Talk:Asteroseismology

Astroseismology
Should there be a mention of "astROseismology" and "astEROseismology" as beeing synonymous? There are many articles (on the web) using the spelling astroseismology.

What about a mention of how this field relates to classification of extrasolar plantes according to suitability for life criteria and so on.¨

Bj norge (talk) 22:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Is that just a misspelling though, or an actual alternate spelling? On wikipedia I found only one page using the 'astro' spelling (which I have now corrected), and a search of ADS shows that only about 78 papers use the 'astro' spelling, and a majority (47) of them are because somebody has misspelt the title of the journal 'Communications in Ast[e]roseismology'. We probably shouldn't bother to write about a simple misspelling.
 * You have a good point about the relationship with exoplanets - I'll write something on this later. --Neil (talk) 10:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Good. Some websites use it but it might just be a misspelling. Any particular reason it was astero and not astro in the first place? It has the same etymology as far as I can tell. Bj norge (talk) 10:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, 'astroseismology' is a common misspelling, especially in the U.S. See this wonderfully erudite comment in defence of the correct spelling by Douglas Gough. Timb66 (talk) 00:22, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I have edited to remove 'astroseismology' as an alternate spelling. It has been dismissed as incorrect and is not used by practitioners. Timb66 (talk) 01:04, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

P-Mode
Should there be a dis-ambiguation page for "p-mode"? I originally searched for this term with the intent of reading about asteroseismology, but instead was directed to a page on mathematics. Thanks Scottyaggie (talk) 13:57, 5 April 2011 (UTC)scottyaggie

I think that might be quite good, but I'd suggest posting it to the talk page of the exisitng page which redirects from p-mode as they are more likely to object. --Neil (talk) 15:29, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposed overhaul
I've been working on basically overhauling this article. The draft replacement is at User:Warrickball/Asteroseismology. I've tried to incorporate coherent existing material and I'll probably port the lengthy section on solar-like oscillations into that article, to better balance things. Comments and edits are welcome!

I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes. I work in the field and would like to see the article make a leap well beyond start-class. Warrickball (talk) 19:52, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Your overhaul is great! I added a tiny bit during the AAS Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in mid-June, but I'm thrilled you dove into a more comprehensive revision. Merrdiff (talk) 17:44, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Theoretical Background – missing details
In the section “Theoretical Background”, I spot two problems:

(1) In the equation for $$N$$, the parameters $$g$$ and $$\Gamma_1$$ are not defined/explained.

(2) In the equation for the Lamb frequency, the quantity $$r$$ should not be the radial coordinate, but probably the star radius, let's call it $$R$$. Otherwise, this would be a function of $$r$$ (which is not impossible, but the name “Lamb frequency” is then strange. —DieHenkels (talk) 13:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC)


 * [apologies for using LaTeX notation conventions for equations]
 * (1) Here g stands for the (local) acceleration of gravity, so $g=GM(r)/r^2$, with $G$ the universal constant of gravity, $M(r)$ the mass enclosed within radius $r$, which is the distance to the stellar centre, so $g$ is still a function of the variable $r$. $\Gamma_1$
 * is the first adiabatic exponent. For an ideal mono-atomic gas, this would have a value of $5/3$, but for real plasmas it deviates from that value and still depends on local density and temperature.
 * (2) The Lamb frequency $S_{\ell}$, just as the bouyancy frequency $N$, is a locally defined quantity and therefore dependent on $r$. Both have the unit $s^{-1}$ and are therefore frequencies. The diagram indicates the value of each as a function of radius in a standard stellar model. Man.Invert (talk) 09:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)