Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sirius

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 02:20, 1 February 2008.

Sirius

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I'm nominating this article for featured article because it is comprehensive, fully referenced and the prose has been massaged well by a few other editors as well as me. It is currently a good article and has been expanded, referenced and copyedited since that point cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Well written, well referenced. I see no major problems with the article. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 02:26, 27 January 2008 (UTC))[reply]
Support: Very well written and informative with no grammatical or spelling errors to speak of and adequately cited. Though I do sometimes have a tendency to advocate more citations than are necessary, I did see two areas that should probably be cited better.

The first is the first half of the "Observational history" section that contains challengable statments such as "The Ancient Greeks believed that the appearance of Sirius heralded the hot and dry summer, and feared its effects on making plants wilt, men weaken and women arouse." and "Sirius served as the body of a 'Great Bird' constellation called Manu, with Canopus as the southern wingtip and Procyon the northern wingtip, which divided the Polynesian night sky into two hemispheres. Just as the appearance of Sirius in the morning sky marked summer in Greece, so it marked the chilly onset of winter for the Māori, whose name Takurua described both the star and the season. Its culmination at the winter solstice was marked by celebration in Hawaii, where it was known as Ka'ulua 'Queen of Heaven'.".

The second area is the first paragraph of the "System" section, which contains these sentences: "Currently 10,000 times less luminous in the visual spectrum, Sirius B was once the more massive of the two. The age of the system has been estimated at around 230 million years." All of those statements should probably be cited.

Again, in my opinion, not having those statements cited is not enough to prevent this article from being promoted to FA because most of them would probably be easy to verify if you knew somewhat of where to look, but it definately wouldn't hurt to cite them. Thingg ^⊕^⊗ 20:01, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No probs. ~~The cites at the end of the respective paras actually refer to them as well, but~~ I ~~can~~ have duplicated/tweaked to clarify. Thanks for your support.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. Kudos Cas, for taking on this important object. I'd like to return the FAC favour by plowing through this, but it's late for me. On the lead:

The first sentence (or at least the second) must mention it's a binary, not an individual. (List of brightest stars is unfortunately named in this regard.)cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(OK, I have readjusted the intro - tricky as I didn't want to mention things twice)

Necessarily, brightness is a function of both intrinsic luminosity and closeness.

(OK, I readjusted " is not its intrinsic luminosity " to " is not so much its intrinsic luminosity ", as I still wanted to highlight it is mainly its proximity as it is pretty feeble when compared with many of the supergiants etc.)cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Before commenting further, I'd like to make a comparison to some of RJH's great work, such as on Vega. Marskell (talk) 20:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(sure, I sure as heck did more than once while developing this article.. :) ) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Damn, now I'm embarrassed... thanks.—RJH (talk) 23:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surface temperature of Sirius A and rotational period of both (if possible) should be in the body.

(ok, one done, the rotational velocity is already in but not the rotational period. I am surprised the fairly comprehensive source paper doesn't mention it. Might be tricky...)

My main concern is rationalization. Observational history covers both culture and some of the science. The System section subsequently seems weak in comparison. And then at the end we return to culture. Hm. I must say a fine job has been done tracking down cultural references and ancient observation. Marskell (talk) 09:37, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Yep. Has been tricky to figure out what goes where. Originally the Observational History section began with a sentence from antiquity and then jumps to Edmund Halley, whereas I figured ancient material directly related to observation and navigational use e.g. heliacal rising etc. should go there instead of at the cultural significance section, which I left for symbolism etc. I suppose one could quite easily put the 3 paras, say, on discovery of Sirius B/spectrum of Sirius B and Hertzsprung/moving group para into the system bit. If all the astronomers think its a good idea I am happy to do it for consensus' sake.) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm no astronomer :). Just an editor that thinks ToCs are critical. OK, one possible reorganization would be something like this:

Everything in Observational history after the paragraph beginning "In 1844..." gets moved to the System section, with para's into Sirius A and B, accordingly.
Move Visibility and System above history—this prioritizes the science.
The now smaller Observational history gets renamed Early observation (and navigation, maybe).

Note this would break up the attempt at a chronological presentation but it would keep the scientific data together. This can be discussed on article talk, to avoid lengthening this. Marskell (talk) 18:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, it becomes hard to fulfil all criteria but am happy to follow consensus. Hopefully the others will voice opinions there. I can see issues with varying order as most other astronomical FAs have history of observation as a first or section, and I do like ordered sequence of sections for conformity.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Most astronomy articles don't start with an observation section. Those are typically shuffled after the physical characteristics with a "Discover and naming" section first (if it applies—not here, except for naming). This does follow the ToC of Vega, however, and every article calls for something different. But I can't support without better rationalization of "Observational history"—there's just too much in it, and too much jumping between topics and dates. Marskell (talk) 20:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I still think it has a rather nice ancient to modern chronology. The excellent Jay Holberg book on Sirius follows the same order too. FWIW I get 34 Astronomy Featured Articles have some form of history of observation or discovery vs 23 which don't.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support—Nice work in transforming a somewhat dry article into an interesting read. I don't have any issues with the organization. The one entry that did catch my eye was: "...one of our near neighbors", which sounds a bit odd. Apparently it was edited from "nearest neighbors", but a "near neighbors" seems redundant and I would hardly consider it "near". =) On another note, it's interesting that the orbital motion of Sirius B is just now taking it sufficiently far from Sirius A that the binary can once more be split by amateur astronomers. They reached their minimum separation in 1993.[1] It would be nice if some day a diagram of Sirius B's orbital motion, as seen from Earth, could be included. I've seen that portrayed in various places but it's probably not PD.—RJH (talk) 23:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks RJH - happy for anyone to tweak neighbours wording again. Not a biggie for me. Agree about plotting out graph of motion, as I have seen it in books and thought it would be great to add but wasn't sure under copyright whether it was permissible. If you had a ref for the widening and easing of visibility for amateur astronomers and thought it was appropriate to add then I'd be grateful if you did so.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I've checked what is a really well-written article for accuracy, and it's excellent. My one quibble is that I wouldn't quote the time taken for nuclear reactions to account for 100% of energy (the casual reader is unlikely to know what the other sources might be, and also this number is highly model dependent) but instead quote to zero age main sequence lifetime, given in the same source as being approximately 4.5 million years. This is a minor point, and otherwise all is well. Chrislintott (talk) 23:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and the Voyager comment seems out of place where it is now. Chrislintott (talk) 23:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree (sort of) in that it sort of doesn't fit anywhere particularly well. I wasn't the one who placed it there. It may go better in system section I guess, not sure really. I don't have strong feelings about it.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If no one else has a problem with the structure I won't hold you up on it. The important thing is that all of the main information be there, which I think it is. So support.

Any mention of possible planets you've come across? With such a high metal content it seems possible. Marskell (talk) 11:08, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, the 3rd companion seems to be just about (but not 100.000%) excluded too..cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The article is comprehensive, well written and has a long list of references. I think however that the article would be better if it had a paragraph (several sentences) comparing Sirius with Vega. Both stars have similar masses but Vega is a fast rotator and Sirius is a slow rotator. Ruslik (talk) 19:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the support. Not a bad idea again, but needs to have been discussed somewhere first. Comparing them de novo without a source which already does so could be straying into OR. However if you know of one I am all ears..cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:26, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Very well written and sourced. J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 02:13, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.