Talk:Gliese 876

Planet c in habitable zone?
OK you physicists-- stop quibbling over magnitudes and invent us a starship! Sean7phil 23:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

In the article it says the apparent magnitude of the star is 10.16, which makes it 36.96 magnitudes dimmer than the sun, which translates to a factor of approx. 608*1012. If we correct for distance (multiplication with (1 AU / 15 ly)2 = approx. 1.11*10-12), we find that the sun is about 676 times as luminous as Gliese 876. The insolation in 0.13 AU distance (planet c) is 1/(0.132*676) = approx. 0.0876 times that at earth - it's as much as at 3.38 AU distance from our sun. I think this is outside the region where water is liquid. 193.171.121.30 19:55, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't we be talking about the absolute magnitude for calculations on Habitable Zones?? Stating its apparent magnitude is nice, but not helpful. Can you clarify this (aside from a not stated calculation to its absolute magnitude)? --JorisvS 12:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

If I would have taken the absolute magnitude instead of the apparent magnitude the distance correction would have had to be with the standard distance (10 parsec) and not with the actual distance. But I think the above explanation was too short, so here again in greater detail:

apparent magnitude of the sun: -26.8 apparent magnitude of Gliese 876: 10.18 (apparently changed from 10.16 in an earlier version of the article) difference: 36.98

5 magnitudes difference mean a factor of 100, therefore 36.98 magnitudes mean a factor of 100(36.98/5) = 6.19 * 1014 This means as seen from earth, the sun looks 6.19 * 1014 times as bright as Gliese 876.

To make a better comparision, we've to put Gliese 876 at the same distance as the sun, i.e. at 1 AU. Since the brightness drops with the square of the distance, Gliese would be ((real distance of Gliese 876)/(1 AU))2 as bright as it is now if we put it at a distance of 1 AU. The real distance of Gliese 876 is 15.33 light years = 1.450 * 1017 m = 9.695 * 105 AU.

If we divide the brightness factor fom above by the squared distance measured in AU, we get a new factor of about 659, i. e. the sun is 659 times as bright as Gliese 876 when viewed at the same distance.

Now planet c is at a distance of 0.13 AU. To get the brightness of the star from there, we have again to take into the account the distance-squared law: The star would be 1/0.132 = 59.2 times as bright as at 1 AU, that is 59.2/659 = 0.0898 times as bright as the sun at 1 AU.

Now we want to know at which distance would the sun have this brightness? Again the distance-squared law, now in the other direction, i. e. we've got a brightness factor and want to know the distance; it should be clear that we have to take the inverse of the square root of the factor: 1/sqrt(0.0898) = 3.337 AU (not exactly the same numbers as above, maybe there was a different distance of the star in the article or I took less acurate numbers).

So far about the calculations, but I think the problem is that the star is a red dwarf and thus emitts a greater fraction of its power in the infrared, while the magnitude is only determined by the visible component.

The luminosity of the star as it is in the table is 0.0016 suns, although according to my calculations its 1/659 suns which is closer to 0.0015 suns (in the article about astronomical luminosity it is claimed that luminosity is directly related to magnitude, although it's also stated that "luminosity is the amount of energy a body radiates per unit time", which cannot both be true; of course my calculated value applies only in the case that it's directly related). With 0.0016 instead of 1/659 in the alculations above we get a bightness as at a distance of 3.249 AU in the solar system, which I think is still too far away for liquid water (but this is pretty much irrelevant now that we know about the infrared radiation). 193.171.121.30 06:48, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Passed GA
This article matches the standard of other GAs on a similar topic, so I have no hesitation in passing it. Congratulations. It's good to see that Wikipedia is so well-served in terms of astronomy articles. MLilburne 08:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

temperature?
The temperature is given to ridiculous precision-- 4 significant figures? It appears the value 3223 K is based off the values for R, and L, although each of these is somewhat uncertain. It is far better policy to quote a value for temperature which is independently determined, such as from colors or from spectral fitting. Leggett 1996 seems to put T in the range 3100-3250

876/581
Wasn't the new planet found in the solarsystem to gliese 581 and not 876? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dead Fish Jr (talk • contribs) 20:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC).

According to scientific american it was And new scientist I think the inclusion of the planet in this article is a mistake.. unless the star has two names for some reason EvilFred


 * They're completely different systems. Gliese 876 d was in the news a couple of years ago when it was the smallest known extrasolar planet around a normal star. It is no way habitable as it orbits very close to its star.— JyriL talk 13:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Review: Pass
As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Planets and Moons" articles. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have made several minor corrections throughout the article. Altogether the article is well-written and is still in great shape after its passing in 2006. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. I would recommend going through all of the citations and updating the access dates and fixing any dead links. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 01:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Masses of Gliese 876d and 876?
There are three mentions of the mass of 876d. The first one is given as the initial estimate. The second is given as an estimate using orbital parameters. The third, given in the table, is different from both of these masses, yet it doesn't state in the article how that mass was derived. The same goes for the mass of 876c, which is different in the table from the "true mass" whose derivation was explained in the article. I'm not well-verse in extrasolar planetary systems, so I'm wondering if someone can clear up this confusion. 98.180.50.81 (talk) 01:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The section on the planetary system could do with a rewrite. The table values are from the most recent study of the system and based on the largest radial velocity dataset available. Icalanise (talk) 17:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Rotational velocity
Does anybody know where the rotational velocity of 1.38 km/s came from? The value seems unusually concise. I checked the very recent Jenkins et al. (2008), but they only list a value <= 2.0. SIMBAD doesn't have any values listed for v sin i. I tried checking the other reference links in the infobox, but didn't find it. (I'm also curious how the rotation period was determined. Is the inclination of the axis known?) Thanks.&mdash;RJH (talk) 18:14, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Found it.&mdash;RJH (talk) 17:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Orbital elements
I think the table of planetary orbital elements should mention the same proviso that is listed in the paper: "Quoted uncertainties in planetary masses and semi-major axes do not incorporate the uncertainty in the mass of the star." After all, the mass of the star is only known within ~9%.&mdash;RJH (talk) 17:25, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed, done. Icalanise (talk) 18:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you kindly.&mdash;RJH (talk) 21:51, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Photo of the Star
Need an astronomy photo of Gliese 876 for the infobox.

Something like this http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980626.html. That one is from the NASA site, but I'm pretty sure its by an amateur astronomer, so not sure about permissions.

Anyone have a telescope with a decent camera ? --EvenGreenerFish (talk) 01:29, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Resonance Animation
Would improve the article a lot to have an animation to illustrate the orbital properties of the planetary system. Something like the Jupiter one: Or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Animation_of_the_planetary_system_around_Sun-like_star_HD_10180.ogv --EvenGreenerFish (talk) 01:45, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Candidature for Good Topic Removal
I've had a skim through the standards relating to the definition of a "good topic" and I'm unsure as to where this current article fails. If there are specific portions that are causing concern could the nominator for removal provide a short list of areas that need to be addressed? Perry Middlemiss (talk) 22:20, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem isn't with this article, but rather Gliese 876 e (which isn't a good article currently). Armbrust The Homunculus 05:43, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Gliese 876 emits X-rays, but so what?
It states in the article here, in one very short sentence, that "Gliese 876 emits X-rays." but then all main sequence stars are likely to have hot enough coronae to emit X-rays. So, pointing out that it does something that most other stars in the universe do too, and then ending it there without explaining the significance of that, really does not tell you all that much, and I don't think it backs up the previous sentence's claim that it is likely to host large sunspots. The paper quoted, at the end of that short sentence, I think actually gives Gliese 876 a fairly modest X-ray count, well at least by the standards of other red dwarf stars they've managed to detect X-rays coming from.