Wikipedia talk:Notability (astronomical objects)

Naked eye visibility

Editor ​Danbloch removed the following sentence,

Beware that stars fainter than magnitude 5.0 often lack significant coverage, and thus may not satisfy WP:GNG

with the remark that, "remove misleading text in note. GNG isn't relevant in this case". The lead paragraph of this guideline says that this, "is a subject-specific supplement to the general notability guideline". Hence, it does not override the GNG. To say an article is "presumed notable" does not negate the requirement to satisfy the GNG.

I've found many (fainter) stars visible to the naked to lack notability. If the warning is considered misleading, then the lowest magnitude should be changed to 5.0. Praemonitus (talk) 04:10, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Editor ​David Eppstein reverted with the comment:

"if your interpretation were correct, there would be no point in listing any criteria other than criterion #3, and no point in having an SNG at all"

I disgree with your interpretation, because overriding WP:GNG is not the point of a SNG. Compare, for example, the WP:NFILM guide. It's criteria includes the following paragraph:

These criteria below are presented as rules of thumb for easily identifying films that Wikipedia should probably have articles about. In almost all cases, a thorough search for independent, third-party reliable sources will be successful for a film meeting one or more of these criteria. However, meeting these criteria is not an absolute guarantee that Wikipedia should have a separate, stand-alone article entirely dedicated to the film.

I believe we should provide that level of clarity. Praemonitus (talk) 13:23, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Different SNGs have different purposes. Some override GNG. Some strengthen GNG. Some defer to GNG and merely provide guidance for what sorts of things might pass. Which kind is this? My reading of it is to override GNG in a limited way – to provide automatic notability for all stars up to magnitude 5.0 – and to defer to GNG for anything fainter. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:50, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

No I don't see it as an override of WP:GNG: articles passing through WP:AfD still need to satisfy GNG, so there wouldn't be any benefit. It's more of a guide to astronomical objects that are more likely to be notable (and less likely to be sent to WP:AfD). That way editors will hopefully spend time more productively on this class of object. The word "presumed" was never meant to indicate an automatic override of GNG; it just indicates a high likelihood. Praemonitus (talk) 01:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

When you say "articles passing through WP:AfD still need to satisfy GNG, so there wouldn't be any benefit" is that intended to be a repetition of your opinion that it is not an override of GNG, or as a reason why you hold that opinion? Because as a reason, it is circular: you are saying it does not override GNG because it does not override GNG. Going to AfD does not make any difference to what notability criterion is applicable; AfD participants can and regularly do handle cases where notability is determined for reasons independent of GNG (for example WP:NSPECIES despite that not being an official guideline) or where GNG is insufficient and notability demands a higher bar (for example WP:NCORP). —David Eppstein (talk) 01:47, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. But I see nothing in the guide that overrides the GNG. We aren't providing any criteria about when an article shouldn't be written (beyond the GNG); only when it is likely to be notable. Praemonitus (talk) 03:44, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Is there a difference? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:31, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

At this point I'm not even sure what we're arguing about. The removed comment was just a guide concerning the likelihood of notability for very faint naked eye stars. I'm still not clear why it was necessary to have it removed. Praemonitus (talk) 14:41, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Notable catalogues

May the first edition of the Gliese catalogue of nearby stars (containing Gliese stars with whole numbers from 1 to 915) be notable enough for WP:NASTCRIT #2? It is a fairly notable catalogue, sometimes known as the Catalogue of Nearby Stars, was one of the first of such catalogues, and accoring to the reference listed above: "Often, the solar neighbourhood stars are used to develop concepts that are later applied elsewhere in the universe". Most of the stars in the Gliese catalogue are still often commonly known by their Gliese name, and it is fairly smaller than the HR catalogue that also counts for this criterion (mentioned on NASTCRIT 1 though). 21 Andromedae (talk) 23:20, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I think that makes sense. There's a lot of interest in nearby stars. Do we currently have any non-amateur catalogues for which membership establishes notability, that are less than 100 years old? PopePompus (talk) 01:32, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Do you mean criteria #2? No, not really. It's certainly less well known than the Henry Draper catalogue, which definitely wouldn't satisfy criteria #2. Praemonitus (talk) 05:07, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, criterion 2, confused with criterion 3. 21 Andromedae (talk) 13:09, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Criterion 2 isn't just "the catalogue is notable", but "every object in the catalogue can be presumed notable". That's not the case for the Gliese catalogue. I agree that it's reasonable to consider the nearest stars inherently notable, but that could be defined as everything within the scope of the list of nearest stars, which all have articles already. SevenSpheres (talk) 15:43, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Why it is not the case for the first Gliese catalogue? Consider it has only 915 entries, HR has 10x times more but all entries are notable, many HR stars have much less coverage than most GJ stars. Most GJ stars, specially red dwarfs, are targets for exoplanet discovery, and are targets for other catalogues like CARMENES, despite not visible to the naked eye. At least the first calaogue, of 915 stars which include stars discovered to be nearby with the 50's technology or older (the 50's technology!), with the detection limits from the epoch that was insufficient to discover even the Teegarden's star. Even today stars in the catalogue are targets for multiple surveys, it is perhaps the most famous catalogue of nearby stars. 21 Andromedae (talk) 18:03, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

915 stars for which there is non-trivial coverage in multiple sources? I rather doubt that. A blanket assumption that every one of these objects is notable seems like a stretch. And if there is sufficient coverage for a star, then who cares about a blanket rule for a catalogue it is listed in? Lithopsian (talk) 19:06, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

The HR catalogue isn't part of criterion 2, it's part of criterion 1, that objects visible to the naked eye are presumed notable. If anything it should be removed, the cutoff used for naked-eye visibility is magnitude 6.0, but there are HR stars fainter than that. SevenSpheres (talk) 19:20, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

References

Minor planet names

EDIT: Because several users (on and off wiki) have stated that the post below is confusing, I'd like to clarify that I am only talking about guidelines for mentioning asteroid names on other stuff's articles. The notability of the asteroids themselves is not part of my question. Renerpho (talk) 19:52, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

We do have a clear guideline for when a minor planet itself is notable enough to have its own article. What we do not have is a guideline for how to treat minor planet names. Do we need a guideline for when the naming of a minor planet is relevant enough to be mentioned in the article about the subject?

Lots of Wikipedia articles mention minor planets alongside other kinds of recognition (street names, named species, etc), often pointing only to a primary source (the List of minor planets, or the relevant issues of WGSBN or Minor Planet Circulars), or to Lutz Schmadel's dictionary [1] if the asteroid was named before 2014 (example: Vera Gaze). Sometimes the naming is even mentioned only in the lede, without any source, like at Jürgen Stock (astronomer). I have added a few names to articles myself, usually the moment they are announced (like at Martha Argerich; Hofheim, Hesse; and MS Zaandam), following the apparent precedent that had been set in the past (I usually point to WGSBN for reference), but I wonder if there isn't a notability issue.

There are asteroid namings that get reported in reliable secondary sources. Those are not an issue -- their notability is established by Wikipedia's WP:general notability guideline. What I am concerned about are names that are not reported beyond their initial announcement. One might argue that these fail the notability standards.

Should we keep treating asteroid names as automatically notable? Should WP:NASTRO say something about that?

I'd like to hear opinions from anyone. I am specifically tagging @Nrco0e, Kwamikagami, SevenSpheres, and Tom.Reding: Your thoughts? Renerpho (talk) 17:52, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Doesn't WP:COMMONNAME cover this? Praemonitus (talk) 18:29, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Praemonitus: I don't see what WP:COMMONNAME has to do with it. This isn't a question about article titles, it's about when to mention the naming of an asteroid like 56067 Argerich in the article about Martha Argerich. Right now we are treating this as "notable by default", but I see no discussion about this. Renerpho (talk) 18:31, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

WP:NASTRO is clear that having a name is not sufficient. An asteroid is notable when it meets at least one of WP:NASTCRIT. As for it should be mentionned on an article about the subject, that's something for the talk page of that subject. For example, on Isaac Newton, I'd say no because it's better mentionned on List of things named after Isaac Newton. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:19, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

(Just to be clear, whether the asteroid itself is notable is a different question -- in most cases, it won't be, because we're talking almost exclusively about small main-belt asteroids.)

The Isaac Newton example is unusual because there are not many people/places/things that have a "List of things named after X". I agree though that, in the few cases that do, the name should go there, rather than into the main article. Renerpho (talk) 19:37, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I think this roughly fits into the MOS:POPCULT domain, if not directly/obviously. "Cultural references about the article's subject should not be included merely because they exist." and it requires some particular relevance/coverage in additional sources to be worth invoking (e.g. Pluto having a dwarf planet named after him, Donald Johanson having an asteroid visited by a spacecraft, etc) which is not the way that this is currently being applied for the record. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 20:11, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks -- yes, it seems like, since the early days of Wikipedia, the assumption has been that the mere fact that an asteroid is being named is automatically notable. It is difficult to find any articles in which such an asteroid is mentioned because it had some media coverage, and with a citation that goes beyond the standard ones I listed -- WGSBN, MPC, Schmadel -- which don't seem to satisfy MOS:POPCULT. For an asteroid name, being listed in those sources is synonymous with "existing". Renerpho (talk) 20:16, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

To provide a few more examples, I checked the list of people with minor planets and Wikipedia articles, with numbers between 10000 and 10150. For mentions that likely shouldn't be there per MOS:POPCULT, we have:

List, 29 articles

• Valentin Lebedev, asteroid 10015, reference to MPC, included since 2017
• Fran Bagenal, asteroid 10020, reference to MPC, included since 2017
• Heike Rauer, asteroid 10025, reference to JPL database, included since creation of the article in 2023
• Sophie (musician), asteroid 10026, reference to WGSBN, included since 2022
• Vladimir Arnold, asteroid 10031, reference to Schmadel's dictionary, included since 2006
• Bradford Parkinson, asteroid 10041, reference to MPC, included since 2019
• James M. Creighton, asteroid 10046, no citation, included since 2018
• Friedrich Silcher, asteroid 10055, no citation, included in 2008
• Digne-les-Bains, asteroid 10088, no citation, included since 2008
• Igor Sikorsky, asteroid 10090, no citation, included since 2008
• Karl Glazebrook, asteroid 10099, reference to MPC, included since 2017
• Bruno H. Bürgel, asteroid 10100, no citation, included since creation of the article in 2025
• Fårö#Digerhuvud, asteroid 10102, reference to JPL database, included since 2014
• Lickershamn, asteroid 10103, reference to JPL database, included in 2016
• Hoburgen, asteroid 10104, reference to JPL database, included in 2016
• Hoburgen, asteroid 10105, reference to JPL database, included in 2016
• Rute, Gotland, asteroid 10106, reference to JPL database, included in 2016
• Fide, Gotland and Öja, Gotland, asteroid 10123, reference to JPL database, included in 2016
• Hemse, asteroid 10124, reference to JPL database, included in 2016
• Stenkyrka, asteroid 10125, reference to JPL database, included in 2008
• Lärbro, asteroid 10126, reference to JPL database, included since 2016
• Fröjel, asteroid 10127, reference to JPL database, included since 2015
• Bro, Gotland, asteroid 10128, reference to JPL database, included since 2008
• Fole, asteroid 10129, reference to JPL database, included since 2008
• Ardre, Gotland, asteroid 10130, reference to JPL database, included since 2016
• Stånga, asteroid 10131, reference to JPL database, included since 2016
• Lummelunda, asteroid 10132, reference to JPL database, included since 2008
• Marco Cavagna, asteroid 10149, references to MPC and Schmadel, included since 2016

On the other hand, here are all the articles with references to reliable secondary sources:

• Ghillar Michael Anderson, asteroid 10040, reference to WGSBN, MPC, and ABC News, included since creation of the article in 2021

For the most part, at least it seems like we got better at citing anything, in contrast to how this was handled before 2015 or so..

The remaining ~60 articles for subjects in this number range do not mention the minor planet in their article. Renerpho (talk) 20:37, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I think for people whose connection to the asteroid name is through astronomy (whether professional or amateur as e.g. Marco Cavagna above), mentioning the asteroid named after them is almost always WP:DUE. For celebrities or names that do not come from people the answer may be different.

But there is a serious mistake in the discussion above: WP:N and the existence of in-depth secondary sourcing is only for the question of whether we should have a standalone article on a topic. For the question of whether (once we have an article) some claim should be included, the requirements are WP:DUE (we should not unbalance an article by too-detailed coverage of minor subtopics) and WP:RS (we need sourcing that is reliable, for which Schmadel or the various databases are entirely adequate; it does not need to be in-depth or secondary).

Also I think the relevance of MOS:POPCULT is dubious. That is for adding claims like "random pop culture show mentioned X" in articles to X; I think naming minor planets is a different category of things. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:28, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Incidentally, for some subjects who are notable but for whom the depth of coverage is on the light side, the citation for why are the namesake of an asteroid can provide helpful information for expansion of the subject's article. An example from today: it is only through the asteroid citation that I learned about the birth year of Po-Ling Loh. And although there are better sources, it is where I learned of the high school that she went to and of her performance in the Intel Science Talent Search. None of these are essential to the article nor provide much additional notability but they help fill it out. It would be deeply strange to use this source for this information and then forbid its use to say the main thing that it says, that an asteroid was named after her. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:31, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I want to agree with this interpretation/use of MOS:POPCULT, and that was my first reaction. But, if I were interested in Valentin Lebedev, for example, I would also want to know that there's a minor planet named after him. Scouring the MP pages for his name is not something the typical reader is likely to do on a whim/randomly/for fun (if they even know those pages exist), and so that is likely to be a piece of information that will be lost in obscurity otherwise, so I don't see the harm of including a single sentence about the fact, but no more, unless warranted by additional tertiary coverage beyond WGSBN, MPC, Schmadel, etc.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:40, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: When I created that list for asteroids 10000–10150, I was surprised by which articles did not mention the minor planet. I noticed that longer articles, or articles about the most notable individuals/places, were exactly the ones that left out the asteroids. Examples for that from this number range include the physicists Augustin-Jean Fresnel and Matthias de l'Obel, as well as Rudolf Diesel, Erich Maria Remarque, Thucydides, Rembert Dodoens and Paul Gauguin, and the articles about Paraguay, Uruguay, and Palermo. A lot of the articles about astronomers also didn't mention them, like James W. Head, Hiram Perkins and Jaymie Matthews. Joseph Fourier is similar to Isaac Newton, in that the asteroid is mentioned in List of things named after Joseph Fourier instead. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle mentions the lunar crater that is named after him, but not the minor planet. Renerpho (talk) 12:43, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

if we have an article on the asteroid, or even just a redirect to a list of asteroid names or their meanings, we could place that in the 'see also' section. — kwami (talk) 00:00, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

If you're asking about inclusion in the biography of the person the name is based on, rather than in the article about the asteroid or comet, then that's out of scope for this guideline or WP:AST. I suggest asking WP:BIOGRAPHY instead. Modest Genius ^talk 12:53, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@Modest Genius: Yes, that's what I am asking about. I'll consider cross-posting (or re-posting?) at WP:BIOGRAPHY. Renerpho (talk) 18:06, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I am asking at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Notability of asteroid namings instead. Not all names will be about people specifically, so WP:BIOGRAPHY seemed to too narrow. Renerpho (talk) 02:52, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Proposed change to WP:DWMP

Our "dealing with minor planets" section suggests to redirect any non-notable minor planets to the corresponding list of minor planets. Per the discussion currently happening at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/184314 Mbabamwanawaresa and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/472235 Zhulong, as well as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/(666823) 2010 VR11 (which indicates that this is an unwritten but established practice), it seems like articles about non-notable trans-Neptunian objects should better be redirected to either List of trans-Neptunian objects, or to the appropriate sub-page of List of unnumbered trans-Neptunian objects, depending on whether the object has been numbered or not. I suggest that we amend the guideline accordingly. Renerpho (talk) 16:43, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree for now, if only because list of trans-Neptunian objects tend to include more information. Praemonitus (talk) 18:31, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Updated. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:36, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Renerpho (talk) 21:33, 6 October 2025 (UTC)