Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects

MainTalkAstronomical objects
(Talk)Eclipses
(Talk)Article ratingsImage reviewPopular pagesMembersWikidata

Uranus and Neptune are Gas giants too

As far as I know they are. Technically they're giant and are composed of gas. Ice giant is just a subdivision. Also, I've been into astronomy for quite a while and I swear I never heard the term Giant planet.

Many articles (like the ones I wikilinked) seem to exclude Uranus and Neptune from the gas giants classification. which I think is wrong Tetra quark ^(talk) 12:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, two hardly makes "many", but there has been discussion of this topic before. This was previously discussed here. Personally, I prefer "gas-liquid giants", "Jovian planets", and, yes, even "Ice giants", and don't mind having the otherness of Uranus and Neptune noted. As for Giant planet, be careful not to make the common error that just because you haven't heard a term it doesn't exist. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 14:24, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

"Gas" in astronomy refers to hydrogen and helium. Uranus and Neptune are composed of mostly ices (volatiles heavier than "gas"), and have only a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. They are therefore clearly distinct from Jupiter and Saturn in composition. The specific term for Jupiter and Saturn is "gas giant". The most common cover term is "giant planet". "Gas giant" is still also used to refer to all four, but then we would be faced without a term for the giants composed mainly of H and He. --JorisvS (talk) 14:58, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Tetra's right for once. There are two general classes of planets, which date back to the early 19th Century. There are terrestrial planets and the gas giants. Solid bodies versus gaseous planets. There cores compress the gas into liquids or solids, but they are technically gases from the common perspective we think of hydrogen, helium, noble gases, methane, ammonia, etc. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are collectively termed gas giants. (Many sources. I.e. Norton's Star Atlas, Ed.18., pg.96. (1989), being a reputable standard source. Gas giants are needed to be big to hold their bulk together, especially as small gas planets don't actually exist. Hydrogen content is irrelevant. "Giant planet" isn't a term I heard of either, as it makes little sense without any real context.

Really, 'Gas planet' only came into debate with Pluto and Dwarf Planets, in a bid to try and retain it as a planet under a different definition.

As for saying ""Gas" in astronomy refers to hydrogen and helium. " Yet methane or the noble gases in astronomy, but somehow now it is not? I completely fail to see JorisvS point here? Arianewiki1 (talk) 17:29, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

"Giant planet" is a term used: see here. There is a previous consensus to accept "giant planet" as encompassing "gas giants", "ice giants", etc - though I'll note it was a weak consensus. However, this paper from Nature is an example of professionals using both the term "giant planets" and referring to Uranus and Neptune separately as "ice giants". Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 19:04, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

"Giant planet" is used in astronomy, as already shown by others. It also simplifies the division of gas-type gas giants and ice-type gas giants, which are "gas giant" and "ice giant", with the much less confusing name "giant planet" referring to both types instead of "gas giant" ; or Jovian planet, which itself is being redefined with the flood of exoplanet discoveries as to what "Jovian planet" is. "giant planet" is altogether less ambiguous and confusing a term, so delineates the issue properly as to what coverage our article has in scope. A quick check of Google Scholar shows many uses of "giant planet" [1] -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 09:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6

"1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6" has been proposed to be renamed to being simply half the coordinates, see talk:1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 11:23, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990

Request to reassess an article

User:Primefac marked the article Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990 as a stub at the talk page. In my opinion this contradicts both WP:Stub and general understanding of this term: I do not think the article will ever get more detailed, since there is not much more known about its subject. Therefore I would like to ask for reassessing it. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 18:13, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to the ranking being changed; I based it on the number of references. Primefac (talk) 18:22, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I changed it to start-class. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 20:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

This was certainly inappropriate to class this as stub. It is probably worth a "C" rating. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:34, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Request to rename an article

• NOTE this article has been requested to be renamed, see talk:Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990 -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 06:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Category tree of Category:Objects within 100 Gly of Earth

Category:Objects within 100 Gly of Earth and category tree has been nominated for deletion. -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 07:27, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

More categories up for deletion

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 February 25 where several astronomical object categories are up for deletion -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 05:35, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 February 26 for yet more categories -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 07:16, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

{{infobox astro object}} and {{infobox cluster}}

The proposal to merge {{infobox astro object}} with {{infobox open cluster}} was reopened recently -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 05:41, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

"Ceres"

The primary topic of "Ceres" is under discussion, see talk:Ceres (dwarf planet) -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 06:37, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Category tree of "objects by distance from Earth"

Several categories have been nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_March_8#Objects_by_distance_from_earth -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 04:11, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Eubot (talk · contribs) redirects

Another bunch of completely wrong redirects created by user:eubot have been brought for deletion, see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 March 15 -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Template:Star systems within 25–30 light-years

The following template has seemingly become an attractor for non-notable (and often trivial) articles about red dwarf stars: {{Star systems within 25–30 light-years}}. It would be better if most of those links were redirected to the corresponding constellation star lists. Praemonitus (talk) 20:59, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Chermundy (talk · contribs) recently created a huge number of obviously-non-notable stubs. I've been working recently to redirect all the non-notable brown dwarfs to the list of brown dwarfs, but I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for the red dwarfs except to PROD them one by one and hope no disruptive editors come along and remove the PRODs. And I actually think that all these templates above 20 ly should be deleted, since past the value the distance from the sun isn't really a notability property; it's navbox overuse at its finest. Praemonitus, if you want to help it the PRODing process of the non-notable articles, it would be greatly appreciated. StringTheory11 (t • c) 21:13, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes a TfD request would be appropriate. Praemonitus (talk) 22:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes, I think a speedy deletion criteria for non-notable astronomical objects is needed, with all the garbage we get. I know it wouldn't gain consensus though... StringTheory11 (t • c) 23:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

There's also the problem so non-astronomy editors will consider that almost all things should be deleted, and we'll inevitably loose significant topics to articles speedily deleted, were such a criterion established, since evaluating specialist notability is problematic on Wikipedia -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 05:27, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, I've just sent those templates to TfD. 65, you're probably right on the speedy criteria now that I think about it more, since editors do get overzealous sometimes. StringTheory11 (t • c) 15:29, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Chermundy has been making these things for years. -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 05:28, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

There's plenty more to get at the soon-to-be-deleted {{Star systems within 20–25 light-years}}. Unfortunately, I'm about to fall off to my February activity levels again (i.e. maybe an edit a week), so if somebody else can lead the charge, I would be willing to provide a copy of the deleted template, provided it gets deleted again after they are gone. StringTheory11 (t • c) 23:48, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

You could just subst copies of the various templates into the discussion right here (and then clean it up to remove categories, etc). -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:21, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Question

Do people think this article is enough to establish notability for NSV 11766 (LW Draconis)? StringTheory11 (t • c) 03:57, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't call that an article at all. I was expecting something a lot more substantial. Many articles that cover many objects and do not cover a certain object in the text have similar amounts of information on that object. Short answer: No. --JorisvS (talk) 08:49, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Yep, that's what I was thinking too. Just wanted to get a second opinion. StringTheory11 (t • c) 14:00, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

That journal article just says it's an SX Phe variable , and only 1 article even cites that article... It could possibly work as a redirect to a list of SX Phe variables -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:25, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

There's a total of 6 references on SIMBAD - does sound a bit unusual though - one ref mentions a new red (??) variable which doesn't gell with the classification. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:04, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Link Error in NGC object templates

Many of the templates for New General Catalog (NGC) objects (John Dreyer 1888) have a reference to the older designation in John Herschel's General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (GC). This "GC" is for this catalog of nebulae and clusters. However the GC link in the templates goes to the Boss General Catalogue. This "GC" is for bright stars, not deep space objects. I understand the confusion, as the former is not used much today, but it's the Herschel number that is given, not Boss. All the "GC" links go to the Boss page, unfortunately. The good new is that the numbers are correct, from whatever database they were coming from. You can see the Herschel GC numbers given in the second column of Dreyer's NGC catalog. — ★Parsa ☞ talk 21:38, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Do you know if the numbers for the two Herschels (father and son) match up, or are different? "H" (father, William) and "h" (son, John) are also used to designate their catalogues, IIRC -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 05:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Categories in redirect pages?

I've noticed that a user has been adding categories to redirect pages for asteroids, such as here. Will this interfere with the redirect in any way? Is this a common practice for other redirect pages on WP? It doesn't matter to me if someone wants to do this, but it raised my eyebrow, so I'm hoping somebody who knows more about the background operations with categories/redirects can answer. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 17:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)