Talk:Canis Major/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Hamiltonstone (talk · contribs) 13:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Reviewing...
 * Writing is good, though with occasional moments of hilarity: "The bow and arrow depiction was replaced by that of a dog in Ancient Greece". Amazing that we know where the dog was. Perhaps "The Ancient Greeks replaced the bow and arrow depiction with that of a dog"? Not sure if "depiction" is the right word, either.
 * It is tricky as it has to be some visual word - "portrayal" I thought of but not really apt either. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "Islamic scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī referred to Orion called it Al Kalb al Jabbār, "the Dog of the Giant"..." Couple of issues. There is a missing word somewhere here. Also, the title The Dog of the Giant is in quote marks, but 'the watchdog' and 'the Greater Dog' in earlier sentences are not so punctuated. What principle do you want to follow here? What have you used in earlier constellation articles, especially the ones that have made it through FA?
 * tweaked. normally if it is a direct translation directly after a foreign word or phrase, I'd have quotation marks, so added for first two. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Not an issue here at GA, but if taking to FA - there are a couple of sentences in the non-Western astronomy section that could benefit from reworking, both of them involving situations where the sources appear to be indicating there was more than one possible interpretation of a constellation.
 * Not sure on this one: should this sentence be in the history and mythology section? "Epsilon, Omicron2, Delta and Eta Canis Majoris were called Al Adzari "the virgins" in medieval Arabic tradition".
 * I have it in stars section as it is a small natural grouping to the naked eye and breaks up the star properties a bit. Essentially just a name rather than mythology much and I think it slots better there than going in hisotry section. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * When you have taken articles through FA, has anyone objected to references such as "spectral type F8Iab" without any wikilink for the technical text (ie. no target for the reader to click to to find out what F8Iab means)?
 * No, usually the first mention of spectral type is linked to Stellar_classification#Spectral_types . Somehow missed here and added now Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * " which cause its brightness to cycle from magnitude +2.93 to +3.08" this appears to be the only case where you have used the plus sign to denote positive magnitude.
 * whoops, removed. Some early editors did that and have generally removed them Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "which has become 50% brighter between 1963 and 1978," should this be "which became", since it was nearly half a century ago?
 * aaah here's the thing - it has become brighter and remained so, I used that tense to try and indicate this. But have changed it anyway Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "Despite being a dwarf that is 3.7 times as wide as the Sun, it is still 5.5 times as massive and shines with 940 times its luminosity." What? How can a dwarf star be three times the size and five times the mass? And even if it could, the "despite" doesn't make sense, since the three criteria seem correlated, and a word denoting contrast would thus be inappropriate. What's happening here? A missing decimal point perhaps?
 * Ok, I spliced the sentence the wrong way and have respliced it as meant. Essentially main sequence stars are known as dwarfs, even if the hot ones are much bigger and hotter than the sun . Never mind, I took out the contrastive as the distinction lost on lay reader. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "its distance estimated at 1444–1450 light-years (443 or 445 parsecs) " why introduce the parsec conversion only on this occasion?
 * no particular reason - removed Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:33, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "which has brightened by two magnitudes to magnitude 8 in 1987, 2000, 2004 and 2008". What? Does this mean brightened episodically from magnitude 10 to 8 on several occasions, including 1987...etc"?
 * yes. adverb added Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:33, 12 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Article uses summary style and covers the subject well.
 * Article is neutral and stable.
 * Image licences are all in order. (Can we please not have the discussion again about Till Credner? :-)) However, you might want to take a look at the information on the page for File:CMa setting.jpg. On one part of the page it says "At the moment of exposure the plane was over about 8 degrees north latitude (Andaman Sea west of Thailand)." elsewhere on the page it says "At the moment of exposure the plane hovered above about 32 degrees north latitude (Pakistan)". This discrepancy was introduced by the uploader themselves here. Any bright ideas?
 * I guess they corrected themselves - will ask. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:38, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Generally excellent article. hamiltonstone (talk) 13:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)