Talk:PSR B1257+12

message: Where did this come: "It has a mass of 0.29874213836478 MSUN...". That value is way too low (and precise) for a pulsar mass. Quick calculation (m = a^3/P^2) from its planets' orbits gives a reasonable mass of ~1.4 MSun.--Jyril 11 January, 2006 21:51 (UTC)
:This was in the original write-up posted by . It is indeed bogus, as among other things the mass would have to be greater than the Chandrasekhar limit. I can't find any references to the mass online after a quick search. I've removed the mass note and other unsourced material from that section of the article until a reference can be dug up. The other material _sounded_ plausible, but it really can't be in the article until it's properly referenced. --Christopher Thomas 05:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mass of PSR 1257+12 

message: Can anyone provide a reference for this designation in the scientific literature? I haven't seen it used outside of speculative sites such as Extrasolar Visions, which doesn't qualify it as a real designation. Chaos syndrome 23:02, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was used in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia for the spurious gas giant, but not for the asteroid. Good point, the use of this designation is probably not justified in Wikipedia.--Jyril 06:54, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  PSR 1257+12 D 

message: The article states a distance of 980 light years, but VizieR gives a distance of 0.62 kiloparsecs, which is about 2000 light years. Chaos syndrome 11:05, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Current value is from Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. --Jyril 14:35, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Update to the distance is based on the latest paper (Konacki & Wolszczan 2003, ApJLett, 591, L147) Aasastrohistory (talk) 14:17, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

text: I just realized why the erroneous value of "980" light years was originally given.  The best estimate distance is based on the dispersion measure (which has substantial uncertainty) as reported by Konacki & Wolszczan (2003, ApJLett, 591, L147) to be 0.6 kpc.  When multiplied by 3.3 (the conversion factor between parsecs and lightyears to two significant digits), we get 1980.  So I expect that somewhere along the line someone made a typo and dropped the "1", changing "1980" to "980". Aasastrohistory (talk) 13:29, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This page from 2013 says 710±40 pc = 2300 ly.RicHard-59 (talk) 21:03, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distance to the pulsar? 

message: What is the source for the temperatures of the planets? Chaos syndrome 22:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Where else, Extrasolar Visions!  But before you go around deleting it, how can you 100% known a planets temperature unless you've been there.  In short, they should still be there because an extrasolar planet's temperature can't be 100% accurate, just guessed! But it's still good to put in the best guessed answer we have to this problem. — HurricaneDevon @ 12:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably the pulsar temperature is also an Extrasolar Visions value? I haven't seen a value given elsewhere. Chaos syndrome 15:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Similarly the pulsar radius? Chaos syndrome 16:05, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, I hope any "inaccurate" Extrasolar Vision values at least have an inaccuracy listed so we know if it's X degress with 10% uncertainty, or 80%. ;) Without this number, it's hard to know if it's almost a complete guess, or if it's very close according to our models. I see the numbers have since added been removed now, and I think I'd recommend that unless we have something better than a number without any certainty information.  -- Northgrove 07:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Planet temperatures 

message: You know, with the proposed 2006 redefinition of planet, D is bigger than Ceres, so would be a planet... 132.205.93.195 03:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The mass value for PSR B1257+12 "D" is an upper limit based on the non-detection of gravitational effects... it could easily be much smaller. I'd hold off on claiming planethood. If the object exists, it has been detected via cometary activity (the object's coma affects the transmission of the pulsar's emissions). Chaos syndrome 10:13, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  PSR B1257+12D 

message: http://exoplanet.eu/star.php?st=PSR+1257%2B12
When you go there, you will notice that it is listed as b,c,d and the A,B,C,D has been dropped, as well as the asteroid/comet 4th body.  Also, the system possibly contains comet(s). Thanks, CarpD 8/28/06
:As discussed above on this talk page, the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia uses an automated PHP-based approach which doesn't allow the planets to be specified as A,B,C. The designations there are in error. Chaos syndrome 18:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name change 

message: The intro says the planets were the first extrasolar planets discovered. I'm almost certain that's supposed to be first solid extrasolar planets. Plethorae of gas giants were discovered first, but the one small one was the first rock ever found. Thanatosimii 21:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. As odd as it sounds, they're the first confirmed extrasolar planets. There are some planets whose existence was suspected earlier, but they remained unconfirmed (for instance, Gamma Cephei Ab, was first detected in 1989 but not confirmed until 2002). The reason for this is that pulsars' radio pulses are tremendously accurate allowing extremely small discrepancies caused by terrestrial planets to be detected. That is not possible with radial velocity methods (except for very quiet stars with huge amount of data points).--JyriL talk 22:53, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

text: The sentence was poorly written, I rewrote it. The planets were detected by timing pulses coming from the pulsar. As the pulsar moves towards us, the frequency of the pulses rises and vice versa (see Doppler effect); the actual frequency is extremely close to a constant. In theory, some weird phenomenon could mimic the planets. However, because we can detect the perturbations caused by the planets in each other, exactly as predicted, it is next to impossible to figure out any source for changes in pulse arrival times other than planets orbiting the pulsar.--JyriL talk 12:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  first extrasolar planets? 

message: A diagram of the planetary system, and their orbits would be nice. 132.205.44.134 22:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  RqImg 

message: 70.51.8.115 (talk) 05:31, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Honestly, I have no idea what you are implying here.  There is no need for this box simply because of the fact that it is a "suspected comet," and not a planet (in this classification).  Let's keep the planets in planetboxes, and suspected comets out of them.  However, I have no trouble mentioning it in the order planetbox (witch I took the liberty to add "D" to).  Also, what is your definition of "excised"? — NuclearVacuum 18:08, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm using plain english. It should be clear what I am stating, since I am stating it without obfuscation. You cut out the table, you removed the table, you excised the table, you deleted the table, you erased the table, you reformatted the article to make the table disappear, you edited the article to make it appear without a table, you cleared the table from the article. Need I add more clarifying statements? 70.55.86.139 (talk) 04:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  NuclearVacuum excised this table 

message: The article includes a 'size comparison' of the four planets. Isn't this impossible given that we only know their masses, not their diameters? I think this should be removed.Masursky (talk) 19:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Size comparison" 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:PSR B1257+12 A which may be of interest to editors who frequent this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — InsertCleverPhraseHere 09:23, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested Moves of the planets of this system 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 6 external links on PSR B1257+12. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051230112904/http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/alex/pulsar_planets.htm to http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/alex/pulsar_planets.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081012120754/http://live.psu.edu/story/10180 to http://live.psu.edu/story/10180
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110720034147/http://www2.astro.psu.edu/~niel/astro550/week07-wolszczan-pulsar-planets.pdf to http://www.astro.psu.edu/~niel/astro550/week07-wolszczan-pulsar-planets.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051230112904/http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/alex/pulsar_planets.htm to http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/alex/pulsar_planets.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080525161540/http://exoplanet.eu/star.php?st=PSR+1257+12 to http://exoplanet.eu/star.php?st=PSR+1257%2B12
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080613163808/http://exoplanet.eu/index.php to http://exoplanet.eu/index.php
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:37, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The "Starbox" at the right of the page quoted values for mass, radius, luminosity, and temperature, that appear to come from questionable sources; I've removed these until a reliable source can be identified.
The mass and radius referenced to this report, which quotes them in Table 1, stating they come from the "Taylor et al. 2000 catalog", although the full reference is not given. I presume this is actually a reference to Taylor et al. 1993 (which was uploaded to the Vizier database in 2000), but that catalog does not give any estimates for mass or radius. The value of 1.4Msun closely matches the typically assumed (but not measured) mass - see e.g. the abstract of Konacki and Wolszczan (2003). The 10km radius similarly looks like an assumption for all neutron stars, especially given that the same value is quoted for all four objects in Table 1.
The luminosity referenced this image, but it's not clear what the 5.2 LSun value refers to - it might be the gamma ray luminosity, but it doesn't seem very informative.
No source at all was given for temperature, which had an unusually precise upper limit of "≤28856K".
I also modified the age to show "1-3 Gyr" based on the range given in sources, rather than 1+2-0 Gyr, although I note that Konacki and Wolszczan (2003) quote an even wider range of 3+-3 Gyr. --Danny252 (talk) 14:29, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed unsourced parameters 

message: Since this article made the front page today (yay!) I noticed this sentence in the intro: "They were both the first extrasolar planets and the first pulsar planets to be discovered; B and C in 1992 and A in 1994," which was preceded by another sentence listing the three planets by name. In light of that, this sentence sounds awkward (seemingly talking about three planets on one hand and two planets on the other). Unless I'm reading it wrong? Does this make more sense: "Planets B and C were discovered in 1992, making them the first extrasolar planets and the first pulsar planets to be discovered, while A was discovered in 1994." Something like that?
70.91.35.27 (talk) 18:02, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is a little bit awkward^^, a solution is to have the senetence: "They were both the first extrasolar planets and the first pulsar planets to be discovered; B and C in 1992 and A in 1994." changed to "two of them - B and C - were the first extrasolar planets ever discovered in 1992 and A was discovered in 1994." Ciao Pentaclebreaker (talk) 07:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awkward sentence? 

message: The image posted with this article is striking, but unfortunately questionable.  I have no expertise in the field of astrophysics, but I cannot see how the portrayed objects could appear with those relative sizes from any perspective.  The planets would likely be composed of ordinary matter (?), planetary size, and several AU removed from the pulsar itself, with its radius of only a few kilometers.  And would it be spherical at that rotation rate?  A note with it saying that the objects are not to scale might be a start. Martino3 (talk) 07:56, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pulsar system image