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Featured articleSerpens is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 25, 2015.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 19, 2014Good article nomineeListed
August 15, 2015Featured article candidatePromoted
Current status: Featured article

Notes

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History: write about how it was subdivided when the constellations were defined to be areas, not lines and conventions. Rursus declamavi; 21:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Picture

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Picture in the infobox shows only one half of this constellation (Serpent's head).95.220.146.155 (talk) 08:45, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. The other half was missed. The corresponding SVG has been uploaded to Commons. Once the file name is corrected on Commons, then this can be fixed. Kxx (talk | contribs) 03:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Kxx (talk | contribs) 04:08, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Serpens/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Parcly Taxel (talk · contribs) 01:45, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Someone (@StringTheory11:), seeing my (now successful) nomination of fluorine and my multiple GA reviews, asked me to come over here and review this constellation. Now that the FAC is done and passed, let's get here. Parcly Taxel 01:45, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:
    B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. Has an appropriate reference section:
    B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:
    C. No original research:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:
    B. Focused:
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
    B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:

1a

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Bold text in the quotations indicates errors that need to be replaced with the italic text.
Lead

  • "Part of the Milky Way passes through Serpens Cauda, which is thus therefore rich in deep-sky objects, such as the Eagle Nebula (IC 4703) and its associated star cluster Messier 16."

History

  • "In some ancient atlases, the constellations Serpens and Ophiuchus were depicted as two separate constellations, although in most they were shown as a single constellation. Back in this time, there were no official constellation boundaries, so when depicted separately, their bodies were not intertwined with each other."
  • "in In Chinese astronomy, most of the stars of Serpens represented part of a wall surrounding a marketplace, known as Tianshi, which was in Ophiuchus and part of Hercules."
  • "It appears that Mušḫuššu was depicted as a hybrid of a dragon, a lion and a bird, and loosely corresponds corresponded to Hydra."

Notable features
Head stars

  • "The brightest star in Serpens, Alpha Serpentis, also known as Unukalhai or Unukalhai, is a red giant of spectral type K2III located approximately 22.68 parsecs (74.0 ly) away which marks the snake's heart."
  • "Located near Alpha is Lambda Serpentis, a magnitude 4.42 star rather similar to the Sun located relatively close to Earth at only 12.12 parsecs (39.5 ly) distant away."
  • "The Mira variable R Serpentis, located between Beta and Gamma, is visible to the naked eye at its maximum brightness of 5.16, but, typical of Mira variables, it can fade to below magnitude 14."
  • "The primary, an a white subgiant, is a Delta Scuti variable with an average apparent magnitude of 4.23."

Tail stars

  • "The eclipses of the system are very erratic, and although there are two proposed theories as to why, neither of them is completely consistent with today's current understanding of stars."

2b

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  • "Since Serpens is regarded as one constellation despite being split into two halves, the ordering of Bayer and Flamsteed designations go roughly in order of brightness among both halves (i.e. there is only one Alpha, one Beta, etc. in the entire constellation). Only one star in Serpens is brighter than third magnitude, so the constellation is not easy to perceive." (Stars)
    • You know, I'll just remove this bit. The first part about Bayer designations going in order of decreasing brightness isn't quite accurate, since right ascension is also involved, and it would be next to impossible to actually find a source that says this specifically for Serpens (even though it's common sense). As for the second part, a one-sentence section does more harm to the flow of the article than the reader can gain from that sentence, which doesn't say anything too important. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:35, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "USS Serpens (AK-97) was a United States Navy Crater class cargo ship named after the constellation." (Namesakes) This claim doesn't look like it is relevant, let alone belongs, to the article; maybe it could be removed? Parcly Taxel 10:13, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Deep-sky objects to possibly mention

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Unless otherwise noted, galaxies, galaxy clusters, globular clusters, and GRBs are in Serpens Caput and all others are in Serpens Cauda

collapsed for readability
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Galaxies:

Galaxy clusters:

Globular clusters

GRBs

Open clusters

Associations

Nebulae

  • Abell 41 (planetary nebula, binary central star)
  • L134 (molecular cloud complex, well-studied)
  • L183 (molecular cloud, well-studied)
  • W40 (HII region, star-forming region)
  • S68 (enigmatic nebula)
  • Serpens cloud (large star-forming region)

Cores

  • L483 (class 0 protostar)

StringTheory11 (t • c) 03:24, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Remaining things that absolutely need to be mentioned and aren't yet: 3C 321, 3C 324, 3C 326 N/S, NGC 5953/NGC 5954, PG 1553+113, L134/L183, W40
Things that would be nice to have, but aren't absolutely necessary:, 3C 318, NGC 5970, NGC 6070, S68
StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:33, 10 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(groan) there is....so...much...that could be added...do you want to ask Mike Peel to take a look or do some more tinkering? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:23, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
At this point, I've gotten everything on the essential list apart from L134/L183. For these larger constellations, things that would certainly make it into smaller constellation articles, such as those on the nice to have list, just can't find a way into the article. I'll ask Mike Peel what he thinks, though. StringTheory11 (t • c) 16:06, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're good to go, after we get Mike's comments! StringTheory11 (t • c) 15:00, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

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@StringTheory11: in response to your request at [1], here's some suggestions. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner! I want to spend more time reading through this article, and offering more suggestions for improvement, but this is probably enough to get on with for now!

  • "Serpens is the only one of the 88 modern constellations to be split into two disconnected regions in the sky" - were there any other (non-modern) constellations that were similarly split?
    Before the boundaries were set up, there were no well-defined barriers between constellations, so I don't think it's meaningful to refer to historical constellations as having either a continuous or divided region. I did do a search, though, and was unable to find anything. StringTheory11 (t • c) 00:37, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "108 stars in total are brighter than magnitude 6.5" - add why magnitude 6.5 is significant here?
    Added. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Serpens Caput's boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930" - it would be good to cover more of the definition of the constellation in the 'history' section.
    I added some stuff here; how does it look now? I don't want to get too much into stuff that relates solely to Ophiuchus and not to Serpens. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:51, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • For the IAU definition, it might be worth referencing [2] too.
    Done. StringTheory11 (t • c) 00:37, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "See also: List of stars in Serpens" - the formatting of this looks odd, where did the indentation go? It also looks a bit odd not having any text in the 'Stars' section before getting to the 'Head stars' section, maybe add a short paragraph summarising the key stars (and later, objects) in both constellation regions? (altohugh TBH, I'm not sure this is absolutely necessary.) Or maybe talk about the closest/most distant/brightest/faintest of the key stars, and their distribution in spectral types?
    The image was screwing with the formatting, so I moved it down a bit. As to the paragraph, I originally had something similar there, but took it out some time ago after somebody (I forget who) told me it looked out-of-place. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "marking its heart" - should that be "marking the heart of the serpent"? Also, "or Unukalhai", perhaps say "(traditionally called Unukalhai)" instead? Link spectral type?
    All done. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "provide nearly all the light that reaches Earth", the caveat "that reaches Earth" isn't needed.
    Removed. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "most are too faint to be seen without professional equipment" - what kind of professional equipment are you referring to?
    Added. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the system demonstrates one of the best examples of general relativity" - this claim needs more support. How does the GR constraints compare to those from PSR J0737-3039, and other multiple-star systems containing pulsars?
    I've tried to explain this better without making it too wordy. StringTheory11 (t • c) 16:34, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Eta Serpentis was previously classified as a carbon star, which would have made it the brightest carbon star in the sky, although this classification was found to be erroneous." - I'm not sure this needs to be in this article rather than the article about the star.
    Removed. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and thus cannot be resolved with modern equipment" - specify their separation in arcseconds?
    Done. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:50, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "As the Milky Way passes through it" - what does this mean? Since the stars in the constellation are all in our Galaxy, this can't be true. Do you mean the Galactic plane? (ditto the later "As the Milky Way does not pass through this part of Serpens" sentence).
    Changed to galactic plane. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "was one of the first discovered Serpentids" - without the existence of a Serpentids article, this needs some more refs to indicate whether it is a widely-recognised term or not.
    Google Scholar gives over 90 refs for the term "Serpentid", nearly all of which relate to this type of star, so it does appear to be widely-used. I think I'll go ahead and create the Serpentid article soon. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Barely visible to the naked eye under good conditions", but in the figure caption it's described as "a naked-eye globular cluster". This isn't quite consistent!
    Fixed caption. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Interestingly, the cluster contains two millisecond pulsars" - why is this interesting?
    Explanation added. StringTheory11 (t • c) 16:34, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • When quoting distances and magnitudes, please give uncertainties for the values too.
    For magnitudes in which the source provided uncertainties, I've given them here. For magnitudes where the source did not provide an uncertainty and for distance (where the uncertainty is different in each direction due to parallax measurements containing the uncertainty instead) I've instead reduced the precision of values here, which I think should work as well. It's unfortunate that uncertainties aren't taught until college in our education system, considering how important they are.... StringTheory11 (t • c) 19:02, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please consider using more bibcodes to the Astrophysics Data System in the references, to make it easier for readers to find open access copies of the journal articles.
    All done, I think. StringTheory11 (t • c) 16:56, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • A number of the references (e.g., 86-92, and 100-101, amongst others) don't seem to be displaying correctly at the moment.
    At the moment, Citation bot is down, and I've had no luck finding a replacement tool, since the WMF refuses to create anything good. If it isn't up yet by the time I start an FAC, I'll fill them in manually. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why aren't the Levy and Ridpath references in-line refs? They look a bit odd as they are.
    Converted the former to inline; the latter doesn't appear to be used in the current version of the article, so I deleted it. StringTheory11 (t • c) 00:37, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are the external links needed, or can they be used as references or removed?
    One was already used as a reference; removed all the others. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More soon! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:50, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you; I'll work on these when I get a chance. StringTheory11 (t • c) 02:33, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: I should have plenty of time tomorrow to work on these, and will do so barring something unexpected happening. StringTheory11 (t • c) 04:04, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And we're all done, finally! StringTheory11 (t • c) 16:56, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(belated) Thanks for making those changes! I'll post any further comments to the FAC page. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:58, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Equatorial vs northern

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Categorized as equatorial consstellation, but the lead says "northern hemisphere". Should we clarify that somewhere in the article? Category:Equatorial constellations isn't a subcat of Category:Northern constellations. Brandmeistertalk 07:58, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The constellation is split into two parts, and the equator crosses both of them. The smaller part lies mostly in the southern hemisphere and the bigger one lies mostly in the northern hemisphere. So, most of the constellation lies to the north of the equator overall. PlanetStar 20:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Psi Serpentis

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Psi Serpentis was determined to be a triple star system in 2015. Praemonitus (talk) 02:15, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why there are two images about Serpens Caput in the infobox?

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Why there are two images about Serpens Caput in the infobox? This is likely an error. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 17:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree User:Hamterous1 (discuss anything!🐹✈️) 19:13, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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