Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cat's Eye Nebula

Cat's Eye Nebula

Professionally I've studied this nebula until my brain hurt. I've recently expanded the article about it a great deal, and I think it's now very detailed and informative, but hopefully not overly technical. Therefore I'm putting it forward for consideration for featured status. Worldtraveller 21:24, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Support. Fredrik | talk 21:51, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Support - seems very good. violet/riga (t) 22:28, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Support Paul August ☎ 05:06, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

But, there is a small problem. In the section "General information", it says that the "… halo extends over a diameter of about 386 arcseconds (5.8 arcminutes)." But 386 arcseconds = 386/60 arcminutes = 6.433… arcminutes. Could someone verify the correct figure for the diameter? Paul August ☎ 06:23, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Well spotted! A wrong conversion which seems to have been taken from another web page about the nebula. The original paper on the halo just quotes 386 arcsec, so I've changed the article to 6.4 arcmins. Worldtraveller 09:26, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By the way I forgot to say that I liked this article alot. Paul August ☎ 22:25, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

I support it, science-cruft that it is. Astronomy-cruft. Seems a bit short, but there's pretty pictures, that's worth a lot. I'll go through and make all the cites link to the reference section. Everyking 11:33, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Pretty! (Though the first image shouldn't appear on the Main Page anytime soon, it was there on New Year's Eve.) And I think the prose is as clear as possible, I was most impressed with myself for being able to nearly understand the final paragraph. ;-) Or, I nearly would have, if it hadn't been for the collisionally excited lines with their redlink. :-( The term is somewhat self-explanatory, but still, would you consider either putting in an explanatory sentence (what collided?), or writing the stub for the link? Secondly, that's a very unusual footnote organization, I was flummoxed by it at first. Now I've figured out why the footnote numbers are in random order, and why they all refer to the whole references section (there's a secret connection between the reasons ;-)), but it seems an unnecessary hurdle. Why not use what I think of as ordinary footnotes (consecutive), or inlined short refs? Either of those would allow page refs, which your system does not—are page refs really not needed? ~~Right, those are two objections, I'm minorly objecting, but~~ I'd like to support.--Bishonen | Talk 16:12, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments! I've just written an article about collisional excitation, which I hope is comprehensible and helps the final paragraph look better! Reference-wise, actually they should be numbered consecutively (but some are cited twice hence a [1] appearing after a [4]). The refs do have page numbers, and I've just altered them to make that clearer. Worldtraveller 12:20, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Normally, the references section should list the works referenced, in alphabetical order, by Author's last name (and year, for multiple works by the same author). Then citations of these references (including page numbers or otherwise located within the work cited) can be made either in-line, or can be in a footnotes section in which case they can be indicated by consecutively numbered superscripts in the text. For an example of this latter style see: Philetaerus. Paul August ☎ 16:50, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, but since the references are already very clear, the rest is more a minor formatting issue, which won't keep me from voting support on this well-written article.--Bishonen | Talk 11:43, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Support! Well-written, well referenced, and lots of cool pics! [jon] 22:08, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Support Jacob1207 16:34, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Support great article, nice pictures Mgm|^(talk) 11:45, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
Support. Really well written. One suggestion: I think that a short section on observational data would be useful. JYolkowski 22:29, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your comment. Section 2 is entitled 'Observations' - is there more that you'd like to see in that section than is already there? Worldtraveller 00:56, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, re-reading "General Information", I now see that it contains almost everything I would be looking for, other than the right ascension and declination of the object (although you do note that it's quite close to the North Ecliptic Pole). Sorry, missed some of that the first read. JYolkowski 03:43, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)