Talk:Kapteyn's Star

Retrograde?!
I have been scanning to see whether any know stars orbit the galaxy retrograde. Might this direction mean that this star is a captured intergalactic wanderer? Or could other mechanisms (ejection from trinary systems) explain the phenomenon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.223.141.143 (talk) 13:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes (likely exogalactic origin). 2602:306:BDA0:97A0:466D:57FF:FE90:AC45 (talk) 04:04, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Science fiction in article?
Does this belong in here?
 * "The announcement of the planetary system was accompanied by a science-fiction short-story, "Sad Kapteyn", written by writer Alastair Reynolds.[21]"
 * Seems to me that someone is taking advantage of Wikipedia to promote his writings. Kortoso (talk) 17:12, 4 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes it does belong, according to Wikipedia policy, so long as it remains in a separate section, or sub-section, within the article that clearly states that it is discussing works of science fiction related to the star. 2602:306:BDA0:97A0:466D:57FF:FE90:AC45 (talk) 04:07, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, seeing as we now have a separate article (Stars and Planetary Systems in Fiction) linked to the article, under which 'Sad Kapteyn' also appears, having it also in the article now seems redundant, so its been removed. There's no need to have it appear in both this article and the other one... unless, of course, someone was just trying to get exposure after all... 155.143.112.133 (talk) 07:54, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That listy article is not a great way to present information. Prefer relevant material to be on the one page. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:18, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Is it a flare star?
It is apparently a variable, but not all variables are flares. Depending on which astronomy article I read, flares may or may not preclude the possibility of life. Any scientists (or advanced science students) around who can say more about this? 2602:306:BDA0:97A0:466D:57FF:FE90:AC45 (talk) 04:04, 6 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I "sort of" have an answer now, most red dwarfs are flare stars, which are thought to pose significant challenges to life on nearby orbiting planets. But flaring only occurs for up to the first 1.2 billion years of a red dwarf star's life.


 * The questions re Kapteyn b and any history of flaring by Kapteyn's star and how that might or might not impact the survival of it's atmosphere are as yet unanswered ones:


 * 1) Can an atmosphere reestablish itself after being stripped away by intense solar activity? This might occur due to millions of years of cometary bombardment. Or if the planet originally was ice covered and then later thawed out.


 * 2) If the planet already had an extremely robust magnetic field (perhaps due to a hundreds of miles-deep saltwater ocean being there), if so, an atmosphere surviving on a planet that had endured solar flaring might then be possible.


 * Cliffswallow-vaulting (talk) 18:00, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * P.S. I forgot to log in originally. The opening question was also mine. Cliffswallow-vaulting (talk) 18:15, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It's pretty old, so I doubt it still has flares. I guess if I were to hypothesise it'd be something along the lines of above. Interestingly the planets appear to be biggish. I guess it's a, "watch this space" scenario for more publications.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:48, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Photoshop needed for illustration?
The re-use permissions on the illustration with the German text do allow for modification. Actually, I don't mind a different language in the image (most non-English speakers deal with this sort of thing all the time). But if someone does have a problem with it, it's better to modify the image (removing non-English text) rather than to delete the image.

By the way, there are very few illustrations of Kapteyn's Star that have full copyright releases right now, in fact, this may be the only one. So better we work with this one than have none. 64.134.234.7 (talk) 05:49, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * P.S. I added translations for the German image text to the caption.
 * 64.134.234.7 (talk) 05:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Merger proposal
At least Kapteyn c, and possibly also Kapteyn b, should be merged to this article. Both proposed planets were refuted in 2021, and the Kapteyn c article is a short stub. There may be some argument for keeping the Kapteyn b article - while editing it to make it more clear that the planet likely doesn't exist - since it has a fair amount of content and the planet has been described as potentially habitable, so people may be attached to it. SevenSpheres (talk) 19:06, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Merge: Merge 'em both.  One of the problems with having separate articles for the planets is that a lot of info like distance and the star's characteristics have to be repeated in each article (and occatioanlly updated).   If these planet articles were merged into the Kapteyn's Star article, and all the redundant information was removed, the resulting article would only grow by a couple of paragraphs.PopePompus (talk) 19:25, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Merge The planet was refuted in 2021, and most of the article is still out of date. Also, most of the nontrivial information in this case is probably WP:OR or WP:SYNTH.We had similar problems with the articles about Planck units containing mostly information that was redundant to the main article, not getting corrected when the main article was, or attracting OR (and fringe POV's, as is common in quantum gravity). Those articles were all deleted or merged into the main, with all relevant information that is accepted by mainstream physics fitting in at most a few paragraphs per unit. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 12:10, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge: in this case a merger makes the most sense for maintenance reasons. A big chunk of those articles are redundant. Praemonitus (talk) 14:19, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge I don't see why they should be separate from Kapteyn's Star article now that these planets are refuted. MarioJump83 (talk) 15:37, 22 February 2023 (UTC)