Talk:Gaia 1

Veiling glare and star gauging terms, and articles for them
The terms veiling glare and star gauging are important to this article. Please do not omit or deprecate them because they're not yet found in Wikipedia. The concepts are not widely talked about, as evidenced by the Gaia 1 article being perhaps the first article where they're relevant.

"Star gauging" is the term the ESA GSO team uses for their method of (automated, digital) spatial star population density analysis, as referenced in the article, based on Herschel's (manual, analog) 19th-century technique and terminology. Read the GSO refs and their Youtube videos to see why they want to revive the term. While the method of star gauging would seem obvious to modern signal or image processing experts, the astronomical application is provoking a new motivation for using this 19th century name. The Gaia 1 discovery dramatically exhibits that motivation.

"Veiling glare" is the proper term in optical engineering for the imaging error that, to the astonishment of omniscient scientists, kept this prominent star cluster from discovery in the history of sophisticated astronomy until 2017. Wikipedia doesn't have a veiling glare article, and doesn't even have a decent article on optical aberration, but I look forward to others or myself improving that situation (hency my redlink). Glare (vision) is a different concept. Wikipedia is just weak on optics and is missing entire articles treating optics, like this. I attribute these omissions to optical engineering being well-understood, but the least-popular and least-taught, field in engineering. Richard J Kinch (talk) 10:56, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Open Cluster Age
The article says it's an Open Cluster, but also states the age is estimated at 6.3 billion years, which is much older than open clusters get? The page on open clusters says the longest estimated possible "half life" for an open cluster is 800 million years; in this context half life is apparently the time required to lose half its member stars. That would indicate this cluster would have lost over 99% of its stars already. So something's not adding up there. 66.76.14.59 (talk) 19:46, 13 January 2023 (UTC)


 * So, I actually read the referenced article about the cluster, and it (A) says the cluster is 3 billion years old, not 6.3 billion, and (B) talks about how old this is for an open cluster: "Our finding that Gaia 1 is three billion years old is curious as the models would have it not surviving anywhere near as long. More research is required to try and reconcile this," says Simpson. 66.76.14.59 (talk) 19:59, 13 January 2023 (UTC)


 * You need to read the reference given in the article for the distance, which says 6.3 billion. Other studies have other ages, such as the 3 billion.  Although the 3 billion comes from a newer paper than the 6.3 billion, newer sources still quote both and say that it isn't at all clear which if any is correct.  Both are towards the high end for open cluster ages, but not unbelievable.  This is Wikipedia, follow the sources that are always (should always be!) given.  There are newer sources available than those in the article, but the end result is not dramatically changed.  Lithopsian (talk) 21:17, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair, but it does seem like it ought to be mentioned in the article.
 * The fact the cluster was unknown until recently is cool but ultimately easily explained. I'd say the unusual age is actually more noteworthy. 66.76.14.59 (talk) 22:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)