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List of all stars in the Hipparcos catalog

So I enjoy making lists and and organizing catalogs. Right now I have wikified the complete list of all 100,000+ stars in the Hipparcos catalog. Here is a small sample of the list with a reduced number of columns:

Star Other designation RAhms DEdms Vmag Stellar type
HIP 1 HD 224700 00 00 00.22 +01 05 20.4 9.1 F5
HIP 2 HD 224690 00 00 00.91 -19 29 55.8 9.27 K3V
HIP 3 HD 224699 00 00 01.20 +38 51 33.4 6.61 B9
HIP 4 HD 224707 00 00 02.01 -51 53 36.8 8.06 F0V
HIP 5 HD 224705 00 00 02.39 -40 35 28.4 8.55 G8III
HIP 6 LP 524-8 00 00 04.35 +03 56 47.4 12.31 M0V:

I intended to create the list article, however, I'm afraid there are way too many redlinks. There are bigger lists, like List of minor planets, but most links there are clickable. What do you think? Any idea on what I should do with my list? Thanks. Huritisho (talk) 02:29, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

The various entries in Category:Lists of stars by constellation already list the Hipparcos catalog entries that are of any significance, and they do it in a useful fashion. Praemonitus (talk) 02:41, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Well, any idea on some other astronomy-related thing else I could list? Huritisho (talk) 02:55, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I concur with Praemonitus on this one. On a related subject, I am concerned about List of exoplanets and List of historic comet close approaches. The former is unmaintainable (and simply cruft in my opinion) and the latter is a direct copy (with no attribution) of this NASA page. I know NASA websites are not copyrighted, but the fact that it's a perfect match is slightly unsettling. Primefac (talk) 02:58, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Oh god I completely forgot about that list I made. I intend to wikify it now. I can make it look less of a perfect match if you wish, by the way. Huritisho (talk) 03:04, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Some of the variable star types could do with lists - we've been doing some as we go. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:05, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "wikify" since it's a properly formatted wikitable at the moment... I'm also not sure how (or why) you would change the table to obfuscate its origins. Primefac (talk) 03:06, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
I mean add wikilinks, mainly. The "origins" are NASA. The same origin of most of the astronomy-related lists. Let's stop getting off topic now? Thank you Huritisho (talk) 03:13, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Fine, I'll bring it below. Primefac (talk) 03:51, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

@Huritisho: I had at some point meant to make a table of the brightest stars (say down to mag 1.5) with their article rating (FA, GA, start, stub etc.) and stick it at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Astronomy/Popular_pages. If you could do one there that'd be great. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:09, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

@Casliber: That's an interesting idea. However, I was thinking of making a list from raw data. I mean, from catalogs like SIMBAD. I can find a database of the brightest stars down to mag 1.5, but I'm not sure if I have the time to check whether the stars have their own article and if so, if they are FA, Ga, etc. Huritisho (talk) 03:16, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
They all have articles, and you'd have to check on the talk pages about status. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
There is a List_of_brightest_stars up to mag 2.5. So I guess it can easily be expanded. Huritisho (talk) 03:24, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

You can follow up on #Listification of nearby star navboxes, specifically the stars in the range 25-30 ly, since the 20-25 ly range looks A-OK. --Izno (talk) 13:17, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

@Izno: Ok. So far I've found this [1] catalog of stars within 25 pc (81 light years). I can sort and select those within that range you mentioned. I'll see what I can do. Huritisho (talk) 17:35, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
The (minimum) intent is to turn the templates in the mentioned TFD into lists, but if you want to add to that, be my guest! --Izno (talk) 17:47, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
@Izno: Oh, I know what you mean. Well, I've created a list of stars within 81 ly. However, there is no column about the distance. I think we can know the distance in light years by converting the paralax of the star, right? After we do that, we sort and split the list into the desired distance (25-30 ly, i.e) Huritisho (talk) 18:38, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
I don't think that listification needs separate articles for each distance regime of every 5ly, instead of a single list for all 0-30ly; it would still be listification, just combining the various templates together. -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 00:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
WP:SIZE is relevant. Tables are big from an HTML point-of-view. --Izno (talk) 03:53, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

What I would like to see is a list of the 20 brightest red dwarfs. That would be a list a backyard astronomer could use. But it would still be similar to List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs sorted by apmag. -- Kheider (talk) 19:03, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Sol's Solar System lists

@Huritisho: are you interested in the Solar System? There's DRAFT:Extremes of the Solar System which you could bring to articlespace (and update with data from Messenger, New Horizons and Dawn) ; IMO it's currently in a state that is already acceptable for articlespace. -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 00:33, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

70.51.202.113: Wow, that's a good draft and is very well referenced. It is definitely worth publishing when it's done. Huritisho (talk) 00:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
WP:NOTFINISHED allows us to publish with empty boxes still on the page. Indeed, most stub articles have empty or missing sections, so it is a common occurrence in article space. -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 03:36, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
I've taken the draft to article mainspace. I believe the draft is good enough. Check it out. List of solar system extremes. If anyone can think of a better name, just rename the page Huritisho (talk) 22:05, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
I suppose equivalent/similar lists of Extremes on Earth for the Milky Way, Local Group, Local Supercluster, Laniakea would also be in order -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 00:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
Or extremes on other planets Extremes on Mars for instance, since we have good data for that planet. -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 04:19, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
Draft:Extremes on Mars has been started -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 11:48, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
Can someone tell me what are considered the major geographic divisions on Mars? On Earth, they would be the (12) continents (7) and oceans (5), so if someone could list the various major regions of Mars, that would be nice. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 13:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
See category:Albedo features on Mars and template:Mars. Regions are determined by brightness variation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:29, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
There is a reason I said continents and oceans, as I didn't want all the large regions of Mars. And classical features don't all match up to real ones, which was why I didn't want to use 19th century Mars atlases. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:48, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Someone suggested using the Mars quadrangles instead, as cartographic divisions instead of geographic or geologic ones-- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 04:54, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Another set of lists

In the interest of not interfering too much with the above discussion, I'd like to bring light to List of exoplanets and List of historic comet close approaches. The former is a list dump and the latter is a direct copy (with no attribution) of this NASA page. I know NASA websites are not copyrighted, but the fact that it's a perfect match is slightly unsettling. What should be done with these two pages? Primefac (talk) 03:51, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Huritisho

FYI, active astronomy editor Huritisho (talk · contribs) has been indefinitely blocked. Anything we have been relying on him/her for will no longer be forthcoming. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 06:02, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Kepler EPIC

We currently don't have an article on K2's version of K1's KIC, called EPIC, should this be a new article, or should K1IC be expanded to cover the K2IC? -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 06:42, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I think It should be expanded under The original Kepler Input Catalog, as it is just a new version of it for K2. Davidbuddy9 (talk) 00:03, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Alpha Centauri Bb

There is a merge discussion at Talk:Alpha Centauri Bb#Merge. The article was merged but this has been reverted. Fdfexoex (talk) 11:40, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Standard gravitational parameter

As there seemed to be some confusion centered around the use of km3 s−2 vs m3 s−2 in the tabulated data in Standard gravitational parameter, I've standardized everything to m3. But since my math fu is weak, someone might want to double-check that table to make sure I didn't drop an order of magnitude somewhere. Cheers - Elmidae 12:44, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Elmidae, the conversion looks right to me. Primefac (talk) 17:12, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Siding Spring Survey (SSS)

I have updated this SSS page, and several related pages, regarding its closure back in July 2013 due to lack of funding, which wasn't mentioned on that page. This is not my area of expertise, so a check by more savvy editors may be useful. If anyone has better sources, or I have made any error please let me know.

My main source is an article in The Guardian newspaper.[1] and SEN TV for the exact month the Survey ended.[2]

Also updated re SSS

References

  1. ^ Safi, Michael (20 October 2014). "Earth at risk after cuts close comet-spotting program, scientists warn". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  2. ^ Winder, Jenny (5 November 2014). "Comet Hunters Warn of Threat to Siding Spring Observatory". SEN TV Limited. Retrieved 27 November 2015.

Regards, 220 of Borg 08:38, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

"Solar System"

Solar System has been requested to be renamed by someone, see talk:Solar System -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 09:49, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, this has already been snow closed. Primefac (talk) 16:46, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiEd : Intro to astronomy

See WT:PHYSICS and Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Wright State University/Introduction to Astronomy (Spring 2016) for a new education linked effort -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:48, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Enceladus

I have nominated Enceladus 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. DrKay (talk) 16:26, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Pioneer 11 Vandalism

The page Pioneer 11 (See here if fixed although you probably dont want to see it) Has recently been vandalized. I tried to revert the edit but it still seems to be messed up? Davidbuddy9 Talk  23:27, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

There was some template vandalism going on - the problem was in transcluded templates, not the page itself. It seems to be fixed now. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:29, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
What template was vandalized? -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 07:46, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
I purged the page and it appears to be fixed now... Appears to be some organized vandalism as these attacks are being posted on a twitter feed. Davidbuddy9 Talk  03:46, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
There's very weird wording added about brothers and sisters in the intro on 12 December. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 07:46, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Many 'List of...' moved to 'List of known...'

Are you freaking kidding me moved many lists and their associated talk pages to add the word "known" to them (search contributions for "known"). Graeme Bartlett promptly reverted one pair with the reason revert move, no need to include the word "known" Wikipedia only has known information in it, which I support. The only lists which had already contained the word "known", prior to kidding me's edits, were List of most massive known stars, List of largest known stars, and List of most luminous known stars, so removing "known" from those lists is the most obvious solution, instead of adding "known" to all lists. Since this is a good time to gauge consensus, what does everyone else think?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  15:36, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

My thought on this is everything on Wikipedia is as "known". Thus the use of "known" seems redundant to me. -- Kheider (talk) 15:56, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Kheider, Tom, and Graeme. There is no need for "known". How would one list an "unknown" star? Reyk YO! 15:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
How would one even verify an unknown? Even Vulcan (hypothetical planet) is known (but hypothetical) and Coronium is a known (but misidentified) chemical element. I can't even think of an edge case where the distinction would be helpful. Removing known sounds reasonable across the board. --mikeu talk 18:11, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I will add my support to removing "known" from the titles of the other lists. It is not adding any value, and it makes it harder to type and find the list. To Mu301's categories of unreality, I would also add fictional, something that someone made up. But in any case "known real" is the default meaning, so we do not need to intensify the fact that it is genuine in the title. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
It looks like the contribution of a pedant. I'd say the Conciseness criteria of WP:CRITERIA justifies removal of the 'known'. Praemonitus (talk) 22:22, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Good enough; seems WP:SNOWy. I'll remove errant "known"s from list article names in Category:Astronomy in the near future, with a link back to this discussion.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  21:01, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I support the removal of 'known' to keep the titles simple and because it is obvious to many that 'known' is implied. But I can certainly see where those who prefer 'known' are coming from: 'List of most massive stars' could easily be read as implying that the list actually contains the most massive stars in the universe (i.e., that the list is complete), while in reality, the most massive stars in the universe remain undiscovered (statistically almost certain). Therefore it is important to point this out in the lead, as has already been done in this example: This is a list of the most-massive stars so far discovered [..]. For broader reference, Largest known prime number includes 'known', presumably exactly to avoid the possible the confusion I mentioned. Gap9551 (talk) 00:02, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Given that User:Are you freaking kidding me edited but did not rename List of brightest stars, which by definition is a complete list of bright naked eye objects, that does appear to be the motive. If "known" is required or desired for clarity it can be included at the top, and this is important for lists like "most distant" which change from year to year. I stumbled upon SCP 06F6: a candidate for a hypothetical Category:Astronomical objects of unknown type but could not find a second object to accompany it. --mikeu talk 00:55, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
This is exactly what I assumed. I've had friends actually think we know the largest stars in the entire Universe, etc. I did make a mistake with brightness though, and I confused it with "luminosity" for a second. --AYFKM (talk) 01:39, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree that it is very important to have that clarification in the articles. I don't think it is too useful in an article or category name. --mikeu talk 04:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Another thing possibly worth mentioning is that a list like List of most luminous stars may include stars that no longer exist, as their remaining lifetime (after the evolutionary stage we observe the star to be in) can be less than the light travel time (some listed stars are at 3 million ly). Gap9551 (talk) 15:28, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
That distinction is also relevant to massive stars if Population III stars existed. If they did, then people may expect such stars in the list. But I admit that's not really a problem now as we couldn't see them anyway in the foreseeable future. Gap9551 (talk) 15:36, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I was able to move all but 2 pages: List of largest known stars because it's semi-protected, so I made a move-request here; and List of most massive known stars because List of most massive stars already exists as a #REDIRECT, so I submitted an RfD here made a speedy deletion request at List of most massive stars.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  15:42, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I have moved those two. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:50, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:10, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Alert message

Can someone check the contribution list for edits made by User 148.246.100.138 who was blocked temporarily in the month of November 2015 on my ARV request. Looking at his edits, he is interested in changing the timings of Eclipse events without citations. - Ninney (talk) 22:39, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at Timekeeping on Mars

WPSS got a note about an interesting query regarding Martian and Earth time at the Timekeeping on Mars talk page, thought I would cross-post here to expand the sphere of influence. Primefac (talk) 03:17, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Venus

I have nominated Venus 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. Anon 09:39, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

18 useless redirects that I can't speedily delete are up at RfD

I found these exceptions buried in Category:Minor planets. I put 10 of them up at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 January 8 and will put the rest up tomorrow if the first lot gets approved for deletion (it's not looking good). 17 of them follow the form 12818Tomhanks, 12820Robinwilliams, etc., with no space between the number and name, and all corresponding redirects-with-a-space exist. The 18th is 3962 Valyaev (asteroid), which doesn't require the "(asteroid)" distinction, as far as I can tell.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:56, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll note that even if they're not deleted, as far as the project's maintinance-of-redirects concerns with them are, the project can just "pretend they were deleted" for that purpose. - The Bushranger One ping only 20:42, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
If not deleted, I'd prefer to strip all categories and identifying features from them, yes.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:49, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
It would make sense to only have the categories on one of the redirects for each object. Praemonitus (talk) 22:52, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Numbered asteroids Maintenance

It's been a few months since exoplanetaryscience brought up the point that most of the ~19,200 numbered asteroids are not contained in Category:Numbered asteroids (current population = 1,605). This bot request was made shortly after, but never performed. The archived WT:AST discussion we had alongside the botreq is here (I'm only concerned with point #1 at the moment); the consensus of which was to add a 0-padded 7-digit sort key to the end ([[Category:Numbered asteroids|0000001]]) while adding the category to all of the ~19k pages. I'm thinking about taking up this request in the near future (as I did with the then-incomplete request to selectively redirect the many asteroid stubs), so I'll ping all those previously involved to see if any opinions have changed or been added, since I haven't really kept up with WP:AST, nor WP in general, over the last 6 months. [@Exoplanetaryscience:, @StringTheory11:, @Kheider:, @JorisvS:, @Primefac:, @Casliber:, @Headbomb:]   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  19:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I would be adding an extra 0 to the front of any existing {{DEFAULTSORT:000001}} 6-digit entries too.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  19:21, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Fine by me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
My question would be why add "asteroid re-directs" to such a category? ~15,000 of those ~19,000 numbered asteroids re-direct to very generic list articles. -- Kheider (talk) 17:33, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
This would make it useful for someone wanting to process the list of numbered asteroids. Also, asteroid redirects are currently categorized with cats such as Category:Main-belt asteroids, Category:Asteroids named for people, Category:Astronomical objects discovered in 1982 (9005 Sidorova as a random example). Is Category:Numbered asteroids any different? Finally, it seems that Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects#Categorization of list entries applies here, but I want to get other people's opinion.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  18:36, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Being numbered is what got the bots to go on article creation sprees as at the time all asteroids were treated as notable. So I kind of think the category is less meaningful as 75% of the category will be re-directs. -- Kheider (talk) 18:44, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Does it matter, really? Given the total number, it's not a practical category anyway. Praemonitus (talk) 22:15, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Ok, I thought there was much more support behind this. At the very least, though, I will add this category to all non-redirects, which is much less controversial.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:46, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
I personally prefer the idea of Category:Numbered asteroids only containing numbered asteroids that actually have a wiki-article. -- Kheider (talk) 20:30, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Since this won't be as all-encompassing a change as I thought it'd be, {{DEFAULTSORT}} will remain 0-padded 6-digit, and a similar sortkey will be added to the category, if necessary.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:02, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree on adding the category to all non-redirects. I've been doing so myself for the last few months to all edits tagged "overall revision". I wouldn't use that category on redirect (though I might have done so on a few occasions), as there is already a complete list, List of minor planets: 1–1000. I have been removing all self-redirect on that list up to #200,000 and now is easy to see how the actual articles get thinner and thinner. So a "compact" (not really) category, listing only articles, is much better. Also, I normally added the "Category:Numbered asteroids" in 2nd position, after the Main-belt/family category and before the "Discoverer" category. If everybody adds a 6-digit sortkey to that category, I will do so as well. (Until recently only up to #2,000 the category entries were numerically sorted, from there on, in 99% of all cases, the higher numbered bodies were sorted by the standard name-based on the DEFAULTSORT key). Rfassbind – talk 15:17, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Indeed, I have been placing that category in the 2nd position, though not intentionally. I first attempt to place the category (if non-existent) alphabetically against other categories that begins with 'N', going from the top down. If unsuccessful, alphabetically against 'M' categories (Main-belt asteroids, usually). If unsuccessful, alphabetically against 'L-A' categories. If still unsuccessful, alphabetically before O-Z cats. If still unsuccessful, then I just put it at the end.
For minor planet article names of the form (#####) YYYY Wwwww (where w's are word characters), I added a 6-digit sortkey at the end of Category:Numbered asteroids no matter what the DEFAULTSORT. I decided on this after seeing at least 3 (if not 4) different DEFAULTSORT variations for this group: 0-padded 6-digit, "YYYY Wwww", and "(#####) YYYY Wwwww" ("##### YYYY Wwwww" probably exists too, but I wasn't interested in getting that specific), with no clear pattern. The first 2 variants are roughly equally common, and the 3rd is less common. The categories did not seem to always account for these DEFAULTSORT variants. More category maintenance is needed here, and I don't trust the average editor to keep Cat:Numbered asteroids tidy (nor the other cats, but I'm only focusing on Cat:NA at the moment; see the semi-proposal below).
For minor planet article names of the form ##### Wwwww, especially those numbered 1-2000, I'm only adding a 6-digit sortkey if the DEFAULTSORT is not already 6-digits. This might change as I go up in number, if I see a lot of disorder. As of ~1/2 way through, I'm deciding to add a 6-digit sortkey IF other categories on the page also have one, regardless of the DEFAULTSORT. I'll be making a 2nd pass through all the minor planets to include this and other rule changes I've made since I started.
For minor planet article names of the form ##### WW (where W's are upper case word characters), I'm not adding the category since these are still provisionally designated.
Finally, I'm also checking for non-numeric Category:Numbered asteroids sortkeys and replacing them with 6-digit ones. There have been 1-to-a-few dozen of these so far, and I'm 1/3 of the way through.
Semi-proposal: Ideally, every category has a consistent sorting method for all its children. A variable DEFAULTSORT only adds a layer of complexity to the semi-automated check. Going through manually would be a source of error (at least for me). There're 2 ways to approach this: 1) enforce a standard DEFAULTSORT on all articles, then adjust each cat's sortkey for consistency, or 2) abide by the current DEFAULTSORT, then adjust each cat's sortkey for consistency. Since each cat needs to be checked anyway, I'm slightly in favor of #2. Either way, a sort order for each category needs to be established (which is probably obvious, and the prevailing and most intuitive order by just looking at the cat, but I haven't looked at all the various minor planet cats).
If I were given an explicit list of cats and their preferred sort order (consensus approved, if currently ambiguous), I would do this. I don't really feel like making that list, though, if someone else wants to do that.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
It's my strong conviction that the magic word DEFAULTSORT is detrimental, as it is a source for well-meant bad ideas. Soon someone will come up with a 7 or 8-digit Sortkey and change a few hundreds articles/redirs before anyone will notice the changes. By then, a category's entries in the 1000s will be meddled with those in the 10,000s and/or 100,000s. Rfassbind – talk 04:07, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

 Category:Numbered asteroids is now completely sterilized (in a good way).

~2,100 pages were added (current population = 3,721).

201 minor planet redirects already in the cat had their sortkey changed from alphabetic/non-existent to numeric, instead of removing the cat (sorry).

Unfortunately, there were quite a few more #redirect-worthy minor planets than I expected... I'd say between 200 and 500, while I was expecting maybe 100. But, at least now they're easier to find :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:57, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Well done. Don't worry about the 201 Redirects still containing the category; I'll do that manually. Also, if you could post on my talk-page these mentioned 200–500 "redirect-worthy" articles, I will go through them as well. -- Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 04:06, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks!
The 201 categorized redirects were done intentionally, so there's no need to change anything. I'd rather fix an existing category on a redirect than to remove the cat. Otherwise, this would send a mixed message to future editors, or the cat might be lost if/when the redirect is reverted, if the cat was added to the redirect. Keeping Category:Numbered asteroids clean of redirects is not a particularly worthwhile task, especially for those articles bouncing in and out of redirect; it's best just to keep the category on the page.
Tom, I replied to what you just wrote here on your talk page. Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 08:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm working on making a short-ish list of potential redirects, which will likely need guidance from the likes of exoplanetaryscience, Kheider, and several others here to pass judgement. I'll post it here somewhere when I'm done (will likely take a few days).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:37, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
send me another ping when you're done. I will be going around quite a bit in the next few days and will only be able to check my emails for most of them. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 04:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Shortlist posted at User:Tom.Reding/Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:05, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Adding a template such as {{Large category TOC numeric}} could be useful. Praemonitus (talk) 22:56, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Merge proposal

INITIAL PROPOSAL: WPECLIPSE and WPCONSTELLATION

I propose that WikiProject Astronomy/Constellations Task Force be merged with WikiProject Eclipses. Since they only have 4 active members I think that its better if we covered both of their topics in one WikiProject. Also, their topics are both covered by the Celestial mechanics and astrometry branch of astronomy so it might be a good idea to include them in a new and broader WikiProject I would like to call WikiProject Celestial mechanics and astrometry. MartinZ02 (talk) 23:49, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

It does not sound a good idea to me. The articles they cover are almost completely disjoint. But it should just be up to the task force members themselves if they want to disband or merge or change their name. It is not really up to WikiProject Astronomy to impose on them unless they have disappeared. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
As a creator of the task force, I just have to declare myself no longer active. The latest changes to the project page were made by User:Irockz and User:Casliber. They may decide instead of me. Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 07:13, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
The taskforces serve as good places to map out content, even if inactive. Rursus set it up, I found it later and a few of us have found it a good place to plan constellation article improvement. It will have only one active member soon as Stringtheory is not active much but no matter, it may be again one day. The subject matter of the two is disparate and not good to merge. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:23, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Merging the task forces creates an active task force that could also serve as good place to map out content. The resulting taskforce would be a good place to plan constellation and eclipse article improvement. If we decide to let the task force cover some additonal topics it would also attract more people. Lastly, the difference of the their respective subject matter are probobly no greater then that of black holes and comets who are both covered by a sub-project of WikiProject astronomy, they are also both within the domain of Celestial mechanics and astrometry which I mentoined earlier. MartinZ02 (talk) 20:39, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Oppose: A merge of that nature has no apparent benefits. The Constellations task force is still doing good work, so I think that should stay in place unless they decide to disband. Praemonitus (talk) 02:34, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
@MartinZ02: why have any taskforces at all? Why not just ask for help here from other editors interested in astronomy? There are more on this page than on a constellation task force page. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:10, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
The Constellations task force is inactive as it only has three active members left. Merging The Constellations Task Force is therefore the most applicable thing to do. MartinZ02 (talk) 16:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
What do you mean by "applicable"? Applicable to what? Praemonitus (talk) 19:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Typed the wrong word. I actully meant appropriate. MartinZ02 (talk) 20:30, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
It is appropriate to retain if the members feel it is still useful. That seems to be the case for at least one of them. But I would have no heartburn over the Constellation-related discussions taking place here instead. Praemonitus (talk) 21:08, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
It seems like User:Casliber doesn't appear on their membership list and therefore not a member of The Constellations Task Force. MartinZ02 (talk) 21:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I am now. Listen MartinZ02, working together on articles is fine, but please don't try and boss other people around - your proposal makes no sense and I think you just need to drop it now. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
@MartinZ02: name one article whose subject matter would be considered part of eclipses and constellations. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:49, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Aquarius MartinZ02 (talk) 23:06, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
What has Aquarius got to do with eclipses? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:56, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
It doesn't need to have anything to do with eclipses as long as it falls into the domain of the task force. Halley's Comet doesn't have anything to do with black holes but they are still covered by the WikiProject Astronomical objects. MartinZ02 (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I see no consensus for action developing here. This should be shelved for a year, then possibly revisited. Praemonitus (talk) 23:18, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I think we should get some time to come up with a compromise everyone can agree on before doing that. MartinZ02 (talk) 00:18, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
In what way would merging these two taskforces make it easier than drawing up a list on them separately? What are you trying to solve or facilitate here? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:56, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I think WP:SNOWBALL applies here. You've received no support for your proposal; the consensus is to do nothing at this time. Praemonitus (talk) 01:01, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Can someone explain to me how merging would be bad in any way. MartinZ02 (talk) 15:27, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, for one thing the resulting name can be misleading unless the visitor is well informed. I.e. most people viewing the group name may not realize that it is about eclipses and constellations. A second reason is that returning participants may not be aware of the revision and believe the project has gone away entirely. Does that make sense? Praemonitus (talk) 17:12, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
The combined task force will cover more topics then just eclipses and constellations. My goal is to make the new task force cover all topics in Celestial mechanics and astrometry which would include things like natural satellites and Lagrangian points. The second problem could be solved by having a section about the its history in the project page. MartinZ02 (talk) 18:29, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I believe you're free to start an entirely new task force. That's a different topic. If you want to cover the topics of Constellations and Eclipses, well that's up to the members. Just don't treat that as consensus to remove the existing task forces. Praemonitus (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
When reading Graeme's link below (Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide) it's clear that a "task force" is a child of "project". However, WP:AST#Constellations Task Force's heading (as do all of those heading's pages) lists "Constellations" (without the "task force" qualifier) between "Astronomical objects" and "Eclipses" (both are projects), implying that all 3 are equal. Furthermore, WP:AST's main page says Sub-projects of WikiProject Astronomy include WikiProject Astronomical objects, The Constellations Task Force and the WikiProject Eclipses, which pretty close to being unambiguous, but "The Constellations Task Force" should be moved farther away from "Sub-projects", probably into its own sentence. All of these issues should be corrected or improved somehow, since I think they're part of the problem/confusion here. At they very least, they're not helping.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:15, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Comments: Both groups seem to be more or less defunct, so I'm not sure a merger constitutes a benefit to content in either area. I'd rather suggest that we leave messages on the talk pages of both groups directing traffic here. Alternatively, interested parties might consider contacting WP:Wikiproject X to overhaul the project format and get advice on how to generate new interest. Honestly, I've been a little underwhelmed with that project's results so far, but they are the closest we have to experts on analytics and navigation regarding Wikiprojects. Snow let's rap 21:51, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

ALTERNATE PROPOSAL: WPECLIPSE -> Astronomical Events

  • Merge/Convert WP:ECLIPSES into a new project WP:WikiProject Astronomical events that covers eclipses, occultations, conjunctions, Great Comets, Great Meteors, syzygies, cosmic reionization, big bang, various outbursts and explosions, impacts; also covering impact craters. ECLIPSES itself could also be a taskforce of said new project. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 07:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Please read Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide which has this advice: "If a closely related group already exists, even if it is inactive, you should join that project rather than starting yet another WikiProject. ". Much of what you list will already be under WikiProject Astronomy, or the Solar System project. I see no merit in closing one project to start another mixture of semirelated topics. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest that you boost up the content of Time domain astronomy which I have neglected for a long time. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery mass-sterilization

While working for a while on the minor planet redirects, and with considerable prodding from exoplanetaryscience, I finally made an AWB rule-set which grabs discovery year, month, and day from the article text or from the infobox parameter |discovered= (in that order, and, if both exist, checks for agreement (text wrong, text & infobox wrong)) and adds the corresponding YYYYMMDD sortkey, which is the sole sortkey-format I've seen for these categories. I want to run this on all pages contained in the 255 subcategories of Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery in the near future, so I figured I'd warn everyone. There will invariably be another shortlist of exceptions, but it'll be a lot easier to go through that once the easy-to-fix cases are taken care of.

Also, I'm tempted to put a note on this parent-category, and the 255 subcategories, explicitly stating the sortkey format, before I start. How about we come to an agreement on Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery first, then I'll propagate?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:38, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I've listed Category:Minor planets discovered in 2001 (the only category of its kind) for deletion here.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:17, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Update: 24% of existing articles needed fixing: ~1,261 edits made to the 21,485 pages in this category, ~16,215 of which are #redirects (inoperable due to missing text), leaving ~5,270 articles.

The shortlist of exceptions found, which should be fixed manually, are:

  1. sortkey="?": 109,(Thanks to John of Reading) as of this post, contain a "?" sortkey: [[Category:Astronomical objects discovered in <year>|?]], which were only touched if they:
    1a. have a dmy in infobox or in body text
    1b. have a clean dmy format (i.e. not Discovered by blah blah and [[blah]] on 2000/5/05 or |discovered=2000/5/05)
  2. No sortkey: There are 352 without a sortkey, but spot checking a few of these reveals that search is using a non-current database, so these numbers should be less.

I also found a few pages whose only category is this one, i.e. 170906 Coluche, leading me to do some cat-arithmetic. Since Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery should include all Category:Minor planets, I found 3,986 Category:Minor planets pages not in the Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery hierarchy, and 1,969 Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery not in Category:Minor planets (though, at most, only 300 are not minor planets), so more maintenance is necessary. This will also help process the minor planet redirects and help populate the Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Update 2: Of the 3,986 not in the Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery hierarchy, only 66 needed the addition; 96 were #redirects, and the other 3,824 were terrestrial objects (recursion often leads you into weird places). Of the 1,969 not in Category:Minor planets, only 92 are minor planets, and are all redirects, so I'll propagate their categories from redirection, if that's what caused the problem. Aside from these 92, the shortlist above, and barring any stray uncategorized pages, I think I've done pretty much all I can.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:12, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

New largest star?

At List of largest stars, a new star was on the top. However, I cannot understand the reference because it is too technical. And as I analyze, it does not give the radius. The star is EV Carinae and was jot down by a long time watcher of the list, who I know is responsible enough. Putting a new star on top is crucial, since the world watches it. Join the talk at Talk:List of largest stars#EV Carinae. Hope anyone responds! SkyFlubbler (talk) 06:37, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

The ref did not look like it supported the edit to me, so I reverted and responded at the talk page. I don't have the necessary expertise either, however, and it would be helpful if someone in the know could check it out. A2soup (talk) 07:58, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
The VLTI is an interferometer, so it looks like they're using that, in combination with a stellar atmosphere model, to derive an approximate angular diameter for the photosphere. (There seems to be some certainty because their models don't accurately predict the larger angular diameters seen in the infrared bands for water or carbon monoxide.) Combined with the distance estimate, that data gives them a physical size for the star. The radii are listed in the final sentence of the Results paragraph in the Abstract.
That's my $.02 interpretation, at any rate. Praemonitus (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Are you talking about the 1988 de Jager paper? If so, I'm not seeing it. In any case, probably best to give your thoughts at Talk:List of largest stars#EV Carinae to keep the discussion centralized. A2soup (talk) 21:16, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey everyone, it'd be really helpful to have more input in the discussion at Talk:List of largest stars#EV Carinae. It's a tricky question and a highly viewed article. Thanks! A2soup (talk) 00:14, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Notability of discoverers of astronomical objects (including amateurs)

I've been nominating a number of biographies of amateur astronomers for deletion because I don't think that they fulfill the notability requirement. There seems to be some uncertainty as to the conditions under which discoveries confer notability upon the discoverer. My position is that in general, they do not; every year, many novae, supernovae, variable stars, comets, etc. are discovered, many of them by amateurs. Moreover, the general media seems to conflate "discovery" of an astronomical object with "notability," so a web search on these amateurs turns up media coverage which, in my opinion, is a poor indicator of the discoverer's notability. For example, if an amateur astronomer has discovered a total of 10 supernovae over the years, I don't think that that fact alone establishes notability. But perhaps someone else would disagree.

To my knowledge, there isn't a specific notability guideline for discoverers of astronomical phenomena. Have I missed it? If it doesn't exist, is there any interest in establishing one? Astro4686 (talk) 21:27, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I was disappointed when I noticed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Lowe as I would think Andrew Lowe is well enough known as he does have more than 500 asteroids discoveries. It is a little disappointing when Wikipedians that know very little about a topic vote on AfDs. -- Kheider (talk) 21:38, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
For this article it was a bit of a puff piece, listing every asteroid discovered, but the only references were the subject's home page and twitter. If others have written about this person, then I reckon a neutrally written recreation would be in order. I suppose the lesson for us is perhaps we need to look at the AFD pages more. For some amateur astronomers, there are newspaper or magazine articles about them, so WP:GNG is applicable. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:59, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
It's usually better to get an outside view, because editors who aren't familiar with a subject area aren't likely to have prior inclinations towards keeping or deleting. Knowledgeable editors are useful, of course, but a problem that frequently comes up is that enthusiasts often want to uncritically and indiscriminately include everything. Reyk YO! 22:05, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
It is somewhat dubious that comet discoverers get all their comets named after themselves, where as asteroid discoverers do not. -- Kheider (talk) 22:55, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Reyk's point illustrates why it might be useful to have more specific criteria for notability of astronomers, including amateurs. Editors without a background in astronomy could simply see if an article meets straightforward, objective criteria specific to astronomy; specialized knowledge wouldn't be necessary. Astro4686 (talk) 00:17, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
What's wrong with the general guidance we have now: substantial coverage in reliable, independent sources? Reyk YO! 07:49, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
What does WP:Notability (people) say about it? (I haven't read it)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:54, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
In general, WP:Notability (people) hasn't been especially useful in the context of discoverers of astronomical phenomena. I think that three aspects of that policy are most relevant here.
  • The basic rule (WP:BASIC) is that a person is presumed to be notable if there is significant, reliable coverage of the individual in secondary sources that are independent of the individual. Since discoveries by amateurs frequently receive media attention, this requirement is often satisfied for biographies of discoverers — even if the discovery isn't astronomically notable.
  • In the case of people famous for one event, the general rule is to write about the person in the event's article instead of writing a separate biographical article, but there are exceptions to this rule (WP:BIO1E and WP:BLP1E). For astronomical discoveries, this rule seems awkward. For example, if someone discovers a single comet, one could invoke WP:BLP1E and claim that the person is notable for a single event only, but if that person later finds a second comet, WP:BLP1E would no longer seem to be an impediment to a biographical article.
  • WP:ANYBIO lists two additional notability criteria. The one that seems most relevant for discoveries reads as follows: "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." In the context of astronomical discoveries, this is sufficiently vague that it could cover almost anything.
My concerns boil down to 2 main issues. (1) There's a tendency to rely on media coverage as a reliable indicator of discoverers' notability. However, the media is generally a poor judge of what constitutes notability in astronomy. For instance, a non-notable discovery of a variable star might nevertheless make for a good news story. Coverage by specialized science and astronomy publications would be a much more reliable indicator of notability. (2) The number of discoveries attributed to a person seems to be used as a basis for asserting notability. At the very least, with so many new objects discovered every year, I think that there needs to be a governing rule (e.g., which types of discoveries and how many). But even beyond that, I would argue that the emphasis should be on the individual's relative contribution to astronomy beyond mere discoveries, as it paints a misleading picture of astronomy if it gets reduced to a list of discoveries by individual observers. Astro4686 (talk) 00:17, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Thats the thing though, it's both up to us (i.e. via WP:NASTRO), and not up to us (in the case of "undue" media coverage). If a bunch of reporters want to cover something seen by the astronomical community as trivial, they can do that. The flip side is that they're going to start repeating themselves very soon, so there ultimately wouldn't be much more than a sentence or 3 to write about. I have no problem with the inclusion of this behavior, and I'm comfortable with the scope of NASTRO and the like—we shouldn't be so strictly re-deciding the important of something that many other people already decided the importance on, that we censor an article's existence. Instead, we should mention the field's perception of a discovery's importance, if we think it's necessary.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:29, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
We can't go around WP:GNG. All we can do is supplement it. It's important not to conflate what you think is notable to astronomy with how Wikipedia defines notability; the latter is an independent standard that is less subject to personal opinion. Praemonitus (talk) 15:18, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Hi Tom.Reding and Praemonitus, thank you both for your thoughts. I guess that I'd contend that reliability for scientific articles per WP:GNG requires more than media coverage by non-scientific publications, but if the consensus is otherwise (as it seems to be), I'll gladly defer to it. I appreciate your input! Astro4686 (talk) 21:20, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
It needs to be fairly deep, ongoing coverage, not trivial mention in the media ("Somebody discovered something".) Unfortunately, the AfD process is more or less broken and the notability guidelines are at best just post-hoc justification. And I should point out that there is no inherited notability, so having a comet named after somebody doesn't confer notability. For the same reason, there is no number of asteroids one could discover that would in itself confer notability, notability comes from how much non-trivial coverage that person has gotten in reliable sources. There's no difference between scientific and non-scientific reliable sources in this regard. Geogene (talk) 21:35, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Note that WP:Notability (science) failed to reach consensus. As usual, I haven't read it, nor its nom-failure. I might soon, though, to satisfy my curiosity whether its success/failure hinged on exactly (or party) this divide.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:38, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
My sense has been that the "significant coverage" and "reliability" requirements are independent; the former can just be satisfied by entries in the External Links section, if that content doesn't prove particularly useful or reliable for referencing purposes. For the article body I usually prefer reliable scholarly sources, even if they don't contain "significant coverage". My $.02 worth. Praemonitus (talk) 00:47, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Notable?

Is astronomer Adam Frank notable? I am unfamiliar with the nuances of notability for astronomers, and I would be grateful if one or more of your project members would take a look at this article. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:30, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

WP:PROF is the relevant notability guideline, and it's fairly liberal. This looks like a borderline case - he's written lots of papers, but that doesn't necessarily pass WP:PROF (criterion 1). Similarly its unclear whether his popular writing reaches the required threshold (criterion 7). I think this is one to ask WP:ACADEMIC about and/or test with an AfD. For now I've rated the article importance as Low. Modest Genius talk 13:43, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

On a revision of the categorization of astronomical objects

There are quite a few important categories relating to astronomy on wikipedia, and groups of categories. These range from category groups like Category:Astronomical objects discovered in [year], Category:Discoveries by [astronomer], and Category:[spectral type]-type asteroids, to more specific categories like Category:Quasars, Category:Multiple star systems, or Category:Kuiper belt objects. Every one of these categories contains a fairly large amount of objects in it and covers an important topic, but in most of these cases, and in quite a few more, there is no clearly established system or sort order for these objects, and in this discussion I seek to put an end to this, and provide a consensus for the outcome of this.

PROPOSALS:

      • keep in mind wikipedia's entire database, for better or for worse, is driven and only held up through consensus and majority, so none of these suggestions are rules unless the majority of WP:AST should deem it so.
  • For minor planets and solar system objects:
  • For asteroids:
  1. For default:
    1a. For numbered default: sorted by a 0-padded 6-digit Minor Planet Center number (642 Clara would be sorted 000642, 19731 Tochigi would be sorted 019731, and (52430) 1994 PF8 would be sorted 052430).
    1b. For provisional default: If it does not have a numbered designation, the provisional designation would be sorted YYYY MNNNL, in which 2015 FG345 would be sorted 2015 F345G, 1992 QB1 would be sorted 1992 Q001B, and 2014 RC would be sorted 2014 R000C. This is to establish hierarchy of the classification, as 2014 RC was discovered before 2014 RA1, yet would be sorted after. In this situation, they would be sorted 2014 R000C and 2014 R001A, sorting it appropriately
  2. For name sorts: The asteroid's name would be included in categories directly relating to the name of the asteroid, such as Category:Asteroids named for people, or Category:Asteroids named for places.
  3. For date sorts: Specifically for Category:Astronomical objects discovered in (year), asteroids, comets, and all other objects will be sorted by YYYYMMDD of discovery in UTC- the introduction of the year, even though it is implied, is because without the year included it would simply be MMDD, and would end up in a separation of some objects sorted with a 0 and some with a 1- objects discovered in January to September, and October to December.
  • For comets:
  1. For default: Numbered comets will be sorted as (A)NNNN- where the N is the designation of the comet. A is invariable and simply serves as a discriminant as to not confuse comets and asteroids, as well as establish numbered comets before unnumbered comets. comet 1P/Halley would be sorted A0001, and comet 34D/Gale would be sorted A0034.
  2. Unnumbered comets are sorted as PYYYYMNN with P being the orbit of the comet- X, D, P, or C, and YYYYMNN being the comet designation, formatted much the same way as asteroids- Caeser's comet would be C-043K01, C/2013 US10 would be C2013U010S, P/2012 F5 would be P2012F05, and D/1993 F2-K would be D1993F02K.
  • For other astronomical objects
  1. For multiple stars (more than 3): The exact number of stars in the star system, it's quite simple
  2. default: sorted by distance, padded designation if categorized by a non-RADEC catalog, or discovery date?

I would recommend the exact sort format be provided on each category's page, as the sort format could quickly become quickly confusing and conflicting.

These are my proposals, yea or nay? Also, any comments or input? This is still a work in progress, and most of this I have based only on what I have encountered so far on wikipedia. Either way, I believe that this could be immensely helpful for providing meaningful information on Wikipedia, and I hope others will see this too. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 02:21, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I cannot comment on all of the proposals here, but I say "For other astronomical objects" just go with the status quo, categories listed in distances would surely rupture categories listing objects by entries of their catalog (ex. Category:Exoplanets discovered by Kepler (spacecraft), Category:Exoplanets in the Gliese Catalog, etc.). Davidbuddy9 Talk 
As per said convention, exoplanets discovered in both would be sorted by their Kepler designation or GJ designation. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 15:01, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
Thx for addressing these issues. As for the magic word {{DEFAULTSORT}} the basic question of whether or not such as default-option should be used in the first place is not mentioned in the proposal. Frankly, I've come to the conclusion that such an generic sort-option does potentially more damage than it helps. I suggest its removal from all articles about minor planets using a bot-request. -- Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 15:37, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree and would prefer to see each category's sorting done explicitly.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:51, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree with most of exoplanetaryscience's post. I'm unfamiliar with comet nomenclature, so I'm neutral on the comet issue. I don't agree that anything should be sorted by distance; we had several categories sorting objects by light years from Earth, but they were thankfully done away with with a majority vote I believe.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:51, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I have to wonder how much some of the more esoteric categories are actually being used by visitors. Category:Henry Draper Catalogue objects? Category:Exoplanets in the Gliese Catalog? Seriously? How are these useful? Praemonitus (talk) 17:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
In addition, most of the [[Category:Discoveries by <astronomer-name>]] in minor planets articles do not make much sense to me. Why not directly list the bodies in the article about the astronomer? This would also simplify the inconsistent sorting-issue of categories, as mentioned above. For example the article about the astronomer Nikolai Chernykh already lists his discoveries, while the redundant Category:Discoveries by Nikolai Chernykh is incomplete (probably 50% of the bodies are missing). While it's easy to create a new category, it is much harder to make sure all articles are added in the correct sorting order. Maybe that's why there are so many incomplete categories... Rfassbind – talk 23:31, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Category:Exoplanets_in_the_Gliese_Catalog about 1 view per day. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:48, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure that we can learn a whole lot of useful things about categories from views, just because Wikipedia categories generally aren't really used by readers. For example, Category:Biology only has about 30-50 views per day: [2]. Category:World War II has 40-60 with some spikes up to 120: [3]. A2soup (talk) 06:35, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

It is my opinion that readers are most likely to search for an article by its title. In the case of minor planets, this means the name, or if there is none, the number. In the case of stars, nebulae, galaxies, etc., this would mean the most commonly used designation, or common name if that is used more. I think that the categories should be arranged so that it is easy for readers to find articles they want, so they should be ordered by name/designation. StringTheory11 (t • c) 16:13, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

All categories are esoteric to a certain point. Categories may not necessarily be used by casual readers but esoteric categories are not unhelpful or unconstructive as you are suggesting. Davidbuddy9 Talk  18:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes, regardless of the need or use of categories by casual readers (though important), as a contributor, I find these categories quite useful, and frequently do category arithmetic while searching for a particular group of articles, or checking for inclusion, or exclusion, or looking for accidental exceptions. Indeed, esoteric categories exist, but they have yet to be mentioned here.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Ding ding ding ding ding! Yes these categories are very handy for contributors! Casual readers that barely understand how to use Wikipedia are obviously not going to browse through categories to find what they are looking for but instead they are going to use the search feature. The bigger point is why would you not make a category for all objects in a catalog? Why would you even suggest such a thing? Because casual readers aren't going to use them? Really no rights for the editors and contributes to make their lives easier? Davidbuddy9 Talk  04:51, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I think a reasonable course of action is, as expolanetaryscience suggested, to state on each category page exactly how it should be sorted, both for preliminarily-designated objects and for numbered objects, but only if the intended sorting method for each category is obvious. If the category is a mess, we should discuss them individually, preferably on their talk page, but placing a link here (WT:AST) so that all may participate.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:05, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

As an example, I've done so on Category:Potentially hazardous asteroids, since I created and populated it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

For the asteroids#1b (and comets#2) proposal for preliminary designations only (i.e. 1991 BA, not (3708) 1974 FV1), why are we trying to keep preliminary designations ordered by date of discovery in a non-chronological category? Isn't that the job of Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery? Turning "1992 QB1" into "1992 Q001B" seems unnecessarily confusing and could easily be done incorrectly. Any category explicitly or implicity sorted by name (Category:Minor planets, for example, implies sorting by the object's name), the name of the article should be used (with the rare exception, which these names are not; they are the norm in their number range). This doesn't relate to numbered asteroids, whose sorting proposal I agree with. And even numbered asteroids are not sorted chronologically (they're only "roughly" chronological).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:30, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

New IAU Star and Exoplanet names

I have started a discussion over at WikiProject Astronomical Objects on the article titles of exoplanets and stars that have been given official, formal names by the IAU. Feel free to share your opinion! Philip Terry Graham 03:02, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

List of pages in Category:Astronomy updated

58,481 mainspace articles listed here and here after 5 level-recursions, for those interested.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  17:09, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Many of the minor planets are probably redirects by now. Praemonitus (talk) 21:16, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Yup, I did most of them! This list is an unmodified query from AWB, though, for those that don't have it or don't want to perform it. I could make a separate list that excludes redirects, if there's enough interest. The pages above get ~1000 views/month (combined), so if whoever's using them would like that, just let me know.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  22:27, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Misinformation on Commons mainpage

Hello. Couldn't you estimate correctness of the caption of this image? Stas (talk) 20:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

87%? I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Praemonitus (talk) 15:30, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Already solved. Moonrise was captioned as sunrise based on mistake on NASA site, and some admins reverted attempts to correct this. Stas (talk) 15:37, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
The filename is still slightly misleading, although technically it is morning since it was taken after midnight local time (local at the location being photographed, not on the space station). Lithopsian (talk) 15:41, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes. And the category must be changed too. If anybody is interested, discussion on Commons is here. I also asked NASA to correct their mistake, but I doubt that I will be honoured with any response from their side. Stas (talk) 16:57, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Notability

There are a few asteroid pages being tagged for notability in CAT:NN Dec 2015; anybody would be welcome to look them over. 501 Urhixidur is included. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 17:56, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to search for the others? As I pointed out at 501 Urhixidur "most asteroids" rate Low on the Importance scale and a case could be made that this one rates Mid. This minor planet certainly qualifies as notable, imo. --mikeu talk 21:12, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks to the recent sort order change, most appear under 0 in Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability.
   501 Urhixidur
   666 Desdemona
   1000 Piazzia
   4607 Seilandfarm
There is also Category:Astronomical object articles with topics of unclear notability but not as complete. I cannot see any others starting from 1 to 9. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:38, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Actually, that category was empty an hour ago when I looked. I added Urhixidur and Piazzia :) I really don't see any question about the notability of any of those four. The issue with those pages has more to do with lack of sources and stub length, as discussed at Talk:501_Urhixidur. --mikeu talk 22:49, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
@Mu301: Catscan can do category intersections (including subcategories). Here is a full list of astronomical objects from Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery that are in one of the unclear notability categories. --mfb (talk) 22:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Title Page ID Namespace Size (Bytes) Last change Namespace name
(12377) 1994 PP 48580415 0 2496 20151224105144 (Artikel)
(12921) 1998 WZ5 33336219 0 1969 20151230030949 (Artikel)
(32326) 2000 QO62 48579512 0 2196 20151214061929 (Artikel)
(374158) 2004 UL 42139260 0 2337 20151227222626 (Artikel)
(386454) 2008 XM 42140070 0 2032 20151227221529 (Artikel)
(416151) 2002 RQ25 33375541 0 3227 20151227215638 (Artikel)
1000 Piazzia 3037590 0 3268 20151228195642 (Artikel)
15728 Karlmay 16453366 0 1664 20151223193710 (Artikel)
19980 Barrysimon 6797683 0 2163 20151130184743 (Artikel)
2002 LT38 32092341 0 970 20151214052604 (Artikel)
2013 MZ5 39802716 0 1675 20151128101354 (Artikel)
25375 Treenajoi 27865029 0 1637 20151212101639 (Artikel)
4348 Poulydamas 16477144 0 3720 20151230161724 (Artikel)
4607 Seilandfarm 16631307 0 2268 20151230183858 (Artikel)
6498 Ko 17239270 0 3042 20151212101639 (Artikel)
666 Desdemona 3033052 0 1713 20151230191446 (Artikel)
9359 Fleringe 16440830 0 1624 20151130184743 (Artikel)
U (TNO) 48821860 0 1284 20151230050727 (Artikel)

Several more asteroids have been tagged for notability and are in CAT:NN for Dec and Jan. I'm trying to start discussions on all their talk pages so they don't drag on, e.g. Talk:10121 Arzamas, Talk:10126 Lärbro, Talk:10125 Stenkyrka. PLease help resolve these by commenting in these discussions. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 11:04, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

As a general rule, if a main-belt asteroid (MBA) numbered above 10,000 does not state what makes it notable and is still a wp:substub, you can probably safely re-direct it. -- Kheider (talk) 20:38, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
My preference would have been to establish notability per Wikipedia criteria, but I went looking and found nothing of interest. Praemonitus (talk) 22:38, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
The articles 1000 Piazzia and 4348 Poulydamas have been revised today. Others will be revised soon. Rfassbind – talk 23:06, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

It's been over 2 weeks since mfb posted that category-intersection list. For those numbered over 10,000, it's probably time to #redirect if no reason for notability exists in the articles. I'll do so tomorrow.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:19, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

 Done I struck those on this that I either redirected above 10,000, are already redirects, or Rfassbind or Huntster improved, with the exception of (32326) 2000 QO62, (374158) 2004 UL, and (386454) 2008 XM, which contain text that presumes notability; they just need to be expanded. I removed the notability tag on those 3.
For what it's worth, here's my take on the remainder (all but 1 are notable):

Thx Tom.Reding for the follow-up, 4607 Seilandfarm has been revised four days ago, and 666 Desdemona and 6498 Ko will be revised soon. Rfassbind – talk 18:43, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Planet Nine?

A recent edit to Planets beyond Neptune led me to the existence of Planet Nine, a newly-dubbed hypothetical planet that some guys decided really does exist. With only one paper written (and no physical evidence), does it make sense to keep the new page? Certainly the byline in the Neptune article can be kept (since it is what they're claiming), I just wonder about (yet another) theory that may or may not ever be proven. Primefac (talk) 17:35, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

It's an unnecessary content fork and should probably be redirected back to Planets beyond Neptune. Praemonitus (talk) 18:33, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree with that, or a very selective merge into that target. Reyk YO! 18:40, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Caltech is involved, with publications in AJ and Nature. It's not associated with the Journal of Cosmology, so it's got that going for it. Agree to subsume into Planets beyond Neptune, then, if discovered, made into its own article.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:42, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, some merging of content makes sense. Praemonitus (talk) 19:02, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
It can also be merged with Telisto (hypothetical planet) and/or Hypothetical fifth giant planet. -- Kheider (talk) 19:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I support a selective merge of Planet Nine to Planets beyond Neptune, and also think that Telisto (hypothetical planet) should get the same treatment, since it seems to be based on a single paper. A2soup (talk) 19:40, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Notice There is a merge discussion here if you want to weigh in further (in a more "consensus" capacity). Primefac (talk) 01:53, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Is the new paper about the same theoretical planet as that described for creating the Kuiper cliff (from several other much older papers) ? -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 06:27, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Because you are listed as one of minor planet Sedna's wikiprojects

Minor planet 90377 Sedna > Sedna (minor planet) discussion taking place at Talk:90377_Sedna#Odd_name. Please join in if it catches your fancy. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:39, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Article Alerts archiving

It seems that the article alerts for this project aren't being automatically archived. (i.e., there are alerts all the way back to August 2015 still listed on the page.) Is there some specific reason why they aren't being archived?? 8bitW (talk) 17:54, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Archive time is set to " |archivetime = 90". Seems like a bug. Report it at WP:AAlerts/BUGS. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:18, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
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