Talk:Microscopium

Microscopium 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.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 31, 2018.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 4, 2015	Good article nominee	Listed
May 31, 2015	Featured article candidate	Promoted

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on July 21, 2012.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the constellation of Microscopium can't be seen from locations affected by light pollution?

Current status: Featured article

Bayer-designated stars in Microscopium

As far as I can tell (Google, Starry Night, Bayer/Flamsteed) the Greek letters Kappa, Lambda, and Mu were skipped (possibly because they got "moved" to another constellation when the IAU redefined constellation boundries, when was it, 1930 or so). Beta does exist, but it is fainter than all the rest, breaking the usual pattern of asigning Greek letters in magnitude order.--Todd 01:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no 'usual pattern' of assigning Bayer letters in magnitude order. In this case the letters are clearly assigned in order of RA, at least in the northern half of the constellation. Skeptic2 (talk) 12:41, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bookmark

Note DD Mic ads at here Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 18:49, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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

Reviewer: Curly Turkey (talk · contribs) 07:21, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take this. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 07:21, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to revert any of the copyedits I may have made, or to disagree with any of my following comments, some of which may not have any bearing on whether the article gets promoted. I know nothing about astronomy, so please bear with any questions I may have.

only minor headache is that I always use last two digits of pagerange, and you've gone and made them all complete/three digits. Still, there's no hard and fast rule on this and as long as they are all consistent no-one will care much. so no biggie... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, like I said, revert if you don't like it. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:48, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Prose comments

What's the EngVar? I see both "honored" and "neighbouring".

hmm, should be British English - will align all I see Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What's with the ????? under "|meteorshowers"?

leftover from article's creation - researched now Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:01, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

/ˌmaɪkrəˈskɒpiəm/ — is this really the pronunciation?

hmm....all the constellations seem to have them, and doesn't agree with this or this either...I'd always pronounced the 'o' long - never noticed that the phonetic alphabet has text helping on hover...will look into this. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:18, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if it's not sourced, and it's no the pronunciation you're familiar with, it might be best to drop it. It's not like the name will give readers headaches the way some of these Latin-derived names do. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:48, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it normal to have the "History" section before the "Characteristics" section? There's a logic to it, but I wonder if that's what readers would expect or be looking for first.

meh, slotted it at the bottom - does help with images :) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

the non-tropical northern hemisphere: the linked article capitalizes "Northern Hemisphere"—is this optional, or EngVar?

nah, laziness - fixed now Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

may previously been seen as: should this be something like "may previously have been seen as"? The source doesn't seem to think there's any "may" about it.

tried rewriting to align closer to source Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

he did not pinpoint their positions: Al-Sufi or Ptolemy? The source seems ambiguous on this as well.

it's Al Sufi- tricky to try and write this without sounding repetitive - the easiest is to put "Al Sufi" in parentheses after the "he" in question......? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:09, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken a crack at it. Revert it if you don't like it. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 10:25, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is 'Mic' : should those not be double quotes?

all other constellations have single quotes here - not sure why that came about... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

HR 8076, `HR 8110: is that backtick supposed to be there? It's not in the linked article.

oops, removed...(how'd that get there...) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

12.9 light-years from our solar system: I was taught there was only one Solar System. Is this not the case?

linked and capped Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

are challenging stars for beginners: in what ways?

presumably hard to find on charts due to lack of distinctive patterns in neighbouring stars and quite faint at times, so hard to follow. I am assuming this but unfortunately the source doesn't spell out why..... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Images

All three images are appropriately licenced.
There's sandwiching with the first two images and the rather long infobox. Could at least one of the images not be moved? There's a lot of space further down the article.

moved one down - tricky to move the historical one as that's where the text is Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps if the article were re-ordered so the "History" section came later? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 10:30, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You've set image sizes for them, which normally is best to avoid as it overrides user settings. The 250px you've set is only marginally bigger than the default 220px.

removed them. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

For Lacaille 1756, what does "page=519– [589]" mean?

means the relevant note is on that page...I forgot to put last page of article, added now...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:26, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What make's Ian Ridpath's site a RS? Normally we are to avoid such sources per WP:SELFPUBLISH. Who is Ridpath? (now I can see you've cited another work by him published by Princeton. I imagine it's okay, then).

yeah.....Ian Ridpath has written alot of astronomy books (e.g. see on google) and has his own website Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Same may apply to Kaler, though as he's Prof. Emeritus of Astronomy, University of Illinois, and the site's obviously not a blog, I can't imagine anyone raising a fuss. (You might want to back up the page at archive.org or something).
I don't see anything like plagiarism or close paraphrasing going on here. If the Lacaille citation can be cleared up, sources should be fine.

Etc

As far as I can tell, the article seems comprehensive and well-written. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 09:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pass another Good Article. I might play around with the image placements to avoid the sandwiching that's still there, and I'd probably either source or drop the IPA. I'd also look into the single-quoting, if only to find out why it's done. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:52, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

As per @Casliber:'s request, here's some suggestions:

"Given that its brightest stars are of fifth magnitude, the constellation is invisible to the naked eye in areas with polluted skies" - could link to light pollution, and comment on what level of light pollution is needed before it can't be seen.

linked and foot note with bortle scale added Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:09, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"four of the Mira variables in Microscopium were very urgently needed as data on their light curves was incomplete" - why are their light curves important?

The article highlights that since the death of Danie Overbeek, apparently many long period variables are not being observed regularly and hence there are gaps in the coverage of their curves. The article doesn't explain why this is important (though I can guess it is because some long period variables are changing and hence it is extremely valuable to catch them in action as they contribute to knowledge of stellar evolution....?) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:04, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"are challenging stars for beginners" and "are more difficult" - it could be clearer that this is talking about amateur astronomy observations. It also seems a bit out-of-place amongst scientific results, unless there's a connection between the two.

I like trying to drop big fat hints in articles that everyone can do science - alot of astronomy is helped greatly by amateur astronomers, especially monitoring of variables...these pesky Miras...every constellation has 'em..but are there enough eyes watching them? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:42, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"The system is metal-poor" - could do with an explanation of what "metal-poor" means (and probably also what "metal" means, since astronomy has an unusual definition of this word!).

I've linked to Metallicity and reworded to "The system has a low metallicity" Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:14, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"a minor meteor shower described in 2012" - the "described in 2012" seems unnecessary, unless it means "discovered in 2012" (which I don't think is the case, since they were mentioned in 2009). It would be good to link to meteor shower, and consider adding it to List of meteor showers.
"History" could be merged with "Characteristics" to match the other constellation articles.
I'd recommend merging the Wagman ref and the in-line refs #5, 6, 37 into a single in-line ref, which would mean that you could remove the sub-sections of the references section. Alternatively, the "Citations" bold text should probably be a subsection to match "Cited texts".
There is a Microscopium Supercluster [1] [2].

nice find! added Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:09, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:31, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Northern Hemisphere

This goes on the Main Page on October 31, with the sentence in question in the blurb.

So what does it mean? "Its stars are faint and hardly visible from most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere." Magnitude +4.68 can be called "faint and hardly visible", but that would also be true in the Southern Hemisphere. If you're far enough north, southern stars don't rise above the horizon, and stars near the horizon are harder to see. But the article allows for that when saying "The whole constellation is visible to observers south of latitude 45°N" (meaning visible at the right time on a summer night). And it doesn't say "Some stars are faint", it says "Its stars ...". So part of the constellation would be visible in that sense, to 55-60°N. So it's faint everywhere, and none of the stars are visible at all in the Arctic. But in the continental U.S., England and the populated part of Canada, at least some of the stars are about as visible as they are further south. So why "most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere"? Art LaPella (talk) 01:44, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I just read the page, and had the same reaction -- then I saw your comment. Southern stars aren't visible from very far north. But why should that be in the lede? The Big Dipper article does not state in the lede -- or anywhere -- that it's not visible from far south latitudes. And the Mount Everest article doesn't mention in the lede that the mountain is not visible from Australia. Too bad nobody fixed this. — Lawrence King ^(talk) 09:26, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The comparison with Mt Everest makes no sense. Fact is, most of our readers are in the Northern Hemisphere, so pointing out a far southern constellation is not visible makes sense. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:17, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Except that most of our readers aren't in the Arctic. Art LaPella (talk) 14:01, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why no green lines in graphic?

Ever constellation article includes a graphic at the very top showing that constellation's stars. Most of them connect the stars with green lines to show the asterism -- like the lion in Leo or the dipper in the Big Dipper or the fish in Piscis Austrinus.

But Microscopium's graphic just shows the stars. It doesn't connect them with green lines in the shape of a microscope (or any other shape). Why not? — Lawrence King ^(talk) 09:30, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good question. Since before my time the constellation articles have all used the standard IAU charts. But I see there are some others that do use the lines. Feel free to edit and replace the IAU chart if you like. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:09, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]