion with the year. But for numbered-and-named asteroids it's less important. I've seen both styles used; for instance, http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/ omits the parentheses. Perhaps people omit the parentheses because they're lazy to type them, and the form with parentheses is more correct. The Spanish wikipedia uses parentheses, for instance http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/(1)_Ceres , while the German wikipedia refers to (1) Ceres in the article text although the article itself uses the naming convention http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(Asteroid)
If your personal preference is strong enough to actually do the drudge work of adding the parentheses and moving and editing all the pages involved, go for it. It's a lot of work and I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.
-- Curps 09:36, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I've designed a true template for minor planets over on the French wikipedia (fr:Modèle:Planète mineure), and I'll probably import it into here soon. On the subject of names, I've also dug deep into the IAU conventions and offer the following insights:

  • Names always include the number, ideally in parentheses. Dropping the parentheses for named asteroids lightens the text (e.g. 1 Ceres instead of (1) Ceres).
  • Temporary designations ending with a number are written as indices: (15760) 1992 QB1, for example.
  • Diacriticals are part of the official name but are omitted on some of the reference web pages for technological reasons. An exhaustive list of "diacritical-ed" names is found at fr:Discuter:Désignation des astéroïdes.
Yes, in theory, it should be "1992 QB1". However, this is mostly theoretical... in practice, the subscripting is not done. The popular astronomy magazines don't use it Astronomy.com, the MPECs don's use it (they just use plain ASCII), Hohmann Transfer, etc. So adding it only adds confusion.
I propose that 1992 QB1 should be reverted to not use subscripts, and we should make non-subscripting the Wikipedia standard. -- Curps 16:25, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Here are two web sources that provide official designations, with diacriticals.
Notice how they do include the subscripting of asteroid temporary designation sequence numbers. The fact that popular (american) astronomy magazines don't bother with it is obviously because they feed off of the ASCII sources. That doesn't make it "right", although I'll admit it isn't "wrong" either. Should Wikipedia use subscripting? I say yes, mostly because I do not feel it introduces any confusion at all.
Urhixidur 21:20, 2004 Jul 18 (UTC)

It's not just American magazines, but French magazines ("2001 RX 76") [10] and German ones "2001 CP 20" [11] also.

And all of these (American, French, German) are print magazines, not just websites, so they can easy do things "properly" if they wanted to.

Even scholarly journals don't seem to use subscripts: [12], [13] [14] and other examples.

I think there is no point for us to try to be "more correct" than the rest of the astronomical world. The de facto standard is, subscripts are not used.

-- Curps 22:05, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The question of the naming of minor planets has cropped up on both Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) because of a recent WP:RM vote:

Talk:657 Gunlöd#Suggested moves to add diacritics: a multiple page-move vote at WP:RM results in diacritics being applied to names of minor planets, following the International Astronomical Union's recommendations.

As this is an exception to the long running dispute on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) over diacritics (or "accent marks"), I think is is probably best if this is incorporated into this guideline if the people who specalise in this area think that it should be a general rule. --Philip Baird Shearer 00:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Input from the members of this Wikiproject would certainly be welcome! See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Diacritics in minor planet names and several sections of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). In summary, it is a controversial issue in general, and while there seems consensus over the specific names involved in the move, there seems a great deal of reluctance to make this a clear and accessible guideline. My guess is that some fear that it will give ammunition to the promoters of more widespread use of diacritics. Andrewa 14:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
You might find Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Norse mythology) interesting and instructive. It was developed during October/November 2005. Archive 3 shows (yet again) how the community is split on the issue of diacritics. --Philip Baird Shearer 22:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

infobox meanings?

Some meanings are not so obvious, for example Rotation period is the sidereal day and is usually wiki-linked correctly, but Escape velocity and Gravity could be more rigourously defined.

Should there be a link in the infobox to a What are these? definition of the terms? Otherwise users will click on, for example, Escape velocity, and get very confused by the explanation they find (try it!). By contrast Axial tilt is an excellent example of explaining a term.

Escape velocity appears to be the polar escape velocity, calculated from the polar radius, and this too seems to be correct in wikipedia (I've been checking each entry from Earth to Neptune using my escape velocity calculator).

NASA's datasheets define Surface gravity (m/s2) as: Equatorial gravitational acceleration at the surface of the body or the 1 bar level, not including the effects of rotation, in meters/(second^2) and Surface acceleration (m/s2) as Effective equatorial gravitational acceleration at the surface of the body or the 1 bar level, including the effects of rotation, in meters/(second^2)

Surface gravity seems relevant to orbiting bodies, while surface acceleration is relevant to people or things on the surface, or rocket launches.

I'm not sure if I would prefer Polar gravity and Equatorial gravity, as there are often differences, especially large differences for Jupiter and Saturn.

I've rambled enough. -Wikibob | Talk 23:23, 2004 Mar 21 (UTC)

The new "Category" feature

Just to let everyone know who's interested in this wikiproject, I've started pondering how to go about categorizing astronomical objects over on Category talk:Solar System]. Bryan 15:19, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Database value retrieval proposal

I believe the wikipedia project is in error to attempt to record on each page data about bodies such as mass and eccentricity, when these data would be better pulled from a database of some sort. Such a database should be under the administration of a recognised authority (IAU, NASA, whoever), allowing increased dependability, decreased chance of error and a centralised system for data storage.

It doesn't just have to be limited to numerical data, images could also be indexed and presented as thumbnails, for example. Does wikipedia currently have the facilities to generate requests to other servers, parse resultant data and present the output?

I envisage something like the following:

  • User requests entry for NGC 3472
  • Wikipedia retrieves prose discussion from internal source
  • Wikipedia formulates query, asks SIMBAD for data, parses resultant XML and generates info box
  • Wikipedia requests index of images from 2MMASS (or wherever), appends list
  • Wikipedia returns page to user

Comments, suggestions?

I'd love it if it could be made to work.
Urhixidur 04:49, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
The external dependancies worry me. If one of those sources becomes unavailable, bits of Wikipedia disappear. Also, what of the licencing? I think it would be better to import the data, and perhaps have some sort of "maintenance" bot that can update the figures in Wikipedia if the authoritative source changes its mind. Bryan 06:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If a source should become unavailable (temporarily) then fallback servers could be used. If a database should go permanently offline, the lookup mechanism could be quickly changed to use another one. Perhaps alternatives could be catered for ahead of time. Honestly, I think it far more likely that the wikipedia would be down than ADS or SIMBAD :) [[User:Nickshanks|Nick | ✎]]
While dumping huge piles of data into Wikipedia makes me nervous too, I think on-the-fly retrieval and incorporation would be a bad idea. Wikipedia is inescapably about caching knowledge from elsewhere - in particular, reconciling data from multiple sources if there isn't a single authoritative source (and there usually isn't) - and provided data doesn't have to be updated every five minutes it falls into that category.
However, I think a link from each instance of (e.g.) Template:Star to an appropriate lookup on something like SIMBAD would be a good idea; that way people can check for more up-to-date data without Wikipedia having to keep bang up to date.
JTN 17:49, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)
Yes, perhaps the templates can auto-generate links to a specific database, say from the GSC number or something. [[User:Nickshanks|Nick | ✎]]
Perhaps someone can use Rambot as an example? Ardric47 01:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Planetary Orbits

Angular data, I feel, are better reported in decimal degrees. Anyone who has had to manipulate the data (in a spreadsheet or otherwise) knows what I mean. Degrees, minutes and seconds should be parenthetical.

Although it seems logical at first to group the Argument of perihelion right next to the Perihelion, closer inspection reveals trouble brewing. First off, it breaks the more natural sequence of mean radius - eccentricity - perihelion - aphelion (values which are closely related to each other, as every one will agree, I'm sure). Next, in terms of orienting the orbit in space, it seems more natural to first describe the orbit's size and shape [mean radius, eccentricity], then tilt it away from the (default) ecliptic [inclination], then rotate its line of apsides [longitude of the ascending node] and only then to finally rotate it (within its own plane) into proper place [argument of perihelion]. This "natural order" is reflected in the oft-used longitude progression, such as the data on the JPL pages: Longitude of Ascending Node, then Longitude of Perihelion, then Mean Longitude. Each one is the partial sum of its predecessors (i.e. the longitude of perihelion is the longitude of the ascending node plus the argument of perihelion, and the mean longitude is the sum of the longitude of perihelion with the mean anomaly).

Am I making sense?

Urhixidur 04:49, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Perfect sense. I've updated all of the arguments of perihelion and longitudes of ascending node. I also added the Epoch to the top of the orbital data box.

Edsanville 16:48, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Supernova

I think the supernovae info box is missing a vital piece of data: the date of the supernova (maybe when it hit maximum brightness) Ed Sanville 15:29, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The only reliable date is the date of discovery. I'll add that.


Could we use two tables, one for the supernova and one for the remnant. Its just that for old SN we don't really have info on the progenitor, but we've could put stuff like their size, surface brightness and SNR type (I've added SNR type to the table) - Shell, Filled centre or composite. Only problem is how to not duplicate things such as position. Suggestions? --Sillylizard 09:52, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category umbrella for astronomical objects

We have the hierarchy found at the astronomical objects article (Category:Astronomical objects) or the one used with Category:Celestial bodies. Which one to use? how do we clean the articles? which one is more intuitive? which one is easier to use? any other options?

Btw, could someone change Category:Sol System planets to Category:Planets in the solar system por favor? —Joseph | Talk 06:55, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

You mean Category:Planets in the Solar System, don't you? 132.205.15.4 04:23, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Category:Stars & Category:Galaxies

There is a need to subcategorize stars. Currently the stars are categorized under Category:Stars. However that will lead to a massive page and not duly help navigation. I made an attempt to clean up this by moving articles on individual stars to Category:List of stars, so that the main category page is not so cluttered, since individual stars would have the preponderance of entries. This is meant as a temporary solution until people actually categorize these things properly. An administrator advised me to stop. Discussions on the issue are at: Category talk:Stars#Category:List of stars. As most star articles are very stubby, relying on article content to categorize will not be possible in most cases.132.205.15.43 04:50, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Can someone build a skeletal Star categorization scheme and wikipedia category pages in any case? 132.205.15.43 04:50, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • should there be a list of stars in general such as - Category talk:Genera? 132.205.15.43 04:12, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • WP:CFD Category:List of Stars and Category:List of Galaxies are currently up for vote. 132.205.45.110 16:17, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Not sure I see the benefit of having all articles on individual stars listed on one single page (what if we had articles on several thousand stars?), but I suppose some might. I would suggest one of the following:

  1. Categorize articles about individual stars only under one or more subcategories of Category:Stars. Nothing else goes in those subcategories. The non-individual-star articles go in another category. No one page lists all stars, but everything's easy to find.
  2. Use the List of stars and related pages to list all stars. The benefit of using a list here is that you can include more information about stars, such as alternate designations.
  3. If all we really care about is having a list of all stars, we could add Template:Star to each star page (probably want to think about exactly what template we want to use before doing this). If someone wants to find all star articles, they check "What links here" for the template. This approach would also have the advantage of making our star pages more uniform.

JYolkowski 21:31, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:Star requires alot of data to fill in. In fulfilling the purpose of listing all stars, I've created a template Template:List of stars that can be added to each star article, simply and directly. 132.205.15.43 03:43, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Someone speedily deleted the template. It contained just : [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:List of stars|list of stars]] Perhaps the name is the problem, trying Template:Listing of all stars 132.205.15.43 03:54, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
revised it into a box format 132.205.45.148 16:39, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
box renamed to Template:Star listings 132.205.15.43 03:50, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
box for galaxies Template:Galaxy listings 132.205.15.43 04:03, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

An update: Both the "List of galaxies" and the "List of stars" categories are going to be deleted. Note that, in the future, there should be a way to view the contents of all sub-categories of a parent. (At least, we hope there will.) That would provide an easy way to get at the contents of Category:Stars without having to list everything any it.

Here's what I think would be useful:

My goal is to have something fairly unambiguous and easy in place so that I (and others, but I figure it'll be mostly me) can move articles out of the "List of" categories and into a scheme that is more useful. I can do the moving out without the moving in, but if I'm going to be editing all of the articles anway...-Aranel ("Sarah") 15:45, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Should also move stars out of Category:Stars and into the subcats. (only about half the stars are in Category:List of stars, the other half are still languishing in Category:Stars) 132.205.15.43 03:43, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Having just emptied Category:List of stars, I have the following suggestions:
  • Most stars can easily be categorized under Category:Stars by spectral type. (However, a couple of the types are redundant with other specifications.)
  • Category:Variable stars is often relevant, as is Category:Star systems.
  • Category:Hertzsprung-Russell classifications is currently not in any condition to be helpful to laypeople. The distinctions seem to be somewhat vague. Different groups might be more useful (in particular, a category for red dwarfs, which seem to come up an awful lot).
  • If a specific type or a spectral type cannot be determined based on the article, it should probably go in the parent Category:Stars. (I'm afraid that stars listed in Category:Constellations sub-categories only will be "lost".) I found maybe half a dozen in the list category that were like this. If they clutter up the category, that should motivate folks to research them. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:50, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Star template

Do we really need a massive template for each page that describes a star? I'd like to suggest having at least two separate templates. The first would have the absolute minimum information that would appear in a standard stellar catalog. (I.e. Name(s)/Identifiers, RA, Dec, Mv, and Stellar Classification -- including variability). The second would be a detailed template for those stars that are of special interest.

Alternatively we could have 2-3 templates: a main template for the upper right that gives the basic observational data; a characteristics template for listing the more detailed information (which could go down near the bottom of the page?), and one or more orbital parameter templates for multi-star systems and/or systems with planets. — RJH 23:47, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that we should have one small template with minimal information, and other, more detailed templates. I feel that one of the reasons the existing templates aren't being used is because it's hard to fill them out in their entirety. Having a small template would help resolve this problem. JYolkowski 15:29, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • So I'd like to suggest modifying Template:Star to just display the basic observational data applicable to every star, and add a Template:Stellar template for the more detailed template. (The two templates to have a similar appearance for consistency, at least in the first few rows.) — RJH 18:54, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • Okay a Template:Stellar is on the WP:AO page. If there is no objection I'll go ahead and trim Template:Star. Thanks. — RJH 15:36, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
      • The templates should probably be split up like in the "Tree of Life" WikiProject, with a header portion, several middle portions, and a footer portion. 132.205.45.148 16:45, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
        • Since all the NAME portions of all the boxes are the same, being bold, I've created Template:Astrobox_begin, Template:Astrobox_begin2, Template:Astrobox_end. The observational data can be split out the same way, with ancillary boxes for field specific to the astronomical object class (galaxy/star/cluster...) Template:Astrobox_observe Template:Astrobox_observegal Template:Astrobox_observeclust Template:Astrobox_observetar. This is how the Tree of Life project works, and it seems to work well enough. 132.205.15.43 03:19, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
          • Templates are more fine-grained in ToL though. 132.205.15.43 03:45, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
        • So for stars, at least, would the following arrangement make sense? — RJH 19:43, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
          1. Template 1 — Star name; basic observational data' (RA, Dec., Spectrum, Visual Magnitude)
          2. Template 2 — Astrometry (radial v, proper motion, position angle of motion, parallax with error, derived distance, derived absolute magnitude), color/characteristics (B-V, U-B, V-R, R-I, rotation, oscillation, notable features), and catalog information.
          3. Template 3 — Visible companion information (perior, ellipticity, &c.)
          4. Template 4 — Spectroscopic companion information.
          5. Template 4 — Close table.
I have added several new Template:Astrobox_begin templates which automatically link to astronomical databases. See e.g. 3C279 for an example of their use. The templates are Template:Astrobox_begin3, Template:Astrobox_begin4 and Template:Astrobox_begin5 Rnt20 20:33, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Splitting Lists of asteroids for size

A couple of months ago I posted a comment on Talk:List of asteroids about dealing with the fact that all of the 1000-asteroid pages were around 90-100K in size, and would need to be split into three or four parts to go under the Wikipedia size guidelines. This was around the time that we split the Meanings of asteroid names pages into 500's for similar reasons. The List of asteroids pages are longer because they have more data. We could reduce the data on the actual lists pages, moving more of it onto individual asteroid pages(when we make more of them), and maybe only cut them in half. Thoughts? Alfvaen 18:25, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

If you reduce the length of each list sufficiently, there is no longer any advantage to having separate articles for names and meanings: as it is now there are no lateral links between the two. It would probably be worthwhile splitting the lists down to 200 or even 100 and merging the meanings back into the main articles. --Phil | Talk 15:26, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Astronomy COTW?

It seems to me that there are lots of astronomy articles which are currently quite short and stubby, which could easily be developed into featured articles - for example Orion Nebula,globular cluster, open cluster - a wealth of images are available, and these are important and well-studied objects. So, I was thinking that maybe an astronomy collaboration of the week could be started. Not sure at all how one goes about setting up a COTW, or whether there would be enough interest in an astronomy one to justify it, so I thought I would float the idea here. Any thoughts or suggestions, anyone? Worldtraveller 11:48, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am looking at going through some of the Messier Objects and putting together some readable articles. I like the current list of facts, but would like to at least add a more narrative portion. However, I am worried about copyright issues. In particular there is some great stuff on the SED Site but it seems we can't even cite it here? Even paraphrasing their material might be awkward, as there is so much of it. I can dig up sources and reference them at the end of the article...but don't have the time to match SED's compilation. I've been thru the Wikipedia's copyright FAQ's and am still unsure. I may just go ahead and put in an article as a proposal. Anyone with experience on this? --John Norris 8 July 2005 05:30 (UTC)

  • I'd be game for an Astronomy COTW. But perhaps the scope slightly to include aerospace topics? Maybe an "Outer Space" COTW? — RJH

Extrasolar Planets

As there is a discrepancy in the naming of extrasolar planets, what should they be? The HIP# as the primary name? HD#? Some Bayer or Flamsteed designation? Proper name of the star? Or the pet names for the planets that the discoverers come up with? (ie Osiris (planet)). I've put up move requests into WP:RM of the concerned planets. 132.205.15.43 05:01, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think following sequence is the best: Proper name -> Bayer designation -> Flamsteed designation -> HD number -> other. For example: Edasich b, ι Draconis b, 12 Draconis b, HD 137759 b etc. Bayer designation should precede the proper name if the name is too obscure. The planet letter (b in this case) should always be lower case to make it more distinct from binary components, although there is not any official designation convention. --Jyril 09:12, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer the "pet name" since that's the easiest to use in conversation and linking. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) has some things to say on this which I believe are relevant. Bryan 05:13, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, you are correct about the usability of nicknames, but they are not very widely used, especially with the case of "Goldilocks" (70 Virginis b). There is also a possibility that a casual reader may think they are widely accepted names. --Jyril 09:12, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
While I see the point about common names, I am very much in favour of using the official designation as the article title for extrasolar planets. These nicknames are virtually never used in the scientific literature (I found one reference to Osiris and nothing else), and they're not even much used popularly. I just did a search on BBC news, and found one mention of Osiris, and none for Methuselah or Bellerophon.
Just for comparison, the Cat's Eye Nebula is a semi-unofficial nickname for NGC 6543, but is widely used by astronomers (e.g. me! [15]) and in the press. In that case it makes sense to me to have the article at the easy-to-remember name. But for the planets, the most common name is still the official designation. Worldtraveller 12:16, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Stellar template sequence

I'd like to propose the following series of templates for use when describing a star:

{{Starbox begin}}

  • Name

{{Starbox image}}

  • Image
  • Caption

{{starbox observe}}

{{starbox character}}

...

{{starbox detail}}

  • (Highly-detailed continuation of {{starbox character}} template?)
    • Age -- billion years
    • Metallicity -- % Sun
    • Mass -- Msun
    • Diameter -- Rsun
    • Rotation period
    • Bolometric luminosity -- Lsun

{{starbox astrometry}}

...

For visual binaries:
{{starbox visbin}}

  • Companion
    • Period (P)
    • Epoch (T)
    • Semimajor axis (a)
    • Eccentricity (e)
    • Inclination (i)
    • Longitude (ω)
    • Position angle (Ω)
    • Ephemerides (2000)

For spectroscopic binary (or possibly astrometric planet):
{{starbox astrobin}}

  • Companion
    • Period
    • Distance
    • Mass
...

{{starbox catalog}}

...

{{starbox end}}

The minimum would be the stellar_base and stellar_end. Most stars would include the star catalog template. The stellar_astrometry is for use with nearby stars. Any thoughts or suggestions? Should the catalog information instead be placed in one of those panel-width templates at the end of the star page? Thanks. — RJH 20:36, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What would the advantage of this series of templates be over the existing {{Star}}? Some of the information you propose is not currently included in that, and I think it would certainly be good to include the astrometric information where known, and the Bayer, Flamsteed and HD designations, but might it not be easier to just change Template:Star to include them? Worldtraveller 10:48, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If it's all in one template, then all stars would have to have all of those sections displayed even if there was no information to put in them. Having multiple templates like that allows for more customization of the template, keeping it small for stars we don't have a lot of information for in here. However, I'm wondering if perhaps it might be better to put it all in one template anyway, since I imagine most of that information can be looked up fairly easily and should be added to articles it's not already in. Bryan 00:37, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Current star template is not expandible or extensible, but still needs a lot of information before it can be included on a star page. If we have a minimum star table that can be expanded later, it will be easier to set up on most of the star pages. All you'd need at first would be coordinates and magnitude. Also the star template does not include much astrometry information, binary orbit information, catalog information, &c. RJH 19:50, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If this template reorganization does go ahead, though, I suggest creating {{starbox planet}} to add to the stars with known extrasolar planets. This template could have simple stats like period and approximate mass, and could be added multiple times if there's more than one planet known to orbit that star. Bryan 00:37, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I would like to suggest the alternative naming scheme starbox ... to be more uniform with infobox ... and taxobox ... already in use elsewhere. --Phil | Talk 15:38, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
Works for me. — RJH

Starbox conversion

Starbox templates are being steadily added to the various star pages. The following have been completed:

Note: binary stars were merged on the same table by separating data with a slash (/). — RJH 19:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

A request from WP:Stub sorting

Hi - We over at the Stub sorting Wikiproject have a small problem: we have a template called {{star-stub}}, to add stub messages to small articles on stars. You have a template {{star stub}}, a smaller version of {{starbox}}. Would it be possible for you to change the name of your template to something like {{starbox-small}}? Otherwise the names are too close and likely to cause confusion. If you are willing to change it, I'd be only too happy to do some of the work involved in changing things over. Grutness|hello? 06:05, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't object to that. Doesn't look like a huge amount of work to do to change it over. Worldtraveller 07:01, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
No objections here. — RJH 21:54, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Thak you for creating the new name for the template. Would there be any objection if I replaced the old name with the new one on the articles where it appears and sent the old name to tfd? Or is that going too far? Grutness...wha? 00:54, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I was bold and moved the template. I'm limping through the links list replacing the old template: any help you have time for would be good. --Phil | Talk 11:44, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
Sure - over at WP:WSS replacing templates is what we do best! :) Grutness...wha? 11:59, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Many hands make light work - job done! Worldtraveller 12:25, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
I'll take {{star stub}} over to tfd to get rid of the name now. Many WikiThanks for your cooperation on this :)! Grutness...wha? 12:31, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

Now that the Starbox templates are set up, I'm going to request that the redundant {{Star}} template be deleted. I removed that template from the one page where it was in use. Are there any objections? :) — RJH 30 June 2005 16:02 (UTC)

No objections, so I put in a request for a speedy delete. — RJH 15:46, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Deleted and cleaned up. — RJH 21:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Removal of "colour" and "mass" from galaxy templates/infoboxes

I have been recently adding to galaxy articles and noticed that a very small amount of galaxies have their colour or mass recorded (atleast anywhere I look). If anybody knows how to change templates, consider removing these 2 from the galaxy template. It doesn't look good to have 2 "unknowns" or blanks in many observational tables. The few galaxies that do have this information available can have the informtaion listed in the article. Uber nemo 01:00, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

  • That works for me. I went to the {{Galaxy}} template page and checked the "what links here". There are only 24 pages linked to this template. Of these, only the following had a mass listed: Andromeda Galaxy, Spiral Galaxy NGC 2403, M110 (galaxy), NGC 2043. I'd also be in favor of adding an entry for the constellation in which the galaxy is located. A number of the galaxy templates mention the constellation in another field. :) — RJH 16:23, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 4 is not enough, I changed it and added a constellation tag. I could use some help adding infoboxes to articles. Uber nemo 15:37, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
    • I probably would have put the constellation up in the observation data section, since it's from our perspective. *shrug* — RJH 15:31, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
      • you can if you want, I put it near noticeable features because thats where the constellation name used to be listed, if we took away everything about the galaxy that was from our standpoint the chart would have only 3 entries on the bottom: radius, absolute magnitude, and notable features (other designations would not belong). Of course you could move "type" down to physical charcteristics, If anyone has any bright ideas of what we can rename the two sections and keep everything else, that be good, if we just rearange the template, all the articles with that templates will be messed up. Uber nemo 16:30, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • changing all the templates in each article is going to take too long and look really sloppy, I'll just move "constellation" up. Uber nemo

Some space on the left of the "planets and moons" table?

What about adding some space to the left of the "planets and moons" table? Otherwise there's no room between the article text and the table (see Charon (moon) for example) and the text is unnecessarily harder to read that way. Just a style="margin-left: 1em" at the top of the table would do the trick. What do you think? If we decide to implement it, then it will certainly be quite a lot of work to do, as it is unfortunately not a transcluded template. — Pt (T) 18:49, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't that make an already bloated table take up even more room? Maybe something slightly smaller such as 3px? :) — RJH 16:07, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. But I personally really don't have enough time to go through all the articles using the table... Perhaps a bot would be useful? — Pt (T) 18:42, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Proteus

I've done what I can with the template on the Proteus (moon) page. The template is quite short really given the lack of figures for the moon... very little is known about it.

If anyone can add to it, please do. - Burwellian 18:13, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Category:Galaxies by constellation

The category has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 August 9#Galaxies by constellation. It's been raised that input from this WikiProject in the discussion would be quite desirable. siafu 05:12, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I nominated that one, and listed it incorrectly. Right now that category's empty. And all the galaxies are already in their individual constellation category, which are subcategories of Category:Constellations, so galaxies can already be found by going through the constellation's category, which are pretty small so it shouldn't be too hard. →ubεr nεmo→ lóquï 15:57, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
Category:Galaxies by constellation - were deleted via CfD, because they were disused and empty. 132.205.94.34 01:27, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

some problems with Spiral Galaxy M100

Hello, there seems to be an error in Template:Galaxy listings (it refers to whatlinks there), and also, there is a better image of M100 on Image:Improvement in Hubble images after SMM1.jpg. Samohyl Jan 20:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Units for astronomical distances

Hello. The anonymous user editing from IP address 67.85.2.175 has been adding distances in miles, for instance, this edit added the fact that the Spiral Galaxy M61 is 352.4 quintillion miles away. I'm not into astronomy, but I would be surprised if astronomical distances were in fact measured in miles. Please have a look at his/her contributions and revert if necessary. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:42, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that the Astronomy community has standardized on the metric system, so I'd support such a revert. Besides, distances to galaxies are usually given in megaparsecs, light years or their redshift factor. — RJH 19:49, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Star Charts

Some objects have and observation section that tells where to look for and what kind of instrument can have a look at the said object. This is great because amateur astronomers can use Wikipedia to build watch plans. Many of those "observation sections" would benefit from a mini start chart showing the plain constellation the object is in and the object highlighted. While this sounds great, there are caveats. I know no way to specify what should be on a star chart that works across multiple tools.

To help the users, all those mini charts should look the same. What should be a dimmest magnitude shown? Real colors of black stars on white background? What size? 640x480 with a thumbnail on the article page sounds reasonable to me. Should the charts show the star names? Should the charts show the constellations lines ?

Kstars is Free Software and can produce the said charts but its scripting abilities are limited. Anyone know a better tool that is widely available? --Yannick Gingras 17:01, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

  • This is just my opinion: I think most of your questions depend on what you are trying to illustrate and at what scale. I'd go for the cleanest look that still shows what you are trying to illustrate. I.e. a constellation map would probably have a magnitude scale that would show the stars well on the thumbnail scale, but not too faint a magnitude or the data can get lost in the detail. If the constellation is important to the illustration then I'd include the lines. Otherwise not. I personally prefer dark stars on a white background because it shows up better on the monitor, as well as in low lighting conditions. Showing star colors may or may not be too much information. Again it depends on what you're trying to illustrate. :) Thanks. — RJH 20:24, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

b:Astronomy Wikibook Cleanup

I am looking for some people who are interested in perhaps a larger challenge than the usual fare here on Wikipedia. (not that you aren't doing good work here as well. Thanks for the effort to make high quality articles!)

I've been doing some cleanup on Wikibooks, and looked at the Astronomy Wikibook in terms of overall quality. It is frankly a mess and something that largely duplicates what is being done here on Wikipedia anyway, so I've nominated it for a VfD on Wikibooks. I do think a high quality textbook about astronomy would be very useful, and indeed is something that we actually need on Wikibooks. I've read a few astrophysics textbooks myself and as this Wikibook is currently written is far from useful for anything that could be used in a classroom setting.

I guess what I'm asking is that this Wikiproject also "adopt" this Wikibook to help in its cleanup, and try to put it on a much better standing both academically and make it something that a professor would want to use for an Astronomy 101 class. We don't need an encyclopedia of Astronomy here, but a real book that discusses Astrophysics in depth. This Wikiproject has perhaps the best collection of people who are interested in this subject, which is why I'm posting this comment here. I'll try to do what I can, but I'm mainly a very interested amature astronomer who loves the subject and likes writing Wikibooks as well. --Robert Horning 14:50, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Galaxy template "reform"

Hey, firstly I've added an image variable to Template:Galaxy. Unfortunately it does not fail gracefully if an image is not supplied, it shows {{{image}}}, so perhaps someone can fix the template. I tried to make it work with Template:If, but to no avail.

I've also incorporated this thing:

Centaurus galaxy
Galaxy listing of galaxies


... into the infobox, and removed it on one page (Centaurus A Galaxy).

It basically hangs around not looking too good, so I though it would be good for the infobox.

Any thoughts on this?

--JamesHoadley 08:48, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Other projects usually just make a pair of templates; one for the image and one without. Alternatively you can come up with a generic image, such as a galaxy with a big question mark on top, that you use when you don't have an image. — RJH 00:02, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I think we can do fine with just the one template, it just means that even if a body has no image, the line
| image =
still has to be included in the template. --JamesHoadley 00:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Comet template

I added the {{Comet}} template. It seems to me orbits of comets are bit less stable than one for minor planets (or I'm misinterpreting things...) so there is a shorter list of parameters. Also, giving the last and the estimated next perihelion is something interesting for the reader. Please, commment and improve! Awolf002 01:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

As in the discussion above, an "image" section sounds useful enough even if it is "empty" for quite a few comets. Maybe we get some GFDL compatible pictures from amateur astronomers with decent quality? Awolf002 04:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I added the template to already exisiting periodic comet articles, with the data being extracted from the "visible comet" list from the MPC. I have many more visible comets in that list than we have articles, however having just a template in an otherwise empty page is rather ugly. I will hold off on adding those. Here is the list of articles I updated:
4P/Faye, 9P/Tempel, 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, 32P/Comas Solá, 81P/Wild, 87P/Bus
Awolf002 15:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Recently, I put minor planets on my watchlist to prevent unnoticed vandalism. These pages sometimes just show the orbital parameters and a "canned sentence" about that this article is about a minor planet, e.g. 702 Alauda. That seems reasonable enough for our list of numbered comets, too. If nobody objects I will create a similar "canned" article for numbered periodic comets, which have current orbital parameters. Awolf002 00:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Look at 8P/Tuttle as an example for discussion. Thanks! Awolf002 02:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I finished with adding templates to all visible numbered periodic comets, using the MPC orbital data for epoch March 6, 2006. The MPC list also contains visible non-numbered periodic comet orbits (eg. P/1995 A1). Is it worthwhile to make stubs for those? Any other comments? Awolf002 15:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Planetary features

So there doesn't appear to be any convention on a template for a planetary feature. What do you think about an infobox tree format for things like craters, plains, valleys, and so forth? One of the things I was contemplating was how to fit the {{coor}} template format into this scheme. For example, in a template with separate lines for latitude and longitude, what about employing the {{coor|cc|tt}} form by, say, having fields for:

latitude
N_or_S
longitude
W_or_E

on, say, the Moon, and assembling it so that the latitude and longitude rows both have links to the same map information? For example:

... | latitude=42.5 | N_or_S=S | longitude=51.5 | W_or_E=E | ...

then the resulting coordinate entries would look like:

Latitude 42.5° S
Longitude 51.5° E

Thoughts? — RJH 19:41, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

  • For now I set up a new lunar crater template that has a single row for the coordinates, and includes the {{coor d}} template. (For example, see Abbe (crater).) Perhaps some day it can be refined. Also I tried out some of the maps and for an unknown reason the L&PI page isn't always finding the right pages. I'm not sure why, but the template is passing the right information so it can be fixed on the other end. It'll take me a little while to update all the crater pages with the new template and the reference link at the bottom... — RJH 23:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
A single line looks better to me than two. The example looks good! Awolf002 03:04, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay. I also put together a similar template that can be used to display a small image as well as the data. C.f. C. Mayer (crater). The reason I did that was because when somebody put an image at the top of the page the text didn't wrap very nicely and it looked a little ugly. So I folded the image into the table and it seems to look a little more elegant. :) — RJH 16:44, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we could ask the interwiki site kvaleberg.com (which currently handles mapping coordinates to online mapping sites) to set up a special page pointing to Google Moon, and possibly the digitized sky survery.
Sounds good to me. :) — RJH 16:44, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The url for the digitized sky survey for the orion nebula is:
http://stdatu.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_search?v=poss2ukstu&r=05+35+17.30&d=-05+23+28.0&e=J2000&h=15.0&w=15.0&f=gif&c=none&fov=NONE&v3=
Here r is RA, d is Declination, h is height in arcminutes and w is width in arcminutes. There's a reasonably slow response time from the site unfortunately. -- JamesHoadley 21:48, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Starbox revisions

I took the liberty of making a few small revisions to the starbox templates. First of all, when you go to any of those template pages, it now shows you how they are used. (These details won't show up in the actual star pages thanks to the <noinclude> tags.) I also broke up the starbox base template into the {{starbox begin}} and {{starbox observe}} templates so that the {{starbox image}} could be inserted into the top of the table. Finally I modified the proper motion and parallax fields to use the milliarcsecond measurement, since that is becoming the convention these days. (It'll make it easier to double-check the numbers; plus some of these templates have been erroneously added using the mas values instead of the arcseconds anyway.) Hopefully these are to everybody's liking. :) — RJH 18:13, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

  • P.S. All of the star pages that were formerly using the {{star}} template have been modified to use the starbox instead. I tried to fill in as many additional fields as I could find information, so they're fairly complete. — RJH 23:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
    • P.P.S. I nominated the {{star}} template for deletion over on the TfD page. Please comment if you object or approve. Thanks. — RJH 21:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

"Buffy" the Kuiper Belt object

I read a clip from New Scientist about "Buffy" officially object 2004XR190 which apparently has a rather unusual orbit. I was going to create an article under "Buffy (Kuiper Belt object)" when I read that it would have an Inuit name selected for it by the International Astronomical Union. Please see New Scientist [16] and Google News search for Buffy Kuiper [17].

I would appreciate advice as to whether I should create an article under "Buffy" , 2004XR190 with a reference from Buffy disambiguation or wait until the International Astronomical Union names it. Capitalistroadster 10:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I was going through similar headaches when I considered to add this story to Current science and technology events. I now think, I will use the official "designation" 2004 XR 190 with a wiki link to it, and only mention the "nick name" Buffy in parentheses. So, my suggestion is to have an article with that designation number. (I also believe there are spaces in the designation. I might be wrong, though) Awolf002 12:22, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I just checked, the name is 2004 XR190 (2004 XR190) [18], and there is an article with that name, already. :-) Awolf002 12:46, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Misspelled 2004 XR 190 article is changed to redirect, since it doesn't have any additional information.--Jyril 19:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Improvement drive

Asteroid deflection strategies has been nominated on WP:IDRIVE. Support it with your vote if you want it to be improved.--Fenice 22:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Exoplanet-stub

Image:HD1888753ab.jpg This exoplanet related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This could be the stub for exoplanets. All we need to do is to make Category:Exoplanet stubs. — Hurricane Devon ( Talk ) 14:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

You can add the Category:Exoplanet stubs to the template, all articles with that template will be automatically added to the category. See Template:California-stub for an example. - Ganeshk 21:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • As a member of the Stub Sorting project, I have a few comments about this stub. The first is that we prefer to have stub categories have names that match their parents. Since the main category is Cat:Extrasolar planets, it would have been preferable for the stub category to be Cat:Extrasolar planet stubs instead of Cat:Exoplanet stubs. The second is that you've generally placed brief information about exoplanets in the article about their star. Indeed it would seem to me that it would be better given the scant information available about most exoplanets to do so with a redirect from the planet name to the star name until there is enough information for a separate non-stub article. That would suggest that stub articles about only an exosolar planet shouldn't exist. I've proposed on the Stub Sorting Discoveries page the possibility of a planetary systems stub instead for articles about such stars which would help reduce the size of Cat:Star stubs which is current larger than we like for a stub category to be. This would also enable the identification of articles containing information about exoplanets that need expansion. Since your Wikiproject is the one most likely to turn such stubs into articles, I would of course appreciate feedback before formally proposing any changes on the Stub Sorting Proposals page. Caerwine Caerwhine 16:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Improvement drive

Asteroid deflection strategies is currently nominated on WP:IDRIVE. Support the article with your vote if you would like to see it improved on the article improvement drive!--Fenice 18:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:Planet

I see there is an infobox template for the planets, but can't find any reason why the planet articles use individual "Planet Infobox/name" templates (Special:Allpages/Template:Planet). Are they waiting to be converted or were they split out for some reason. Anyone have insight? -- Netoholic @ 21:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps because the Planet template wasn't a superset of the others? The {{Planet Infobox/Mars}} template has more information and a different color scheme, for example. — RJH 20:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Virgo Stellar Stream

Should I be adding a galaxy infobox? I'm not sure enough is known to fill in many of the boxes.

Other comments welcome. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I would say "yes", even so not much info can be filled in. Since it seems to be clearly classified as a "galaxy remnant," we should do the decent thing and give it a "farewell" worthy of a galaxy :-) Awolf002 15:57, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks to WilliamKF who did it for me. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:48, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Galaxy groups

{{Galaxy cluster}}

I made this to explain groups, clusters, clouds, and superclusters in it's artical. I've put it in some articals already. — Hurricane Devon ( Talk ) 02:26, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

"Articles"? For the distance field you might want to add a Mpc afterward so that people know the proper scale to use. Otherwise you might end up with z values or light years or kilometers or ... — RJH 20:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

TNOs

Similarities and contrasts

It appears to me that numerous articles on TNOs lack comparisons with similar (or dissimilar) objects. Such comparisons would in my opinion help the reader (it helps me as contributor) to get some 'grasp' about who’s who and highlight the perplexing diversity of these objects. As example, what Quaoar, Varuna and some stubby 2002 TX300 have in common (or otherwise). Smaller, less known objects could be compared to the larger/more notorious very early in the lead. Many referred papers include such statements while wikipedia articles are too often austere and leave to the user the effort of 'inferring' such comparisons. I've timidly started added such one-statement (often just a bracket) comparisons but I would like your comments on the usefulness of the approach. Eurocommuter 21:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Graphs

New joiner, I’ve been working in the obscure area (outside Neptune), adding some orbits’ distribution diagrams to the Kuiper belt, scattered disk etc. As I intend to progress slowly toward the light (centaurs,..?) I would appreciate your comments on how to improve them. Thank you. Eurocommuter 22:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I tried to figure out the meaning of the various axes in your pictures, and it seems way too hard to do that. Please, add labels to all of them, as well as explain what the size of the circles mean. Awolf002 20:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Good point. I will. Thanks Eurocommuter 21:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I added the missing labels and detailed descriptions to the updated graphs for centaurs, plutinos, cubewanos and SDO/ESDOs. Others will follow. Regards Eurocommuter 22:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Kuiper belt

I would like to get rid of / replace the leading artist’s picture Kuiper belt which appears IMHO archaic today and clashes with the updated content of the TNO related articles. Namely:

  • It presents Kuiper belt as flat disk which is not
  • Does not picture the scattered disk
  • An obscure and banal (today!) cubewano is plotted; it was news back then, of course…The article(s) never refer to this object
  • The hypothetical Ooort cloud (0 objects known for sure) is plotted together with NTOs (>1000 objects discovered) in a way that is misleading in my opinion, confusing the limit between fact and conjecture.

Could anybody find (or draw) a contemporary picture, please? Regards Eurocommuter 15:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Request for Help

I have made some comments on the talk page of list of nearest stars, but I just noticed that there are unresolved issues as far back as March 2005 (DENIS 1048-39 a.k.a. (?) DENIS 1048-3956), so I'm not sure that the list is being maintained or the talk page is being monitored by something like this WikiProject. Thanks, Ardric47 23:14, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Did you look at the history? The page is getting regular updates. — RJH 21:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Sources

Most information (particularly in the infoboxes) is unsourced. Which sources are considered the most authoritative? Ardric47 01:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Would be indeed nice to define some standards…For transneptunians, I’m using Minor Planet Center: MPCORB database but also the web-based list [19] and Distant Object from the MPC Circulars, the latest: [20]. For moons' physical characteristics: Nasa well-referenced summary [21] For asteroids: AstDys is a good alternative [22]. Regards Eurocommuter 13:52, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Deep sky object naming convention

I don't know if this has been discussed before, so I put this here:

Current naming of deep sky objects is quite a mess. Most deep sky object articles are named in the style "Globular Cluster M107"; the object is called by its designation M(essier) 107, "Globular Cluster M107" is not its name. I think these articles should be renamed, because

1) They don't follow Wikipedia article naming convention: Article names include unnecessary capital letters, and the definition is before the name
2) Article names, although informative, are too long; needed information can be found in the article

Therefore I suggest that we rename them accordingly:

Other problems with names:

My examples cover only galaxies, but same is true for star clusters and nebulae. --Jyril 20:27, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I was also confused by the current naming when I looked for Messier objects. I think, having an object under its standard designation like Messier 15 or NGC 7742 makes a lot of sense! We should be able to accomodate common names like Andromeda Galaxy or Eagle Nebula with having redirs, there. Awolf002 16:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I totally agree with this, except even things like Messier objects shouldn't be disambiguated unless they need to be. Galaxies should never be Spiral Galaxy XYZ, they should be XYZ or XYZ (galaxy) if they need disambiguation. The Spiral Galaxy prefix is part of the description, no the name.
As for Messier, NGC and IC objects, I think the naming convention Messier xxx, NGC xxx, and IC xxx should be followed. Mxxx should redirect unless it needs a disambiguation (a lot of them do).
Things like Pegasus dwarf irregular/spherical galaxy, I think they should be named by their catalogue designation, and have redirects. I'm not too sure though, there's a lot of them, and a lot of possibilities for disambiguation.
-- JamesHoadley 03:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Problem with the names of many small Local Group galaxies is that many of them have only obscure designations.--Jyril 18:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Can you give an example? And also, why could a redir at the less "obscure" name not be an acceptable solution? Awolf002 18:58, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Sure. NED[23] lists for example Pegasus dwarf [irregular] following designations: PegDIG, PEGASUS DWARF, UGC 12613, A2326+14, DDO 216, A2326, CGCG 431-072, PGC 071538, CGCG 2326.0+1427, UZC J232835.2+144435, MCG +02-59-046. Ursa Major dwarf galaxy doesn't even have a catalog designation[24]. Of these, UGC catalog designations might be notable enough, but considering how much more the common names are, I suggest we use them (or alternatively abbreviations like SagDEG, SagDIG, Ursa Major dSph etc.)--Jyril 21:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

There is an international standard when it comes to naming, and that is SIMBAD. Note that if you read the small print on NED[25] it simply says that it uses SIMBAD to translate whatever name you type into a standard form (so NED just follows the SIMBAD standard). Unfortunately the first name picked by SIMBAD is rarely the most famous, but we should at least make sure that the designation used in Wikipedia is at least recognised by SIMBAD (and hence by astronomers and astronomical software). Rnt20 08:58, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

As the naming for Messier objects is contentious (between Messier xx and Mxx), why not use the equivalent NGC entry? For most things, there is not a notable difference in frequency of usage (ofcourse for some there are, but many of those have a more common name, like the Whirlpool Galaxy) 132.205.45.148 18:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? We would like to have a complete set of the nine planets + the Moon + the Sun - do you think they would all be publishable? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Walkerma 03:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps somebody should take the planetary pages through for peer review? The asteroid and geology of the Moon articles seem pretty decent. — RJH 20:23, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Some of the articles are FAs, like Sun and Venus. However, they are frequently vandalised so another peer review would be a good thing. Awolf002 20:28, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Venus is probably a good candidate for FARCing, to be honest. It was promoted a long time ago and I wouldn't think it's up to current FA standards. I would like all the planets to have FA-standard articles and intend to work on them all over the next few weeks, as I am trying to prepare a WikiReader on the solar system. All the articles have plenty of content, they just need a lot of polishing and formatting. Worldtraveller 20:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Still it is probably the best of the planet articles. Especially the Mars article is quite horrible really.--Jyril 19:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
The best articles aren't necessarily the most appropriate articles. I think you definitely need Nebula (with a few articles under that class), Star cluster (Globular cluster, Open cluster), Galaxy (spiral/barred and elliptical galaxy), and then larger scale stuff (clusters, supercluster) and cosmological stuff (Big Bang, Hubble Constant). That list is probably too big, but anyway, a lot of those articles are backwaters. For instance, Nebula is adequate as an article (Start to B-Class), but there is a lot of cross over in the sub-articles and some of the most important articles (like Diffuse nebula) are stubs. Galaxy articles are a lot better, same with Star cluster articles, but none are above B-class except Open cluster (FA).
I guess we should aim to make Nebula, Star cluster and Galaxy A-class and major sub-articles B-class, but it's not like that right now.
You're asking what articles fit a quality framework, but it's probably more important to have the right articles to explain the field, otherwise you'll have an encyclopedia with (for example) an Elliptical galaxy article, but no Galaxy article, which would be weird.
-- JamesHoadley 03:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I’m surprised by Walkerma’s suggestion to limit the cover of the Solar System to 9 planets. Arguably, my comment should be dismissed as I’ve been one of the recent contributors to the articles on TNOs, but I would like you to consider trans-Neptunian objects, Kuiper Belt and related articles, including a few major objects. I believe limiting the Solar System content to 9 planets would hurt Wikipedia's credibility. A few reasons to consider TNOs, IMHO:

  • TNOs change the traditional vision of 9 planet system and challenge theories of the origin of the Solar System; the subject is rich in recent developments (both: observation and theory)
  • The subject is highly mediatized (maybe for wrong reasons: ...is Pluto a planet?, ...is 2003 UB313 bigger?) this generated a wide public interest
  • The subject includes refreshingly new, puzzling objects (e.g. 2003 EL61).
  • There are very few widely available, popular sources related to the subject as opposed to scores of 9 planets-related sources. Wikipedia has an opportunity to become one the most respected popular sources on the subject.
  • Most articles are well-referenced and follow the research up the preprint level!

Of course, the related articles are work in progress and require a substantial editing effort. Any critical comments are welcome. Regards Eurocommuter 14:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. We should at least have everything mentioned in this:
Image:Solar System XXVII.png
The Sun · Mercury · Venus · Earth · Mars · Ceres · Jupiter · Saturn · Uranus · Neptune · Pluto · Eris
Planets · Dwarf planets · Moons: Terran · Martian · Asteroidal · Jovian · Saturnian · Uranian · Neptunian · Plutonian · Eridian
Small bodies: Meteoroids · Asteroids (Asteroid belt) · Centaurs · TNOs (Kuiper belt/Scattered disc) · Comets (Oort cloud)
See also astronomical objects and the solar system's list of objects, sorted by radius or mass.
and all other main astronomical object articles, like Globular cluster, Galaxy, Star, Comet and so on. I wonder how WP-1.0 will handle left-over redlinks? There might be quite a few. Awolf002 18:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I would thing the red links problem would affect all areas, and it'll be pretty easy to do something about it.
We still don't know if Walkerma wants a list of articles of good quality or a list that should be included in a smaller edition of WP. We're telling him the most important articles, but not which ones are FA, A- class, B-class, Start and Stubs.
-- JamesHoadley 03:46, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the excellent discussion! As well as finding out about your best articles, we are indeed looking for the major topics. We will almost certainly be contacting all the WikiProjects in the spring asking for lists of "core topics" for each subject area. I suggested the 9 planets just because these are what I considered to be some of your most important articles - I realise that there's a whole lot more (I'd like to see Titan (moon) in there, myself!). The initial 1.0 trial release (WP:0.5?) will probably be quite small, so we may be quite limited in what goes in. However IMHO the full release should include more than just the 11 articles I mentioned. Regarding a request to review Venus, can I suggest nominating it for review here, and people from this group should probably give their (expert) comments there.

It's clear that this project is active and well-coordinated, can I suggest that you consider creating a worklist like the ones at Military history or Chemicals? (There are about a dozen worklists now in use) I've been involved with the worklist at WP:Chem for almost a year now and it's a great place to list all of your most important articles and keep track of how they are progressing. At WP:Chem the list is integrated with the goals of the project - we are aiming to get all 380 or so articles up to A-Class (about equivalent to GA standard). If you create a similar list, we will use that when compiling articles for WP:1.0. If not, we'll be tracking your articles in our own list (which I'll probably get filled out tomorrow). Thank you very much for your help, Walkerma 07:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea, but it would have to stick to the most important topics. The potential list of pages is, well, astronomical. :) — RJH 03:16, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I propose to (ab)use the article Astronomical object by setting up a list of "grades" for each of its entries in the talk page and go from there. Awolf002 15:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I would suggest to grade separately

  • Perceived importance (how badly the full picture will be affected if the article does not make it into the edition)
  • Content (e.g. exhaustive, up to date coverage of the subject, solid and varied references…)
  • Form (e.g. readability, attractiveness, graphics, pictures, accessibility to wider public...)

Separate grades would make easier to choose the articles to be fixed if we think that they deserve to be fixed more than others. The next step would be to set up a list of no-nonsense criteria for grading…. And the rules for voting? We refrain from voting on the articles we personally contributed to? Please bear with a new joiner, I’m ignorant of the usual rules… Eurocommuter 16:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it, this is guidance for the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, so we can discuss to achieve consensus but voting is not really applicable. Awolf002 18:11, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Great to see you working on this, thanks. We've usually used consensus, and if someone doesn't like an assessment they usually just edit it - or if there's general grade inflation we list the articles on the talk page and come to a consensus there. You can try more complicated grading schemes, but in my experience something simple works best - so everyone can get the idea. We use this system -we've sometimes debated adding a C-Class between B and Start, but generally it works very well. A-Class approximates to GA. But use whatever works for you, different subjects can have different needs. I agree that you have to limit it to the most important topics, at least to begin with. Be sure to let us know if you start a worklist, or if you have an agreed list of "core articles" (even without assessments}. Regarding the previous comment - yes, the list is guidance for us, but I think this project would benefit immensely from it too. Thanks again, Walkerma 06:01, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

A "bare bones" list is now available at Talk:Astronomical_object. It's time to prioritize and assess. Awolf002 18:00, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
It looks like a pretty good start. (I was bold and added in a few more.) But I don't think it's a good idea to have articles on individual spectral categories (O-class, B-class, &c.) These can be covered by the already-existing categories. I'd like to suggest that the mass of asteroid articles be grouped in their own section. Note that beyond this list there are many thousands of other articles that could potentially be included: stars; clusters; Messier objects, craters, individual asteroids, &c. &c. — RJH 16:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Navigational maps

I would like your opinion on using, for instance, the graphic illustrating trans-Neptunian objects as a navigational map, in addition to its day job. I’ll spare you the technical details but wiki does not support SVG links, does not support HTML maps and suggest a kludge instead, used for navigational maps in some articles. In spite of poor technology I believe maps like this could be used in the navigators (TNO model for example), smaller navigable illustration for the notable objects, size comparison etc. Please have a look on my user page where I included a test, using the graphic from the trans-Neptunian object and adding a few links. I’d be also grateful for any technical comments as well. Regards Eurocommuter 22:44, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it's an excellent idea, and it would be neat to have that sort of map for a wide variety of topics. Of course, text-based navigation should not be neglected. Ardric47 23:27, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Extrasolar planets with unknown semimajor axes

Some extrasolar planets do not have a known semimajor axis, this includes objects detected by imaging (e.g. 2M1207b) or microlensing (e.g. OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb). Instead for these planets we have a projected distance on the sky, which is not the same as the semimajor axis. Since there are now several planets for which this consideration applies, either the current extrasolar planets template needs modification (though I am not sure if it is possible to conditonally include a table row based on presence or absence of a parameter) or a new template may be necessary. Chaos syndrome 10:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Move to wikisource

I invite everyone involved with this project to come discuss moving it to wikisource at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Move to Wikisource?. Thanks! Ewlyahoocom 11:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Naming Conventions

NGC objects

I'd like to revive discussion on naming conventions. There are many articles whose titles begin with the type of object, such as Lenticular Galaxy M86, Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300, etc. My opinion is that ObjectType Name should be a redirect to Name. As far as I know, the usage ObjectType Name has no major equivalent outside of astronomy-related pages. "Rules" and examples are:

  • There are no articles Operating System Windows XP, Philosopher Plato, Religion Christianity, Court Case Brown v. Board of Education, Mood Subjunctive, House Monticello, etc.
  • Sometimes, titles of that form do exist, but they seem to normally be redirects: King Henry III of England -> Henry III of England.
  • Sometimes, to avoid ambiguity, the type of thing that the article is about is needed in the title, but then it goes at the end in parentheses, e.g. John Smith (dentist) or Jazz (album).
  • There are a few exceptions, such as Popes.
  • Even within the subject of astronomy, there are not articles such as Star Gamma Orionis, Planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, etc. Ardric47 22:34, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the redirect you suggest. People are much more likely to search on "NGC 1300" than "Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300". If it is for disambiguation, it usually ends up as something like "NGC 1300 (galaxy)". — RJH 18:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Know that I think about it, it being called NGC not Spiral Galaxy NGC would sound cool. In short, you got my support all the way.
— HurricaneDevon @ 11:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I completely agree that article titles do not need to include the object type. Worldtraveller 20:42, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
While I like the format type of object NGC xxxx, just NGC xxxx would work for me as well.--Kalsermar 21:05, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Messier objects

My opinion is that ObjectType Name should be a redirect to Name not just for NGC objects (i.e. Messier objects). I think we should insted of calling it Spiral Galaxy M109 (M109, if we do ↑) into Messier 109. Because most astronomers call it the full name and no. and not just the abbr. (i.e. they prefer to call it Messier 109 insted of M109). — HurricaneDevon @ 11:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I gave it a test with Messier 99. The talk should explain. — HurricaneDevon @ 00:33, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
As above - agree completely with this suggestion. Worldtraveller 20:42, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Messier XX looks fine to me too.--Kalsermar 21:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, this makes a lot of sense! Awolf002 21:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Star-stub, due for a split

It's been proposed that {{star-stub}} be split into a number of sub-types. Opening bid was to do this by constellation, which would tend to produce a large number of very small categories, which isn't the best of ideas according to the stub-sorting rules of thumb. I'm not sure it's the more natural for astronomers -- are there "constellation specialists"? I'd have thought that by spectral type, or probably better, by luminosity class would be preferable. At any rate, if anyone has any brights ideas... Alai 02:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

First, at least separate stubs pertaining to a single star from those about star clusters (and then, probably separate open and globular clusters). Ardric47 02:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Good points. Would anyone have an idea about how many of the existing (1000+) articles are on clusters, of one or other sort? Alai 03:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Also, I'm not sure that sorting by spectral type or even luminosity class would work well, because sources tend to disagree on them. Ardric47 03:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Some possibilities: giants; main sequence; stellar remnants/exotic (white dwarf, pulsar, black hole); multi-star systems; stars with known planets; naked-eye visible (apparent mag. > 6)/bayer name/flamsteed ID, known variable, &c. — RJH 17:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing that the first two would be very large, and some of the rest seem to cut across the others. If we stick with the HR diagram based approach, we might re-split MS by spectral type, and giants into Ia, Ib, II, III and IV, if those are all sensibly sized. Alai 02:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the logical way to split up the star-stub is by constellation with a 'master constellation page' with pointers to constellation pages that contain all the star-stubs assigned to that constellation. It would split the star-stub up into managable chunks (that we might get through before the next millinium ;) ).

That works for me as well. I was also going to suggest splitting up by R.A. or Dec., but with constellation stubs the stars can be linked from the category. :) — RJH 18:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
As I pointed out, by constellation is not in general going to be feasible, on size grounds. Alai 02:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Well you could group by constellation: Northern, southern, zodiacal, circumpolar. Or you could group by first letter A-const, B-const, ... Alternately the star coordinates are the most readily available data, so you could sub-divide by RA or Dec. E.g. RA01hour, RA02hour, ... — RJH 20:24, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Spectroscopic binary template?

Spectroscopic binary
Pair {{{name}}}
Companion mass {{{mass}}} M☉
Period (P) {{{period}}}
a · sin(i) {{{asini}}}
Eccentricity (e) {{{eccentricity}}}
Inclination (i) N/A
Periastron longitude (q) {{{longitude}}}
Periastron epoch (T) {{{periastron}}}

I'd like to find out what everybody thinks of this table as a "starbox specbin" template as a supplement for the other starbox templates? Thank you. :) — RJH 18:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Nice work, though the Eighth Catalog of the Orbital Elements of Spectroscopic Binary Systems lists the longitude of periastron as one of the parameters. In addition, a reference to which component it is the companion of might be useful in cases of multiple systems. Chaos syndrome 23:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Further point, eclipsing spectroscopic binaries have known inclination. We should probably handle that too. I've also edited the link in the table - we probably don't need a discussion of theological matters in the template ;-) Chaos syndrome 00:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
We could add the epoch of Periastron (T) as well as to the longitude (q). — RJH 18:47, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


Binary stars

I made this for star articals like Gliese 777 (with the binary star in a seperate section). Is this a good idea, because it might not be.
— HurricaneDevon @ 01:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, we already have a {{Starbox visbin}} template. I'm not sure why you need to do a manual format. — RJH 18:12, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I know think it's a bad idea. — HurricaneDevon @ 11:18, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Why do you think the {{Starbox visbin}} template is a bad idea? — RJH 20:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Extrasolar Visions and speculative data

It seems that some of the extrasolar planets infoboxes are being filled with radius and temperature values from the speculative website Extrasolar Visions. Personally I think this is misleading, since for most planets we do not have temperature and radius values. Putting these values in gives the impression that these are real data. Furthermore, EV is not really an authority on extrasolar planets - the literature does not cite this website.

Another point is that the assumptions behind the "guesstimate" values may be wrong - the planets may have a massive core like HD 149026 b which would result in a much smaller radius than predicted by the model used on EV, and we cannot be sure of the atmospheric properties which would have a significant effect on temperature.

Since these values keep getting put into infoboxes, I'd like to know some views on this matter as to whether they should be kept. Chaos syndrome 17:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we should put this information in the artical, since when is any exoplanet info 100% correct. Pritty much everything about exos are estimated, shouldn't we delete all exo info.
But not to confuse best guessed data & estimated, we should put a * nexted to the estimated data. It should be in the artical, it's the best anyone can get to that thing. — HurricaneDevon @ 00:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Thing is, we should be dealing with the state of knowledge about the planets. While the parameters are not 100% certain, at least with data such as the period and mass of the planet the quantities have been measured, which is a crucial difference. For the majority of planets, properties like radius and temperature have only been calculated using simplifying assumptions, and are not linked to the observational data. Chaos syndrome 10:38, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Temperatures should not be added unless they're mentioned in a proper scientific article. Quick calculations a la Extrasolar Visions are too speculative and misleading.--Jyril 19:38, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, apologies if this is the wrong forum for this, but I seem to have let this matter degenerate into something approximating an edit war with another user. I have been removing the values as misleading speculation and the other user has been equally persistent in putting them back. I'm calling a stop to it now. I have explained my viewpoint on this matter above. Can we have some kind of formal vote on the issue of whether to keep the values or remove them? I will make no edits to the Extrasolar Visions radius/temperature calculations until we have some kind of consensus on this. Chaos syndrome 23:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I am informally stating (meaning that I don't consider myself to have thought or read about the issue enough to "vote") that the speculative data should be removed. I would even go as far as saying that speculative data in other types of articles, such as estimated or derived mass/luminosity/etc. data on stars should be removed, also. Ardric47 01:38, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I have been examining the values for extrasolar planet radii and temperatures on Extrasolar Visions and have noticed these points:

  • The planet radius model used is the one from Burrows et al., for which there is a web-based calculator. This calculator produces the same internal temperature values as displayed on the Extrasolar Visions planet pages, but when the radius output by the calculator is divided by Jupiter's radius (71492 km), the values don't match up with the values from Extrasolar Visions. After a bit of investigation, I found that dividing by 74192 km (swapping the 4 and the 1) reproduces the values. This looks like a typo in John Whatmough's code. The values being outputted are incorrect even according to the theoretical model.
    • The planet radius model used gives a radius for Jupiter (1 Jupiter mass, 4.6 Gyr) of 1.035 Jupiter radii. The model cannot be tested for Saturn as the mass range doesn't extend down that far. The model doesn't reproduce Jupiter, and can only be tested for Jupiter - not very good.
  • The website gives the parameters star radius (RS), star temperature (TS), planet distance (a), estimated planet albedo (A). Using these parameters, the effective temperature of a planet (T) can be calculated using the formula:
    T_p = T_S \left(1-A\right)^{\frac{1}{4}} \left(\frac {R_S} {2a} \right)^{\frac{1}{2}}
    John Whatmough said he was using this calculation in this post on his messageboard. However, I have calculated this using the data given on the site for several planets in the Extrasolar Visions database and there are often significant deviations from the value. Again, something seems to be going wrong in the back-end code on Extrasolar Visions.
    • We don't actually have any measurement of the albedo, only a prediction from a theoretical model which relies on knowledge of the planet's temperature and composition (paper). We haven't measured either the temperature or the composition for most planets, and having the predicted temperature depend on an unknown value which depends on the temperature puts the result on rather dodgy ground.
    • Extrasolar Visions lists effective temperature values for solar system planets which differ significantly from the values on NASA's planetary fact sheets. Again, the Extrasolar Visions values cannot be reproduced by the formula claimed to be used to generate them.
    • Effective temperatures are often very different from the actual temperature anyway (e.g. Venus, effective temperature ~230 K, surface temperature ~740 K - data from NASA's Venus fact sheet.

Therefore Extrasolar Visions is not implementing its theoretical models correctly, and the theoretical models don't compare very well with the real observations either. I personally think these are good grounds to remove the values from the articles. Chaos syndrome 19:26, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Some issues involving binary stars

I've noticed that the unit of the semimajor axis for visual binaries in Template:Starbox visbin was changed recently from arcseconds to AU, and now it seems that some pages (e.g. Alpha Centauri) are using AU whereas others (e.g. Xi Ursae Majoris) still have values in arcseconds, which means the information being presented is wrong. Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Starbox visbin has the list of pages which include the template. Do we want to continue using AU or go back to arcseconds?

I would recommend always using arc seconds. The A.U. is based on the parallax estimates, which are imprecise. So any time a new parallax measurement was made, the A.U. distances would need to be updated as well. With arcseconds it is measured directly and is independent of parallax. (The A.U. distances can always be listed in the text.) — RJH
Looks like only three articles need to be changed if it is put back. Not sure what to do about Delta Trianguli, it's a spectroscopic binary so it shouldn't really be using the template for visual binaries. Also, it might be useful to put what the orbit is relative to in the template, to handle multiple systems. Not sure if that's a good idea though. Chaos syndrome 23:04, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, Delta Trianguli also has a listing as a visual binary, so it seems ok for now. Chaos syndrome 23:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we should change the title of the visbin template to just "Binary" or "Binary orbit", since good orbital parameters are now available for some spectroscopic binaries? :) — RJH 18:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, a template for binaries with non-determined orbits would be useful, it would need properties such as separation (preferably in units consistent with whatever is being used for visbins) and position angle. I'm not sure how to go about making templates though. Chaos syndrome 21:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

What would you do for systems that have multiple separation/position angle measurements taken over a period of time? — RJH 22:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, good point. The starbox syntax does allow for repeated sections however (i.e. you could use {{Starbox binarypos}} or whatever you want to call it multiple times), so maybe attach some kind of JD value to the box. In principle the same issue exists where several different orbital solutions have been derived for the same binary. If needs be, several values could be repeated, though this would probably end up really ugly. Chaos syndrome 22:39, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Why don't the templates include sensible links

Every single astronomical object outside the solar system has one (or two) standard webpage(s) which describe all the details of the object, list every single paper about that object, give links to standard survey images etc. Why don't the wikipedia astronomical objects templates automatically link to these pages (on SIMBAD and NED)? It would be a huge improvement if this were included in the infobox so that lists of links to all the references about any astronomical objects were immediately available by clicking on a link in the infobox. The link can be generated automatically from either the object name or coordinates.

The international databases where all the webpages about astronomical objects are kept are:

  1. SIMBAD for survey images of the 3.7 million most discussed astronomical objects, with links to every article about each of these objects since 1983 etc.
  2. NED for spectral energy distributions of 9.3 million extragalactic objects

Standard links can be URLs to the coordinates (like with Google Maps) or pointing to the object names, e.g. for NGC 4151:

Data and links about NGC4151 from SIMBAD (including links to 1914 research articles about NGC 4151!)
Spectral Energy Distribution of NGC4151 from NED (i.e. what it emits)

Everyone in astronomy uses these databases every day, so why doesn't Wikipedia use them? Rnt20 08:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

By convention the references go down in their own section, rather than being included in a template. The template entries could then be tagged with appropriate references. — RJH 18:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
But I do like how the SIMBAD link has been applied to some of the star infobox table titles. Hopefully that link won't rot. :) — RJH 21:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Extrasolar planet template sequence

I'd like to propose the following template sequence for dealing with extrasolar planets:

{{planetbox begin}}

  • name

{{planetbox image}}

  • image
  • caption

{{planetbox orbit}}

  • Orbital parameters (for objects whose orbits have been determined - radial velocity and astrometric orbits would go here)
    • Semi-major axis (a)
    • Eccentricity (e)
    • Orbital period (P)
    • Inclination (i)
    • Argument of periastron (ω)
    • Time of periastron (τ)

{{planetbox observe}}

  • Observed position (for objects detected by imaging whose orbital parameters are largely unknown, e.g. 2M1207b)
    • Observed separation (d)

{{planetbox microlens}}

  • Microlensing parameters (for objects detected by microlensing, e.g. OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb)
    • Observed separation (d) (optionally specify in terms of Einstein radius or AU)
    • Mass ratio (q)
    • Normalised impact parameter (u0)
    • Einstein ring radius crossing time (tE)
    • Time of closest approach (t0)
    • Angle of source motion (θ)

{{planetbox character}}

  • Physical characteristics
    • Mass (optionally specify Jupiter or Earth masses)
    • Radius (optionally specify Jupiter or Earth radii)
    • Density
    • Temperature

{{planetbox discovery}}

  • Discovery
    • Discovery date
    • Detection method(s)
    • Discoverer(s)

{{planetbox end}}

This has the advantage of being able to cope with the various discovery methods - at present, planets detected by imaging or microlensing are poorly served by the current template. It also can be extended if other categories of properties are thought necessary.

Another issue to consider is that some quantities may be expressed in different units (e.g. days/years, Jupiter masses/Earth masses), and the present template leaves question marks if one of the units isn't used, even though the data is present. Perhaps this calls for esoteric template features, or maybe not having specified units for these quantities.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Chaos syndrome 17:17, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I've made a mockup of this with all sections in (in practice this is an unlikely setup - most likely only one of orbit/position/microlens will be used). This is based on the starbox template sequence. One of my concerns here is the colour scheme - the links in the headers is blue on blue, if they are visited then purple on blue, neither of which is very visible. Probably to get around this may need a change of colour scheme. Any comments? Chaos syndrome 20:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I've got a test of this at OGLE 2003-BLG-235L Chaos syndrome 17:52, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
I like this new box. — HurricaneDevon @ 18:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
It would be nice if you could include somehow in the discovery section a link to the reference paper on arxiv.org — Nicholas (reply) @
Ideally, that should be done in the references section of the page. The problem would be trying to get this to work with Cite.php, especially if the article also references the same source, in which case you'd have to handle the situation of already having a defined name or having to define a name in the template, which could get tricky. Chaos syndrome 18:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Enceladus Peer Review

The article for Enceladus (moon) is currently undergoing peer review before a push for Featured Article Status. The article underwent a peer review in February prior to a set of articles in the journal Science on discoveries made by Cassini at Enceladus. If this peer review is successful, I hope to make the Enceladus article a Featured Article Candidate next week. --Volcanopele 17:58, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Naming convention for DSOs?

Is there a set naming convention regarding Deep Sky Objects? I have seen the titles of articles all over the place without a clear pattern and some of them have recently changed title without clear reasoning (often by User:Hurricane Devon. I've seen Messier objects renamed to obscure so called proper names and now Messier 60 is at Arp 116! (I'll change this one back though.) What exactly is the naming convention here? I myself propose either type-number like in Open Cluster M35 or simply number like in NGC 3132 unless there is a clear and well established proper name like in Crab Nebula.--Kalsermar 18:06, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I have just been made aware that there is already a discussion regarding naming further up this talk page. I do maintain that a strict policy is in order and that proper names should only be used when they are widely known throughout the astronomical community.--Kalsermar 21:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Planetbox classification

Template:Planetbox classification has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Chaos syndrome 11:00, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

New look for box headers

I've always thought the object name floating outside a lot of the infoboxes used in astronomy articles looks odd. I just edited {{starbox begin}} to try out a new look, which I think is an improvement (though I'm not sure whether the increased font size is really necessary). What does anyone think of it? If other people like it, the other infoboxes could be converted to the same style. Worldtraveller 17:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The style was different from the standard form being used for the other AO templates. I believe a consensus is needed before such arbitrary style changes are imposed. For now I've reverted it. The suggested look is here: [26], which changes the font style and includes the name within the table box. Note that this may have a negative impact on the appearance of some of the other templates. Thanks. — RJH 18:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I believe consensus is needed too, hence my request for opinions, you see. Please elaborate on what negative impacts there might be. Worldtraveller 19:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Enlarged font format may look fine in one browser but lousy in another, particularly if the name is overly long and expands the table excessively. There can be aesthetic issues with the color format of the other table rows, as well as cases where there is an image at the top. Finally the caption format is a widely accepted form for HTML tables, when it is included at all. (Personally I'd be all for getting rid of the name field altogether as it is redundant with the page title and text.) Thanks. :) — RJH 18:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, like I say, the font enlarging was just an idea - the main point was to not have the object name outside the table it's supposed to be the header of. Not sure what you mean about caption format? I'd also be in favour of dropping the name at the top of the table as well - I can't think of any examples of where it wouldn't be redundant either with a section title or the page title. Worldtraveller 18:48, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I had a look through the other WikiProjects to see how they are handling the same issue with their Infoboxes. The convention seems to be to include the title within the borders, in bold font (not enlarged), and using the color background theme of the box. — RJH

Something comparable to this: ...moved below under Style #2

Not bad so far. Let's have a full set of examples so we can discuss this further.
Urhixidur 14:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd prefer the current style, and I think other templates do have the title outside the box, eg, Template:Infobox Organization. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JamesHoadley (talk • contribs) 15:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC).
I like this style, having a large heading row is distracting. I don't have a particular visual preference for having the title inside or outside the box, but I'm not entirely sure using the caption as a title outputs semantic HTML (I'd suspect table header cells are more correct for this purpose). Chaos syndrome 15:52, 27 April 2006 (UTC).
I would assume that the new style would also apply to Minor Planet. The Name inside the infobox (in bold, standard font) makes sense and looks good to me. To make the boxes more homogenous (and avoid a direct background colour clash) I would suggest taking the category row up, under the name, as you do for other AO below, with colour-coded categories (to be agreed, e.g. Main Belt, Plutino, Scattered etc).Eurocommuter 16:02, 27 April 2006 (UTC) Could someone provide such a modified Minor Planet example, please?. I tried but while I can read HTML I haven’t got a handle on the 'wiki dialect' yet.)


What needs to happen is a threefold process:

  1. Decide whether we even need these extraneous headers. The page already has a H1 element of the same name. This is just a duplication of that data and provides no additional information. (Though on pages with multiple boxes maybe this would not be true)
  2. Once that's done, and if its decided that it be kept, decide whether a TH cell with an all-column scope is a good idea. it goes against my gut instincts of what a TABLE should contain, but CAPTION is definitely the wrong markup (CAPTION should be a terse prose description of the table).
  3. Only then can we faf around with what colours to make it. IMHO the Eros box looks good with a yellow top, but the Orion Nebula box didn't look good with a red top. The nebula box doesn't look good at all to be frank.

I would say that the tables shouldn't have a header at all, since the H1 element of the page provides that. Thus points 2 and 3 don't apply anyway. — Nicholas (reply) @ 02:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Going by the Help:Infobox content, it looks like having a name of some sort is accepted practice, even though it's redundant and can seem a little silly (IMO). But I suppose the title at least has the benefit of clarifying any potential ambiguity if additional tables are added later. The examples in the Wikipedia:List of infoboxes are all over the map in terms of header format (including borders, coloration, cell spacing, &c) with style #2 below being somewhat more common. — RJH 16:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I think repeating the article's topic is not breaking any "rules". Remember, that the title is repeated at the beginning of the text in bold. I would prefer to keep the header, and I agree that it looks better "inside" the box. I disagree with having a color background "just because". Where it does make sense to me is when tying together the top and lower part of a section with a larger image as the center. For instance for Eros, having the name on top and the caption with the same bgcolor (even if its grey) looks good to me. However, I feel that is just what I am most used to, not an objective design decision. It does certainly look bad, if there is nothing "in between" but filler space or the color changes (See both style #2 examples), though!! Awolf002 17:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Quick opinions: either of the new styles is better than the current setup, but I think the name looks too plain in Style #1, and it blends in too much in Style #2. Ardric47 00:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't like the centred properties (e.g. Discoverer, Discovery date in the asteroid template), it looks messy. I'll agree that the heading is not prominent enough on the #2 style. Style #1 is ok (though it would be best to preview these in the context of an article to get an idea of how they interact with the page elements), though I think there is too much of a gap between the title text and the top border. Chaos syndrome 18:32, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Style #1 -- bold; enlarged; plain bkgd

Alpha Centauri

Observation data
Epoch J2000
Constellation Centaurus
Right ascension 14h 39m 36.2s
Declination -60° 50′ 8.2″
Apparent magnitude (V) 0.01

Orion Nebula
Diffuse nebula Lists of nebulae
Observation data
(Epoch J2000.0)
Type -
Right ascension 05h 32m 49s
Declination -05° 25′
Distance 1,600
Apparent magnitude (V) +4.0
Apparent dimensions (V) 85 × 60
Constellation Orion
Physical characteristics
Radius -
Absolute magnitude (V) -
Notable features -
Other designations NGC 1976, M42
edit

433 Eros
This picture of Eros shows the view looking from one end of the asteroid across the gouge on its underside and toward the opposite end.
This picture of Eros shows the view looking from one end of the asteroid across the gouge on its underside and toward the opposite end.
Discovery A
Discoverer Carl Gustav Witt
Discovery date August 13, 1898
Alternate
designations B		 1898 DQ; 1956 PC
Category Amor,
Mars-crosser asteroid
Orbital elements C
Epoch October 22, 2004 (JD 2453300.5)
Eccentricity (e) 0.223
Semi-major axis (a) 218.155 Gm (1.458 AU)
Perihelion (q) 169.548 Gm (1.133 AU)
Aphelion (Q) 266.762 Gm (1.783 AU)
Orbital period (P) 643.219 d (1.76 a)
Mean orbital speed 24.36 km/s
Inclination (i) 10.829°
Longitude of the
ascending node (Ω)		 304.401°
Argument of
perihelion (ω)		 178.664°
Mean anomaly (M) 320.215°
Physical characteristics D
Dimensions 13×13×33 km
Mass 7.2×1015 kg
Density 2.4 g/cm³
Surface gravity 0.0059 m/s²
Escape velocity 0.0103 km/s
Rotation period 0.2194 d (5 h 16 min)
Spectral class S
Absolute magnitude 11.16
Albedo 0.16
Mean surface
temperature		 ~227 K

Style #2 -- bold; normal; color bkgd

Orion Nebula
Diffuse nebula Lists of nebulae
Observation data
(Epoch J2000.0)
Type -
Right ascension 05h 32m 49s


433 Eros
This picture of Eros shows the view looking from one end of the asteroid across the gouge on its underside and toward the opposite end.
This picture of Eros shows the view looking from one end of the asteroid across the gouge on its underside and toward the opposite end.
Discovery A
Discoverer Carl Gustav Witt
Discovery date August 13, 1898

TfD nomination of Template:Star-planetbox primary

Template:Star-planetbox primary has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Also nominated are {{Star-planetbox secondary}}, {{Star-planetbox end}} which are members of the same template sequence. Chaos syndrome 14:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

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