Talk:Caldwell catalogue

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BetacommandBot 03:16, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Compilation errors NOT listed below

The article mentions that compilation errors are "listed below" but they are not.

CielProfond (talk) 02:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Moore may be criticized...

It says

Moore may be criticized for what could be perceived as an egocentric-approach to compiling the list, including the use of one of his surnames to name the list and the use of "C" numbers to rename objects with more common designations.

The reference (only available through web archive) is to an opinion by a person who is not famous enough to have a Wikipedia entry. If there is not a more substantial claim, then I think this is Wikipedia:OR and a possible Wikipedia:BLP violation and should be deleted. Man with two legs (talk) 11:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Done. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 08:38, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

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Tags; tone

Arianewiki1 (talk · contribs) has reinstated tags with the comment "There are serious issues with the statements article, and the warnings are justified". If there are serious remaining tone issues, I invite discussion here. -- Elphion (talk) 15:45, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

What issues? As far as I can see, the article describes its subject in perfectly reasonable tones. It is a shame we don't have a valid, free link to the original Sky & Telescope article in Patrick Moore introduced the catalogue. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 16:40, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

@Elphion: You are really wanting to pushing this issue. Most of the problems here are objectivity and it is clearly about bias, based mostly on the recent death of Patrick Moore and the publishing of O'Meare's book on the Caldwell Objects. People seem determined to promote these Caldwell objects without any heed to convention or usage for deep-sky objects, and worst, ignore any negativity of its use. (Like of Patrick Moore himself!))

The main objection and serious issue is with "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable."

Earlier completely unverified statements like; "Since its publication, the catalogue has grown in popularity and usage within the amateur astronomical community.", "As stated above, the list was compiled from objects already identified by professional astronomers and commonly observed by amateur astronomers." (No Professionals use Caldwell!)

Furthermore all the references here are are based on Sky and Telescope and related publications, which they are strongly promoting. (Is this article advertising?) I mean there a six references just from O'Meara's book.

I am very disturbed with your statement on my user page, when you said; "But the Caldwell numbers are acquiring a currency among amateurs that we should not ignore. -- Elphion (talk) 19:21, 8 June 2013 (UTC)"

This seems not just a personal opinion, it seems to infer motivation to promote it or that you have a personal stake in it. Please prove this statement is true and verify it from an independent source. (I experience the exact opposite when other talk of Caldwell Catalogue, as below.)

Also there are other modern listings as well. I.e. The Bennett Catalogue for Southern Objects, "RASC finest NGC Objects List." . Should these be we listed as well?

Many of the pages with Caldwell objects have the statement "...known as Caldwell Cxx…", but the fact is they are place catalogued as Caldwell, and few people state an object is C87, for example, and no one would know what you are talking about. In fact, this article is looking more like promoting Caldwell objects over all others.

As the BAA review of O'Meara's book (http://britastro.org/jbaa/pdf/113-3omeara.pdf) by Stewart Moore clearly states;

"Controversy has arisen because, while Messier’s list was compiled for a good reason – to locate the many objects that could be confused with comets in small telescopes - the Caldwell list is of objects already catalogued. Some people feel that to give these objects (only four of which do not have NGC or IC designations) another name is unnecessary. Others have argued that any list which gets people out observing must be good."

Traditionally we use valid names based on the discovery. I.e. Messier, Lacaille, Dunlop or Herschel. These should be in preference to all other listings.

Most of the objections to the Caldwell objects is it non-uniformity, having bright objects looked over and fainter difficult objects promoted. I.e. NGC 6882/5 is included. but the vastly better NGC 6930 is not.

There are many negative views on Caldwell too. I.e. http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/1,2,3,4,5,8,9,10/Number/4775788/page/34/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1/vc/ another objection in 2008 is here http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/2440391/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1

Another is from the "East Valley Astronomical Club" in 1998 in the Article "The Caldwell Catalogue : A Good Idea Gone Bad - Besides Good Ideas Already Exist." http://evaconline.org/nl/nov-1998.pdf

As Jack Kramer in 2002 once said; " I had never thought of it as anything but a potential target list. From my experience, the Caldwell List is ignored by most observers as entirely superfluous." This was in reply to "I was quite shocked to find out that some folks are strongly against it."

There is enough evidence here to prove the main point against its use.

Clearly this is strong evidence of non-objectivity, and the non-encyclopedic nature of this article.

I.e. The article states;

1) "The Messier Catalogue is used by amateur astronomers as a list of deep-sky objects for observations, but Moore noted that the list did not include many of the sky's brightest deep-sky objects"

Other than being poorly written, this statement is only partial true. I.e. Some of the Southern objects were not observed by Messier because they are below the horizon. Worst O'Meara, now as a references since I placed the warnings, doesn't say this. Moore's motivations were different from this. (Another independent verifiable source would help.)

2) "Since its publication, small compilation errors in the original 1995 version of the list have since been corrected."

This should be verified other than O'Meara's book because of the POV. I.e. O'Meara was not the one to correct the errors.

3) "Moore used his other surname to name the list as M for Moore was already taken by Messier, and the catalogue adopts "C" numbers to rename objects with more common designations."

Moore never actually suggested using this, but S&T, and worst, Mobberley reference never said this.

So unless you can improve the balance article, we could try WP:ER. I recommend you also read WP:POV again, because the tone is certainly not neutral.

It is a poor quality article on many fronts, and it fails badly on many counts with Wikipedia's quality standards.

(Perhaps an extension of this article under the section "Criticism" should be included.)

For more balance it should refer to other lists too. I.e. Bennett or RASC lists.

Note; The Caldwell is a object "list" not an object "catalogue"

Arianewiki1 (talk) 18:35, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

(Note: the template you need to notify someone, is {{replyto}} aka {{ping}}. I've updated your usage of {{user}} above! Hope that helps. –Quiddity (talk) 19:01, 10 June 2013 (UTC) )

I will address these points one by one. In the first place, I am not "wanting to push" the Caldwell catalogue. I have been gradually adding Caldwell numbers to the relevant articles, most of which already had references to the catalogue. I do find the catalogue useful, and it is notable enough (a real understatement, given the amount of attention and use it gets) to be accommodated in our articles about the various objects. I have no deeper bias, certainly not based on "the recent death of Patrick Moore" (of which I was unaware) or "the publishing of O'Meara's book" (which happened over a decade ago -- are we to eschew modern books altogether?).

Arianewiki1 appears to regard O'Meara's book as somehow not a reliable source, despite being published by well-respected houses. I find it very useful -- my many references to it come about because it is the closest source I have to hand regarding Caldwell. People are welcome to add other sources, but not to carp about his "POV" simply because he chose to write a book about the catalogue. Again, if we avoid references to authors who have chosen to write about various subjects, WP would become one big {{citation needed}}.

Arianewiki1 complains about earlier "unverifiable" statements in the article. Since Arianewiki and I have since removed them, this point is completely moot.

What on earth is disturbing about my statement on Arianewiki's talk page that "the Caldwell numbers are acquiring a currency among amateurs that we should not ignore." That's exactly how WP makes itself useful. The utility of Caldwell is evident to anyone who has attended a Caldwell Observing Party. But again, this is a moot observation, since the claim is not made in the article.

The deeper claim Arianewiki1 makes -- that I (and presumably a lot of other editors) are interested in Caldwell for monetary gain is simply false, and a breach of "assume good faith". For the record, I have no association (monetary or otherwise) with Patrick Moore, Cambridge University, Sky Publishing, or Stephen O'Meara.

"There are other modern listings as well ... Should these be listed as well?" Sure; but this is an article about the Caldwell Catalogue, and that should be its primary focus. Adding other lists to "See also" (as you appear to suggest farther down) is a good idea. Their current absence however does not make this a poor article of "unencyclopedic tone".

Arianewiki1 objects to additions (mostly by me) of "also known as Caldwell xxx" to articles about the individual objects. I did this primarily because the "Caldwell xxx" pages redirect to the pages in question, and I felt is was appropriate to have the text there for people redirected there (Principle of Least Surprise). We do that for essentially all of the Messier objects, and (as I said above) in my experience the Caldwell objects are being explored by number precisely because they are in the catalogue. I take the point that these are not yet (or perhaps ever) the primary names by which they are known, and therefore perhaps inappropriate in the lead. That's a discussion we can have. But it has absolutely no bearing on the tags placed on this article.

Plenty of people dislike Moore and carp about the catalogue. This article had, by contrast, a generally positive slant before Arianewiki1 and I came to it. That has since been removed. The discussion here now is perfectly neutral.

"Traditionally we use valid names based on the discovery. I.e. Messier, Lacaille, Dunlop or Herschel. These should be in preference to all other listings." Um, like NGC, which is used more than all the rest combined? This is a non-starter. Not to mention completely irrelevant to the current article.

"Most of the objections to the Caldwell objects is it non-uniformity, having bright objects looked over and fainter difficult objects promoted." Again irrelevant to this article. And it ignores Moore's own intent -- he wanted some of the objects to be challenging.

"There is enough evidence here to prove the main point against its use." But WP is not about prescribing use. The catalogue is notable (in WP's sense), therefore deserves an article and mention on the object pages.

Arianewiki1 objects to "The Messier Catalogue is used by amateur astronomers as a list of deep-sky objects for observations, but Moore noted that the list did not include many of the sky's brightest deep-sky objects", first as poorly written (which is manifestly false), second as ignoring the fact that Messier's Paris horizon limited his view of the southern sky. But Moore noted that as well -- we should certainly add that in. (added: It was in fact already included in the article.) Moore's introduction to O'Meara's book gives three motivations: to call attention to prominent non-Messier objects, ditto to prominent southern objects, and to provide a few objects to challenge amateur observers.

Arianewiki1 objects to using O'Meara as a reference for the corrections to the list. This is nonsense: O'Meara discusses all of them in minute detail, and is a very good reference for that.

Arianewiki1 says that Moore never explained the naming of the objects as "Caldwell" objects, but the account in the article is exactly what Moore says in his introduction.

Arianewiki1 suggests adding a Criticism section. That's a good idea, but again, the absence of such does not give the article an "unencyclopedic tone".

"catalogue" (noun): list, register. (ref Merriam Webster) It also falls under the definition of Astronomical catalogue. To avoid calling it a catalogue now, even though Moore did not, would ignore the practically universal current usage.

-- Elphion (talk) 21:32, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow, if ever there was problems with POV, you've summary above shows it.

"I have been gradually adding Caldwell numbers to the relevant articles, most of which already had references to the catalog."

Yes, and they should be in the starbox and not so prominently in the text. Where it is place infers that the Caldwell list number is second in importance, when in fact it is further down the list of catalogue numbers.

Take for example the planetary nebula NGC 3195. In preference, the order is something like PN G296.6-20.0, PK 296-20 1, ESO 19-2, He2-44 or HEN 2-44, Sa2-57. As it was discovered by John Herschel, it should be h.3241 as well.

Traditionally for northern objects this is the same for all object, EXCEPT in the case of Messier, who was the discoverer of most in his list. (Caldwell is a contrived and mostly unimportant list.)

What you are doing is placing a trivial classification less than 15 year old, and promoting it over the other more extensive and useful.

In astronomy, there is an enormous problem in keeping up with catalogues and annotations. In SIMBAD, the annotation for "C" Acronym means 'cluster', that is for open clusters [These are in "Dictionary of Nomenclature of Celestial Objects" http://cds.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/Dic-Simbad . I.e. C1250-600 is NGC 4755. If you really want the ins-and-outs see "Second Reference Dictionary of the Nomenclature of Celestial Objects." http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994A%26AS..107..193L ]

In the end, the Caldwell number is meaningless to most, and it should be followed carefully when deciding the annotations of deep-sky objects. (This is even worst for proper names, of which, people think they can name anything they like, and act as if it is set in stone. O'Meara is a classic example of this, as noted with the NGC 3532.)

There a formal conventions for these things, and ignoring them is unwarranted. Caldwell is a classic example of this silliness.

Note: The naming of the Southern objects is particularly bitter, and observations of Caldwell numbers are particularly irrelevant.

"the publishing of O'Meara's book" (which happened over a decade ago -- are we to eschew modern books altogether?)."

Yeah, and S&T, O'Meara have been pushing it for all they are worth since Moore's death. Again do we dump the tradition of cataloguing objects by their discoverer, just because someone produces a list of objects they think are more important? Its a silly argument.

"The deeper claim Arianewiki1 makes -- that I (and presumably a lot of other editors) are interested in Caldwell for monetary gain is simply false, and a breach of "assume good faith".

That is not true at all. (Show me where I said "monetary", eh?) Promotion of something is not necessarily monetary, and mostly it is done for some wild crusade or bias. Frankly, I don't understand your obsession here. I do assume "good faith", but the evidence for that falls apart without any logical argument.

"I take the point that these are not yet (or perhaps ever) the primary names by which they are known, and therefore perhaps inappropriate in the lead."

They are quite inappropriate in the lead of the article. When you say they are "known as Caldwell xxx" just avoids my first point above. It is an annotation of trivial importance. They should only be in the starbox, with the other catalogue numbers and annotations.

"Plenty of people dislike Moore and carp about the catalogue. This article had, by contrast, a generally positive slant before Arianewiki1 and I came to it. That has since been removed. The discussion here now is perfectly neutral."

Actually it is more biassed. I'm pleased you agree it was generally positive, because the statements were not verified. The reason it is biassed is that it only referred to interrelated documents (O'Meara, S&T and Moore. + Cambridge Press publishing the books.) Where are the other independent sources? The problem is the article is still not neutral, because it fails to mention the mounting number of critics on many levels. Just saying "…now is perfectly neutral" shows my POV remark is factual.

"Arianewiki1 objects to using O'Meara as a reference for the corrections to the list. This is nonsense: O'Meara discusses all of them in minute detail, and is a very good reference for that."

Another falsehood. I did not object to you using O'Meara at all, what I do object to is the use of one source to justify an entire POV and not being objective as it is not using other sources. With the knowledge that some find this list dubious and having many failures, making others wanting to rejecting it as unimportant, the article itself should at least be reflective of this POV. This is why more broader sources should be cited. (How else are others reading the article are able to access the relative importance (or lack thereof) of the information.)

Again from your emotive statements here, this again shows a lack of objectivity.

""catalogue" (noun): list, register. (ref Merriam Webster) It also falls under the definition of Astronomical catalogue. To avoid calling it a catalogue now, even though Moore did not, would ignore the practically universal current usage."

Fine, but I real object to the word "universal". Again, this shows your whole POV is clearly biassed. It is a list of objects, which a few find useful, but most have either ignored the list or don't find it practical.

With such a unrealistic attitude, I see no choice here but to go to WP:ER path. Arianewiki1 (talk) 23:29, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

You guys really need to get a grip. The Caldwell list is clearly notable and worth an article. It's purpose was never to be particularly scientific but as an alternative tick list for amateur observers. There is no agenda and no advertising. I can't offer reliable sources but an subjective impression from various astronomy boards is that people do move on from Messier to Caldwell. Instead of expending a lot of hot air on the discussion page, maybe some constructive editing of the article would be better. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 08:12, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

No very objective in comment here. I disagree it is "is clearly notable", as it is fairly trivial, and shows the lack of understanding of astronomical catalogues and history. As for "There is no agenda and no advertising.", there is evidence of the contrary, as stated above. The amount of criticism visible on the net proves this, and their is a core group pretending it is all important, when it is mostly being ignored. Your comment on editing the article is a fair point, and I will be adding to it in due course. The article is unbalance, and unfairly not objective. Sorry, but that's the way I see it. Arianewiki1 (talk) 07:23, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

There is no such "evidence above". I am no more biased for calling the catalogue "useful" than Arianewiki1 is for calling it "junk" [1]. It is clear that Arianewiki1 dislikes the notion of the catalogue and the fact that people use it. (Since the start of this discussion Arianewiki1 has taken to systematically removing the Caldwell catalogue template from southern objects -- and at least one northern one as well),

The implication that no one uses it is belied by pages about it or supporting it at various well-known sites, like SEDS, the Deep Sky Observer's Companion, and the Astronomical League -- and by the WP Astronomy Project's guidelines for notability.

Looking through the discussion above, the only major disagreement about this article appears to concern the advisability of using O'Meara's book as a reference. Arianewiki1 appears to feel that use of the book promotes the catalogue, but the references don't do that. They answer points of fact: Moore's motivation for creating the list, his desiderata for inclusion, his choice of number, his choice of name, and corrections to errors in the original, Arianewiki1 asked for references on those points, and I provided them.

-- Elphion (talk) 11:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

When?

When was the Caldwell catalogue released? RJFJR (talk) 18:02, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Per article: "published in Sky & Telescope in December 1995". -- Elphion (talk) 21:52, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

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