Talk:HD 217107

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Good article HD 217107 has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
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[edit] Should be delisted from GA

This is not a Good Article candidate as long as Worldtraveller insists on improper capitalization and spelling of "5,000 kelvins". I won't delist it because I am the one trying to keep him straight, though I really haven't made any other significant contributios to this article. Gene Nygaard 17:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

As I've explained time and again, that's your personal style preference and is not followed by the majority of the scientific community. Worldtraveller 17:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
You know full well that the scientific community in general, and even many astronomers in particular, follow the rules as set out in:
NIST Special Publication 811, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units, section 6.1.2 Capitalization and section 9.2 Plurals.
BIPM SI brochure (rule by example) [1] [2]
Guide for contributors to Universe, Journal of the Astronomical Society of New South Wales.doc file
American Meteorological Society Author's Guide (pdf)
Rand Corporation style manual (pdf)
National Geographic Society Style Manual (pdf)
and everything else we've talked about on Talk:Pleiades (star cluster) and my talk page and wherever else. Gene Nygaard 19:22, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I've demonstrated as clearly as possible that scientists do not use the form you're edit warring to impose here. You've ignored it all and demonstrated that your interest is in disruption rather than constructive editing. Worldtraveller 19:54, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
On the contrary. Everything you've cited, even the most favorable to your position, has always shown a significant number of scientists following the rules, as they are set out by the authorities cited above and by others. Yes, there are dinosaurs with incomplete understanding of the current rules, often getting them one-fourth or one-half right, and some still living 100% within the pre-1967 days of "degrees Kelvin" with the symbol "°K". But we have have higher standards here at Wikipedia. Gene Nygaard 20:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
'Significant numbers' being about 5%. If you're interested in anything other than disruption you'll drop this. Worldtraveller 20:17, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's just use the Kelvin symbol (K). Like writing 'm' instead of metre/meter it is neutral. Wikify the letter if necessary to help clueless readers.--Jyril 19:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd have no problem at all with that approach. Worldtraveller 19:54, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm ignoring this argument over kelvin/Kelvin, etc., & I'm promoting this article to {{GA}}. Please take this dipute to WP:MoS; once resolved there, this & related articles can then be editted to conform to the consensus there. -- llywrch 03:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separate planet articles

Do we really need separate articles for HD 217107 b and HD 217107 c - this seems to have been done more to avoid whitespace than because the planets are especially noteworthy (most extrasolar planets articles have the planets and infoboxes in the main article). While I agree that whitespace is annoying, I also don't think every extrasolar planet deserves an article: most are just another catalogue entry, and I don't see anything particularly special about the planets of HD 217107 - just another hot Jupiter and eccentric planet. See also Gliese 876, clearing the starbox seems to be fairly common practice. Chaos syndrome 18:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The white space in all these articles looks absolutely horrible. But that's beside the point - I split the planet's articles out because if there is enough info about them to warrant an enormous info box then surely they do deserve their own article. I did some research and without much effort at all put together non-stubby articles about them. What do you actually think of the content of the articles? Too detailed? Worldtraveller 18:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting the articles were too detailed, that would be silly. There is still the problem of presenting a quantitative comparison for the planets in this system though. I think the table idea proposed by Jyril is a very good one: at present there is no article which contains values for all the planets in the HD 217107 system (while the current "Planetary system" section provides a good basic overview, it is fairly qualitative). Something like the table at Attributes of major planets or the tables on the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia would be good. Not sure what would happen if the table got wide enough to impinge on the starbox though. Chaos syndrome 21:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Vast majority of the known extrasolar planets are so poorly known that basically all we know about them can be described in an extrasolar planet infobox. Therefore separating articles tend to create just more stub articles and excessive repetition (to be honest, current HD 217107 planet articles look really good despite the lack of available information; still, I'm not convinced that anyone has enough patience to create so comprehensive articles to every planet). From this point of view it would be better to include all planet data in the star article until it becomes detailed enough.

But still, the current situation is clearly not a good one. To be honest, it's horrible because the infoboxes have grown so long. There is way too much clear space in the articles. One way is to use JavaScript to hide the infoboxes so the article stays compact as WorldTraveller has done in his test page. Problem is, we should avoid using JavaScript because of compatibility issues. IMHO it would be better to combine extrasolar planet infoboxes to one table and put it in the bottom of the page. True, they wouldn't be as visible but that wouldn't be much different from the current situation. The article would be more readable, because text is then more compact.--Jyril 18:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Chaos syndrome, what I mean is, articles can sometimes be a bit puffed out and not very interesting and I wondered if you thought these were. If you think the separate articles are good quality then what's the problem? Not all extrasolar planets warrant articles, I am sure, but it was really quite easy to write enough about these to warrant the separate articles. As for one article containing all the details, I'm not sure I see that's essential: the main article here contains the most essential info about the planets - mass and orbital period. The subarticles contain the detailed tables, so people can find it if they want it.
As for generally whether extrasolar planets should ever have separate articles, I wouldn't ever separate them out if the separate article is going to be a stub, but I think that the lack of separate articles currently is a reason to say they shouldn't exist. I really think that if a planet has enough known about it to warrant a large infobox then it has enough known about it to warrant a separate article, whether someone's written it yet or not.
The javascript test of mine that Jyril's talking about is here - interested to know what anyone thinks. I thought I didn't particularly like it in the end. Worldtraveller 09:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I've gone and rethought it, the separated articles are fine, we probably don't need to compare ALL the parameters... leaving it at mass/period/semimajor axis/eccentricity provides a pretty good overview of the system anyway.
The thing is, it is possible to populate most of the Extrasolar Planet infobox for most planets thanks to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, and that sums up most of what we know about many of the planets, so I'm not sure being able to use the infobox is a good criterion for a planet being worthy of a separate article.
While the JavaScript works fine on a technical level as far as I've been able to tell (the usual tests of disabling Javascript and leaving CSS enabled, disabling CSS and leaving JavaScript don't leave the information inaccessible), I'm not really convinced that JavaScript is a good way to go. Besides, it ends up (in the no-JavaScript but CSS enabled case) with infoboxes floating a long way down the page separated from the article text relating to them, which isn't particularly good.
As for position of the infobox, I don't mind. Centering is good, I have a slight preference for it being at the top of the section, but I'm not going to alter it for the moment (plus there is the precedent set on the Solar System article, which puts tables at the bottom). I'd like to align the numbers better (e.g. on the ± symbol) but I can't see a way to do that without using extra table cells (and disabling border formatting for some cells), or going to full HTML tables, which is presumably a bad thing. Chaos syndrome 09:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree the javascript is not the solution here - it works nicely for navigation boxes at the bottom of articles (see Template:Dynamic navigation box) but less well for this kind of thing. Would it be possible in some way to incorporate the planetary comparison into the starbox, do you think? That might make it look a bit less cluttered, although I can't think of a good way of doing it.
It's not really true, I don't think, to say that all that's known about most exoplanets is the numerical data in the infobox. I did a search of the literature for three random planets we've got stub articles for and found that each of them had several papers published about them containing interesting stuff which would make ideal content for an article. Worldtraveller 10:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I prefer the separate table approach: putting the data in the starbox is going to be problematic once we start getting to planetary systems with more than, say, 2 planets. If we assume the approach of putting planet data in the starbox becomes widely accepted, we have to consider the situation where another planet is found around 55 Cancri, it's going to get to the stage where a starbox takes up as much horizontal room as it does vertically. Even multiple star systems (e.g. 40 Eridani) aren't handled particularly well with the starbox as currently implemented. Do we need starbox twostars, starbox threestars, etc, then add combinations for p planets around s stars and it ends up ridiculous... Chaos syndrome 00:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with you people? We've been puting exos in the it's star's artical for years, why change now. The only time exos are made into there own artical is if they are of big news and of public intrest (i.e. OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, 51 Pegasi b, HD 188753 Ab). These planets are not of any of these standerds, why should they be treeted with royalty. They should be in the star's artical as of wiki rules and tradition. And FYI, the only reason that Worldtraveller made the b and c articals is because he hates those {{clear}} things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— HurricaneDevon @ 11:20, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Oppose merge - there is no rule that says extrasolar planets can't have their own articles, and there's plenty enough content for separate articles. Worldtraveller 11:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per above. Chaos syndrome 11:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I oppose merging for the same reasons. There's no point to create new articles if the article includes only an infobox and short paragraph of text. Articles like these are well structured and should not be merged.--Jyril 12:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There is no compelling reason to merge. Putting information about exoplanets in the articles of their primaries is a fine practice but it is not, and shouldn't be, an inflexible policy. Eluchil404 14:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Now that I think of it, I also oppose. But I would like to organize this new trend. (more to come).
    — HurricaneDevon @ 19:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Planetary system table

I've changed the header from "planet" to "companion", because presumably a table of this sort will be useful for systems containing brown dwarfs as well as planets. I'd like to get feedback as to whether people think this is a good idea and whether we should start deploying this on other extrasolar planet/system articles, and what if anything to add/remove from it.

I'll add that I don't like the current form of the templates {{Star-planetbox primary}} and {{Star-planetbox secondary}} which have been created in response to the changes in this article, the semantics are a bit weird (why does the first planet in the list get special treatment?), and the header seems unnecessary (it also is ungrammatical for single-planet systems). Not entirely sure a template is really necessary for this purpose. Chaos syndrome 15:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't really think these templates are necessary. They're much more complicated than simple wiki table markup, and in many cases I think they just add to the clutter on a page - I don't think they're much good where there's only one planet and the details are easily incorporated into the text. I think we should stick with the simple table. Worldtraveller 10:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Distance to HD 217107

According to Hipparcos, the distance to HD 217107 is 19.7 pc (64.3 ly) and therefore the star's absolute magnitude is 4.70. A value that close to solar sounds unrealistic because the star is a subgiant. Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia uses a different value, 37 pc (120 ly). [3] Can't find the source for that value, though.--Jyril 12:39, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say generally there's little reason to doubt Hipparcos results - they are the most accurate measurements of distance for nearby stars. HD 217107 is either still on the main sequence or only just evolving off it, and has a mass slightly less than solar, so I don't think an absolute magnitude of 4.7 is really that unrealistic. Worldtraveller 12:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I searched for more papers. Looks like it really is a borderline case, some sources give it a luminosity class of IV-V. According to the Geneva Group, MV = 4.7 is 0.7 mag above ZAMS for a 0.9 MS star. [4] The California & Carnegie group also use the Hipparcos value. I wonder what is the source of that 37 pc value. Only paper which seems to use it is this [5], but it isn't refereed nor it provide a source for that value. (It should be noted, however, that Hipparcos has some serious errors: for example, the distance to β Cen was calculated wrong, but that was because its companion was not taken into account.)--Jyril 13:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)