Talk:OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb

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  • We probably shouldn't write that much about microlensing; it has its own article, and readers can go there if they need or want more information. Ghent 22:06, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Speculation

Probably shouldn't have all this speculative stuff in there, all we have is a mass and projected separation - we don't know if it has a rocky core or not, nor even if it is a terrestrial. Chaos syndrome 23:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

We also have spectral type of it's star. Thus probabls range of surface temperatures can be estimated. Some of the referances are definatly classifying it as rocky - including the ESO - although how they derive that, I'm not sure - Beowulf314159 00:04, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Toss in the fact that they were saying that Glise 876 d could not be a Jovian type world because it's "low mass" - 7.5 times terran mass - would not retain the atmosphere of a gas giant. This world is smaller yet. - Beowulf314159 00:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
However this planet is a lot colder, which aids gas retention as the molecules in the atmosphere aren't bouncing around so fast. After applying a few worldbuilding rules-of-thumb I get that the planet could probably retain hydrogen in the atmosphere, though this isn't by any means rigorous, and would count as original research anyway. The whole implication that this is a terrestrial-type planet seems to only be present in the press releases, not the discovery paper. Chaos syndrome 10:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
As long as we make it clear that it's not been proven yet, it can't hurt. The information so far is making what the *official announcement* states, quite possible. Ghent 07:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that one has to strain out the "media hype" here. The media seems intent on every new "smallest" exoplanet discovery being "earthlike". It doesn't help that there are no nice, neat dividing lines between categories. - Beowulf314159 13:46, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which red dwarf?

Does anyone know that? I believe it doesen't even have a name, does it (don't know how this works)? anyway, that would be something nice to be in the article. algumacoisaqq 01:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and somewhere, it's said the surface should be made primarely of frozen líquid. Isn't there a better way to say that?? algumacoisaqq 03:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

It looks like the name of the star is OGLE-2005-BLG-390L (at least, its the name given in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia), which, by the way, has got its own article. — Poulpy 10:46, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
The star is very inconspicuous -- one of the hundreds of millions visible towards the Galactic bulge. The image [1] of the star illustrates that well. Therefore it did not have a name before the lensing event.--Jyril 12:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] frozen liquid

"the surface is made of a frozen liquid" — i.e. "the surface is solid"?? Joestynes 12:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it to read "frozen volatiles," which is more consistent with astronomers' usage in such cases. --Jeff Medkeff | Talk 13:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Repeatability

Planetary detections through doppler means have the potential to follow the delta through the entire orbit, from red shifted, to the mean, to blue shifted, and back. So I take the point about microlensing not being repeatable, to the extent that other observatories cannot go look in a month or a year and potentially make observations that disprove the hypothesis. However, the article summarizes this distinction as non-repeatability and, as I read it, it seems to suggest that the microlensing event won't repeat. At a distance of ~28ly or whatever, and given normal proper motions for the star, it would be very surprising if it wouldn't detectably repeat one planetary orbital period later. A nit, but still. --Jeff Medkeff | Talk 13:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

During a microlensing event the star and especially the planet must travel over the disk of the background star, which needs extremely accurate alignment. That is why these events are practically unique. The lensing star moves relatively quickly (the whole lensing event lasts only a few months at maximum), enough that the planet cannot cross the background star again.--Jyril 12:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page name

Can we please decide this once and for all? The ESO doesn't use the space (second paragraph of this page). Nor does planet.iap.fr. Nor does Nature. Anville 13:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The Gliese 876 entry uses a space, so it's a Wikipedia convention at least. Of course, astronomical societies trump Wikipedia, but if there is no official standard or strong convention, it seems to be how exoplanets are written up in Wikipedia. If the space is wrong by "official" standards, other exoplanet articles might need repair. - Beowulf314159 13:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

A Google search for OGLE-2005-BLG390L b returns no results. The only place I've seen the space used is on Wikipedia and on the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, which uses an automated PHP script which basically assumes a space (EPE gets the PSR 1257+12 designations wrong also). Chaos syndrome 13:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Google search isn't useful here, yet. Searching Goodle for "OGLE-2005-BLG390Lb" only hit twice. Google hasn't spidered all the pages yet - it's only been announced for... 24? 36?.... hours. However, your assertion also holds true for the Google News search, for this exoplanet. Searching for "Gliese 876 d" and "Gliese 876d", Google search hits for both, although the non-spaced version hits twice as often. - Beowulf314159 14:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Basically there are only rules-of-thumb here - if the star has a name or Bayer designation then you obviously need a space. If the star is a binary (e.g. 16 Cygni) and the planet orbits one of the components, a space is generally not used - hence 16 Cyg Bb. If the star only has a catalogue number, spaces may or may not be used (both HD 28185 b and HD 28185b have been used). PSR 1257+12 follows its own rules. In the case of this planet, the convention at Bennett 05 seems to be in use, and no space is used there. Chaos syndrome 14:29, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I am member of the discovery team, and we adopted OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb (without space), in accordance with was brought up for discussion by my collaborator Dave Bennett. (Martin Dominik, University of St Andrews)

I didn't realize the name of the star is the reason if there's a space or not. If the name was going to be OGLE-05-390Lb since the star was named, i'll leave it bee. But if the name was and still is obtianal, i'll be back. — Hurricane Devon ( Talk ) 18:03, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I said rules-of-thumb, not definitive guidelines. But the case here seems to be that the space you are insisting on is actually not used. Give us a source which uses the space. Otherwise, by inserting a space, you've invented a designation. Chaos syndrome 18:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be "space fetish" in general - the annoying "big ass block of whitespace" keeps getting put back by this user - Beowulf314159 18:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Besides - one of the discovery team has said they do not use the space? Looks like that settles it. Check the pre-print article to make sure it's not someone "pulling a fast one" - but whichever the use in the pre-print article is, use that. addendum: the abstract of the pre-print article does not use that space. Seems to settle that, unless you want to argue the discovery team can't name it? - Beowulf314159 18:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "At the time of its discovery ..."

These bits about this planet being the "most earthlike ... at the time of its discovery" are misleading. It implies that a more "earthlike" planet has been found since, which, being that this planet was discovered all of yesterday, cannot possibly be the case. Until a more "earthlike" planet is found, the text should simply read "the most earthlike planet discovered to date." - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 15:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

and when that happens, you guarentee that you personally will come back and change the article? Or will it just go "stale" and be inaccurate then? "To date" is a relative term, depending on the time of reading. - Beowulf314159 15:32, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
How about "as of January 26th 2006 it was the most earthlike..." Galuple 18:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm more worried about Wikipedia being inaccurate now than "then". Vague and misleading text is inherently unencyclopedic and, given that people are constantly crawling Wikipedia for errors, such an error would probably fix itself rather quickly. Being that I read the article the day after it was first posted, I was relatively quickly able to discern that this vague information was, in fact, still true. But five years down the line, if no "more earthlike" planet has been found, text like "at the time of its discovery ..." would be a costly error. Yes, I said error: implied errors are just as unencyclopedic (and damaging to Wikipedia's credit) as blatant ones. - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 17:52, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Also, there is already precedent on this issue. See, for example, the where Sears Tower article says it is "the tallest office building in the United States", not that "It was at the time of its building"; the largest photographs in the world say what the "current claim" is, not what the claim was "at the time this photograph was printed". Search around Wikipedia if you like -- that's the way it's done, and that's the way it makes sense. What if that turns out to be the most earth-like planet we ever find? Wikipedia is not a crystal ball ... - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 18:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Nice speech. The article was resolved on that point about 24 hours ago. You could have read it and saved yourself the trouble. - Beowulf314159 19:46, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I did. I wanted to respond anyway, since there is no such thing as a permanent "resolution" on Wikipedia. - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 00:24, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Distance?

Can someone provide a referance for the stars distance? I've seen it quoted as 20 thousand, 25 thousand, and 28 thousand light years (See here as well). Someone changed it from 20 to 28 in this article. The external referance right beside it says 20, while the article for the star says 28.

A pretty minor quibble, but does anyone have a referance to solve the confusion? - Beowulf314159 16:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I would've thought that we should stick with the ESO/OGLE official number. In my opinion, that's much more reliable than whatever pages might've got it wrong... Ghent 18:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I changed it to the data provided by the team members and reflected in the pre-print article. I figure they probably are more accurate than, say, the BBC. See section "Some corrections" below. - Beowulf314159 18:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The 28000 light year figure appears to apply to the source star in the lens (which would probably be designated OGLE-2005-BLG-390S). I think this should be added to the OGLE-2005-BLG-390L article (see my comments on the talk page there). Chaos syndrome 16:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some corrections

I'm an author on the actual Nature paper, just a few points:

-You should reference the scientific paper itself, not just Nature's commentary/press release. A preprint (identical text and figures but lacking the Nature formatting and copyright restrictions) is at:

http://au.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601563

A reference to the PLANET home page is also a good idea - http://planet.iap.fr

-the PLANET/Robonet microlensing followup group made the planet discovery, not OGLE. OGLE find microlensing events themselves, around 1000 in 2005 alone. They didn't find the anomaly that indicated this one had a planet. The paper's authors include all of PLANET, all of Robonet, all of OGLE, and all of MOA. PLANET found the planetary anomaly, OGLE found the microlensing event itself, and both OGLE and MOA have one or two points that confirm the planetary anomaly, but wouldn't be useful on thier own without the PLANET/Robonet data. Two-thirds of the data defining the planetary anomaly itself was taken at Perth Observatory.

-The planet parameters are:

mass: 5.5 Me +5.5/-2.7 Orbital radius: 2.6 +1.5/-0.6 Astronomical units, a period of 10.4 years Distance: 6.6 +/- 1.0 kpc - that works out to ~ 21500 light years, +/- 3300, with sources rounding differently Coordinates: RA=17:54:19.2, Dec=-30:22:38 (J2000)

-The ratio between the mass of the planet and the mass of the star is known fairly precisely (7.6 +/- 0.7)*10^-5, along with the lensing properties for the star (which depend on both star mass and distance). The latter, combined with a model of stellar mass distribution along the line of sight, lets us work out that the star mass is most likely to be 0.22 solar masses, within a factor of two (which gives most of the uncertainty in the planet's mass). There's a 4% chance that the parent star is actually a white dwarf, and <1% that it's a neutron star or black hole. In a decade or two, new telescopes are likely to be able to resolve the lens and background (source) stars individually, and pin down a precise mass and stellar type, which will in turn pin down the planet's mass.

-The main reason for the fuss about this planet is not so much the fact that it's the smallest mass so far - dozens of previous discoveries have met that criteria, one by one. If you look at a plot of mass versus orbital radius for all previous discoveries (170, not 150), they all cluster in the high-mass, small-orbit corner, and because of the huge selection bias in the Radial Velocity technique, the smallest planets have the smallest orbits. The nearest contender, Gliese 876d, has a three DAY orbit, compared to 10 years. This new planet sits smack in the middle of the region of parameter space enclosed by all the planets in our solar system - it would fit in perfectly, unlike any other planet discovered before.

A plot that shows this is at: http://www.wa.gov.au/perthobs/OB05390/KH-my%20mods.gif

-As well as the artists impressions - showing a generic icy planet - there are some raytraced lensing movies and stills showing the distortion caused by the gravity of the star and planet. This one shows the whole event, with the lens as a green dot, the true (undistorted) background star position and apparent size as a red circle, and the yellow images showing what you'd actually see from Earth over the 40-day lensing event. The planetary anomly is the short glitch in the primary image near the end of the movie: http://www.wa.gov.au/perthobs/OB05390/OB05390-whole.mpeg

The zoomed version shows just the anomaly, over two days: http://www.wa.gov.au/perthobs/OB05390/OB05390-zoom.mpeg

More info, movies, and images are at: http://www.wa.gov.au/perthobs/OB05390/

Andrew Williams

Thank you! Anville 19:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Style

Is there an official wikipedia policy with regards to whitespace and "breaking around" images? I can't find any mention, other than the "three revert rule". The edit wars around the "big ass block of whitespace" at the beginning of the article are annoying - Beowulf314159 22:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's any, for the simple reason that white space is completely unpredictable, since it depends on the font size and window width used by the browser —we have no control, and neither should we.
Urhixidur 23:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Personally I would suggest putting the databox before the image in any case, because the current positioning puts something that is basically speculation ahead of real data. Chaos syndrome 00:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there a way for the databox to hold the image? I mean, I've seen this several times (like in the sagittarius), but don't know how to do it algumacoisaqq 00:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

So? Quick poll? Do hard breaks stay in the document, or not? - Beowulf314159 01:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

With the current long vertical length of the infobox, a hard break would look ridiculous. So no. Chaos syndrome 09:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It's kind of amusing sometimes how a question can get posed, and before anyone answers, the page evolves to the point that the question is meaningless :) - Beowulf314159 11:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orbit Eccentricity

The orbit does not have an eccentricty. The +/- is a measurement and calcualtion error, not how much the orbit varies. Orbital elements are not known - Beowulf314159 01:20, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Constellation

Some time ago, the article said it was in the constelation of Sagittarius. Now it says Scorpius. Is this an error corrected or vandalism (or something else)? algumacoisaqq 20:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a correction. The person who made the change also made and uploaded the starmap using planaterium software, so I assume it's correct. You could download the starmap and check. - Beowulf314159 20:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
"You could download the starmap and check" errr... i think I'll believe you... I had trouble figuring out the star was OGLE-2005-BLG-390L... algumacoisaqq 00:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

>chuckles< Or you could look up the coordinates (which are in the article) on a general starmap, and see which constellation they're in. - Beowulf314159 00:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

By the way, does anybody else agree that the constellation to which the planet's star belongs is too irrelevant an information to be stated rigth on the first sentence? Leschatz

No. And since you also took an external reference out of the article, leave that alone too. You may find it personally "annoying" to have an external link in the opening paragraph, but you don't take references out of an article - even if you find them annoying. As for the talk page, learn to sign your comments. - Beowulf314159 01:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but by "annoying" I just meant that the reference in that place seemed to be polluting the sentence a bit. Of course the astro-ph pre-print should be referenced, but it is already on the External Links section, right below the reference to the Nature paper. And it seems rather obvious that the paper is where information such as coordinates and distance came from. But what about the constellation? I just wondered if anyboydy else would find that the name of the constellation is really an unimportant information (at least on the first sentence), because it makes the text sound less scientific and more like a newspaper or magazine curiosity. If most people think it's really importante to state that on the first sentence, perhaps it would be better to phrase it like "... in the direction of the constellation Scorpius", because at least, this would prevent people from thinking that the planet is somehow "located in" the constellation, which of course makes no sense. Oh, and by the way, issuing angry orders in capital letters such as "repairing external link VANDALISM, LEAVE REFERENCES IN" is not a very effective edit summary. And not very polite either. Leschatz 15:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I believe it's general practice to avoid footnotes, external hyperlinks or other inline citations within the lead paragraph(s) of an article. Generally speaking, all points raised in the lead section should be developed more fully below, and it is in the sections below where one places the various forms of inline referencing. This doesn't have the force of policy, of course, but lots of people like it this way (myself included). I would also support modifying the statement about the constellation, though I'm not sure the best way to do so without verbal gymnastics. Sounding like a bunch of astrologers is bad, but so is writing horribly awkward and convoluted prose. Anville 15:55, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Then take the "kiloparsecs" out, or at least put it with the location and constellation. If we're going for "readability over conciseness", this should be removed as well. The general public doesn't usually think in kilosparsecs. They might be hard pressed to define it. - Beowulf314159 17:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Note

Please, take away the note thing. I find it annoing. I didn't find a way to remove it away.

[edit] What the HELL?

Do people just smack copyright violation stickers on things without reading three days of history and discussion? - Beowulf314159 03:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Looks like whoever put the second section in did take it off yahoo. Just great. Three days getting the facts right on the first half, and some idiot sinks the whole article? - Beowulf314159 03:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name

Will this planet be named? I don't mean something like the current name, I mean a name like the names of the planets Venus, Mars, Pluto, Saturn, etc, etc. --Revolución (talk) 03:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think anyone knows. It's possible that it might be named after some famous astronomer, or something like that - just to commemorate them by naming something after them. However, unless they do something like that, it's unlikely it will be named anything other than it's catalog name. We will most likely never observe the planet directly - and it seems unlikely we'll even detect it again; planetary microlensing events are unique. So there's no real need - Beowulf314159 03:34, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Life

What are the possibilities this planet has non-intelligent life or even intelligent life? --Revolución (talk) 03:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

No one can say for sure without going there - and it's 25,000 light years away, so that isn't likely to happen, either. However, the planet's surface temperature is -220 C, and we don't even know if there is a rocky surface or not - it might be a small ice/gas world something like Neptune - only smaller. If there was life of some kind on this world, it seems unlikely that it would be water/carbon based. As far as we know, it seems unlikely that this world can support life as we know it. - Beowulf314159 03:37, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
How did they find out the temperature? Or is it just a guess? --Revolución (talk) 04:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, so it is a guess, based on distance from the star. Seems reasonable. --Revolución (talk) 04:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes - based on the distance from the star, and the spectral type of the star, which tells us how much energy it is producing. It's a long ways away from a (relatively) cool star - Beowulf314159 12:28, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, wouldn't a world 25,000 light years away have life that might be able to survive in cold temperatures? Or this could be an Earth-in-the-making. ;) --Revolución (talk) 04:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Hey - do I look like an astrophysicist?! :) Ok - just warning you that I'm not an expert, just an interested armature - but I'll tell you what it is that I understand.
Yes, it's possible that there is a form of life that uses a totally different chemistry than ours. Or it's possible that (if it were rocky) that there might be volcanic "hot spots" heated by radioactive decay of elements in the crust (if it has a crust - remember, we don't even know that!), etc. That's why I said that no one can tell for sure unless they go there. However, based on what we no, there is no evidence for any of these scenarios, and these are pretty unlikely scenarios.
As for an "earth in the making", that doesn't seem likely either. Remember in the article it talks about the type of star the planet orbits around? Red dwarf stars are very cool compared to the Sun. So are white dwarf stars. Plus the planet is at least as far away from it's star as Mars, which in our solar system is really cold, and it has a nice hot G-type star. So the planet is cold and it doesn't seem it will ever get warmer. So... it doesn't seem likely it's an "earth in the making", either. - Beowulf314159 12:26, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WHO discovered the planet ?

The news agency Reuters has given me a hard time rectifying the wrong news that OGLE led the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb. By mistake, the NSF press release used 'confirmed' with PLANET/RoboNet rather than 'detected', awaking a wrong impression. Reuters has meanwhile corrected their article, however the wrong news has spread. The OGLE team detected microlensing by the planet's host star on 11 July 2005, giving PLANET/RoboNet the opportunity to monitor this event densely with their telescope network. A planet was first suspected by PLANET based on data obtained with the Danish 1.54m telescope at ESO LaSilla (Chile) on 10 August 2005, and an OGLE point (from the Warsaw 1.3m at Las Capananas, Chile) from the same night showed the same trend. The OGLE group states: "But for a period of about a few hours on the night of August 10, 2005 the gravitational field of the planet caused a short-lived planetary deviation lasting several hours. It was noticed first by the PLANET team." (http://ogle.astrouw.edu.pl/ogle3/blg390.html). The PLANET team also led the scientific analysis. The authorlist is primarily sorted teamwise in the order PLANET, RoboNet, OGLE, MOA. The systematic name of the planet, OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, follows the name of its star OGLE-2005-BLG-390L, which is the lens star of microlensing event OGLE-2005-BLG-390, the 390th event towards the Galactic BuLGe detected by OGLE in 2005. For any details not provided on the web, feel free to contact me (contact details provided on http://planet.iap.fr under 'Team members' and on ESO press release http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2006/pr-03-06.html).

Martin Dominik (co-leader of PLANET collaboration and member of discovery team)

[edit] Unicode planet symbols

The only planet symbols that are in common use in astronomical literature seem to be the sun and the earth (interestingly, whoever put these symbols in seems to have used Mars instead of Earth and the usual Earth symbol is a circle with a plus sign in the middle). MJ seems to be fairly common. Is there a Wikipedia convention here? Not sure the Unicode symbols work on all computers either. Chaos syndrome 13:11, 29 January 2006 (UTC) edited by Chaos syndrome 13:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC) you can read more at www.SPACE.com. www.SPACE.com

[edit] Infobox

I didn't vandalise anything! I added pictures to the ((Extrasolar Planet}} so I put the proper infobox on it. We need a starmap for the star, not the planet. Plus it's not my fault that theres not enough info on this planet. I rereversed it.
— Hurricane Devon ( Talk ) 21:12, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Did you notice that by adding the "me", "mr" and "tf" values to the template almost every 150+ extrasolar planet articles look bad? I'm not sure if they're needed, and I'd like to keep the templates as small as possible. Also, if there is an unknown value, please use the word unknown or just "?" so that the default {{{missing value}}} doesn't appear.--Jyril 22:29, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The customized infobox was written for this page, not because someone wanted to spend time making it, but because, with this planet, most of the standard information is not available, and as Jyril notices, it just looks better to have a meaningful table, rather than a bunch of blank entries.

The standard infobox makes you try and hunt down what data there is there. The old presentation was concise and easy to read.

As for the starmap... I find you statement... odd. "We need a starmap for the star, not the planet"? How do you think a finder starmap is going to be different for the star or planet? Sorry, but at 25,000 light years distance, how is their placement in the night sky going to be any different?


It's nice that you expanded the exoplanet infobox; that's helpful, and anyone's effort is appeciated. It doesn't mean that your "new and improved" infobox is appropriate everywhere. That is why the exoplanet infobox wasn't changed a month ago, a custom version was added here instead.

While you did not set out to "deliberatly wreck" a page, and thus your edits are not vadalism, you've attempted to fit something on the page that doesn't really fit, which results in a lot of blank information, and you also removed a perfectly valid locator starmap, which is taking infomrtion out of a page.

What was here was working perfectly well; in fact it can be argued that it was working better and more concisely than what was put here in it's stead.

Standardization is a good thing - hence the custom box was made to look as much as possible like the template. However, readability and consise presentation take priority over standard template use - and removing information that is correct and applicable to the topic, is never justifiable.

Vedexent 23:13, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Just to sumarize: Using the standard template ADDS nothing but blank table entries - which are useless - and REMOVES a skymap - which is useful. If you want to edit the infobox that's there to make it look more like the main template, great. Perhaps I would agree if I knew WHY you think adding blank table entries and taking the starmap out improves the article. Could you explain? Vedexent 23:19, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Infobox proposal: Ok, this problem is not unique to this planet. The standard exoplanet infobox is not likely to be useful for any planet discovered through gravitational microlensing. All that is detected in this technique is the planet's average distance and mass. The temperature is calculated through the planet's distance and the spectral type of the star. The nature of gravitational microlensing detection also makes it unlikely (not impossible, but unlikely) that the planet will ever be detected again.

More and more worlds are going to be detected using this technique, and this is all we're going to know about them. Maybe it's time for a new infobox for these planet detections? Say.. {{exoplanet-microlensing}}? What do you think? That way everyone is happy, there's a standardized information box - which will be useful for a whole bunch of new discoveries as well - and it doesn't have a lot of extraneous blank table entries. What do people think? - Vedexent 00:09, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me.
Urhixidur 03:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
There is a danger that the development of different templates diverges producing very different looking infoboxes. Maybe we should use subtemplates? For example, {{exoplanet-start}}, {{exoplanet-mass}}, {{exoplanet-radius}}, {{exoplanet-end}} and so on. Unknown values can then be leave out, which makes the infoboxes more compact.--Jyril 12:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Does it need to be that fine grained? I admit that such a collection of sub-templates could pretty much adapt to any combination of known and unknown information about an exoplanet, but is that fine a control needed?

The information known about an exoplanet it determined by it's means of detection. Exoplanets detected by radial velocity method have one set of known information, those by millisecond pulsar variations another, those by gravitational microlensing, a third, etc. A series of 5-6 templates, tops, could handle these contingencies, and even be grouped under a category. This is less work, but also less flexible than your proposal. It's a trade off. - Vedexent 21:01, 18 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Illustration of microlensing

The NASA figure illustrating the effect of microlensing is technically wrong: The gravitational field of the lens star does not focus the light of the observed source star like a convex lens. Instead, light rays closer to the lens star experience a stronger bending (rather than a weaker one). Can this figure be replaced? I have contacted NASA JPL on this issue.

Martin Dominik