Wikipedia: Zundark/Old Talk

(This is an old talk page. My current one is at /Talk.)

Hi Zundark, welcome, and thanks for your work in the math area! --AxelBoldt

thanks for getting the other Herod Agrippa part - I hate wading thru Project Gutenberg --MichaelTinkler

Great work on Beowulf there! --Anders Törlind

What is the standard way to speicify the coordinates of the constellations? The coordinates of the alpha star probably is a good alternative. Most constellations only occupy a small portion within their bounding "rectangle", it is rather pointless to specify a large "rectangle".

Not Zundark speaking, but - how about their centre of mass? The alpha star is no good, since in a lot of constellations it lies far off to one side (Bootes, Carina come to mind).

: I've been wondering about this ever since 63.192.137.xxx (that's a great name you've got there!) inserted some coordinates for Boötes. The official boundaries are often quite complex, so it wouldn't be very enlightening to give them (although we could give them as well). Centre of mass (for epoch 2000.0, say) is quite a good idea, except that it would be difficult to calculate. (Also, it's not entirely clear how you define it on a sphere.) Just giving a single point somewhere near the centre of the constellation would be OK, as long as it isn't claimed to anything more than a rough estimate. --Zundark, 2001 Sep 17

: I agree that a full boundary description is an overkill here. Center of mass is not practical either. I still think coordinates of the alpha star is a good start. Star gazers find a constellation by looking for the bright stars first, the position of the brightest (alpha) star within the constellation is more significant than the real boundary coordinates for the purpose of locating the constellation with unaided eyes. Of course, it must be clear that the coordinates are for the alpha star and not the constellation itself. -- 63.192.137.xxx

: I have no objection to the coordinates of the Alpha being added. I suggest to do them for epoch 2000.0. But as Josh Grosse notes, the Alpha is often far from central. (Eridanus is probably the extreme example - a huge constellation with its Alpha at an extremity.) Also, Vela and Puppis have no Alpha. --Zundark, 2001 Sep 18

: Center of mass is easy to define on a sphere. Assuming you don't want it weighted by bright stars or anything, you simply calculate it the way you would on a plane but use the sine of the declination rather than the declination proper as your y-coordinate. As 63 says below, though, it might not be that useful, and could fall outside the boundaries. I'll help with the bright stars list meanwhile. --Josh Grosse

: Another question. Is the center of mass computation weighed according to the magnitude of the member stars? It would make sense because the center will be more likely to fall closer to the bright stars which are what star gazers look for. On the other hand, is the effort worthwhile? What added value is a precise calculation compared to a general direction? I personally think a rough vicinity is good enough. If the objective is to provide the coordinates for the star gazers, then the location of the bright stars are more significant than the accurate boundary information. -- 63.192.137.xxx

Ideally each constellation article should have a table of brightest stars. I've done this for Caelum, but it's going to take a lot of work to do it for every constellation. Since the table should include coordinates, this would solve the problem of the present lack of location information. --Zundark, 2001 Sep 18

: I think it might be a good idea to put distance, spectral class, and absolute magnitude in if feasible. For stars that have their own pages, like Sirius and Mizar, we maybe could have a standard table giving this information?

: I've added distance, spectral class and absolute magnitude to the Caelum table. My source is somewhat old (1982), so there may be better figures available now, but this is just to get some idea of what the tables should look like. --Zundark, 2001 Sep 19

Zundark, you say you've been checking for plagiarism on Wikipedia pages. How do you suggest one go about this?

: I just choose a suitably distinctive phrase from the page and type it into Google. For example, from the former Carl Friedrich Gauss article, the phrase "Gauss visited Olbers who had discovered Pallas in March" would be suitable. Typing it into Google (including the quotes), finds the MacTutor biography [here], and if you compare this to the Carl Friedrich Gauss article which I deleted, you will see that the plagiarism is obvious. --Zundark, 2001 Oct 5

Thanks, I assumed it was something along these lines.

Please, please, do not confuse the word "plagiarism" with "copyright violation"; they are entirely different things. Plagiarism is claiming someone else's work as your own, that is, claiming to have written something that you did not write. Most copyright violations correctly attribute the author. --LDC

: You're perfectly correct. I only used the word plagiarism because the person I was responding to did. In the case I was referring to there was no attribution. --Zundark, 2001 Oct 22

Why do you adhere to the "BC" notation vs. "BCE" on the Proleptic Gregorian Calendar? I explained the reason for using "BC". --Tompeters

You wrote

: it is traditional to represent the years preceding 1 as "1 BCE" etc.

This is factually incorrect, since it's actually traditional to represent them as "1 B.C.", etc. We should not normally use BCE and CE anyway, because many people don't know what they mean. --Zundark, 2001 Oct 23

: I see your point for this particular phrase, but I disagree with your position that we should NOT use "CE" and "BCE". Besides the religeous sensitivities, European non-native English speakers may be unfamiliar with abbreviations like "BC" but familiar with the Latin "ACN" or "AC". And hypertext systems like these are excellent to give immediate explanation of terms and abbreviations. BTW thanx for referring to the existing Anno_Domini page, I will try figure out how to do that (being a newbie on Wiki). --Tompeters

: I agree that those who are not native English speakers may not recognise B.C., but they are even less likely to recognise B.C.E. We can't use A.C.N. or A.C., because they are even more obscure (for English speakers) than B.C.E. Hyperlinks are of somewhat limited use in this case, because we usually want to link the whole year, e.g. 44 B.C., and in any case we shouldn't needlessly send people off to look up something when we could have used a more normal (and entirely equivalent) abbreviation anyway. I don't understand the thing about "religious sensitivities" -- I am not a Christian, but no matter how hard I try I can't get even the slightest bit annoyed about A.D./B.C. --Zundark, 2001 Oct 24