Wikipedia:Featured article review/Sun/archive2

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

The article was kept by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 5:10, 2 November 2024 (UTC) [1].

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Sun

Notified: CactiStaccingCrane, Nergaal, Headbomb, WikiProject Physics, WikiProject Astronomy, [diff for talk page notification]

2006 listing, last reviewed in 2009. As taken note of in the talk page notice from the tenth of May, there are fifteen (and possibly more) unsourced paragraphs and sentences. @ArkHyena: noted that "Given that the last FAR for this article appears to have been done all the way back in... 2009?! I'd certainly agree on one being needed. It necessarily is not only unsourced text which may be an issue too; piecemeal revisions over ~15 years could potentially impact clarity, and I'm pretty sure FA criteria back in 2009 may have been different than they are now.", while @Sgubaldo: said that a lot of references were missing different fields. 750h+ 01:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

On a first reading, the uncited statements generally seem to be the sort of thing that is written in many books (Sirius being the second-brightest star in the sky, etc.), so fixing that up shouldn't be too difficult. XOR'easter (talk) 23:53, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

More of a nitpick, but in the 'Observational History' section, it seems to be that there's a tad too many images. I'm thinking the hydrogen-alpha and ultraviolet light ones could be removed or moved elsewhere? Sgubaldo (talk) 23:37, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I have partially addressed this in diff. CoronalMassAffection (talk) 00:24, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Sgubaldo (talk) 13:09, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Comments from Praemonitus:

• A potential concern I had is that the "Celestial neighborhood" section is an except from the Solar System article. However, the latter is an FA article itself, so perhaps this isn't an issue. Praemonitus (talk) 14:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
• I question the need for much of the current "Faint young Sun" section, as that is more about the Earth than the Sun. What would make it more relevant is a discussion of higher activity levels (stronger solar wind) in the early Sun, but that is currently lacking. Praemonitus (talk) 14:38, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
• There is no discussion of solar spin-down. The early Sun would have been spinning much faster than it is today. Praemonitus (talk) 14:48, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
  • On a related note, there is a statement about, "Recent analysis of SOHO mission data favors a faster rotation rate in the core than in the radiative zone above." However, this is dated from 2007. Subsequent results from SOHO show a significantly faster rate of core rotation: about once a week compared to once a month at the surface. The implications of this can be discussed.[2] Praemonitus (talk) 18:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
    • I've addressed these. Praemonitus (talk) 01:37, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
• The term "life" is used rather loosely in this article, presumably referring to the Sun's life span as a "fusor" star. This leads to suspect statements such as, the "Sun today is roughly halfway through the most stable part of its life". I think the most stable part of its life overall would be as a white dwarf. Praemonitus (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
• "5,620 K (5,350 °C; 9,660 °F)" What is the need for a Celsius value here? To me it just adds unnecessary bloat. Praemonitus (talk) 15:06, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

  Removed from all of them. Sgubaldo (talk) 18:59, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 00:54, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

• Why is a value in the lead being presented in light-seconds? It is an informal unit that it not widely used. Praemonitus (talk) 15:09, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

  I've removed the usage in the infobox and lead. Sgubaldo (talk) 16:02, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

• The 'Observational history' section should mention that helium was first detected as an unknown absorption line in the solar spectrum. Praemonitus (talk) 15:16, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
  • I see that was added to the "Photosphere" section for some reason. I'm going to relocate it. Praemonitus (talk) 00:17, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
• While the article does discuss the solar constant, there's no discussion of the present-day net luminosity of the Sun, other than to say it is equal to a solar luminosity. Granted the photonic energy output is mentioned in the infobox, but that should be stated in the article. I think it would be useful to compare it to the net annual energy generated by humankind. Praemonitus (talk) 15:24, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
• In the "Solar activity" section, there is no mention of the change in solar luminosity due to chromospheric activity. Praemonitus (talk) 15:34, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
• The "Solar space missions" section has a bulleted list of missions, most of which are not of particular interest. I think most of that would belong on the List of heliophysics missions page, or perhaps Solar observatory. That entire section seems longer than it perhaps needs to be. Perhaps it needs to be spun off into a separate Solar observatories in space, then presented WP:SS? Praemonitus (talk) 16:20, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

  I'd be fine with moving that list (and potentially more of the section) to some place like Solar observatory. XOR'easter (talk) 00:02, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• The paragraph on SOHO reads like WP:Puffery. "One of the most important solar missions..." Praemonitus (talk) 16:25, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

  I made a first stab at toning this down. XOR'easter (talk) 23:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

• In most cases the image credits can be stripped from the caption, to keep it succinct per WP:CAPTION
• I'm not sure what to make of these references:
  • Ross and Aller 1976, Withbroe 1976, Hauge and Engvold 1977, cited in Biemont 1978.
  • Corliss and Bozman (1962 cited in Biemont 1978) and Warner (1967 cited in Biemont 1978)
  • Smith (1976 cited in Biemont 1978)
  • Signer and Suess 1963; Manuel 1967; Marti 1969; Kuroda and Manuel 1970; Srinivasan and Manuel 1971, all cited in Manuel and Hwaung 1983

I went through the remainder of the citations and tried to make them consistent and more complete. Beyond that, the article has built up a fair amount of fluffy padding and redundancy that can be tightened up so the writing is more crisp. Praemonitus (talk) 16:17, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

@XOR'easter and Praemonitus: any updates? Some comments I have includes the lead section, you might consider removing the references (as that should be summarised in the article) and I think the lead paragraphs should be a bit more balanced in size. 750h+ 10:41, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I have nothing further to add. Praemonitus (talk) 13:10, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I have (re)moved the references from the lead (see diff). CoronalMassAffection (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

In this case, I don't really care about references being in the intro or not; it's a little more clean without the blue clicky linky numbers, but they weren't egregious. XOR'easter (talk) 19:07, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

@FAR coordinators: what are our thoughts? 750h+ 15:04, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Which of the issues raised above remain unaddressed? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:28, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I added some cn tags. The article should probably be trimmed because it is over 9,000 words (WP:SIZERULE), although I think removing introductory paragraphs in some sections and a copyedit for redundant words might improve this. Some inline citations have quotes, which have fallen out of fashion on Wikipedia, so these can probably be removed. Z1720 (talk) 17:58, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

i don't think prose size needs trimming, the size rule it says the "scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material", this is probably one of the most important articles on the site, so i think 9.5K words is perfect; if anything, one would expect this have more. It also says "A page of about 10,000 words takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is close to the attention span of most readers", this page is well below that. I removed the first cn tag you added in "Life phases", as that paragraph summarises the whole section (which is referenced). I also added citations for the second one. 750h+ 03:35, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@ArkHyena, Z1720, Praemonitus, XOR'easter, and Sgubaldo: do we have any more concerns? this has been idle for about a month 750h+ 11:40, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't have the time to have a proper look, but I will note a large addition to the article was made on August 22. Sgubaldo (talk) 21:00, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I removed part of that addition for being really excessive detail and because it relied upon a journal that nobody should rely on. XOR'easter (talk) 03:00, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Z1720: now the article has 43 words over 10,000. Genghis Khan was recently promoted so I think this can be an exception. 750h+ 08:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

• Keep without FARC i don't see any issues. Page is 100% sourced and well-written. 750h+ 12:09, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
• Comment WP:TOOBIG states that an article should be split after 9,000 words; this article has over 10,000. Yes, this is a large topic that will be very long but some longer sections might be good places to split or summarise information more effectively, such as "Atmosphere", "Sunlight and neutrinos", "After core hydrogen exhaustion", "Motion", "Development of scientific understanding" and "Solar space missions". In addition, I do not think the last paragraph of "Etymology" is needed in this article as it describes the origin of words like "Sunday": these can be stated in the articles about that word since this article is already long. Z1720 (talk) 23:55, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
• Keep without FARC Having addressed the recent addition mentioned just above and the bulleted list discussed earlier, I believe this article covers what it needs to at the level it ought. XOR'easter (talk) 03:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: what value do the equations provide in the Motion section? This seems unnecessary. Praemonitus (talk) 03:31, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  I took a first stab at condensing all that. If you want to trim it further, I won't object. XOR'easter (talk) 03:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  Maybe we could move it to Stellar kinematics and put it in a section there called something like "As applied to the Sun"? I have no strong feelings about it. XOR'easter (talk) 03:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

My objection isn't intended as an obstacle toward a Keep without FARC; I just view the formulae as unnecessary for a high level article like this. It may even discourage some readers as being too technical. All the reader should need to see is the end results. Praemonitus (talk) 04:32, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

We could condense a lot of it down to "The Sun can be modeled as moving in an ellipse around a point that is itself circling the center of the galaxy" and then quoting some numbers, perhaps. XOR'easter (talk) 04:06, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

I see that this section has been trimmed. The result looks good to me. XOR'easter (talk) 19:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Comments from Z1720

Not a subject matter expert, so cannot comment if the information in the article is "correct". Instead, I'll look mostly at prose and other concerns:

• The end of "Atmosphere" has information relating to research concerning the sun (mostly probes). I think this information can be removed from this article as it creates currency concerns (as more probes are sent to the sun, Wikipedia cannot keep adding all these probes). Instead, this information can be moved to the articles about the probes, and this article can present the findings of the probes as verified information (without mentioning that the information came from the probes).
• "This is 132° away from Cygnus." is uncited. I also am not quite understanding what this paragraph is saying, so I am unsure if this sentence is needed?
• "Unsolved problems" only lists one problem. Should this section be renamed, or formatted differently?
• Added alt text per MOS:ALT

This article is looking a lot better and I think it is close to a keep. Z1720 (talk) 20:09, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I removed the 132° line and moved the "Coronal heating" material so that we no longer have an "Unsolved problems" section with only one problem. XOR'easter (talk) 23:57, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Z1720: have we come to a conclusion? 750h+ 10:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

• Keep I have no more concerns with this article. Z1720 (talk) 13:57, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

  @FAR coordinators: can this be kept? 750h+ 01:08, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

• Closing note: This removal candidate has been kept, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:10, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.