Astronomy

Astronomy: Physical characteristics for Celestial Object

2008-06-25T15:37:01.0016Z

It would be great to add properties like mass, volume, radius etc (just model it off the infobox for a planet on wikipedia..)

Thanks!

Plutoid: Controversial new classification/definition from the IAU

2008-06-12T07:08:50.0005Z

Note: this does not include Ceres so that body will possibly be classified as a Ceroid? Will this be acceptable to a majority of astronomers? What's to become of Dwarf Planets?

The small bodies/planetary nomenclature war continues with no end in sight ;)

Astronomical Discovery Status: What else?

2008-04-09T06:09:37.0012Z

I know of only three states for Exoplanet discoveries. Unconfirmed, Confirmed and Published (well, I am certain of the last two, the first may be a variation on 'published').

Astronomy: Request: Exoplanet Type under Astronomy Domain

2008-04-04T00:17:30.0005Z

Greetings!
I created a new type "Exoplanets" a few days ago, and have done some work entering all the known exoplanets into this type. Do you think it might be better within the Astronomy domain? Can I request that "Exoplanets" be included here? Specially now that 10 new exoplanets have recently been discovered, it might serve growing public interest in the burgeoning new field of Exoplanetology - the study of Exoplanets and the search for life on other worlds.Thank you for a Freebase, a wonderful platform. It makes learning about exoplanets fun! Soon I will build a "Freebased" Widget App for Exoplanetology and Exoplanets.

SIncerely,

- Metapsyche

http://exoplanetology.blogspot.com/

http://www.freebase.com/view/user/metapsyche/exoplanetology/exoplanet

Astronomy: Galaxy Classification question

2008-01-24T00:20:09.0012Z

Hubble? Hubble modified by the de Vaucouleurs system?

I think that this would be an interesting addition to the galaxy info. I will be experimenting on Sandbox soon (this may require deep modeling thoughts on my part).

Celestial Object: Much too general

2008-01-14T19:06:06.0007Z

My understanding of this type is that classes of objects should not be co-typed as "celestial object". If you see any, feel free to de-type them. As far as its being a very general type, that's by design -- it holds a number of properties that are common to all or most kinds of celestial object, which both saves us from having to include the same properties on a large number of types, and also makes writing queries much easier. (I.e., if you want to know all objects with an absolute magnitude of > 4 or whatever, you only need to query against one type, rather than create separate queries for every type.)

Freebase has a non-hierarchical structure, so "celestial object" is an included type of comet, planet, etc. If you look at the topic for Comet Hale-Bopp, you can see that it has both the comet and celestial object types, which gives it the full range of properties of both types.

Celestial Object: Much too general

2008-01-13T11:58:20.0005Z

This is much too general of a type. Just purusing the list of what is in here already, I see comets, planets, stars, supernova remnants, etc. I also see individual objects (eg, individual comets) as well as classes or types of objects (eg HII regions). You might consider structuring the schema like this:

Celestial Object -> Object Type -> individual Object

Celestial Object -> Comet -> Hale-Bopp

Celestial Object -> Supernova Remant -> Crab Nebula

You will still likely run into issues, but at least things will be classified in a more meaningful way.

(Just an aside, "Nebula" is also a generic (and antiquated) term which can describe vastly different types of objects - Crab Nebula => supernova remnant, Orion Nebula => star forming region, Andromeda Nebula => galaxy).

Astronomy: Will be adding a 'Radiant' property to Meteor Shower

2008-01-07T23:07:13.0000Z

On Sandbox I changed the name/property of Constellation in the Meteor Shower type to Radiant (links still to Constellation type) and added to Comet type the property Source of Meteor Shower (links to Meteor Shower type). Should have minimal impact on anybody's existing outside applications. Let me know if there are any objections/desired modifications. I will wait for a week before making the modifications to Freebase for Meteor Shower & Comet types.

Astronomy: Will be adding a 'Radiant' property to Meteor Shower

2008-01-06T05:49:32.0005Z

So as to capture the perceived origin point of the various meteor showers in the planetary sky.

Comet: Any objections to making a change to Discoverers property

2007-12-21T02:10:33.0005Z

Comet (unlike the more Planet, Minor Planet, Asteroid) the link is directly to person instead of the more semantically desirable Astronomer so we can list Comets Discovered.

I would like to conform this schema to the previously existing Astronomy object types. I need to remove about 29 relationships and then re-add the discoverers (via list pusher).

Will there be any impact to anybodies mashups/apps?

Astronomy: Astronomical Projects, Studies, Organizations & Facilities

2007-12-05T00:49:26.0012Z

Something I am now considering is the many past/present organized projects/studies like the Minor Planet Center, the various Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking projects & SETI (of course) need a type(s).

Astronomical organizations (eg Royal Astronomical Society), do they need some unique properties to the Astronomy domain?

Observatories and other structures (like the various arrays and networked telescope/non-visual receiver installations) need a type or two.

Any thoughts/rough designs already percolating?

Comet group: Would probably be better as an enumerated list

2007-11-28T02:08:53.0005Z

The list would be the topics for the comet classes/families.

Great work by the way. I just became an administrator for Astronomy Domain and will be looking to add your comet and meteorite types soon.

Great work

Astronomy: Requesting review of Meteorite Type (private type)

2007-11-20T05:44:42.0007Z

Gordon, thank you very much for your suggestion. I will give that a try. Jeff, I agree that something more specific than "Topic" would be nice for the specimen location, but I'll have to leave that for another time or person.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-20T05:36:12.0000Z

Jeff, can you check the property "Comet class" in my Comet Type to make sure I've set it up according to your suggestion? I think I did, but I'm not seeing the results I would expect based on what you said about a reciprocal relationship.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-19T18:48:58.0007Z

There is definitely a need for more comprehensive editing tools -- I run into the problems you're seeing all the time; I can't promise anything anytime soon, but I will forward your suggestions to the relevant people.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-18T17:47:20.0007Z

Jeff and Faye, I'll remove my Comet Type property "Former (alternate) designations" after I copy/paste the data into the Also known as property for the individual comets I've linked to this type.

BTW, is there a way to do this from within Freebase? That is, if you're deleting a property that has values, Freebase only asks for confirmation that you want to delete the property. If the property has data in it, could a mechanism also be added to ask the user if they want to transfer the data to another property?

Jeff, as far as the floating point numbers go for the Comet Type, they all have measurement units except for the ones such as Eccentricity that don't have a measurement unit. I've also updated the Epoch property of Comet so it's a Julian year measurement unit.

Jeff, when I try to edit the Expected Type of the Comet class property I'm blocked from doing so and told to remove the existing relationships. At the moment there are 8 of those. If there are a very high number of existing relationships I think this will pose a problem for users. Can this also not be handled within Freebase by allowing a change of Expected Type by asking the user if they want to reestablish the relationship? I will go in and delete those relationships and reestablish them manually, but I believe this kind of block will impact on user willingness to edit Freebase.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-14T20:48:22.0007Z

I strongly encourage the use of the "Also known as" property for alternative names, rather than creating a new property. 1) The search/autocomplete algorithm indexes the values of "Also known as" so as to allow people to find topics by any known names, whereas your "Former (alternate) designations" will not get the same (special) treatment. 2) Developers against Freebase are aware of querying for the "name" and "also known as" to get the name(s) of topics. Adding yet another property to hold names for an object would make this a special case.

Astronomy: Requesting review of Meteorite Type (private type)

2007-11-14T19:56:53.0007Z

I think that for the specimen location, we'd want something more specific than "Topic" if we can come up with something appropriate.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-14T19:51:11.0007Z

One other thing to note is that the property "comet class" should have an expected type of "comet class", rather than /common/topic. This will allow you to create a reciprocal link on the "comet class" type, so that when someone enters the type on a comet topic, that comet is also automatically listed in the corresponding property on the comet class topic.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-14T19:46:02.0007Z

Re floating point numbers, you can make these be specific (in most cases, not having a measurement unit specified makes the data ambiguous) by editing the property and filling in the "Unit of Measurement" fields that are shown there. I'll open up a bug to add units to the existing astronomy types -- they definitely need them!

The advantage of using AKA is that names listed in that property are more likely to bring the topic up in a search, whereas names entered in a simple text field, while semantically more precise, probably won't.

Astronomy: Requesting review of Meteorite Type (private type)

2007-11-14T11:35:11.0000Z

Seems pretty comprehensive.

you probably would make things easier in the judicious use of enumerated type creation. The one property for meteorite broad category (I was very puzzled by that title...Is that the best and most accurate way to cover the composition of a meteor?). It really should be an enumerated list of topics to choose from (please try to use existing topics only if they will correctly match up with what is intended, there is an existing topic page for "iron meteorite"). A nice simple example is:

Destruction Method

A newer example is the Celebrity type's Sexual Orientation Phase.

In your case the expected type for meteorite broad category could be 'Meteoric Composition' and that in turn would be the enumerated type with the various possible compositions. The user can easily pick out a correct composition from the drop down menu and be prevented from creating by mistake duplicates.

Astronomy: Requesting review of Meteorite Type (private type)

2007-11-14T04:11:31.0005Z

I've developed a Meteorite Type (private type) that's published. I'd appreciate a review and feedback. This type is intended on documenting meteorite falls, discoveries and surviving specimens in public collections.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-14T03:56:57.0000Z

Good questions. A designation is a formal naming. A comet will typically have one currently recognized designation and sometimes many formal former/alternate designations. It may also be known by a colloquial or plain English name. That's the distinction. The same problem, BTW, will crop up with other Astronomy Types such as a Galaxy that have formal and former/alternate formal designations, in addition to a colloquial "also known as" name. Anyway, I think the distinction is an important because to me a formal designation is more specific than "also known as."

As far as the properties relating to comets go, those were taken from Wikipedia and are no different than the many floating point numbers associated with the Star and Celestial Object Types. If those numbers are good enough for those types, they're good enough for the Comet Type, IMHO, as they represent values folks interested in comets want to know about.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-14T03:35:05.0000Z

How does "Former (alternate) designations" differ from the "Also known as" property on /common/topic? That's one way that AKA is often used, already.

Also, I don't know much about comets, but looking at Epoch, Eccentricity, and so forth, I see a lot of floating point numbers. Are these really just numbers with no associated units? Seems unlikely to me. I suspect that you may want some more specific expected type there, though I don't know what.

K.

Astronomy: Requesting review and promotion of Comet Type

2007-11-11T19:44:54.0012Z

As part of my research for an article about and my interest in Freebase, I created a Type called Comet and populated it with several comet Topics. Please review my Type for possible promotion into the public Domain space of Astronomy.

Thanks,

David

Astronomy: TNOs

2007-10-18T21:15:35.0007Z

As far as I know, not all TNOs would be Planets or Dwarf Planets. These are imply any objects beyond the orbit of Neptune (including Pluto). And then we also have Oort cloud objects.

I guess the properties would be the same for most asteriods, planets, dwarf planets, and TNO's--but I am not certain what distinctions there may be. I think it is mostly a question of size, and then relative position in some cases.

Astronomy: Dwarf Planet should be a type with the same properties as Planet

2007-10-16T02:00:02.0000Z

Gordon, can you work with Michael per the above thread? Follow-ups there, please, unless I’ve completely misunderstood your suggestion.

Astronomy: TNOs

2007-10-16T01:59:33.0007Z

Michael, this sounds like a good idea. Does it overlap with Gordon’s suggestions below? Perhaps you two could collaborate on some candidate schema changes and then ask the domain administrators to promote them.

Astronomy: Dwarf Planet should be a type with the same properties as Planet

2007-10-08T22:45:39.0012Z

And maybe marry up the Wiki Planetary info box to be current with the properties for Planet/Dwarf Planet.

Asteroid should have almost all the same properties as Planet/Dwarf Planet.

Astronomy: TNOs

2007-10-08T06:07:43.0012Z

How about trans-neptunian objects?

Astronomy: Moons/Natural Satellites?

2007-08-29T01:37:16.0000Z

I'm not an astronomer, but I guess that the "Orbit Duration" and distance from the planet (or whatever) could be useful - in the form of Apoapsis, Periapsis, maybe Mean Radius.

Wikipedia have got a whole lot more properties in their Planet Infobox: semimajor, semiminor, eccentricity, inclination ...

Astronomy: Moons/Natural Satellites?

2007-08-28T22:08:57.0007Z

Good idea. Right now, the satellite type is earth-centric. What other properties would we need for a general "orbits-around" type?

Celestial Object: Spelling nitpick

2007-07-25T20:14:34.0011Z

The term is "Right Ascension". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Ascension It's not really appropriate for anything closer than a star unless you want to make properties that are calculated from an algorithm rather than being a static floating point number.

Astronomy: Moons/Natural Satellites?

2007-07-23T05:44:54.0004Z

What about a new type like "Moon" or "Natural Satellite"? Would be nice to be able to classify Deimos, Io, etc etc ... Preferably it would have "Orbits" as a property, where the value would be a "Planet" (or conceivably "Dwarf Planet" or "Asteroid" ...)

Planet: Planet properties

2007-07-19T16:11:32.0011Z

Fields like mass, radius, orbital period, average distance to sun might be useful (it is probably not a place for detailed astronomical information, such as orbit eccentricity, major and minor semiaxis, etc.. ). Hipparcos number and spectral type probably should be disabled (can they?)

Celestial Object: Distance (parsecs) - from where?

2007-07-14T12:39:57.0004Z

from earth? solar system? sun? center of containing galaxy? and since it is moving, i guess it should be either time related (when it was calculated) or average.