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Comments/Assistance incorporating the information into the article would be welcome. NW ( Talk) 01:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
A group of us have been working to take the Betelgeuse article to FA. There's a technical phrase that has come up, spectral dispersion, which appears to be central to the whole issue of advanced telescopy, and by extension the angular measurement of astronomical objects. Is this a subject that merits its own article? Perhaps a subsection somewhere else?
I googled the phrase "spectral dispersion" and obtained 35,200 results. I read some of the articles, but most of them don't adequately define the term. Any thoughts on how to handle this issue would be very much appreciated.-- Sadalsuud ( talk) 18:56, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
P.S. This is the best external link I've found so far: Spectral Dispersion of Star Images at Low Elevation.
FYI, Syzygy has been sent for deletion via AfD 76.66.192.49 ( talk) 12:41, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Folks, assistance is needed to review Low dimensional chaos in stellar pulsations and Stellar pulsation theory – Regular versus irregular variability. They are clearly scientifici/research papers (and may even be copyvios of material published elsewhere) but are not encyclopedic articles, at least not in their current form. Thanks. – ukexpat ( talk) 18:03, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is a discussion about this article at WT:physics
76.66.197.151 ( talk) 05:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I've moved an anonymous addition to Dark matter ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to Talk:Dark matter#Additions by 97.103.48.87 for vetting. It looks like a good-faith addition, but it's a preprint discussing a slightly unorthodox variant of the galactic dark matter halo. If a couple of people with more experience in the field could glance at it to see if it's something that should be included, that would be helpful. -- Christopher Thomas ( talk) 19:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Messier 87 was nominated at GAN, but I note the nominater has made few edits to the article. I am concerned the editor might not be able to address the concerns raised. Despite this, the article appears in not too bad a shape and with a bit of work could pass GA. I have left some queries needing addressing at Talk:Messier 87/GA1. I have not yet done a literature search for comprehensiveness. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 04:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.
We would like to ask you to review the Astronomy articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.
We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!
For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 00:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, List of confusing astronomy terms has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 05:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Since there's more of an astronomy community here than over at Commons, I wanted to ask people's opinions of what I've been doing over there lately in commons:Category:NGC objects. Please see commons:Category talk:NGC objects and comment there, if interested. - dcljr ( talk) 23:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Is there a calendar of astronomical events anywhere in Wikipedia that has a chronological list of phases, conjunctions, oppositions, transits, eclipses, solstices and equinoxes etc. - a "2010 in the Solar System", as it were ? I know there are lists for separate event types, such as Table of lunar phases, Aspects of Venus, List of solar eclipses in the 21st century, as well as lists in articles such as Solstice and Conjunction (astronomy and astrology), but I was wondering if there is a consolidated list somewhere - something like this maybe (but without the dayglo colour scheme) ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 10:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
To what does "Holm" refer when saying, for example, that NGC 1 is also known as "Holm 2A"? - dcljr ( talk) 22:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I've been told that Observatory is not up to specks, and it's at FAC nom, and the commenter is out-on-travel, so... Res Mar 02:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Miami Valley Astronomical Society has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 01:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Did anyone notice the astronomical catalogue navigator?
76.66.200.95 ( talk) 02:47, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, AstronomyOutreach network has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 06:50, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
...is at GAN if anyone wants to take a look and help out. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 22:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
I nominated this article for Featured List status. The review page is here. Ruslik_ Zero 18:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Over at Template_talk:Infobox_journal#ADS_bibcode, we are considering adding the bibcode to {{ Infobox journal}}. However we have a few options for where the link should take the clicker. Ideas welcome.. John Vandenberg ( chat) 05:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
See discussion there....while I am thinking about it, am I the only person frustrated by there being an Astronomy discussion page and an astronomical objects discussion page? Are other folks happy or not-so-happy with it...? Casliber ( talk · contribs) 02:07, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Needs someone understanding exoplanets, or at least patient enough to trawl the references and make the story of discovery/refutation/discovery coherent.
Rich
Farmbrough, 18:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC).
Concerning this discussion, what is the position of the project on using unit conversions (especially having km, miles and light years for all values, especially in GAs/FAs) in astronomy articles? Having a certain position would quench such disputes. Materialscientist ( talk) 22:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Astronomical_Society_of_Dharmaraja_College_(ASDRC) has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 06:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, List_of_all_NGC_objects has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 06:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there's a dispute going on at Johannes Hevelius ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article and talk page for 7 years now, about whether this guy is German or Polish. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 20:28, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, File:Nlut galaxy.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 05:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
I have a quick question. for the sentence "Comet Hartley 2, officially designated 103P/Hartley", for example, is there a reference available for the "officially designated" portion? I assume that the IAU is the source of authority here, but I can't seem to find anything about comet names on their web site. I'm not terribly familiar with their site though, so perhaps I'm simply missing something?
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs) 17:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Comet Hartley 2, designated 103P/Hartley by the
Minor Planet Center, is a small
periodic comet with an orbital period of 6.46 years.
I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick ( talk) 20:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
I have nominated Herbig-Haro object for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tom B ( talk) 22:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Just thought this would be of interest.
A planet, HIP 13044 b, which was formed in another galaxy has been discovered in the Helmi Stream. (BBC) Simply south ( talk) 00:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi, following some discussion here, I started to wonder why the {{ WikiProject Astronomy}} banner is preferred over the {{ WPSpace}} banner. After looking into it, I see there is some fairly complicated coding that has gone into this Astronomy banner, that I don't fully understand (it took me a while to figure out what a "hook" was). So, it appears the reason WPSpace isn't being used, is because it would be too difficult to implement the features of the Astronomy banner there. Is that correct? Or is there some other reason?
At the moment, some Astronomy pages use the Space banner while others only use the Astronomy banner; this appears to account for the difference between the Astronomy assessment statistics and the Astronomy assessment category statistics. Mlm42 ( talk) 20:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I guess this three year old discussion might be relevant. Mlm42 ( talk) 01:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
Just a quick note to let everyone know. The Astronomy 533 graduate astronomy class at the University of Michigan is updating the following astronomy-related wiki pages:
The pages will be significantly changed; please feel free to check the pages when they come online in mid-December. EFBell ( talk) 20:28, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, I have nominated antimatter comets for deletion ( Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Antimatter_comet). James McBride ( talk) 09:22, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on over at WikiProject Space after concerns have been raised over a number of organisation issues, many of which have been laid out at WikiProject Human spaceflight. Feel free to provide any input as this concerns all projects currently within the scope of WP:Space. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 22:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is an open RfC at Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines about whether this is an essay or guideline. The scope of the page affects astrophysics, astrochemistry, and math. 76.66.194.212 ( talk) 07:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
Anonymous IP 99.192.66.42 has rewritten parts of this article. "Cephid variable" has been changed to "Classical cephids" in the introduction, and throughout the article (see edit history) - along with supporting content. Then this anonymous IP has placed a requested move tag on the talk page. The move is proposed to be from Cepheid variable to Classical Cepheid variables. I have objected to the move because the rationale is misleading. First, they rewrote the article to suit themselves. Then they requested a move in such a manner, as if the content of the article were about Classic Cephid variables all along. This looks like some form of POV pushing. It also appears that some of the references have been changed to support this person's content, but I can't be absolutely sure about that. Someone familiar with this article could probably make that determination better than I. If the anonymous IP wishes to have an article on "Classical cephids", then the anonymous IP is encouraged to write one. I am inclined to undo this person's changes, mainly because of the alterations in the introduction from Cephid variables in general, to only Classical Cephids. The changes, and requested move don't make sense to me other than POV pushing. ---- Steve Quinn ( talk) 06:14, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I have nominated Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. The Rambling Man ( talk) 13:59, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation regarding the future of WikiProject Space and its child projects. The discussion is aimed at defining the roles of projects, and improving the activity and coordination of the projects. The input of members of this project is requested as it is one which may be affected by the issue. -- G W … 22:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Macrocarpum laws of astronomy is up for deletion here as OR.— RJH ( talk) 20:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that Category:Great Attractor is a subcategory of Category:Norma Cluster which is a subcategory of Category:Great Attractor. One of these relationships should be broken. The category system is supposed to be a hierarchy. So that if you keep selecting a subcategory, you eventually reach a category without subcategories. Another problem is that there seems to be confusion about which supercluster these belong to. Since I am not an astronomer, I brought these matters here rather than fix them myself. JRSpriggs ( talk) 20:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
The RfC over the fate of WikiProject Space came to the consensus of abolishing the project, removing it as a parent to the projects below it, with not a single comment in favour of its retention. As a result that project will be wound-down allowing Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight to become the lead projects in their area as has been pretty much de facto the case for some time on the Astronomy side. As a result it's probably a good idea if we modify some of this project, like the navbox for example, to fit this. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 16:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
The sempiternal German/Polish battle has risen again in the article about Johannes Hevelius. Someone with an IP address ( User:79.131.146.7) keeps removing many if not all mentions of Hevelius being German or being considered German. It would take a certain deal of manual edition to revert back to the original article — I do not have time right now. Is there any way to somehow “protect” the page? Said user does not mention any reference.
I am Canadian with mostly French ancestry, so I have no national interest in the matter. I just find it very sad that this fight comes back periodically, on the pages of people who lived in that area. I understand Polish national pride (I had a Polish work colleague who explained it to me), but the fact is that some parts of Poland were German territory at some point or another, and I consider that people living there should be considered as Germans in that time period.
Mohawks and Crees and other Native Americans in Canada do not consider themselves as not Canadians because the new country was imposed upon them…
CielProfond ( talk) 13:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation , there was a discovery of a wikiproject eclipses. 64.229.101.17 ( talk) 06:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Greetings. As you may or may not know, Wikipedia has a collection of community books, which are pre-assembled collections of Wikipedia articles on a given subject, placed in a format (the Book namespace itself) that streamlines the process of converting them into single PDF documents or printed books.
This message is to inform you that one of these books, Book:Caldwell catalogue, has been identified by a bot to have several issues. After reviewing the bot's report, I can confirm that the report is valid, however I do not possess the knowledge or technical ability to remedy the issue myself. The issue is as follows:
The articles
NGC 6541,
NGC 6352,
NGC 5286,
NGC 5823,
NGC 4609,
NGC 6101, and
NGC 4372 are redlinked; (meaning that they are listed for inclusion in the book, but lack corresponding articles.)
This issue does not make the book unprintable or unusable in any way, however it may be an indication that the book itself is incomplete.
If Wikipedia books are of interest to you or your project, or if you need logistical help in setting up or maintaining Wikipedia books, feel free to leave me a message on my user talk page or the talk page of WikiProject Wikipedia-Books.
Thank you, Sven Manguard Wha? 20:34, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
I have started a merger discussion at Talk:New General Catalogue#Merger proposal. All input and opinions welcome. Reyk YO! 01:33, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Scorpius X-1 has a slew of ambiguous abbreviations in its infobox's Other designations section. If you look at this nifty tool, you see all the ambiguous abbreviations in red ( 2A, RE - twice for some reason, XSS, 3A, 2U, 3U, and 4U). Could someone help decipher these abbreviations? Thanks, -- JaGa talk 06:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I suggest that extrasolar planet information be kept in their respective star's article. There are articles on planets that contain only 2 sentences, when they easily have more information in their respective star's article. I saw this on Kepler-9b and Kepler-9c. I am sure there are many, many more in the same boat. I suppose there are a few that merit their own articles, including HD 80606b, but alot only have a few sentences. atomic 77 32 04:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm having a concern with an editor regarding his understanding of a supposed "international date convention" that applies to astronomy articles. He's basically claiming that all astronomy articles should be using dates of the form "21 April 1990", rather than retaining whatever the author originally chose (the latter per WP:DATERET). Is anybody else aware of this? I have not seen such a convention and I don't recall a discussion on the topic taking place here. Thus far he has not identified the location of this Wikipedia convention, but in theory it could impact a lot of astronomy articles.
The article is History of supernova observation, and he has modified all date formats in apparent violation of WP:DATERET. After he twice reverted my reverts, I began a discussion at Talk:History of supernova observation#Change in date format and left a message at User_talk:Thorwald. Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 16:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
The page on Kin Endate, a Japanese asteroid hunter, was deleted back in Feb 2010 for lack of notability. I'd like to bring it back - I definitely feel he meets the notability criteria. He's got 593 discoveries - in the top 25 - and recorded the first known images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Precedence has it that asteroid discoverers are notable because "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." Every other person in the top 50 has an article, so I'm pretty sure it'll pass.
I've created a draft at User:Pi.1415926535/Draft of Kin Endate; I've also got a bunch of external links and old versions there. I would love if anyone could offer improvements, especially anything that'll solidify notability. Thanks ! Pi.1415926535 ( talk) 03:01, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll have to format the citations myself; apparently the {{Cite google book}} template is not yet bot supported. The "My profile" has useful bio information (it's a legitimate personal site, fortunately, not Myspace) so I relinked that under the name of the full site. I'll move it to article-space either tonight or tomorrow. Pi.1415926535 ( talk) 00:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Article has been created: Kin Endate. Thanks to everyone for the advice! Pi.1415926535 ( talk) 03:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Bitil Guilderstrone ( talk · contribs) appears to be a number vandal, changing numbers willy-nilly and replacing one constellation with another, doing vandalous null edits (performing vandalism and then reverting it)
I caught some weird stuff in one article and then checked the history, saw some more of the same... This needs someone to verify every contribution of Bitil's. Good thing he/she is inactive now.
65.93.14.196 ( talk) 12:08, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
The article on Hiroshi Kaneda, a prolific discoverer of asteroids, contradicts itself on one point; please see the talk page for details. (An importance rating from someone with subject knowledge also would be appreciated.) Thank you, -- Black Falcon ( talk) 04:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I should have done this days ago, but it slipped my mind. There is an almost week old AfD going on over Constellation Family here. It is quite a discussion already, but I thought some of the editors in this project might be able to add new points of view. James McBride ( talk) 00:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Usually proper names are not hyphenated when attributive, but common names are. I'd expect "main-sequence star", "O-type main-sequence star", etc. The refs seem to vary on this. Has there been a conscious decision to leave out the hyphens? (I've added en dashes to "pre–main sequence star", per WP:ENDASH, but if 'main sequence' is hyphenated, that would drop: "pre-main-sequence star".) — kwami ( talk) 02:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Looking at a few refs, I see "pre-main-sequence star" (the most logical punctuation) in Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis (2010), Accretion processes in star formation (2000), Asteroseismology (2009), The Physics of Astrophysics: Gas dynamics (1992), etc. That would appear to be the most common punctuation. But when it comes to stars in the main sequence, both "main-sequence star" and "main sequence star" are common. (The latter of course literally means a main star, not a star in the main sequence, but there's little danger of ambiguity, so it doesn't matter much.) — kwami ( talk) 10:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Okay, no objections, so I'll go with logical hyphenation (main-sequence star). — kwami ( talk) 23:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I just clicked on the link to Habitable zone from the main page news item on the Kepler mission discoveries and I noticed that it is rated as "low importance" by this project. Time to upgrade to "Mid"? Anyone interested in astronomy who hasn't heard of the HZ must have been locked in their telescope dome for years... PaddyLeahy ( talk) 13:06, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi. Should potential future supernova candidates have articles on their respective supernovae containing details such as the expected luminosity and possible future time (range) of the explosion as well as the core remnant type or should such information be included in the star or candidate list article? Thanks. ~ A H 1( T C U) 02:27, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
Several citations are done like this
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)or like
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)AKA, the citations have a hard link to the ADSABS database ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...654..373E). I've asked some bot coders to cleanup the citations, and instead use the |bibcode= parameter in these templates instead of the hard link. Which would look like
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)This has the advantage of treating things as they usually would be for citations with doi (which use |doi=10.1086/509106 instead of |url= http://dx.doi.org/10.1086%2F509106 ). Additionally, this would cleanup the downloadable PDFs by removing low-value links; if you have (bibcode: 2007ApJ...654..373E), you don't need to see the url ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...654..373E).
Comments? Feedback? See also User talk:Citation bot#Bibcodes and User:Rjwilmsi/Bibcodes for details, especially User:Rjwilmsi/Bibcodes#Queries, as Rjwilmsi as some questions about things. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)|id={{
arxiv|astro-ph/0604556}}
, aka a "clean" version of the above citation would be
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)I've just put an article up for AfD because the subject discusses a Kepler Object of Interest, basically a planet candidate. We are not talking about any of the 500 or so officially announced planets like those of the Kepler-11 system (note those actual planets don't even have articles yet!), we are talking about points of data no one knows yet are even real phenomena. The statistics of the candidates from the released paper are mentioned already in the Kepler article but does each candidate really deserve its own article? This seems to ridiculously defy notability standards. All sorts of scientific data are released to the public every day, is every datum verified or not notable enough for its own article? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
This is only tangentially related to the issue directly at hand (which seems to be resolved anyway), but I've been wondering: aren't there existing names for all of the "Kepler stars"? For example,
Kepler-11 was mentioned above... I see that the article doesn't mention any existing names for the star, and indeed the article actually states that the Kepler satellite discovered the star... an unreferenced claim that I find hard to swallow. This star has never been observed and cataloged prior to the Kepler satellite coming online? I understand that Kepler, being a space-born observation platform, has a much better view of the cosmos then we do (at least, that portion of the sky to which it is pointing), but... really?
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs) 17:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Location, at Atmosphere of Uranus#Stratosphere, in the picture, it says, "... in the stratosphere and termosphere of...", is termosphere suppose to be thermosphere? Was not sure. Thanks, Marasama ( talk) 20:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Just created this because I was getting tired of not-being able to write "a star of 10 M☉" effortlessly (a star of {{solar mass|10}}) or just the symbol by itself (M☉ / {{solar mass}}). Usage should be straightforward, but if anything is unclear, the documentation is there. Anything else that would need such a template? {{ Terrestrial mass}} / {{ Jovian mass}} / {{ Moon mass}}? Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I wonder if it might not be useful to have a parameter that can be used for the first instance, which would spell everything out and maintain absolute consistency? Ex: {{solar mass|10|1st}} → 10 solar masses (10 M☉). — Huntster ( t @ c) 19:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
{{ SkyTemplate}} has been nominated for deletion. 65.95.14.96 ( talk) 05:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
Last night I removed an unsourced claim, attributed to Alex Dessler, that the Van Allen radiation belts may be due to volcanic activity. I think this is physically very unlikely, and not at all main-stream, though I am not an expert on Van Allen radiation. A little Google search found ~9000 hits on {'Alex Dessler' 'Van Allen'}, but looking at the top few I see only things that seem to quote our previous Wikipedia article verbatim — almost all having all or part of the phrase:
"while Alex Dessler has argued that the belt is a result of volcanic activity".
Most appear to be blogs & other lightweight material, nothing that looks like a reliable source. A full-text search of the Astrophysics Data System for {"ALEX DESSLER" "VAN ALLEN BELT"} found no hits between 1952 and 2003. (Where would one search for older space physics information, I wonder?)
At first glance it appears to me as if there may have been an avalanche or loop of citations stemming from that very early (~2002) Wikipedia mention. The editor who made the claim was blocked indefinitely in 2008 as a troll, although that was not at first enough to convict the edit. Although "Alex Dessler" is redlinked, he is a reputable worker in space science.
I looked around a bit for a proper source, and commented out the dubious claim, thinking that if there is a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal that supports the claim, we should probably restore it. But I now it looks like this is a classic Wikipedia horror story.
When I could find no reasonable sources (glancing at only 30 or 40, of course not 9000), I sent an email, to Dessler, who quickly responded:
I am (sort of) shocked that this is what is reported. It is true that I once made a verbal joke at a meeting where I was making fun of someone (Tom Gold as I recall) to make the point that correlations were not proof of physical causality. You need a viable theory to make the connection. For example, I like this quote, "It has been proven by thousands of experiments that the beating of tom-toms during an eclipse will restore the Sun." This is from E. Bright Wilsons's book (which I read as a graduate student in the early 1950s) Introduction to Research. Wilson did not believe this correlation was true, as I did not believe volcanoes could cause or have any effect on the Van Allen Belt. My point was regarded as funny enough that I believe Wilmot Hess, in one of his books, quoted me in the spirit of a physicist having fun. If he did, the book would have been published in the 1960s. I never put such nonsense in print -- OMG!
The edit that did the damage was:
Lir made many many edits, often on other subjects, for over 6 years before being blocked, many of which probably need to be reviewed carefully. So it is potentially a more general Wikipedia problem. I think this case history needs to be reported (and discussed) on some of the project pages — physics, astronomy, space science,... as many as are relevant, and wherever Lir made many edits.
This is the first clear instance I have encountered of what appears to be an attempt to undermine the integrity of Wikipedia by deliberate covert fallacious editing. It is not trolling, which I think is defined as a deliberate attempt to create destructive conflict by stirring up conflict, outrage & emotion, etc — ie, not hidden.
Some points:
Thus Wikipedia is at least potentially (and perhaps already extensively) threatened by its own remarkable success.
I am basically a wikignome, by no means very well qualified to address these issues. I am certain there are many other editors in our project who are much more aware than I am. I would appreciate it if they could perhaps give us (me) some advice about how a lay wikipedian can best respond to these challenges, or point to existing WP resources for doing better. Thanks to any who respond.
Cheers, Wwheaton ( talk) 03:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
While not directly pertaining to WP:Astronomy, I thought I would share another long-standing error I just noticed (and have since corrected). Here is a link to an image comparing 3 spacecraft; as labeled, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, and 2001 Mars Odyssey. Looking at the uploaded image, I noticed that the far left craft was most certainly Mars Climate Orbiter. The image has existed, uncontested since 2005, and because of this, I assumed possibly someone at NASA simply made an error. However, following the source link, one can clearly see that the image is almost identical, with exception to the correct image of 2001 Mars Odyssey being in place. This was clearly a deliberate attempt to alter the image, and while minor, is rather troublesome nonetheless. This problem may go deeper than I first imagined.-- Xession ( talk) 00:06, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
Comments/Assistance incorporating the information into the article would be welcome. NW ( Talk) 01:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
A group of us have been working to take the Betelgeuse article to FA. There's a technical phrase that has come up, spectral dispersion, which appears to be central to the whole issue of advanced telescopy, and by extension the angular measurement of astronomical objects. Is this a subject that merits its own article? Perhaps a subsection somewhere else?
I googled the phrase "spectral dispersion" and obtained 35,200 results. I read some of the articles, but most of them don't adequately define the term. Any thoughts on how to handle this issue would be very much appreciated.-- Sadalsuud ( talk) 18:56, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
P.S. This is the best external link I've found so far: Spectral Dispersion of Star Images at Low Elevation.
FYI, Syzygy has been sent for deletion via AfD 76.66.192.49 ( talk) 12:41, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Folks, assistance is needed to review Low dimensional chaos in stellar pulsations and Stellar pulsation theory – Regular versus irregular variability. They are clearly scientifici/research papers (and may even be copyvios of material published elsewhere) but are not encyclopedic articles, at least not in their current form. Thanks. – ukexpat ( talk) 18:03, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is a discussion about this article at WT:physics
76.66.197.151 ( talk) 05:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I've moved an anonymous addition to Dark matter ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to Talk:Dark matter#Additions by 97.103.48.87 for vetting. It looks like a good-faith addition, but it's a preprint discussing a slightly unorthodox variant of the galactic dark matter halo. If a couple of people with more experience in the field could glance at it to see if it's something that should be included, that would be helpful. -- Christopher Thomas ( talk) 19:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Messier 87 was nominated at GAN, but I note the nominater has made few edits to the article. I am concerned the editor might not be able to address the concerns raised. Despite this, the article appears in not too bad a shape and with a bit of work could pass GA. I have left some queries needing addressing at Talk:Messier 87/GA1. I have not yet done a literature search for comprehensiveness. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 04:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.
We would like to ask you to review the Astronomy articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.
We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!
For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 00:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, List of confusing astronomy terms has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 05:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Since there's more of an astronomy community here than over at Commons, I wanted to ask people's opinions of what I've been doing over there lately in commons:Category:NGC objects. Please see commons:Category talk:NGC objects and comment there, if interested. - dcljr ( talk) 23:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Is there a calendar of astronomical events anywhere in Wikipedia that has a chronological list of phases, conjunctions, oppositions, transits, eclipses, solstices and equinoxes etc. - a "2010 in the Solar System", as it were ? I know there are lists for separate event types, such as Table of lunar phases, Aspects of Venus, List of solar eclipses in the 21st century, as well as lists in articles such as Solstice and Conjunction (astronomy and astrology), but I was wondering if there is a consolidated list somewhere - something like this maybe (but without the dayglo colour scheme) ? Gandalf61 ( talk) 10:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
To what does "Holm" refer when saying, for example, that NGC 1 is also known as "Holm 2A"? - dcljr ( talk) 22:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I've been told that Observatory is not up to specks, and it's at FAC nom, and the commenter is out-on-travel, so... Res Mar 02:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Miami Valley Astronomical Society has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 01:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Did anyone notice the astronomical catalogue navigator?
76.66.200.95 ( talk) 02:47, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, AstronomyOutreach network has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 06:50, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
...is at GAN if anyone wants to take a look and help out. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 22:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
I nominated this article for Featured List status. The review page is here. Ruslik_ Zero 18:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Over at Template_talk:Infobox_journal#ADS_bibcode, we are considering adding the bibcode to {{ Infobox journal}}. However we have a few options for where the link should take the clicker. Ideas welcome.. John Vandenberg ( chat) 05:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
See discussion there....while I am thinking about it, am I the only person frustrated by there being an Astronomy discussion page and an astronomical objects discussion page? Are other folks happy or not-so-happy with it...? Casliber ( talk · contribs) 02:07, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Needs someone understanding exoplanets, or at least patient enough to trawl the references and make the story of discovery/refutation/discovery coherent.
Rich
Farmbrough, 18:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC).
Concerning this discussion, what is the position of the project on using unit conversions (especially having km, miles and light years for all values, especially in GAs/FAs) in astronomy articles? Having a certain position would quench such disputes. Materialscientist ( talk) 22:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Astronomical_Society_of_Dharmaraja_College_(ASDRC) has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 06:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, List_of_all_NGC_objects has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 06:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there's a dispute going on at Johannes Hevelius ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article and talk page for 7 years now, about whether this guy is German or Polish. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 20:28, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, File:Nlut galaxy.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.203.138 ( talk) 05:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
I have a quick question. for the sentence "Comet Hartley 2, officially designated 103P/Hartley", for example, is there a reference available for the "officially designated" portion? I assume that the IAU is the source of authority here, but I can't seem to find anything about comet names on their web site. I'm not terribly familiar with their site though, so perhaps I'm simply missing something?
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs) 17:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Comet Hartley 2, designated 103P/Hartley by the
Minor Planet Center, is a small
periodic comet with an orbital period of 6.46 years.
I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick ( talk) 20:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
I have nominated Herbig-Haro object for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tom B ( talk) 22:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Just thought this would be of interest.
A planet, HIP 13044 b, which was formed in another galaxy has been discovered in the Helmi Stream. (BBC) Simply south ( talk) 00:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi, following some discussion here, I started to wonder why the {{ WikiProject Astronomy}} banner is preferred over the {{ WPSpace}} banner. After looking into it, I see there is some fairly complicated coding that has gone into this Astronomy banner, that I don't fully understand (it took me a while to figure out what a "hook" was). So, it appears the reason WPSpace isn't being used, is because it would be too difficult to implement the features of the Astronomy banner there. Is that correct? Or is there some other reason?
At the moment, some Astronomy pages use the Space banner while others only use the Astronomy banner; this appears to account for the difference between the Astronomy assessment statistics and the Astronomy assessment category statistics. Mlm42 ( talk) 20:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I guess this three year old discussion might be relevant. Mlm42 ( talk) 01:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
Just a quick note to let everyone know. The Astronomy 533 graduate astronomy class at the University of Michigan is updating the following astronomy-related wiki pages:
The pages will be significantly changed; please feel free to check the pages when they come online in mid-December. EFBell ( talk) 20:28, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, I have nominated antimatter comets for deletion ( Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Antimatter_comet). James McBride ( talk) 09:22, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on over at WikiProject Space after concerns have been raised over a number of organisation issues, many of which have been laid out at WikiProject Human spaceflight. Feel free to provide any input as this concerns all projects currently within the scope of WP:Space. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 22:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is an open RfC at Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines about whether this is an essay or guideline. The scope of the page affects astrophysics, astrochemistry, and math. 76.66.194.212 ( talk) 07:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
Anonymous IP 99.192.66.42 has rewritten parts of this article. "Cephid variable" has been changed to "Classical cephids" in the introduction, and throughout the article (see edit history) - along with supporting content. Then this anonymous IP has placed a requested move tag on the talk page. The move is proposed to be from Cepheid variable to Classical Cepheid variables. I have objected to the move because the rationale is misleading. First, they rewrote the article to suit themselves. Then they requested a move in such a manner, as if the content of the article were about Classic Cephid variables all along. This looks like some form of POV pushing. It also appears that some of the references have been changed to support this person's content, but I can't be absolutely sure about that. Someone familiar with this article could probably make that determination better than I. If the anonymous IP wishes to have an article on "Classical cephids", then the anonymous IP is encouraged to write one. I am inclined to undo this person's changes, mainly because of the alterations in the introduction from Cephid variables in general, to only Classical Cephids. The changes, and requested move don't make sense to me other than POV pushing. ---- Steve Quinn ( talk) 06:14, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I have nominated Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. The Rambling Man ( talk) 13:59, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation regarding the future of WikiProject Space and its child projects. The discussion is aimed at defining the roles of projects, and improving the activity and coordination of the projects. The input of members of this project is requested as it is one which may be affected by the issue. -- G W … 22:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Macrocarpum laws of astronomy is up for deletion here as OR.— RJH ( talk) 20:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that Category:Great Attractor is a subcategory of Category:Norma Cluster which is a subcategory of Category:Great Attractor. One of these relationships should be broken. The category system is supposed to be a hierarchy. So that if you keep selecting a subcategory, you eventually reach a category without subcategories. Another problem is that there seems to be confusion about which supercluster these belong to. Since I am not an astronomer, I brought these matters here rather than fix them myself. JRSpriggs ( talk) 20:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
The RfC over the fate of WikiProject Space came to the consensus of abolishing the project, removing it as a parent to the projects below it, with not a single comment in favour of its retention. As a result that project will be wound-down allowing Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight to become the lead projects in their area as has been pretty much de facto the case for some time on the Astronomy side. As a result it's probably a good idea if we modify some of this project, like the navbox for example, to fit this. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 16:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
The sempiternal German/Polish battle has risen again in the article about Johannes Hevelius. Someone with an IP address ( User:79.131.146.7) keeps removing many if not all mentions of Hevelius being German or being considered German. It would take a certain deal of manual edition to revert back to the original article — I do not have time right now. Is there any way to somehow “protect” the page? Said user does not mention any reference.
I am Canadian with mostly French ancestry, so I have no national interest in the matter. I just find it very sad that this fight comes back periodically, on the pages of people who lived in that area. I understand Polish national pride (I had a Polish work colleague who explained it to me), but the fact is that some parts of Poland were German territory at some point or another, and I consider that people living there should be considered as Germans in that time period.
Mohawks and Crees and other Native Americans in Canada do not consider themselves as not Canadians because the new country was imposed upon them…
CielProfond ( talk) 13:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation , there was a discovery of a wikiproject eclipses. 64.229.101.17 ( talk) 06:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Greetings. As you may or may not know, Wikipedia has a collection of community books, which are pre-assembled collections of Wikipedia articles on a given subject, placed in a format (the Book namespace itself) that streamlines the process of converting them into single PDF documents or printed books.
This message is to inform you that one of these books, Book:Caldwell catalogue, has been identified by a bot to have several issues. After reviewing the bot's report, I can confirm that the report is valid, however I do not possess the knowledge or technical ability to remedy the issue myself. The issue is as follows:
The articles
NGC 6541,
NGC 6352,
NGC 5286,
NGC 5823,
NGC 4609,
NGC 6101, and
NGC 4372 are redlinked; (meaning that they are listed for inclusion in the book, but lack corresponding articles.)
This issue does not make the book unprintable or unusable in any way, however it may be an indication that the book itself is incomplete.
If Wikipedia books are of interest to you or your project, or if you need logistical help in setting up or maintaining Wikipedia books, feel free to leave me a message on my user talk page or the talk page of WikiProject Wikipedia-Books.
Thank you, Sven Manguard Wha? 20:34, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
I have started a merger discussion at Talk:New General Catalogue#Merger proposal. All input and opinions welcome. Reyk YO! 01:33, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Scorpius X-1 has a slew of ambiguous abbreviations in its infobox's Other designations section. If you look at this nifty tool, you see all the ambiguous abbreviations in red ( 2A, RE - twice for some reason, XSS, 3A, 2U, 3U, and 4U). Could someone help decipher these abbreviations? Thanks, -- JaGa talk 06:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I suggest that extrasolar planet information be kept in their respective star's article. There are articles on planets that contain only 2 sentences, when they easily have more information in their respective star's article. I saw this on Kepler-9b and Kepler-9c. I am sure there are many, many more in the same boat. I suppose there are a few that merit their own articles, including HD 80606b, but alot only have a few sentences. atomic 77 32 04:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm having a concern with an editor regarding his understanding of a supposed "international date convention" that applies to astronomy articles. He's basically claiming that all astronomy articles should be using dates of the form "21 April 1990", rather than retaining whatever the author originally chose (the latter per WP:DATERET). Is anybody else aware of this? I have not seen such a convention and I don't recall a discussion on the topic taking place here. Thus far he has not identified the location of this Wikipedia convention, but in theory it could impact a lot of astronomy articles.
The article is History of supernova observation, and he has modified all date formats in apparent violation of WP:DATERET. After he twice reverted my reverts, I began a discussion at Talk:History of supernova observation#Change in date format and left a message at User_talk:Thorwald. Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 16:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
The page on Kin Endate, a Japanese asteroid hunter, was deleted back in Feb 2010 for lack of notability. I'd like to bring it back - I definitely feel he meets the notability criteria. He's got 593 discoveries - in the top 25 - and recorded the first known images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Precedence has it that asteroid discoverers are notable because "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." Every other person in the top 50 has an article, so I'm pretty sure it'll pass.
I've created a draft at User:Pi.1415926535/Draft of Kin Endate; I've also got a bunch of external links and old versions there. I would love if anyone could offer improvements, especially anything that'll solidify notability. Thanks ! Pi.1415926535 ( talk) 03:01, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll have to format the citations myself; apparently the {{Cite google book}} template is not yet bot supported. The "My profile" has useful bio information (it's a legitimate personal site, fortunately, not Myspace) so I relinked that under the name of the full site. I'll move it to article-space either tonight or tomorrow. Pi.1415926535 ( talk) 00:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Article has been created: Kin Endate. Thanks to everyone for the advice! Pi.1415926535 ( talk) 03:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Bitil Guilderstrone ( talk · contribs) appears to be a number vandal, changing numbers willy-nilly and replacing one constellation with another, doing vandalous null edits (performing vandalism and then reverting it)
I caught some weird stuff in one article and then checked the history, saw some more of the same... This needs someone to verify every contribution of Bitil's. Good thing he/she is inactive now.
65.93.14.196 ( talk) 12:08, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
The article on Hiroshi Kaneda, a prolific discoverer of asteroids, contradicts itself on one point; please see the talk page for details. (An importance rating from someone with subject knowledge also would be appreciated.) Thank you, -- Black Falcon ( talk) 04:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I should have done this days ago, but it slipped my mind. There is an almost week old AfD going on over Constellation Family here. It is quite a discussion already, but I thought some of the editors in this project might be able to add new points of view. James McBride ( talk) 00:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Usually proper names are not hyphenated when attributive, but common names are. I'd expect "main-sequence star", "O-type main-sequence star", etc. The refs seem to vary on this. Has there been a conscious decision to leave out the hyphens? (I've added en dashes to "pre–main sequence star", per WP:ENDASH, but if 'main sequence' is hyphenated, that would drop: "pre-main-sequence star".) — kwami ( talk) 02:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Looking at a few refs, I see "pre-main-sequence star" (the most logical punctuation) in Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis (2010), Accretion processes in star formation (2000), Asteroseismology (2009), The Physics of Astrophysics: Gas dynamics (1992), etc. That would appear to be the most common punctuation. But when it comes to stars in the main sequence, both "main-sequence star" and "main sequence star" are common. (The latter of course literally means a main star, not a star in the main sequence, but there's little danger of ambiguity, so it doesn't matter much.) — kwami ( talk) 10:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Okay, no objections, so I'll go with logical hyphenation (main-sequence star). — kwami ( talk) 23:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I just clicked on the link to Habitable zone from the main page news item on the Kepler mission discoveries and I noticed that it is rated as "low importance" by this project. Time to upgrade to "Mid"? Anyone interested in astronomy who hasn't heard of the HZ must have been locked in their telescope dome for years... PaddyLeahy ( talk) 13:06, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi. Should potential future supernova candidates have articles on their respective supernovae containing details such as the expected luminosity and possible future time (range) of the explosion as well as the core remnant type or should such information be included in the star or candidate list article? Thanks. ~ A H 1( T C U) 02:27, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
Several citations are done like this
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)or like
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)AKA, the citations have a hard link to the ADSABS database ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...654..373E). I've asked some bot coders to cleanup the citations, and instead use the |bibcode= parameter in these templates instead of the hard link. Which would look like
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)This has the advantage of treating things as they usually would be for citations with doi (which use |doi=10.1086/509106 instead of |url= http://dx.doi.org/10.1086%2F509106 ). Additionally, this would cleanup the downloadable PDFs by removing low-value links; if you have (bibcode: 2007ApJ...654..373E), you don't need to see the url ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...654..373E).
Comments? Feedback? See also User talk:Citation bot#Bibcodes and User:Rjwilmsi/Bibcodes for details, especially User:Rjwilmsi/Bibcodes#Queries, as Rjwilmsi as some questions about things. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)|id={{
arxiv|astro-ph/0604556}}
, aka a "clean" version of the above citation would be
{{
cite journal}}
: Explicit use of et al. in: |author=
(
help)I've just put an article up for AfD because the subject discusses a Kepler Object of Interest, basically a planet candidate. We are not talking about any of the 500 or so officially announced planets like those of the Kepler-11 system (note those actual planets don't even have articles yet!), we are talking about points of data no one knows yet are even real phenomena. The statistics of the candidates from the released paper are mentioned already in the Kepler article but does each candidate really deserve its own article? This seems to ridiculously defy notability standards. All sorts of scientific data are released to the public every day, is every datum verified or not notable enough for its own article? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
This is only tangentially related to the issue directly at hand (which seems to be resolved anyway), but I've been wondering: aren't there existing names for all of the "Kepler stars"? For example,
Kepler-11 was mentioned above... I see that the article doesn't mention any existing names for the star, and indeed the article actually states that the Kepler satellite discovered the star... an unreferenced claim that I find hard to swallow. This star has never been observed and cataloged prior to the Kepler satellite coming online? I understand that Kepler, being a space-born observation platform, has a much better view of the cosmos then we do (at least, that portion of the sky to which it is pointing), but... really?
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs) 17:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Location, at Atmosphere of Uranus#Stratosphere, in the picture, it says, "... in the stratosphere and termosphere of...", is termosphere suppose to be thermosphere? Was not sure. Thanks, Marasama ( talk) 20:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Just created this because I was getting tired of not-being able to write "a star of 10 M☉" effortlessly (a star of {{solar mass|10}}) or just the symbol by itself (M☉ / {{solar mass}}). Usage should be straightforward, but if anything is unclear, the documentation is there. Anything else that would need such a template? {{ Terrestrial mass}} / {{ Jovian mass}} / {{ Moon mass}}? Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I wonder if it might not be useful to have a parameter that can be used for the first instance, which would spell everything out and maintain absolute consistency? Ex: {{solar mass|10|1st}} → 10 solar masses (10 M☉). — Huntster ( t @ c) 19:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
{{ SkyTemplate}} has been nominated for deletion. 65.95.14.96 ( talk) 05:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
Last night I removed an unsourced claim, attributed to Alex Dessler, that the Van Allen radiation belts may be due to volcanic activity. I think this is physically very unlikely, and not at all main-stream, though I am not an expert on Van Allen radiation. A little Google search found ~9000 hits on {'Alex Dessler' 'Van Allen'}, but looking at the top few I see only things that seem to quote our previous Wikipedia article verbatim — almost all having all or part of the phrase:
"while Alex Dessler has argued that the belt is a result of volcanic activity".
Most appear to be blogs & other lightweight material, nothing that looks like a reliable source. A full-text search of the Astrophysics Data System for {"ALEX DESSLER" "VAN ALLEN BELT"} found no hits between 1952 and 2003. (Where would one search for older space physics information, I wonder?)
At first glance it appears to me as if there may have been an avalanche or loop of citations stemming from that very early (~2002) Wikipedia mention. The editor who made the claim was blocked indefinitely in 2008 as a troll, although that was not at first enough to convict the edit. Although "Alex Dessler" is redlinked, he is a reputable worker in space science.
I looked around a bit for a proper source, and commented out the dubious claim, thinking that if there is a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal that supports the claim, we should probably restore it. But I now it looks like this is a classic Wikipedia horror story.
When I could find no reasonable sources (glancing at only 30 or 40, of course not 9000), I sent an email, to Dessler, who quickly responded:
I am (sort of) shocked that this is what is reported. It is true that I once made a verbal joke at a meeting where I was making fun of someone (Tom Gold as I recall) to make the point that correlations were not proof of physical causality. You need a viable theory to make the connection. For example, I like this quote, "It has been proven by thousands of experiments that the beating of tom-toms during an eclipse will restore the Sun." This is from E. Bright Wilsons's book (which I read as a graduate student in the early 1950s) Introduction to Research. Wilson did not believe this correlation was true, as I did not believe volcanoes could cause or have any effect on the Van Allen Belt. My point was regarded as funny enough that I believe Wilmot Hess, in one of his books, quoted me in the spirit of a physicist having fun. If he did, the book would have been published in the 1960s. I never put such nonsense in print -- OMG!
The edit that did the damage was:
Lir made many many edits, often on other subjects, for over 6 years before being blocked, many of which probably need to be reviewed carefully. So it is potentially a more general Wikipedia problem. I think this case history needs to be reported (and discussed) on some of the project pages — physics, astronomy, space science,... as many as are relevant, and wherever Lir made many edits.
This is the first clear instance I have encountered of what appears to be an attempt to undermine the integrity of Wikipedia by deliberate covert fallacious editing. It is not trolling, which I think is defined as a deliberate attempt to create destructive conflict by stirring up conflict, outrage & emotion, etc — ie, not hidden.
Some points:
Thus Wikipedia is at least potentially (and perhaps already extensively) threatened by its own remarkable success.
I am basically a wikignome, by no means very well qualified to address these issues. I am certain there are many other editors in our project who are much more aware than I am. I would appreciate it if they could perhaps give us (me) some advice about how a lay wikipedian can best respond to these challenges, or point to existing WP resources for doing better. Thanks to any who respond.
Cheers, Wwheaton ( talk) 03:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
While not directly pertaining to WP:Astronomy, I thought I would share another long-standing error I just noticed (and have since corrected). Here is a link to an image comparing 3 spacecraft; as labeled, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, and 2001 Mars Odyssey. Looking at the uploaded image, I noticed that the far left craft was most certainly Mars Climate Orbiter. The image has existed, uncontested since 2005, and because of this, I assumed possibly someone at NASA simply made an error. However, following the source link, one can clearly see that the image is almost identical, with exception to the correct image of 2001 Mars Odyssey being in place. This was clearly a deliberate attempt to alter the image, and while minor, is rather troublesome nonetheless. This problem may go deeper than I first imagined.-- Xession ( talk) 00:06, 24 February 2011 (UTC)