Talk:Aldebaran

message: I removed It is the sun in the Arabian mythology. If someone can clarify the significance of this statement, I think it would fit nicely in the paragraph about astrological & mythological significance. Lusanaherandraton 13:17, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarify

message: This object is not listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, even in the unconfirmed/controversial/retracted list. The best I've managed to come up with is a paper "Long-period radial velocity variations in three K giants" which suggests that the variation is intrinsic to the star rather than a companion. Chaos syndrome 18:30, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia before but I guess that Jean Schneider removes from the list the objects that are clearly proved not to be planets. The object should be mentioned in the article, but it doesn't deserve a section, let alone a copyrighted image.--Jyril 06:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The companion seems to get mentioned on several sites about Aldebaran, e.g.  , so might as well discuss it. The designation "Aldebaran Ab" on the other hand seems fictitious - it isn't used in the papers published about it. Chaos syndrome 19:01, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aldebaran Ab? 

message: First of all, this section is currently tagged as violating factuality or NPOV, but there's no discussion here of why or how it might be improved.  At the very least, this discussion section should cover that.
Secondly, though, and more broadly, this section and the one below it ("Aldeberan in other cultures") seem a bit out of step with the way many other astronomical pages are set up.  The information provided about "royal stars" and the like seems, to me, to be a bit out of scope of this article.
For example, Betelgeuse seems to have some significance to astrology , but has no section about its astrological significance, and includes the historical and cultural information under the topic "Origin of the name 'Betelgeuse'".
Generally, however, I suspect that these stars' pages have not been nearly as completely hashed over as the planets' pages, which have much more general interest for both astrologers and astronomers.  The article for Mars, for example, includes a short "Mars in Human Culture" section which covers the planet's history in several cultures, and mentions astrology only in the sentence which begins "Its symbol, derived from the astrological symbol of Mars..." The article for Jupiter has no section about historical or cultural significance at all.  Both of these pages, however, do link to the appropriate section of Planets_in_astrology in their "See Also" section.
Given the way other astronomical pages are set up, I'd suggest combining "Aldebaran in astrology and mysticism" and "Aldebaran in other cultures" into "Aldeberan in human culture" ("Aldeberan in other cultures" is western-centric, anyway), and moving the astrology-specific things to the already existent Stars_in_astrology.  I'd also note that these two sections are poorly sourced in general, and part of such a cleanup should be to find citations for their parts (or to remove the unsourced parts).
Brett A. Thomas 14:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aldebaran in astrology and mysticism section? 

message: The paragraph about numerical parameters contained the sentence "Taken together this distance and brightness makes it the 14th brightest star, having an apparent magnitude of 0.87." This formulation could be confusing to laymen, as it tends to suggest that apparent magnitude is computed as a function of distance and brightness. In fact, apparent magnitude ***is*** the observed brightness of the object, with a correction for atmospheric attenuation. Although it is a consequence of distance and ***luminosity*** (a parameter that should not be confused with brightness), it is not determined by a computation involving distance, but by observation. I have rewritten the sentence. Piperh 05:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apparent magnitude 

message: While reading this article I noted a discrepancy. In the article itself (part: Physical properties) it states the size of the main star to be 38x that of the Sun. On the right side under Observation data it gives a radius of only 25x that of the Sun. Which is correct?--Interested66 (talk) 13:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The right side infobox now has 44.2, so someone must have fixed that. In the Physical properties section I have just now changed the 38 to 44.2 to match what the 2005 citation stated (and I added a note on how the derived diameter value is verified from the angular diameter and distance). 84user (talk) 21:07, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size of Aldebaran 

message: I'm not sure why someone decided it was important to tell us that Pioneer 10 will pass Aldebaran in 2 million years. First of all, this is a gross assumption - we have no idea what will become of Pioneer in that length of time. Secondly, this bit of information does not tell us anything helpful about Aldebaran, though it might be useful in the article about Pioneer 10. 67.68.46.238 (talk) 14:29, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relevance of Pioneer 10 reference? 

message: I propose that the article Aldebaran b should be merged into the radial velocity variations section, and the Aldebaran b article replaced with a redirect. The existence of the object has not been confirmed, so giving it its own article gives it far too much attention when a redirect to this article would suffice. In fact, it looks like the Aldebaran b article is not giving any information that is not already being presented in more detail here. Icalanise (talk) 16:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure if we have a protocol on it but I agree it seems like a good idea. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I have taken the liberty and redirected the planet's page into its own section on the star's article.  Hope you don't mind. — NuclearVacuum 17:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge 

message: I have found the Citation for the Pioneer 10 claim that has the (citation needed) label.
^ According to NASA, the Voyager 1 spacecraft reached the termination shock on 2005-05-24, Voyager 2 on 2007-08-30. Both had travelled at that time about 16 000 bil. km. The termination shock lies nearer to the Sun than the heliopause. Pioneer 10 has reached about 15 363 bil. km on 2008-12-01 Pioneer 10 on 2008-12-01 00:00 UTC with the Solar System Simulator/ So, it is clear that it hasn't reached the heliopause since 1st December 2008, and that nobody will ever know when it reaches it, as Pioneer 10 has terminated communication in 2003
This is the footnote from the Pioneer 10 article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.208.34.185 (talk) 23:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation for the Pioneer 10 claim 

message: Im suprised or embarrassed.  Is there a Widipedia reference for this star from Rolling Stones song: 2000 light years from home
if no reference, how do we add?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.169.40.78 (talk) 04:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: See the Aldebaran in fiction article, in the Music section.Aldebaran66 (talk) 05:06, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popular culture 

message: The following paragraph was removed from the Myths section of the article for lacking a citation for more than a year and having little to do with the star. I have preserved it here for future reference. This article has similarities to the previously deleted Gnostic Nazi section listed above. Aldebaran66 (talk) 20:36, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Myths 

message: According to the text is -2,1... but this is extremely improbable, as it would be the brightest star on sky. According to :es:Aldebaran it's +0.85 -Theklan (talk) 11:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The visual apparent magnitude (vmag) is listed as 0.75-0.95. The near-IR J-band magnitude is -2.10 since it is a nearby red giant star.  -- Kheider (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I thing taht this is very confusing for people that doesn't understand all parameters. If you click over apparent magnitude you get an information that would lead to thing Aldebaran is currently the brightest star on sky, with -2.1. -Theklan (talk) 14:22, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have modified the intro to apparent magnitude to help explain it somewhat, but I do not want to get too wordy. The average reader just needs to make sure they are comparing vmags and not jmags. The infobox does display (V) and (J) next to the different apmags. -- Kheider (talk) 01:44, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apparent magnitude 

message: Didn't the late Isaac Assimov suggest that Aldebaran was the nearest star that was likely to flare up into a supernova at any time?AT Kunene (talk) 19:10, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The mass is too low for a Type II supernova. It needs to be up around 8+ solar masses. Perhaps you are thinking of Betelgeuse? Praemonitus (talk) 22:40, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  supernova 

message: Seems to have been recovered by Gaia DR2 as Gaia DR2 3313069881589149824. Pllx 47.3417±0.105. Colors indicate a spectral type of M3.5V or so. JamesFox (talk) 11:21, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aldebaran B 

message: The article says " It has a surface gravity of 1.59 cgs, typical for a giant star, but around 25 times lower than the Earth's "
Surely the CGS unit of acceleration is cm s^-2, so 1.59 of them is equivalent to 0.0159 m s^-2, or 1/616 of the Earth's gravity? Have I misunderstood something?
HairyDan (talk) 21:16, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Surface gravity for stars is usually expressed as a logarithm due to the large range of possible values.  This gives a dimensionless number, the cgs just indicates the metric system that was used for the initial acceleration.  log(g) of 1.59 means an acceleration due to gravity of , approximately  compared to the Earth at about .  Using log(g), the Earth's surface gravity is 2.99 cgs, higher than most giant stars but lower than main sequence stars.  In the same system the surface gravity of the Sun is 4.4 cgs.  Lithopsian (talk) 21:28, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surface gravity 

message: Which radius for Aldebaran should be preferred? 44.13 or 45.1? Nussun05 (talk) 10:34, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Preferred radius