Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Proxima Centauri


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 20:04, 12 August 2008.

Proxima Centauri

 * Nominator(s): RJH (talk)

This is a science article about the nearest star to the Sun. My hope is that it is reasonably accessible to a general audience, although some science background may help. It has undergone a PR; a check by BrighterOrange's script; reached GA status, and now I believe this page may satisfy the criteria for a Featured Article. Please take a look and let me know what you think. I'll try to address any specific concerns. Thank you.&mdash;RJH (talk) 17:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Proxima Centauri was discovered to share the same proper motion as Alpha Centauri in 1915 by Robert Innes while he was Director of the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa. This is the sort of thing that gives the scientific passive a bad name. Please make it: Robert Innes, Director of the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1915, discovered that Proxima Centauri had the same proper motion as Alpha Centauri. and so on in other cases.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I updated the above text. Thanks.&mdash;RJH (talk)
 * 'a main-sequence star for another four trillion years' (from lead and repeated in text) Are you certain this is 4 trillion, not 4 billion? This seems an exceptionally long time. I don't have full access to the source so cannot check myself. GameKeeper (talk) 00:04, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Checked a few more sources, very low mass stars do have such a potentially amazingly long life time. GameKeeper (talk) 00:11, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There's a graph here: Red_dwarf.&mdash;RJH (talk) 16:57, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Amongst the known stars, Proxima Centauri has been the closest star to the Sun for about 32,000 years and will be so for about another 9,000 years, after which the closest star to the Sun will be Barnard's Star. Surely Alpha Centauri.--Grahame (talk) 06:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As the orbital period of Proxima (if any) is 500,000 years, I'd expect them to stay in roughly the same configuration during the above time frame. So that probably means Proxima will be closer than Alpha Centauri. But I changed the text. Thanks.&mdash;RJH (talk) 16:32, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support Comments  - looked pretty good on first read-through - some copyedit issues will follow but first I have a couple of comprehensiveness questions. all potential deal-brekares dealt with, anything else is a bonus and we're over the line in my book. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:47, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * A very fine article on an interesting subject. However, questions and comments on a few details. Kosebamse (talk) 12:42, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I'll have to disagree with most of your conclusions. So, please pardon.&mdash;RJH (talk)
 * No prob, I see your points and don't oppose this nomination; nevertheless picking a few nits, see below. Kosebamse (talk) 17:31, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments and amendations. One problem is the excessive number of references and links which represent an amount of work that could have been invested far better into improving the article even further. Howeve, that seems to be counted as a bonus nowadays. Support FA. Ceterum censeo that this puerile referencing lunacy must be stopped. Kosebamse (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the support. As far as I know, articles are not written under a deadline. Hence your statement about the time allotment doesn't seem quite accurate. The article has as many references as it needs, and the addition of the citations did not detract from the time spent developing the article.&mdash;RJH (talk) 17:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments
 * What makes http://www.solstation.com/index.html a reliable source?
 * Otherwise sources look good, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no idea; the page seems well researched and the information has proven mostly reliable. But it is the only source that lists the nearest stars. The alternative would be to compute it myself, but then we would have to do it for every star within a given distance to be certain. That would probably be too close to OR. Anyway, I relocated it to the talk page and asked for a better reference.&mdash;RJH (talk) 16:35, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This is all they give us, nothing to meet WP:V: http://www.solstation.com/about.htm  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:13, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Support. I reviewed this article when it was in Peer Review and I believe that it is up to FA standards now. So I support this nomination. Ruslik (talk) 13:27, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments on images
 * Image:Position from Proxima Centauri.png - The "author" of this image, I believe, should be the person who created it and uploaded it. Do we know who that is? Awadewit (talk) 13:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It appears to be User:Calle_Cool.&mdash;RJH (talk) 14:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That needs to be on the image description page. Awadewit (talk) 22:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I already took care of it. Thanks.&mdash;RJH (talk) 20:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Images all look good. Awadewit (talk) 20:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment Ref #25 is missing ISBN or some easy way to find the book. Also, you might want to consider splitting Notes and Refs parts. Nergaal (talk) 16:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. You probably mean Campbell (1899), which was published before ISBN was established. (But I added in a link to the Google scan.) I considered a split along notes/references, but it is ugly trying to maintain a separate notes section because of the clumsy mechanism of the alternative citing system. I prefer to just let the back-end database take care of the tags. Sorry.&mdash;RJH (talk) 19:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.