Talk:List of nearest stars/Archive 3

Ref
Was trying to add the following link and ref to improve on the existing version, but page wouldn't accept it: "The Close Approach of Stars in the Solar Neighborhood", Matthews, R. A. J.Journal: Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 35, NO. 1, P. 1, 1994. Link: http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1994QJRAS..35....1M/0000001.000.html. Maybe someone else can get it to work ?! Thanks! Robma (talk) 20:13, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Out to 20 LY
Could this be extended to 20 LY to fit in with the lists of stars 20-25 LY and Stars 25-30 LY, or perhaps all combined? The 16.6 LY to 20 LY gap is frustrating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.74.105.124 (talk) 21:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
 * There is an overview of the 15-20 ly star systems with links to the individual systems: Template:Star systems within 15–20 light-years (click "show" in the top right corner) --Thogo 04:09, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

15 ly limit?
I think it would be more elegant if there was a round limit for the table, like 15 ly. That would mean cutting out the bottom 12 entries. Nergaal (talk) 22:37, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I would rather see the table expanded a bit. I think that the list is currently overly short. --JorisvS (talk) 23:31, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * 5 parsecs is as round a number as any. -- Kheider (talk) 23:47, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed, and 5 pc is still at least somewhat "near". The more we expand the list, the less its title fits. Hekerui (talk) 00:52, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Then why don't we cut the list to only the Alpha Centauri system...as befitting of the title as possible! In galactic terms 5 pc is just 'around the corner', and, say, 10 pc is still that, too. There are currently only 57 systems (including the Solar System) in this list. --JorisvS (talk) 10:31, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear I would expand the list before I would truncate it. But I also know if the list was significantly expanded it would be more work keeping the objects at the bottom of the list current and accurate. -- Kheider (talk) 12:55, 14 March 2013 (UTC) -- Kheider (talk) 12:55, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I can understand that. --JorisvS (talk) 16:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, why don't we expand it to, say, 20 light-years? Adeptzare3 (talk) 07:58, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe i have another idea why don't we make another list (without numbering) so can we expand it so far as we wish without problems like numbering and is this star near? What do you guys think of it? why don't we do the same thing as the dutch wiki?

Jelle Gouw (talk) 14:16, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

There is a List of star systems within 20–25 light-years (and 25–30, etc.) so there is a gap that needs filling. TomS TDotO (talk) 18:48, 28 July 2016 (UTC) TomS TDotO (talk) 18:48, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Color Key for List table
The colors utilized in the list table are ambiguous. The stellar class colors are noted in the lead-in paragraph to correspond to their spectral types, however, for instance, there a variety of different colors for stellar classes that all link to brown_dwarf. Also, the lead-in indicates that white dwarfs are indicated with their designation in beige, however there are no entries with a beige background. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rusty Lugnuts (talk • contribs) 22:46, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Gap between 16 and 20 LYs
As the above poster mentioned, this list ends at 16 light years, whereas the next list (List of star systems within 20–25 light-years) beings only at 20 light years. Clearly, either this list needs to be extended up to 20 LYs, or it should end at 15 LYs and then we create an intermediate page for 15-20 LYs. At the moment it's very silly, since we are missing loads of stars. --Hibernian (talk) 06:03, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The latter is probably the better solution: cap this list to within 15 LY, and create a separate list for 15–20 LY. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 06:18, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I would rather expand this list to 20 LY, or merge the 20-25 LY and 25-30 LY pages and expand the merger to include all systems from 5 pc to (say) 10 pc. Neither article would become unmanageably long by this (still far below 100 kB), and we shouldn't split what is thematically a single list into too many separate articles unnecessarily. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 11:37, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Until this gap is filled, here is another list to 21 light years: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/nearstar.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.74.105.124 (talk) 00:09, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Just going to comment about this. Please fix it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.63.87 (talk) 02:53, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Gliese 1005
The list is including Gliese 1005. My understanding is that Gliese 1005 is approximately 19.4 or possibly 19.58 ly in distance. This list may be pulling from the Gliese 1005 article. That article reflects a 19.58 ly distance in the text, but the 16 ly data (and associated parallax) in the table. If that table's data is incorrect, both it and this 10 pc list may need to be corrected. Tesseract501 (talk) 20:34, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Distance Discrepancy
The WISE 0350-5658 article references a parallax and distance that equates to 11.2 ly from the Sun. This would place the star between WISE 1506+7027 and EZ Aquarii A,B,C. Yet, this list article indicates a ly distance of 12.068 (between Gliese 1061 and YZ Ceti). Which needs to be corrected -- the linked star's article or this list article? Tesseract501 (talk) 03:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Notes and additional references
Could this column be made wider so that the longer items don't excessively expand their rows? Agmartin (talk) 15:53, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

2MASS J154043.42-510135.7 distance
WISEA J154045.67–510139.3 distance was estimated by Kirkpatrick and others as 5.9 pc (19.24 ly). It still used in the latest 2016 paper. So this object probably needs to be removed from this list, at least until we receive GAIA parallax estimation. Griever GF (talk) 07:32, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * A 2018 paper by Henry et al, https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07377, list this star at 5.32 pc (17.36 ly). The paper also has up-dated and more accurate distances for several stars in this article. Chasrob (talk) 16:25, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Gaia agrees with the distance. It has been removed. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 00:41, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Please update the list to include nearby sources from GAIA Data Release 2
This morning I noticed GAIA DR2 includes sources as close as 2 light years away. I posted this question on Astronomy StackExchange for verification:

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/26131/very-near-gaia-dr2-sources-has-proxima-centauri-been-dethroned?noredirect=1#comment45145_26131

Gaia data is available from : https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/

If these sources can be confirmed by an authoritative source (GAIA is already authoritative, but perhaps there is a systemic error), this list should be updated.

Agnes 185.46.212.161 (talk) 07:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)


 * These are spurious detections. Notice that almost all the gaia sources you list lie in the galactic plane (and most of these in a small region of said plane only a few tens/hundreds of square degrees); these are dense regions on the galactic plane where confusion is high which leads to mis-identification of sources and wildly inaccurate measurements.  For instance the "closest" source you mention (id 4062964299525805952) is at RA/DEC of 272.2378287453136, -27.6459156411923; and there is clearly nothing at this location in any other survey like WISE/NEOWISE, let alone something moving as you would expect for a high parallax object. Large datasets like this always include spurious detections because of the uniform way the measurements are made which while in general will be accurate, in certain edge cases (like high confusion regions, nearby bright sources etc) will lead to nonsense.  They are not real, I assure you if they were you'd be hearing about it on the news already.  The data should be treated with extreme caution, which is why we should be waiting for reliable secondary source publications.  ChiZeroOne (talk) 13:47, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , 185.46.212.161: I've updated the distances and stuff for all of the Gaia DR2 sources. I did a thorough check and gaia did not detect any new non-spurious objects within 5 parsecs. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 00:40, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

First papers starting to appears for distant future and past encounters. Still at preprint stage mind:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.07581

©Geni (talk) 08:53, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Removing the rank "#" column
FTR, I do not agree with this change, as it makes this listing relatively "contextless". It's better if each system is ranked by distance from the solar system. (If this is being done with an eye on making this a WP:FL, I'll consider it another piece of evidence on why I consider the GA/FA/FL process to be problematic...) --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:14, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Acknowledged that it could be a point of contention. I'll bring this to WP Astronomy and WP Astronomical objects and see if I can get input from others. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 23:27, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

GJ 1005
GJ 1005 is listed as being 16.26±0.76 ly, but its page lists 19.58 in text and 16.26±0.76 in the template. Which is it? Andrew Z. Colvin • Talk 00:20, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * GJ 1005 was my addition to the list, and is honestly quite an uncertain one. The two stars are close enough to each other that Gaia DR2 didn't measure their parallax for being a binary, and in SIMBAD, there are quite a few different distances. The distances listed there as measured by different papers are (in light years) $16.28$, $17.91$, $17$, $16.26$, $17.26$ and $19.695$. Until Gaia releases DR3/DR4 solving for binary systems, it's anyone's guess which measurement is right, so I left it in. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 01:28, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay. Sounds good! It can certainly be updated once better data is available. Andrew Z. Colvin • Talk 20:39, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

from vs for
Oh my god, I'm really sorry. This has to be the weirdest confusion I've ever encountered in my 5 years on wikipedia- just to clarify, it seems I was arguing on the same page as you. As go-in's original edit changed it to "for", I was trying to change it back to from, and thought the other reverts were changing it back to "for", cue major confusion (especially with your edit summaries). Very sorry! exoplanetaryscience (talk) 19:34, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Ahh ok. Go-in's original edit actually did correctly change it to from; https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs&diff=845897860&oldid=845476542 . Perhaps it was just a case of misread edit summary? ChiZeroOne (talk) 19:47, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Hash mark
What is the purpose of the hash (#) mark in the visual magnitude column? It doesn't appear to be explained, so it is confusing. Praemonitus (talk) 15:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)