Talk:J1407b

Unmerge

The object is notable enough to have its own article due to its large rings.🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 16:43, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Support, but how has J1407b merged? 117daveawesome (talk) 13:14, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the page history, there have been several attempted splits over the years. SevenSpheres (talk) 16:54, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Oppose, the star V1400 Centauri is notable for the transit event caused by this object with a large ring system. An article on said object (the exact nature of which is uncertain) would just duplicate information in the existing article. SevenSpheres (talk) 16:54, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Which infobox should we use?

Should we use {{Infobox planet}} or the current starboxes? If we added the {{Infobox planet}} template, some parameters like discovery date could be added. 21 Andromedae (talk) 16:26, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

@21.Andromedae: I don't have a strong preference for either, since we don't know enough about the object's properties to warrant a change. I'd be fine if other people think otherwise, though. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 16:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I'm surprised starboxes don't accommodate discovery dates in the first place, this seems like quite the oversight. ArkHyena (talk) 16:37, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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Illustration of a brown dwarf surrounded by a protoplanetary disk

• ... that the "Super Saturn" exoplanet J1407b might actually turn out to be a free-floating planet or brown dwarf?

• Source: "Issues with the stability of any rings combined with the lack of detection of another eclipse, suggests that J1407b may not be bound to J1407." Mentel, R. T.; et al. (2018). "Constraining the period of the ringed secondary companion to the young star J1407 with photographic plates". Astronomy & Astrophysics.; "...the object we called J1407b is floating freely through the Galaxy, and just happened to pass in front of a very young star." Kenworthy, M. A. J1407b. (2024)

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/White bear of Henry III
• Comment: The J1407b article was converted from redirect into article as a result of a split from the V1400 Centauri article. I began slowly expanding V1400 Centauri on 8 July 2024, but I did not add much to the J1407b section until 24 July 2024. As of today, it's been 5 days since I significantly expanded the J1407b section. Also, the image is optional; I'm fine whether it is used or not.

Converted from a redirect by Nrco0e (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.

Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 20:21, 29 July 2024 (UTC).

• Comment: @Nrco0e: Hey, nice work on this article. I just took a look at your previous DYK entries, and this one is slightly different. Per WP:DYKHOOK, "The hook should include a definite fact that is unlikely to change, and citations in the article that are used to support the hook fact must verify the hook and be reliable." Do we know for a fact that J1407b might be a free-floating planet or a brown dwarf? It doesn't seem so. Your current version says it is not a brown dwarf. This hook also gives the impression of WP:CRYSTAL. What do you think? Can you come up with other hooks or do you personally believe this follows the rules? Viriditas (talk) 22:01, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

• @Nrco0e: my guess is you are busy with school, but pinging you just in case that helps draw your attention by the weekend. Viriditas (talk) 20:12, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
• @ජපස: I could use your guidance. Could you review my comments up above? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 22:26, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I am actually okay with the hook. Brown dwarf seems to not be ruled out and the crucial word "might" makes it facilely correct whether or not it is actually this way or that! There is even a small chance that this thing is just an extremely eccentric orbit, though the chances of this are slim to none. :) jps (talk) 22:31, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@ජපස: I'm with you. The problem is that the lead of the article currently says "Mamajek's team initially hypothesized that J1407b is an exoplanet or brown dwarf orbiting the star, but that has since been disfavored by later studies", so if we run this hook it will sound incorrect. Could you maybe take a look at the article when you have some time and make any necessary adjustments or propose a new hook? There's also the slight problem that DYK tends to favor hooks that consist of facts that don't change. Thanks, and there's no hurry on any of this. Viriditas (talk) 22:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, you mean because someone might think get confused and think the brown dwarf was not free-floating? It is the orbit that is disfavored as opposed to the identification of the object's planet vs. brown dwarf status. jps (talk) 22:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Right. Any way to clarify that? Viriditas (talk) 22:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

... that when J1407b (which is either an exoplanet or brown dwarf) was discovered, it was thought likely to be orbiting the star V1400 Centauri, but current evidence implies it is more likely free-floating? jps (talk) 23:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@ජපස and Viriditas: Hi, yes, I've been really busy with school and other personal matters, so I apologize for the delay. jps, I think your hook is good, but I think it needs to mention that J1407b has a disk/ring system, since that is what J1407b is most known for. In that case, perhaps you can say this below?

... that when J1407b (a ringed exoplanet or brown dwarf) was discovered, it was thought to be orbiting the star V1400 Centauri, but current evidence implies it is more likely free-floating?

I feel like that the parenthetical part of this hook can be eliminated to make it more concise (i.e. say "when the ringed exoplanet or brown dwarf J1407b was discovered"), but I'm not sure if it flows any better, so I'd like to hear what you two think. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 00:44, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

No worries, this is what we call the "riffing" stage. Parentheticals aren’t really allowed in hooks. Viriditas (talk) 01:09, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I think we should stick with one or the other. Personally, if I had to choose, I would not say anything about the rings/disk. The lack of a repeated transit is more interesting. But, alternatively, you could say something like "... that J1407b is either a brown dwarf with a protoplanetary disk or a ringed exoplanet." jps (talk) 01:28, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding below. Please change or add as necessary. Viriditas (talk) 21:17, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Note, the proposed caption for the image is likely too long and needs to be trimmed. Viriditas (talk) 21:20, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

@Viriditas: I'm leaning towards ALT1. The lede of the J1407b article states it is a substellar object (an umbrella term including exoplanets and brown dwarfs), so I think ALT2 would be confusing to the layman. I did change the wording of ALT2 for clarity since the original sounded like J1407b had either a disk or ringed exoplanet, although it still doesn't resolve this aforementioned issue. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 23:00, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Ok. Can you please trim the lead image caption? I don't think they will allow a long caption like that. Viriditas (talk) 23:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

@Viriditas: How short does the caption have to be? Would "Illustration of a brown dwarf surrounded by a protoplanetary disk" be enough or does that caption sound too unrelated to the subject? If the latter is an issue, would it work to include "like J1407b" somewhere in the caption? Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 23:11, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Not sure, but "Illustration of a brown dwarf surrounded by a protoplanetary disk" sounds perfect to me, and if there's a problem, others will deal with it. Even better would be "Illus. of a brown dwarf surrounded by a protoplanetary disk" but I don't know if that's gospel. Viriditas (talk) 23:26, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Got it, I've changed the caption. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 23:30, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

• @Nrco0e and ජපස: Earwig doesn't like this: Mark J. Pecaut, a then-graduate student under the supervision of Eric E. Mamajek at the University of Rochester discovered... Can you paraphrase and reword? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 01:57, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

  Seems like excessive detail to me. The names of discoverers are also a bit of a throwback. Unless there was much mention in the media or something about attributing the discovery, it devalues the team nature of how science is actually done. jps (talk) 10:48, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

  Good point. I will look during my second read through. Do you think the lead section is too dense for the general reader? I know the body is, but it's not too difficult to get through. My only issue is that some of it was kind of boring and I thought the prose could be a touch more exciting particularly in terms of summarizing each section in the first sentence, so the reader knows what's coming and is prepared for the details. I would like to close this soon so I'm going to try and expedite this review. Has everyone chosen the best hook? Viriditas (talk) 20:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

  @ජපස: Can you clarify what you mean by "devalues the team nature of how science is actually done"? I mention Pecaut and Mamajek in the article because that's what Kenworthy says in his website (ref 8). Other news sources from 2012 explicitly say Pecaut and Mamajek discovered the eclipse.[1][2] I mention the other collaborators of Pecaut and Mamajek in the sentences about the conference and journal paper because that's where they first appear in. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 17:00, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  Oh, don't read too much into it. The game is to attribute to one or two people these sorts of discoveries, but we stand on the shoulders of giants. I don't object to you identifying these two as the discoverers. For our purposes, they are. It's just that discovery provenance is caught up in a lot of problematic narratives associated with science, "discovery", and the like. In any case, it's not that big of a deal. Just a thought that perhaps we don't necessarily need to mention who discovered it in a hook. jps (talk) 17:17, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  Ah, alright. Thanks for clearing it up.Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 17:31, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  @ජපස: I don't think I'd vote for any hook that mentions the discoverers, and none of the proposed hooks do, so that's kind of a moot point. I suggest we move discussions about the general ethics of science to somewhere else (this thread is getting long enough by itself). Renerpho (talk) 03:27, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

  @Viriditas: Reworded the sentence. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 17:04, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

• Lead: It was first detected by telescopes of the Super Wide Angle Search for Planets (SuperWASP) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) projects in April–June 2007. Any reason to include the "April-June" part and just say 2007 instead? Works better for the reader, and there's no reason to know the months here, is there? Viriditas (talk) 02:04, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

• Astronomers Mark Pecaut and Eric Mamajek Do we really need a link to astronomers here? Viriditas (talk) 02:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

  I would say "no". jps (talk) 10:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

  I changed it to "team of astronomers". @ජපස: I was just looking at various versions of this subject on other language projects. What I found interesting is how different sites treat the subject. For example, at es, the authors write "J1407b is probably a brown dwarf that is not gravitationally attracted by a star", whereas we take a more ambiguous POV. Just wondering what you think of this. Another thing I've noticed is that the other sites are also very easy to read and understand, whereas this article has somewhat unnecessarily complex and confusing language that talks around the subject rather than just directly stating the knowns and unknowns. Viriditas (talk) 21:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

  ALT1 seems fine to me. The Spanish article is simpler, at the expense of being wrong (working with an outdated mass estimate in the lede). I appreciate the English version for being thorough, and more careful with keeping apart the different hypothesis. Yes, that makes the article more complex, but I'll prefer that to an oversimplification any day. That said, I also agree that the lede can be made simpler and more concise without losing much. Renerpho (talk) 06:58, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed. I'm still standing with ALT1 as I have mentioned earlier. And yes, the other language Wikipedia articles on J1407b are outdated and have not been edited and updated as thoroughly as what I have done to the English article. I personally don't think using these other language Wikipedia articles is really a clear-cut way of qualifying the article. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 17:00, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

• @ජපස and Nrco0e: I've been reading our project pages on the same topic and they basically all share one thing in common that is different from this page. They generalize in the lead and present just the bare facts, and I think that's missing here. We have to assume that most of our readers are not astronomers and astrophysicists. For example, I still find this statement confusing based on the way it is written: "Mamajek's team initially hypothesized that J1407b is an exoplanet or brown dwarf orbiting the star, but that has since been disfavored by later studies". We don't even need to go into all of that. Just fix the lead so that first sentence states right away at the beginning that J1407b is either an an exoplanet or brown dwarf that is likely a free-floating object. Then, from there, once the reader understands what exactly it is they are reading, you can go into the nitty gritty. I have read this six times and I still think the lead is too detailed, particularly in the first paragraph. Give us a dumbed down first paragraph, and I think you should be fine slowly introducing the reader to more details. Viriditas (talk) 20:34, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

How about this for the lede section?

J1407b is a substellar object, possibly a free-floating planet, with a massive ring system or circumplanetary disk. It was first detected in 2007 when its rings eclipsed the star V1400 Centauri, causing a series of dimming events for 56 days. J1407b's rings span a radius of about 90 million kilometers (56 million miles) and may eventually form moons over time. Although initially thought to be orbiting V1400 Centauri, later studies suggest J1407b is likely an unbound object passing in front of the star.

This is stripped down to what I think is the bare minimum. Everything else can (and is) handled in the article body. The Spanish Wikipedia article adds a mass estimate, but I think that's not essential (not to mention that it's a bit tricky, and the Spanish version gets it wrong). Renerpho (talk) 07:19, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and replaced the lede. Renerpho (talk) 07:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

• ALT1: ... that when J1407b was discovered, it was thought to be orbiting the star V1400 Centauri, but current evidence implies it is more likely free-floating?
• ALT2: ... that J1407b is either a brown dwarf with a protoplanetary disk or an exoplanet with a massive ring system?
• ALT3: ... that the "Super Saturn" exoplanet J1407b might turn out to be a free-floating planet or brown dwarf?

Review

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Still need to choose a hook. What is the preference of the nom (and others), based on ALT1, ALT2, and ALT3? I would like to see the readable prose in the lead tightened up a bit, but this is not a requirement for DYK, but I do find the lead section less than ideal for general readers per my comments up above. Viriditas (talk) 21:00, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

• Sorry, everyone, I tried to close the deal, but with nobody responding or too busy, I’m afraid my time has run out. I’m going on vacation for the next month. I will put in a request for a second look on the main page. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 05:47, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

  The lede has been replaced. I hope someone picks this up for review! Renerpho (talk) 07:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)