Talk:List of nearest stars

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The map is interesting, but it lacks orientation. What relation does the plane of the circle have to the plane of the Earth's orbit (the ecliptic)? How about the plane through the center of the Milky Way? Presumably the zero vector points to the center of our galaxy, or does it? And which way is up? Earth's North pole? Or some other direction? Pergelator.

The list is including Gliese 1005. My understanding is that Gliese 1005 is approximately 19.4 or possibly 19.58 ly in distance. This list may be pulling from the Gliese 1005 article. That article reflects a 19.58 ly distance in the text, but the 16 ly data (and associated parallax) in the table. If that table's data is incorrect, both it and this 10 pc list may need to be corrected. Tesseract501 (talk) 20:34, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The WISE 0350-5658 article references a parallax and distance that equates to 11.2 ly from the Sun. This would place the star between WISE 1506+7027 and EZ Aquarii A,B,C. Yet, this list article indicates a ly distance of 12.068 (between Gliese 1061 and YZ Ceti). Which needs to be corrected -- the linked star's article or this list article? Tesseract501 (talk) 03:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WISEA J154045.67–510139.3 distance was estimated by Kirkpatrick and others as 5.9 pc (19.24 ly). It still used in the latest 2016 paper. So this object probably needs to be removed from this list, at least until we receive GAIA parallax estimation. Griever GF (talk) 07:32, 20 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• A 2018 paper by Henry et al, https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07377, list this star at 5.32 pc (17.36 ly). The paper also has up-dated and more accurate distances for several stars in this article. Chasrob (talk) 16:25, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Griever GF:@Chasrob: Gaia agrees with the distance. It has been removed. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 00:41, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Could this column be made wider so that the longer items don't excessively expand their rows? Agmartin (talk) 15:53, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This morning I noticed GAIA DR2 includes sources as close as 2 light years away. I posted this question on Astronomy StackExchange for verification:

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/26131/very-near-gaia-dr2-sources-has-proxima-centauri-been-dethroned?noredirect=1#comment45145_26131

Gaia data is available from : https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/

If these sources can be confirmed by an authoritative source (GAIA is already authoritative, but perhaps there is a systemic error), this list should be updated.

Agnes 185.46.212.161 (talk) 07:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

These are spurious detections. Notice that almost all the gaia sources you list lie in the galactic plane (and most of these in a small region of said plane only a few tens/hundreds of square degrees); these are dense regions on the galactic plane where confusion is high which leads to mis-identification of sources and wildly inaccurate measurements. For instance the "closest" source you mention (id 4062964299525805952) is at RA/DEC of 272.2378287453136, -27.6459156411923; and there is clearly nothing at this location in any other survey like WISE/NEOWISE, let alone something moving as you would expect for a high parallax object. Large datasets like this always include spurious detections because of the uniform way the measurements are made which while in general will be accurate, in certain edge cases (like high confusion regions, nearby bright sources etc) will lead to nonsense. They are not real, I assure you if they were you'd be hearing about it on the news already. The data should be treated with extreme caution, which is why we should be waiting for reliable secondary source publications. ChiZeroOne (talk) 13:47, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@ChiZeroOne:, 185.46.212.161: I've updated the distances and stuff for all of the Gaia DR2 sources. I did a thorough check and gaia did not detect any new non-spurious objects within 5 parsecs. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 00:40, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

First papers starting to appears for distant future and past encounters. Still at preprint stage mind:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.07581

©Geni (talk) 08:53, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

FTR, I do not agree with this change, as it makes this listing relatively "contextless". It's better if each system is ranked by distance from the solar system. (If this is being done with an eye on making this a WP:FL, I'll consider it another piece of evidence on why I consider the GA/FA/FL process to be problematic...) --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:14, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Acknowledged that it could be a point of contention. I'll bring this to WP Astronomy and WP Astronomical objects and see if I can get input from others. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 23:27, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GJ 1005 is listed as being 16.26±0.76 ly, but its page lists 19.58 in text and 16.26±0.76 in the template. Which is it? Andrew Z. Colvin • Talk 00:20, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GJ 1005 was my addition to the list, and is honestly quite an uncertain one. The two stars are close enough to each other that Gaia DR2 didn't measure their parallax for being a binary, and in SIMBAD, there are quite a few different distances. The distances listed there as measured by different papers are (in light years) 16.28±0.75, 17.91±0.67, 17.0±1.5, 16.26±0.76, 17.26 and 19.695±0.095. Until Gaia releases DR3/DR4 solving for binary systems, it's anyone's guess which measurement is right, so I left it in. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 01:28, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Sounds good! It can certainly be updated once better data is available. Andrew Z. Colvin • Talk 20:39, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Go-in:@IJBall:@ChiZeroOne: Oh my god, I'm really sorry. This has to be the weirdest confusion I've ever encountered in my 5 years on wikipedia- just to clarify, it seems I was arguing on the same page as you. As go-in's original edit changed it to "for", I was trying to change it back to from, and thought the other reverts were changing it back to "for", cue major confusion (especially with your edit summaries). Very sorry! exoplanetaryscience (talk) 19:34, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh ok. Go-in's original edit actually did correctly change it to from; https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs&diff=845897860&oldid=845476542 . Perhaps it was just a case of misread edit summary? ChiZeroOne (talk) 19:47, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What is the purpose of the hash (#) mark in the visual magnitude column? It doesn't appear to be explained, so it is confusing. Praemonitus (talk) 15:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, this article illustrates where the nearest stars are in relation to the Sun using four graphics: a video in the WP:LEAD and three images in the section List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs#Maps of nearby stars. These are pretty redundant, and the best illustration (the animated 3D one) is not even on the page. It would be better to remove the map section and replace the video in the lead with the rotating gif, since that's the only one that gives our readers a fair impression of the relative positions in 3D space at a glance (there are other illustrations at commons:Category:Solar neighborhood, but they are unfortunately all "flat" – though if somebody were to make a rotating version of this or this, that would also work). TompaDompa (talk) 21:05, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

According to this a few brown dwarfs are missing: WISE 1541-2250; WISE 1506-7027; WISE 1405+5534; WISE 0350-5658; WISE 0410+1502; DEN 0817-6155. 205.175.106.54 (talk) 23:13, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing these to my attention. They're all further away than the 200 mas parsec limit, but following up references from that link I've found that at least one on the list WISE 0521+1025 probably shouldn't be there and that another which is missing, WISE 1741+2553, should be included.Mollwollfumble (talk) 19:52, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As another editor has pointed out to me on my Talk page, the 'Discovery dates' column in this table is largely unsourced. A lot of these dates were added on 18 August 2013 by editor Mollwollfumble who commented up-page, saying they "had" a lot of the discovery dates, but did not provide inline sourcing for the dates when they added them to the table. (Mollwollfumble hasn't posted in months and is unlikely to see this message.)

Long-story short: Either the dates in the 'Discovery dates' column need to be largely sourced with inline sources (or, if there is largely one source for most of these dates, an inline column source can be added), or I propose the entire column should just be removed from the table. (I'd argue that this column is likely extraneous to what this table/article is trying to do any way...)

An added benefit of removing the 'Discovery dates' column is that it might allow us to stop using 'small text' (i.e. font-size: 90%) in the table, a change I opposed when it was made at the time. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the discussion entry. I agree the whole column is unnecessary, thank you for the constructive possible solution. All the best. Nsae Comp (talk) 16:43, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, the column can be salvaged – but sourcing will be needed to do that... But, separately, I despise that this table is "font-size: 90%" and would like to see it restored to 100% font size. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 18:07, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"A lot of these dates were added on 18 August 2013 by editor Mollwollfumble ... not provide inline sourcing for the dates when they added them to the table. (Mollwollfumble hasn't posted in months and is unlikely to see this message)". I'm back, and am happy to supply sources, though it's a lot of work because almost every date has a different source. I can guarantee that all the discovery dates I added on 18 Aug 2013 are correct. Mollwollfumble (talk) 18:54, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's only half the issue, though – yes, these dates must be sourced – but the other half of the question is: Is this information even relevant/important enough to keep in the table? I think a good argument can be made, as this table is already "too big", that we should just remove the 'Discovery date' column. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 19:21, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My first rule for editing wikipedia is "Never delete anything from wikipedia unless you replace it with something better". Far too often I look up a topic on wikipedia to find that the information I want simply isn't there, when I know that it used to be there. As for discovery dates, you should see my bar chart of discovery dates, it's both interesting and very revealing. Yes, it is very relevant because it shows that the nearest stars were found using the best available large-field telescopes one at a time, sometimes only one a decade, and important enough to keep in the table. Attached are links to three charts of important discovery dates for the nearest stars and brown dwarfs https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJH7nTKE2wTuLKCZesxhQ83snuOsO-4K/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZTM-WdKc4WSsrdDZdQxlpZE4tu-LiDJL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/12a3IF-LomSa8oBve3htJpmyWTDFY0w5m/view?usp=sharing As for references, you have to think what references are used for, they are for checking accuracy. Of course everything that becomes out of date has to be referenced. Discovery dates don't become out of date so adding references is moot, unless the discovery is controversial, and most aren't. At least 80% of the stars in the table have false information attached to them, because that information has been superseded by Gaia EDR3 and by more recent papers on brown dwarfs, you need to concentrate on this. Mollwollfumble (talk) 20:06, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's not how it works at all – as per WP:BURDEN and WP:V, when you add something, you have to source it to something. That applies to historical dates as much as anything. So, no – those discovery dates need to be sourced to something. If they aren't, I'm well within my rights to just remove that column of information. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:57, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And column now removed, as it should have been from the start. FTR, I support this removal, and will revert in support of it if necessary. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:02, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't the table only contain information which is relevant to the topic? So in this case stars and their necessary data to ascertain their distance. Discovery date is not important for that, so I think removal was the right way to go. DutchHoratius (talk) 09:07, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What is the source of the absolute magnitudes? Is this magnitude updated when a new, better value for the distance becomes available? Hobbema (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Distance 16.3±4.2 is incompatible with parallax 217.5±40. Distance is calculated directly from parallax. For that parallax, the distance would be 15.0±2.9 light years. Distance 16.3 is also on the WISE J0521+1025 wikipedia page which doesn't mention parallax, so if that distance is correct, the parallax presented here must be wrong. Mollwollfumble (talk) 20:45, 12 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

40 eridani b and c are missing from the list, they should be with 40 eridani a. Beastlupikachu (talk) 01:22, 15 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wilhelm Gliese died in 1993 and published his last catalogue in 1991. So how were they found in 1995? Serendi^podous 14:25, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See the #Discovery Date column unsourced thread up-page – this is exactly why I think the 'Discovery Date' should simply be removed. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:08, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And now removed, as it should have been from the start. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:02, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It has been proposed in this section that List of nearest stars be renamed and moved to List of star systems within 16 light-years. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. Links: current log • target log • direct move

List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs → List of star systems within 16 light-years – This article is about stars within 5 parsecs (16 ly) from the sun. 108.88.82.1 (talk) 18:48, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed malformed move request by resubstituting {{subst:requested move}}. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 12:52, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment 2 questions:

1. why 16 light-years and not 15 light-years?
2. what should happen to the section "Distant future and past encounters" after the move? It wouldn't really fit in the scope of the article after the move, as it discusses past and future encounters of stars within 5 light-years. Sirius3100 (talk) 06:14, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• FWIW, I also agree that 15 light-years makes more sense as the cutoff, and I think matches the other list articles that are 15-20 light-years, etc. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:47, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose if it is 5 parsecs, use 5 parsecs. Don't equivocate with the random number and imprecise 16. "5" is a commonly used number and makes sense, while 16 is not -- 64.229.88.43 (talk) 03:39, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Right now, the article's lead reads 20 light-years (6.1 parsecs) as the cutoff. By nature, we need to impose some arbitrary cutoff, but we don't really need to change the title every time. The current title is adequate, and the criterion for inclusion must be specified in the lead anyway. No such user (talk) 13:22, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, "nearest stars" is meaningful and useful to readers, if you'll choose 16 ly, 20 ly, or 5 parsecs it would be just a cryptic name nobody would ever find. Besides, there is no reason to rename a reasonably named article. Artem.G (talk) 14:36, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]