Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of space telescopes

Comment Wow! This is a shockingly good list! Very nice work. I only have a few minor suggestions. I believe that the mid-sized dahses used (–) to denote lack of data should be actually be the long dash (—). Minor, I know, but grammatically speaking I believe the mid-sized one is meant to be used in sentences, while the long one is meant to be used by itself in tables. (someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this). Also, the in-line citations, while plentiful and well done, need a tiny bit of work. Mainly, wherever possible publisher values should be presented. Also, only wikilink a publisher in the first citation it's mentioned. NASA, for isntance, is linked everytime. Like I said, fairly minor suggestions. Drewcifer (talk) 04:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! The tables now use mdash rather than ndash. I've removed the overzealous linking to NASA, and added in publisher information in all but two cases (those have author information instead). Mike Peel (talk) 11:38, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Looking much better. All the edits made so far have definately been improvements. I particularly like the little bit of introductory prose in each section. But why don't all the sections have that? Even if its a sentence or two, it would help make the list much more ledgeable to a layman such as myself. Also, another complaint about the publisher values in the citations, I think that you should be wary of abbreviations. I suppose NASA is ok (since it's article is named after the abbreviation, not the full title), but I'm not sure about ESA and MIT and NOAO. Those should probably be spelled out. And lastly, an external links section would be good. Drewcifer (talk) 17:59, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The rest of the sections will have summaries; they're just taking time for me to write. I don't like external links sections, as they aren't generally necessary and invite spam, so I won't be adding one. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

All of the sections now have summaries. I've removed all of the abbreviations in the publisher entries save for NASA, ESA and JAXA, which I think are well known enough (and those abbreviations are used elsewhere in the list). Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• A brief explaination of what a Gamma ray telescope, X-ray telescope, Ultraviolet telescope, particle detection, gravitational waves etc is/does/why at the beginning of each section would be nice, as I and I'm sure many others, don't know the difference or even that there are different types.

• This will take me a short while... Mike Peel (talk) 12:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
• Now done. Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Why aren't telescopes that look solely in our solar system omitted? They're still space telescopes afterall.

• I was wary that this page is very long (>60kb), and that it would be much longer if I included those (>100kb). I plan to create another list at some point dealing with those, looking at solar telescopes, then each planet / other object individually, in a similar way to how this page lists telescopes according to wavelength. It seemed to me like a good division. Mike Peel (talk) 12:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• That's good enough for me, then.

• There are a lot of red wikilinks, and I'd like to see them turned blue, by either creating stubs for them, or at a push, pointing them to a section of an appropriate article.

• I'd also like to see this. I've linked as many as I could find information about on Wikipedia; I'll work on creating stubs for the others over the next few days, when I get the time. Mike Peel (talk) 12:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• What does "Completed" mean? The telescope isn't in use any more? Wouldn't "decommissioned" be a better term if that's the case?
  • Nevermind. I saw the comments above. Perhaps "terminated" would work? -- Matthew

Comments

• Is it a list of space telescopes or astronomical space telescopes? In other words, is the title right, the lead right or are they synonymous?

• I thought that they were synonymous: the only exception might be if you count spy satellites as telescopes. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Not sure why the various frequency ranges are capitalised.

• They no longer are. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• " separately in each. " reads a little strangely (to me).

• Rewritten. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• "Space telescopes that collect cosmic ray nuclei and/or electrons are also included, under "Particle detection", as well as instruments that aim to detect gravitational waves, under "Gravitational waves". " - not sure you need this sentence in its current form. Perhaps just say that they are included and then in the relevant sections expand what is meant by the generic heading.

• Rewritten. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Why are periapsis and apoapsis capitalised?

• Fixed. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• "but it these cases" - in these cases?

• Good catch. Fixed. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Gamma-ray or Gamma ray?

• It's a matter of personal choice, methinks. I've gone for Gamma ray, unless the dash is built into the name of something. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Not convinced even myself, but you ought to consider imperial units converted from the metric ones as well...
• Captions which are fragments should not end with full stops.

• Fixed. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Left align the name column, it currently looks pretty grim.

• It's now left-aligned. Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Location sorts badly - presumably it should sort in increasing/decreasing distance. It doesn't at the moment! In fact, I'd consider just making two columns, one for the periapsis and one for the apoapsis. Then they'd sort perfectly.
• Why abbreviate to AGN when you never use it again?

• It's no longer abbreviated. Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Dark Universe observatory has no launch or termination date. Why? And the Dark Energy Space telescope...

• The missions are being planned, but I haven't managed to find launch dates for them yet. Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• 191709 - 191,709 is preferred.

• Fixed. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• "NASA & ISAS" vs "SRC / NASA" - either & or / but not both (unless they mean something different).

• Sorry, they should have all been "&" - and should be fixed. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Use non-breaking spaces between values and their units.

• I think that these are now in place where needed. Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• 21400 - 21,400.

• Fixed. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Might just be me or the time I'm trying to do it but the nasa.gov links all timeout...

• They all worked fine for me at some point over the last few days... Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Some things to consider and probably discuss before I'm happy to support. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• • So to summarise, it now needs work on the sortability (or double columns?) for the peri- and apo-apsis. I'm also concerned over the planned missions without dates just having em-dashes. It'd be worth adding a footnote to explain what that means. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:27, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• Peri- and apo-apsis are sorting correctly now. I think that they're best as one column, otherwise they would need to be three ("Earth orbit", peri- and apo-), which seems OTT. How about if something like "Future" is put into the launch date of planned missions with no other date? Mike Peel (talk) 14:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, you really need some kind of footnote there or at least replace with Future or TBA or something, whatever's most appropriate. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• They now say "TBA". Mike Peel (talk) 17:08, 3 March 2008 (UTC)