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The artcle says that the galaxy is 100,000 ly across and 1000 ly thick (a W/H ratio of 100), but then makes the following statement:

"As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the galaxy were reduced to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the solar system would be a mere 2 mm (0.08 inches) in width."

This statement implies a W/H ratio of 65,000,000! 100 does not equal 65,000,000. Does anyone know what was actually intended here? Is this vandalism or was something written just a little different from how it was meant? Xezlec 21:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, tired of waiting. Various other websites seem to agree with the 100,000 ly and 1000 ly numbers, but I can't find the 65,000,000 thing anywhere else. I'm assuming it's bull. Xezlec 05:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

My bad, just realized that says solar system, not galaxy. Amazing. I must have read that 100 times without realizing it. D'oh! Xezlec 05:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I thought that the structure of the Milky Way was disputed, as in, no one is sure yet whether it's Sbc or SBb? Has the fact that it is a barred spiral been confirmed recently? bob rulz 02:37, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC) Well, I don't know back in 2004, but now we are sure it is a barred spiral galaxy. I don't know if they are sure of which type it is. -- JorisvS 11:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

193.170.250.70: Hello! The approximate number of stars in the Milky Way is given once as about "100 billion stars" (header), and once as "200-400 billion stars" (section "Structure"). Even if stellar statistics is a rather vague business (if not in this case even a mere shot into the dark), shouldn't the number at least be consistent within the article? Or am I getting something work? Otherwise, keep up the good work. Bye, CalRis.

And the 4th paragraph of the article "Star" says 300 billion. Maybe someone should count them. 24.64.223.203 02:09, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

It would take a rather long time to try to count all of the stars in the Milky Way. Hardee67 02:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Unless you live after the invention of computers. Xezlec 22:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The number of stars in the Milky Way is an estimate based on mass. There are approximately 100 billion solar masses within the sun's orbit of the core, so it is usually said there are 100 billion stars in the Galaxy. Good luck counting the stars, by the way. We can't even see about one third of the galactic disc due to obstruction of the core (I believe this article mentions this), and many stars are too dim or far away to be detected with current methods. Colliohn 01:24, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I've heard that recent computers are capable of multiplying a number by 1.5. And yes, I'm just being a dork at this point.  ;-) Xezlec 03:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Someone removed all the <ref> tags, and now they are improperly cited. Should they be put back, or should a different format be used? Unfortunately, I don't know how to use the <ref> style... Ardric47 03:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I fixed this. A pair of anonymous users munged the refs. — Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 04:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like to argue that if this sentence is true:

The galaxy's bar is thought to be about 27,000 light years long

Then that means that the sun is in the galactic bar because this sentense states the position of our sun:

The distance from the Sun to the galactic center is estimated at about 26,000 light-years.

So if the sun is 26,000 light years away from the galactic center, that places us in the galactic bar, since the bar is 27,000 light years long. Funnybunny ( ^talk/ _{Counter Vandalism Unit}) 19:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The bar extends only 1/2 it's length on each side of the center point. Dragons flight 21:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the bar is a bar, not a disc. So, assuming the dimensions given in this paragraph are correct, our solar system lies ADJACENT to the bar, not necessarily inside it.

I've been reviewing this article, and have determined that it meets the qualifications for Good Article Status. It is well written, is factual and well cited, broad in coverage, neutral in tone, stable, and well imaged. I made the small change of including the Galaxy infobox, but otherwise haven't been a part of the editing of this article.

Now that it is a Good Article, editors should review the qualifications for Featured Article Status and set their standards high! This could be a Featured Article at some point, if it continues to improve. Phidauex 20:51, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The article says 400 quadrillion stars, which is clearly wrong and has no citation. Older pages I just googled say 100 billion, and newer ones like this: http://www.seds.org/messier/more/mw.html say least 200 billion other stars (more recent estimates have given numbers around 400 billion). I'll change it to 200 billion for now, just for the sake of taking the QUADRILLION out of there. If someone finds a 2006 source, please update!

I noticed that the Galaxy infobox was removed from the article. I think it is better to keep it there, but since there is obviously some contention, I thought I'd ask for some more input.

I find myself (and suspect this to be true of many readers) using the Wikipedia science articles to get quick facts, and make quick comparisons. Is Andromeda bigger than the Milky Way? etc. The Infobox format makes that fast and easy. You don't need to go reading around to find the relevant data, rather, it is placed to the side for easy access for readers looking for a quick tidbit.

I don't think that the fact that we are currently inside the Milky Way is a good reason to remove this 'quick access' to relevant information, since it takes up little more space than the image itself. What do you all think? Phidauex 00:01, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I think It looks good and would enchance the article. Why was it removed? Aeon ^{Insane Ward} 13:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

• I didn't remove it, but support its removal. Much of the information it contains is either not applicable (because we're inside the galaxy it refers to) or filled in with data that makes no sense (again, because we're inside the galaxy it refers to). The standard galaxy infobox contains information that's all applicable to other galaxies, which we view from the outside. I don't think a (corrected) infobox that contains two fields with useful information and all the rest with "N/A" is terribly useful. -- moondigger 20:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

N/A isn't hard to fill. We're in it, so redshift is zero. Burnham's notes that no section appears brighter than 5th magnitude, the band circles the sky, and M0 and NGC0 are occasionally used in computerized databases. -- Sturmde 05:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

• Right ascension, Declination, Distance, Apparent magnitude and Constellation don't make sense; Absolute magnitude cannot be determined from inside -- it refers to the brightness of an object as seen from a particular distance outside of that object. Right ascension and declination refer to the location of the core, yet the galaxy (literally) surrounds us, as you point out when you designate Apparent dimensions as 360 degrees. Distance is meaningless, because (again) we're talking about something that surrounds us. It would be equally correct to say the Distance is 0. Apparent magnitude cannot be said to be ~5 because it varies so wildly depending on where you look. And saying our galaxy is in the constellation Sagittarius is like saying North America is in Denver. -- Moondigger 15:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Please consider modifying the section "The Sun's place in the Milky Way" by appending the following phrase to the sentence that begins, "It takes the solar system about 225-250 million years to complete one orbit" ...

and approximately .0004 orbit since the origin of man.

Circeus removed:

We are presently about 1/8 of an orbit before perigalacticon (the sun's closest approach to the center). ^{citation needed}

This information is correct (or nearly so) and interesting. Some long time ago, I added it based on work I was doing for a non-wiki project, and now I can't find the appropriate reference. I'd like to encourage others to go looking, but we are definitely nearing perigalacticon now. Dragons flight 02:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

This article is good, but it lacks allot of detailed information about the size, shape and structure of the Milky Way Galaxy.

For instance, it is not stated how large the Central galactic bulge is. What is its radius? And how much does it bulge out from the normal thickness of the galactic disk?

Also, we are given values for size and mass, but what is the Volume of the galaxy? (i.e. in cubic light years).

What is the stellar density of the Galaxy? Meaning how many stars do we find per cubic light year? Is this value different for different parts of the Galaxy? I assume the core is denser than the rest but how dense? What is the distribution of matter in the Galaxy?

I think these are some of the questions that need to be answered if this is to be a comprehensive article.

-- Hibernian 02:32, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

One problem with this article listing those details is that there is not exact information to list. Such specfic details are the very ones that are in question and currently being researched.

I would like the article to compare the size of the Milky Way with those of other galaxies. - Pgan002 23:12, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The 3 major parts of the Milky Way are the Galactic Bulge region, Arm Structures, and the Halo region. Should there be 3 sections in the Structure section of this page? Just wondering, CarpD 8/28/06 morning...

SDSS has found four new satellites to the Milky Way: Coma Berenices dwarf, Canes Venatici II dwarf, Hercules dwarf, and Leo IV dwarf. [1]-- JyriL ^talk 11:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Note: This article has a small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 01:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it just me or does 'Although the Milky Way is but one of billions of galaxies in the universe, the Galaxy has special significance to humanity as it is the home of the Solar System.' sound like it was written by some sort of alien? Seeing as how most people reading Wikipedia will be humble human beings, is this pompous phrasing really necessary? Auspiciously 17:37, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I added a paragraph to the section Speed through space explaining the speed through CMB. Maybe this should be explained in the CMB article, but given the presence of that section, I believe it was needed for completeness. Any comments are welcome. Franjesus 16:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

According to a recent study: "The chemistry we see in the stars in these dwarf galaxies is just not consistent with current cosmological models," said Amina Helmi of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute... [2]

There's a large gap between "Structure" and its paragraph. I tried to fix it but I'm pretty poor at changing coding. Anybody wanna take a go at closing that gap?

( 1sttomars 21:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC))

The article has been vandalized

THe article has been vandalized. "IN THE CENTER OF THE GALAXY IS A GIANT FOOTBALL." was included. I have already removed them.

Here is a citation [9] that gives -20.9 for the absolute visual magnitude of the milky way. Given the uncertainty in estimating this, I'm sure that there are other references that would give a slightly different value. Absolute magnitude gives -20.5 but does not cite the source.-- mikeu 16:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the infobox used in the Andromeda Galaxy article be used in this one too? - 69.19.14.31 22:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

At least half the categories don't make any sense when applied to the Milky Way. Chrislintott 22:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone should consider making archives of past discussions. - 69.19.14.31 22:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Is is now set for Werdnabot to archive comments older than 1 year. The first archive pass will run within a day.-- mikeu 01:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the clutter piled up images were making here. Zazaban 03:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm skeptical about that Hubble classification of SBbc for the Milky Way. Neither of the citations given for that sentence actually confirm the classification. Various sources cite different classifications.

• Galaxy morphological classification gives SBb.
• SEDS gives "Sb or Sc"; more recently SB or SAB.
• SAO gives Sb or Sc (Sbc).
• Astronomy Adventures gives SBc
• Rolf A. Jansen at ASU gives Sb or Sc, and barred.
• University of Maryland gives Sbc or SBbc.

&c.

The SBbc appears to be somewhat speculative, merging earlier classifications with the barred-spiral classification. So if there is an accurate 2005 classification for the Milky Way, does somebody have a good source? Thank you. — RJH ( talk) 18:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I moved the two references from the classification down to the sentence about the Milky Way mass, where they are more relevant. — RJH ( talk) 15:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

A portion of the text has been rewritten to try and satisfy this. — RJH ( talk) 17:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The Milky Way's absolute magnitude, which cannot be measured directly, is assumed by astronomical convention to be −20.5, although other authors give an absolute magnitude of -21.3.

Shouldn't there be a reference here? Hornberry 23:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been looking for info on this. I could not find a source that detailed how the magnitude was estimated. Here's a note that I posted above. "Here is a citation [10] that gives -20.9 for the absolute visual magnitude of the milky way. Given the uncertainty in estimating this, I'm sure that there are other references that would give a slightly different value. Absolute magnitude gives -20.5 but does not cite the source.-- mikeu 16:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)" There are two places where the magnitude is given in this article. The Absolute magnitude article also gives a value for the milky way.-- mikeu 00:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's add the aa.springer reference for now and when other references pop up we can start redebating. Hornberry 02:55, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I reverted the addition of an infobox [11] See comments above. Most of the info was not applicable (coordinates, constellation), confusing (distance) or just wrong (Messier never labeled it M0) -- mikeu 03:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The galactic disk, which bulges outward at the galactic center, has an estimated diameter of about 100,000 light-years. The distance from the Sun to the galactic center is now estimated at 26,000 ± 1400 light-years while older estimates could put our parent star as far as 35,000 light-years from the central bulge.

So it does have an estimated diameter of 100,000 light years? There should be a reference here. Hornberry 23:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

According to here it's 10,000 so I'll just go ahead and make the change. Hornberry 00:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

That reference gives 70-100,000 ly for the diameter of the galaxy, and then 10,000 ly for the diameter of the central bulge.-- mikeu 12:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

For a project I was wondering what the inclination of our solar system's orbit is, or at least what the axial tilt is of the ecliptic in relation to the Galactic plane. I can't find any numbers on it. Would anyone know? Is this still being researched? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.238.140.116 ( talk • contribs) 02:20, 23 April 2007

This article currently says that the Milky Way is "outside the Galactic core, about 1,000 light-years in thickness", but cites no source for this information. I've spent the past half-hour trying to chase down a reliable source for this, but have found only wildly different numbers. Infoplease's "Size and Shape of the Milky Way" (supposedly based on The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed) claims "its average thickness is 10,000 light-years, increasing to 30,000 light-years at the nucleus" — an order of magnitude larger. One of my old college textbooks, Astronomy, The Cosmic Journey (1982, ISBN  0-534-09576-3, table 23.1, p. 510) gives a table that indicates that we are about 3,300 light-years (1,000 parsecs) from the "edge of the galactic disk in Ζ direction", making the total about 6600 ly (assuming the Sun is very near the galactic plane). Other less reliable sources give numbers typically between 1,000 and 10,000. Oddly, one of the most detailed sources I found (which can hardly be considered reliable) is "A Tour Through the Milky Way" in Star Trek Cartography (STDimension.com), which claims 2,000 light-years "average" thickness (5,000 ly at the center) and states that the Sun is 50 ly off the galactic plane.

Do we have any solid sources for a thickness of the Milky Way that agree with each other? Ideally, I'd like us to be able to cite figures for the maximum thickness at the center and approximate thickness in our region. (Most informal sources seem to quote "average" thicknesses, which seems an odd datum for either the sphere-like core or the narrowing boundaries of the arms.) Thanks for any assistance. ~ Jeff Q  (talk) 03:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The key problem is where you define the edge. It would have to be something like the place where the average star density falls below some threshold, also defining a limit on what counts as a star... Urhixidur 00:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I think there ought to be an image of the Milky Way as seen from the ground, i.e.

, but I have no idea where to put this - the article seems pretty good, and the only spot lacking an image is the mythology section. Any ideas? -- Keflavich 02:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes it's an impressive image. I wonder though if it wouldn't in some sense be redundant with the panorama image in the "Sun's location" section? Might I suggest the Milky Way (mythology) article page as one location for this picture? — RJH ( talk) 18:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps. You get a very different view with that image, though. I think this might be a good choice to replace the first image in the article, the artist's conception. There are already other diagrams showing spiral structure, and I think this one serves as a better overview image. I'll make the change in order to promote discussion, if nothing else. -- Keflavich 18:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there an explanation as to why the Milky Way can be seen from Earth, using the naked eye, and of all places Death Valley? Thanks. Berserkerz Crit 11:59, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, prior to electric light it could be seen everywhere, since we are embedded in it. As far as I know, all human cultures call it "the sky milk" or some variation thereof. Speciate 04:36, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Although the lead takes pains to make it seem like the Milky Way is nothing special, that section looks like it was just a backlash against the rest of the article, which is overloaded with "we" and "us" and other inappropriate language. This article needs a certain detachment that's lacking, recognizing what's important to the reader (selection of content) but not overpersonalizing in an inappropriate way (selection of words). The lead ought to put the fact that it's the galaxy containing earth first, before mentioning that it's part of the local group , and the rest of it should be freed of first person plurals and the patronizing stuff. Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 06:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Disagree about the local group; the subsequent sections are just out of order. Agree with changing the wording. — Viriditas | Talk 07:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks like a contributor has just made significant changes to the organization of this article. A criticism of these changes, however, is that the environment part has been placed before the discussion of the structure. I strongly believe that the later should come first, as it is primarily focused on the Milky Way and this is the main purpose of the article. It would be like an article on the Earth that began with a discussion of the Moon. — RJH ( talk) 15:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, a discussion of the moon in the Earth article does precede the structure, but due to length it begins in the History section, then splits into History of the Earth, with the origin-related articles Formation and evolution of the Solar System, Moon#Origin and history and Giant impact hypothesis coming before the structure. You can't tell because of the nature of summary style articles; the main article would just be too large. The moon is also discussed later in the article as a satellite. The Milky Way environment section could be merged into composition and structure, and the future and velocity sections could be moved farther down. If that doesn't work for you, then try something else. — Viriditas | Talk 20:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I did considerable work on the Earth article so I'm somewhat familiar with the organization. I must say that your new mega-merge on this article is leaving me baffled. Could we possibly slow down a little and work this through? — RJH ( talk) 21:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

All it needs are subsections and content organization. Have you looked at other galaxy articles? — Viriditas | Talk 21:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks (both of you) for all the hard work on this article. Hope you don't mind if I have a say too? Most of the recent changes look like improvements to me, but I really struggle with the move of the environment section to the top of the structure section. At this point, I think the reader expects to find a detailed description of the Milky Way, not be whisked around the local group. How about putting it back where it was, but calling it something less ambiguous (like 'neighbourhood', or 'surroundings'). Chrislintott 19:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you look at an article like the Sun, we are told in the last paragraph of the lead that the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and some more information about the Sun's place in the Milky Way follows. Next, an overview section follows, then a brief history of the formation of the Sun, and then finally, the structure of the Sun is described in the third section. Andromeda Galaxy is similar, with galaxy grouping in the second section and structure in the third. So basically what we are seeing, is a tendency to describe an overview or general information in the introductory sections, which is what I am getting at. On the other hand, the galaxy article puts etymology at the top, then observation history, followed by types and morphology (structure). Is there any way we can enforce a little consistency across all of the galaxy articles? I don't have a stake in the outcome, but I would like to see every galaxy article use a consistent outline. Many WikiProjects provide recommended style guidelines for articles to avoid these problems; I don't see any style guidelines for WP:AST or WP:ASTRO. Perhaps someone can point me to the right place. — Viriditas | Talk 20:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, well, I take your point. It does need either a new header or a split, though. I think what jars when reading the article at the minute is a heading that says 'composition and structure' and then spins off into the surroundings. Is 'location' suitable? Or something more flowery - 'The Milky Way neighbourhood'? I'll leave it to you, but it does need a new heading. Chrislintott 11:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC) P.S. you realise you've just volunteered to write the style guidelines for WP:ASTRO, don't you?

I'm definitely interested. Right now, I'm working on film and Hawaii guidelines. I hope I can work on astro as well. — Viriditas | Talk 04:05, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

First there's a big difference between general subject articles such as the galaxy page and those that cover specific objects such as the Milky Way. Applying a single template to cover both is illogical. Secondly, since the Sun article was used as an example, the body of the article only covers its surrounding planets and then only in passing. The article's Overview section is redundant with the purpose of the lead section and I would have objected to that during the article's FAC. In fact the lead plainly does not meet the lead style guidelines. But yes I agree the "Life cycle" section of the Sun article should follow the structure description. Maybe the FA status of the Sun page should be reviewed?

In the case of the milky way article, having a description of the surroundings in a section on the composition and structure is clearly inappropriate.

Sorry if I sounded a bit too hard on this issue. I'm just trying to work things through. But maybe I should come back later.— RJH ( talk) 17:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Was just looking at this article and said "whoa!!!! this thing is written backwards!!!" This article (and intro) should probably be structured "The Milky Way is the milky band of light seen in the night sky..., It is was discovered to be a galaxy when...., It has this structure....." Right now the fact that this is the name for OUR galaxy is totally missed in the first paragraph (in an odd "outside the universe" view) and there seems to be no history as to how and when we realized it was a galaxy. History could be dropped in many sections piece meal as well as having its own section.

Some observations from someone wandering by, Halfblue 23:55, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 12:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Why is the Scutum-Crux Arm dotted as it extends beyond the observation shadow? Is this correct?-- Pharos 15:32, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

The apparent magnitude in the infobox is listed as about -20 -- far brighter than the full moon. This is clearly false. The main text says that's the absolute magnitude; so the box data is simply using the wrong number. An older infobox above gives an unsourced "~5." This roughly accords with my experience, but my experience is also unsourced -- I was in fact reading this page to find exactly this number. Anyone have a real source? Bhudson 17:54, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Pomona17 dug up a reasonable number for the total apparent magnitude integrated across the sky. However, there's still the question of how dark must the conditions be before we can perceive the Milky Way. Even if you can see well below -5 you still can't notice the band -- you need a good blackout, or to be quite far from town, for that. It's not clear to me if this is a particularly well-posed question, though I bet there is a way to ask something very similar that does make sense.

That -20.9 in the infobox is clearly wrong. The -5.0 estimate that I've seen used in various places was first validated by Abdul Ahad et al in various reaserch thesis published circa March 2004. See these sources [12] [13] [14]. That methodology is an accurate fit between the quoted Absolute magnitude of c. -20.5 and the fact that we happen to be located in the outer spiral arms. Pomona17 12:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; looks reasonable enough for non-astronomer me. I put in the info. Bhudson 03:39, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

First of all, Usenet and webforum postings, and letters to the Editor of a newsletter for amateur astronomers are hardly reliable sources, so using them as a reference is barely one step above original research. Second, it's not clear that the "apparent magnitude" of an astronomical object that spans the entire sky is a meaningful number, for the purpose of comparison with apparent magnitudes of other, near-pointlike sources; that is probably the reason why no such number is commonly given in the professional astronomical literature.

Another, arguably equally "correct", way of computing the apparent magnitude of the Milky Way would be to start with its absolute visual magnitude (-20.9) and apply the standard formula for relating absolute and apparent magnitudes to distance. Using the 7.6 kpc figure from the infobox, we get an apparent magnitude of -6.5, a number representing the apparent magnitude we would observe if all light from the galaxy were emitted from near the galactic centre. (I assume that the arcsecond-precision ascencsion/declination figures also refer to the coordinates of this centre.) I'm not necessarily suggesting that we use the -6.5 number instead, but in any case, the infobox figure absolutely needs a footnote explaining what it means. Lacking official precedent, though, I would propose to simply say N/A in the infobox, to avoid implying widespread agreement on any particular number. The article text can discuss the various possible interpretations in more detail. Hqb 08:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That actually makes sense, but I think you'll find even with the revised distance of 7,600 parsecs to the center of the Milky Way, its core would shine at some -5.7 magnitudes based on the above quoted methodology of Ahad et al : a small correction over your -6.5. Agreed, reliable estimates of brightnesses for extended sources is always going to be difficult but it still makes sense to give a ball-pak number. Take the Large Magellanic Cloud as an example. For that, which covers an extended area of the sky of some (10.75 x 9.17) square degrees, a ball-pak estimate of +0.9 is being used. [unsigned comment]

Here's my take on it: N/A is fine by me; -20.9 was just offensively wrong. Magnitude is a flux, which is well-defined no matter the areal extent; summing the apparent magnitude over all objects in the Milky Way would therefore yield the apparent magnitude of the Milky Way. Your supposedly equally-correct way is a lower-order estimate, in that it ignores the effect of interstellar dust, and in that the -20.9 is an estimate based on apparent magnitudes, so your method amounts to estimating something directly calculable by instead extrapolating from an extrapolation. The fact that the two figures are off by rather less than an order of magnitude suggests Ahab's figures are not unreasonable. The criticism that Ahab's figures and methodology haven't undergone much in the way of peer review is valid, although keep in mind that serious journals often don't publish answers to questions deemed trivial like this one. Another thing to keep in mind: that the number is well-defined does not mean that it's useful for the reader to know. Last point: the number of N/A entries in the infobox has sparked discussion before.

All in all, that's my reasoning for doing nothing right now (i.e. leaving in the -5.0 and reference), but being agnostic about whether you feel like changing it to N/A or something else. I agree the best would be to have a section discussing the question of visibility of the Milky Way, and make the infobox refer to it. I don't have enough time or expertise to write a verifiable version of that section. Bhudson 07:09, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

In the lead paragraph:

"if the galaxy were reduced to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the solar system would be a mere 2 mm (0.08 inches) in width"

Surely these numbers are somewhat arbitrary and don't serve their purpose of helping people to visualise the size of the Milky Way. This sentence should refer to things that people can relate to (e.g. something along the lines of "if the MW were the size of a football stadium, the solar system would be the size of a pea") or be deleted.

212.159.70.80 17:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying, but I must disagree, for these reasons: The numbers aren't arbitrary, they are precisely those every-day distances people can relate to. Second, perhaps more philosophically, I would like encyclopedias and popular science infolets aimed at adults to retain a certain precision. I find myself wondering when I'm once again bombarded with the newly adopted popular units of mass in terms of African Elephants, Jumbojets, or cars, or length units of Football stadiums, Jumbojets or what have you. English isn't my native language, I am not familiar with the Anglo-Saxon culture, I do not know what a pea is, let alone how big it is, or how big one of those football stadiums is you are referring to. But I do know how far a km is, and how small a mm is, and I can very well visualize things on those distances that I am personally familiar with.

In short, I am all for keeping objectivity, accuracy, and internationalization, so that everyone no matter his background can understand. Regards, 145.97.223.162 10:01, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The article states that "The Milky Way is moving at around 552 km/s with respect to the photons of the CMB". How can this be? I thought the theory of relativity postulated that the speed of light (hence, photons) is constant (~300,000 km/s) regardless of the frame of reference. -- Itub 11:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the idea is to use the CMB as a fixed reference frame and calculate the MW motion relative to this frame. I've clarified it in the article, although it probably still needs some work Chrislintott 13:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

There needs to be a "back to basics" as to what this article should be about, or at least how it is structured. "The Milky Way is the galaxy where the Solar System (and Earth) is located." That is how this article currently opens and it is wrong encyclopedically and factually. Encyclopedias describe things. The thing we are describing that should come after "Milky Way" in an encyclopedia is "The Milky Way is the hazy band of white light appearing across the celestial sphere" as stated in any standard text book (for example Contemporary Astronomy - Second Edition, by Jay M. Pasachoff). That is the origin and current meaning of the word "Milky Way". The description of the Milky Way Galaxy as the place where the Solar System (and Earth) is located is different "thing" based on a theory (although a well established one). A theory should not be the main description of something when we have a more factual one with solid references. Like I said above ( Talk:Milky Way 23:55, 8 June 2007 (UTC)), this article seems to have a backwards structure----> Theory up front and the actual factual Milky Way, the band of light, taking a back seat. I see a need for some basic logical re-arrangement of this article but welcome some other points of view on this. Halfblue 03:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and re-arranged the article along the lines I mentioned above. The article now follows its title "Milky Way" and describes the "thing" we call Milky Way. Since the article is now 39 kilobytes long and there is a difference (as supported by reference) between the "Milky Way" and "The Milky Way Galaxy", a good case can be probably be made for splitting off the entire "The Milky Way Galaxy" section to make it a separate article "Milky Way Galaxy". Halfblue 17:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd support such a split-off. There should be a prominent hatnote, of course -- something along the lines of, "This article is about the visual phenomenon in the night sky; for the spiral galaxy containing our solar system, see Milky Way Galaxy; for other uses, see Milky Way (disambiguation)" -- to quickly guide readers to the right place. But given that both topics can easily support their own articles, we may have reached a natural size for fission. Hqb 18:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Time for a vote: Should we move the Milky Way Galaxy section and where? There are redirects at " Milky Way (galaxy)", " Milky Way Galaxy", " Milky Way galaxy" that could be taken down and made into the article. I prefer disambiguating term in parentheses, Milky Way (galaxy). Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects) seems to support this re:In general, the official name of an object should be used (e.g. Jupiter). If another object shares a name with something more notable, the type of object should follow in parentheses. (e.g. Mercury (planet)). Adding tage to section to prod discussion. Halfblue 04:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[Deindenting for votes]

• Move to Milky Way Galaxy, per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects)#Galaxies, and following precedent of Andromeda Galaxy, Whirlpool Galaxy, etc. "Galaxy" is part of the full name, like Atlantic Ocean or Amazon River, even if it's frequently left out in informal contexts. Also, having article titles "Milky Way" and "Milky Way (galaxy)" will just encourage endless arguments about which meaning is the more notable one. Hqb 20:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• Move to Milky Way (galaxy). This is a clear case of disambiguation since we have two "things" sharing the same name. I supply the following reasons:

1. In most texts "Milky Way" is used interchangeably for the band of light and the galaxy. This falls under Wikipedia is not a textbook, it is an encyclopedia where the general guideline at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects) is to disambiguate something with the exact same name.

2. The guideline for naming astronomical objects/Galaxies may not apply here because we only have one object, the Milky Way. The Milky Way Galaxy is not an "object”, it is a concept based on theory about a visible object.

3. Most objects of this type are not called "Galaxy" by default (see: Astronomical naming conventions#Names of galaxies), and even the few that are, such as Andromeda Galaxy are still called nebulas in several of my text books.

4. Personal tendency towards "neatness". When searching "Milky Way", seeing Milky Way (galaxy) in the search immediately tells the searcher that this is a different thing from the other "thing" (Milky Way).

Halfblue 13:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Move to Mily Way (galaxy)

I cannot say much, except that the Milky Way Galaxy is a topic containing enough information to deserve its own topic. Not to mention, when most people type "Milky Way", they are expecting to see a page on the galaxy, and instead see a strange concept of "stars", and have to scroll down to see what they typed in to see. Perhaps even moving the milky way belt of stars to its own page "Milky Way (stars)", and have "Milky Way Galaxy" become its own page.

I'll add more later, as I'm busy right now. I just noticed my browser forgot to sign me in; I'm TAz69x- 70.74.122.87 21:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

With respect to Halfblue, I think your proposal and changes are exactly wrong. In my opinion, the thing most people will be looking for when they search for "Milky Way" is the galaxy and not the "band of light" and so it is appropriate that the article lead off with the galaxy and be defined by it. Even if some technical references have taken a different posture, I do not believe that is the common understanding. If anything Milky Way (band of light) should be moved to a seperate article. Dragons flight 21:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Just to clear up some confusion. The changes I have made in the article are not based on opinion, they are based on actual references, i.e. it has been published by a reliable source. Every singe source uses the word "is"----> "The Milky Way is the band of light seen in the night sky". That is pretty un-equivocal as to what belongs at the article titled "Milky Way". I think the confusion comes from the fact that the majority of the people living in urban areas cannot see and may be totally un-aware of the Milky Way. Their only acquaintance with the term is what they see in textbooks related to the Galaxy. It comes back to Wikipedia not being a textbook... it describes actual "things". And this is an example of what can happen when you surf an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, you look up the Galaxy and you may find out there is something totally different out there you were un-aware of. Halfblue 14:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

You are confused. Here are a few recent examples of academic papers using "Milky Way" to mean the galaxy.

• "Contrasting copper evolution in omega Centauri and the Milky Way", MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 378 (1): L59-L63 JUN 11 2007
• "Mass modelling of dwarf spheroidal galaxies: the effect of unbound stars from tidal tails and the Milky Way, MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 378 (1): 353-368 JUN 11 2007
• "A pair of bootes: A new Milky Way satellite", ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL 662 (2): L83-L86 Part 2, JUN 20 2007
• "The structure of the nuclear stellar cluster of the Milky Way", ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS 469 (1): 125-146 JUL 2007
• "Dark matter in the Milky Way - II. The HI gas distribution as a tracer of the gravitational potential", ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS 469 (2): 511-527 JUL 2007
• "Testing the universal stellar IMF on the metallicity distribution in the bulges of the Milky Way and M 31", ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS 467 (1): 117-121 MAY 2007
• "Open cluster birth analysis and multiple spiral arm sets in the Milky Way", NEW ASTRONOMY 12 (5): 410-421 JUL 2007

And those are just a few from the last few months. "Milky Way" is the common name for the galaxy even among academics. Almost no one consistently writes "Milky Way galaxy". As the most common meaning of "Milky Way" is to refer to the galaxy, that is what should be featured here. Dragons flight 16:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Let's not start making radical changes to the article until we have some kind of rough consensus here. As far as I can see, the reasonable options are at least:

1. Have a single article, Milky Way, covering both the galaxy and the band-of-light in separate sections. The question remains whether the lead paragraph should favor (a) the galaxy, (b) the band of light, or (c) try to give equal prominence to both
2. Split into Milky Way (galaxy) and Milky Way (band of light); make Milky Way a disambiguation page (also covering the candy bar, etc.)
3. Split into Milky Way (covering the band of light) and Milky Way (galaxy)
4. Split into Milky Way (covering the band of light) and Milky Way Galaxy.
5. Split into Milky Way (covering the galaxy) and Milky Way (band of light)

Are there any other proposals one might want to consider? If so, let's add them to the list. (Note that the exact wording of "band of light", "luminous band", "visual phenomenon", or similar, can probably be decided later.) Otherwise, let's wait a day or two, then restart the poll with whatever list of options we end up with. Hqb 19:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The radical change was the one that bastardized this article by taking a good article on a vital topic that was started nearly 6 years ago and radically changing its focus, ignoring that the galaxy is the primary topic (with the visual effect being just a minor manifestation thereof). The tendancy of some people to recklessly change the structure of established articles is one of the more frustrating aspects of Wikipedia. Anyway, I am going back to my vacation and don't plan to engage on this further. Though if someone does want to count heads, you can be sure that I think this page should about the galaxy and "band of light" (or whatever term one likes) should be a minor side page (with a summary section in this article, since it is an aspect of the galaxy). Dragons flight 20:33, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

yes, split-- 80.86.74.135 21:15, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• Split the article in tow, one for the night sky phenomenon, at Milky Way (nebulosity) (or something), and the other at Milky Way Galaxy. I've commented on this before, in 2005. /Archive#Milky Way: Galaxy vs silvery river in the sky. It was eventually split, and then remerged. The mythology section remained separate however. 132.205.44.5 23:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

No, don't split. The argument that the silvery streak is a "thing" and the galaxy is a "theory" doesn't hold water. They are one and the same "thing", just seen from different view points. Any astronomical information about the Milky Way (as distinct from art or mythology information) must include references both to the silver streak and to the galaxy. One makes no sense without the other. Ianchristie 06:34, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

If you go by that argument then the star patterns in the sky called constellations are fake, because they are a trick of orientation and cultural supremacy. They aren't even cultrually neutral. They are fake things that don't exist. And star clouds are also tricks of alignment that don't exist. And Category:Double stars contains alot of tricks of alignment too. 70.55.85.126 04:37, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Further Comment: It should be kept in mind that you cannot make something up based on consensus Wikipedia is not a democracy. Something like this is not determined by opinion or conducting a Google search for variant usage of the term (see Wikipedia:No original research). How long an article has existed in a certain form is not a basis for determining whether or whether not there may be something fundamentally wrong with it. The only basis you can judge this article (or anything on Wikipedia) by putting it up against a reliable source ( Wikipedia:Verifiability). The references that there is a “thing” (a band of light in the night sky), and that it is called the “Milky Way” is pretty basic. For example The Cambridge Encyclopidia Of Astronomy:

“A faint luminous band can be observed in the clear night sky... was long ago named the MILKY WAY... the MILKY WAY gives a first indication of the structure of the world beyond our solar system”.

That is describing a “thing” that has a name--> “MILKY WAY”. Further clarification can be found in Contemporary Astronomy - Second Edition, by Jay M. Pasachoff (a standard college astronomy text book) in the chapter on THE MILKY WAY GALAXY PART V (page 414):

“Don’t be confused by terminology: the Milky Way itself is a band of light that we can see from the Earth, and the Milky Way Galaxy is composed of a hundred billion stars plus many different types of gas, dust, planets, etc. The Milky Way is that part of the Milky Way Galaxy that we can see with the naked eye in our night time sky”.

That seems to be pretty conclusive reference that there are two distinct “things”: the band of light and the galaxy. There are other examples on Wikipedia where you have two distinct articles: one describing what some visual phenomenon is called, and one describing what it actualy is, for example Constellation/ Star, Aurora (astronomy)/ Plasma, Rainbow/ Refraction Halfblue 14:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

• split ask the man on the street, what the "Milky Way" is (if he doesn't live in a city with tons of light pollution) and it's not the galaxy that he'll reply about. Amateur astronomy stargazing books refer to Milky Way as the fuzzy river like thing in the night sky. Milky Way Galaxy and Milky Way (celestial pattern). Milky Way should be an overview articles about both subjects. 70.55.85.126 04:45, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

• I favor a split of some sort, and I lean toward option #4 by analogy with the Andromeda Galaxy naming. While certainly by far the primary topic scientifically is the galaxy, culturally (in terms of world mythologies etc.) a very significant body of knowledge exists about the "band of light" and that is a highly notable subject in its own right.-- Pharos 01:53, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Specifiying "galaxy" for the Andromeda galaxy is important because of the use of "Andromeda" in fiction etc.. AltiusBimm 21:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, surely the "original" heavenly Andromeda (and so somewhat analogous to our band of light here) would be Andromeda (constellation).-- Pharos 22:30, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

• Split into Milky Way Galaxy (with a redirect from "Milky Way") and Milky Way (astronomy) (covering the band of light), which is basically option #5, but notice I used the word austronomy to express the context of the filed in which the term is used for the band of light visible from Earth's surface. AltiusBimm 21:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
• Split the two different things, and move part of Milky Way into Milky Way Galaxy (nothing to disambiguate, therefore no parenthesis). -- Juiced lemon 22:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Time for a breather.

I have reverted the current split of the article. Sorry I did not respond to Hqb proposals about possible splits above (my bad) above because they miss the obvious split as supported by reference:

1. KEEP the Milky Way article as the article covering the band of light and (possibly) create a new article at one of the redirects Milky Way (galaxy) or Milky Way Galaxy.

This seems (in my opinion) to be the best interpretation of all the relevant Wikipidia guidelines, the most important being WP:VERIFY, and WP:NOT#DEMOCRACY.

To clarify further: This does not seem to be a case where you can have a "vote" to make up some new reality. Wikipedia articles have to be based on published reliable sources.

The reality about Milky Way as supported by cited reference above is that it is the name given to the band of light seen in the night time sky. It has had that name for more than 2000 years and is referred to by that exact name in every reference I have looked into.

The reality about Milky Way (the galaxy) is that it could stay under Milky Way but could also be an article on its own since Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. Good reasons to do this?:

1. Reference cited above that there is a distinction between the two "things"
2. It avoids confusion such as improper disambiguation and "Easter egg" links.
3. The article has become too large at this point per dial-up and microbrowser readers and readability concerns.

Please remember again this is not really a "vote" (my bad for calling it that in comments above), at this point other editors need to cite Verifiable text that supports this interpretation of how this article should be arranged or offer counter evidence from reliable sources that shows some other interpretation. Halfblue 14:45, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Whatever you do, please be carful not to revert unrelated useful edits along the way. [15] FWIW, I support the split into Milky Way for the thing we see in the sky and Milky Way Galaxy for the galaxy itself. Of course, with a prominent hatnote pointing to Milky Way bar! ;-) -- Itub 15:02, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

When two different concepts both can be known by the same name (i.e. the "Milky Way") you should be looking at WP:DISAMBIG (not WP:V) for guidance. But as for V:

• Encarta [16]: Milky Way is "the large, disk-shaped aggregation of stars, or galaxy, that includes the Sun and its solar system"
• OED "Milky Way" [17]:

"1a. The irregular, faintly luminous band that circles the night sky, now recognized as composed of billions of stars and corresponding to the main disc of our galaxy, in which are located most of its stars, including the sun; = GALAXY n. 1a."

"1b. A galaxy. Chiefly: spec. the galaxy to which the solar system belongs. Cf. GALAXY n. 1b."

In reference to WP:DISAMBIG, why do you think the band of light (rather than the galaxy) is the primary topic referenced by "Milky Way"? 75.61.111.125 16:05, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I defer to WP:VERIFY instead of WP:DISAMBIG because (If I am reading Wikipedia guidelines correctly) this is not an ambiguous mater. "Milky Way" is and always has been the name for the band of light in the sky. It is supported by every reliable reference I have come across. It is also supported by common sense (and 2000 years+ of historical precedent). "The Milky Way Galaxy" is named after the "Milky Way". "The Milky Way" candy bar is either named after the "Milky Way" or it is named after "The Milky Way Galaxy" which is named after the "Milky Way". I am not sure an encyclopedia should be deferring to someone’s ignorance of a common object.

The Encarta reference has a few problems that make it vary from Wikipedia norms. It's intro teases ( WP:LEAD) i.e. it does not summarize properly. It instructs ( WP:NOT#TEXT), telling the reader how to interpret the band of light. It states flat out that the Milky Way is a galaxy with no reference as to the theory supporting this ( Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). In other words the article defers to a more prosaic style that would not be supportable on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a dictionary so OED may not be the best example to follow. The fact that OED points to there being two separate "things" may support a split; Wikipedia describes "things", we got two things, so two articles. Halfblue 22:25, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment The statements, the "Milky Way" refers to the band of light in the sky and the "Milky Way" is the galaxy containing the sun, are both verifiable. Thus I don't see what WP:VERIFY has to do with the discussion. The two "things" are simply two definitions, something which occurs a lot in the English language, and often causes much confusion and argument. The galaxy is called the milky way, the band of light is called the milky way. WK:DISAMBIG seems to be the protocol to use in this instance. Alisdair37 14:15, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose — I am unclear about the benefit of this split. The milky band across the sky and the Milky Way galaxy are one and the same. Presumably the milky band article exclusively concerns human cultural perspective. So why wouldn't a forked article be sufficient? — RJH ( talk) 17:07, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment they're not one in the same, since the Milky Way Galaxy surrounds us, wherease the Milky Way nebulous thingy in the sky, does not. Aside from that... the Earth's lithosphere and atmosphere are part of the Earth but have separate articles... etc. The band article should be about what can be seen by anything with similar optical capabilities as a human, and not just human cultural perspective... since we have other articles that deal with what people can see as opposed to what's truly there. 132.205.44.5 22:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

    Hmm, I'm not sure I follow this. The band in the sky *does* surround us - because it's just the countless unresolved stars in the galaxy of the same name - it's just that the Earth gets in the way of seeing more than about half of it at any one time. Saying it does not surround us is like saying that the Sun doesn't exist after sunset. Richard B 12:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

    The band of light is not all encompassing. The galaxy englobes us, while the band of light does not. The sun is not overhead when it has set, the sun does not exist 30 degrees off the location of the sun in the sky. The galaxy exists in every single direction, spherically around us. The band of light is what we can see and perceive using our optical capabilities as a human. It does not appear all around us, which is why it is a band of light, instead of having the sky aglow in all directions from horizon to horizon. 132.205.44.5 22:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• • Comment
• Oppose These are clearly the same thing seen it two different contexts. There is absolutely no reason they should not be treated together. older ≠ wiser 23:36, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
  • There is the issue of article size. It is actually common to split articles about large and complex topics to focus on different aspects. See for example water and energy. -- Itub 06:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
    • At 39KB, the present article is not very long, certainly not so as to warrant splintering the topic. older ≠ wiser 10:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
      • Do you also support the current article layout, where ~800 words about the "band of light" is placed in front of substantive discussion of the galaxy? 76.235.157.90 16:07, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

A Proposal

Here is what we have by reference:

• Contemporary Astronomy - Second Edition, by Jay M. Pasachoff: "Milky Way" is the name of the band of light and "Milky Way Galaxy" is a different term meaning the whole theoretical galaxy.
• OED: "Milky Way" means the band of light (def #1) and also means the Galaxy (def #2)
• The Cambridge Encyclopidia Of Astronomy: Milky Way is "A faint luminous band can be observed in the clear night sky" and describes the discovery of the galaxy through examination of the band of light.

That seems to put the band of light forward as the primary "thing" with this name and draws a distinction between it and the Galaxy in terminology. (more reference can be quoted here).

We seem to have predominant proposals to split and WP:DISAMBIG the article. Following the reliable source material quoted so far and throwing in a big handful of "think of the reader" would give us the following:

• Make "Milky Way" the disambiguation page or redirect it to Milky Way (disambiguation) (two terms are running neck and neck with the band of light in the lead, but I see other editors point that splitting hairs may be ambiguous as far as the reader's understanding goes).
• Make " Milky Way (astronomy)" the article about the band of light (that title has a problem because the band of light and the Galaxy are both astronomical topics - we may want to move that article to something like "Milky Way (night sky))"
• Make " Milky Way (galaxy)" the article about the Galaxy (I would defer if a majority of editors want to make the title " Milky Way Galaxy".

Halfblue 21:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Halfblue, this is not a vote. Do not attempt to ram through your proposal. Speciate 22:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I suggest that the appropriate title for an article about the visual phenomenon in the night sky would be "Milky Way (asterism)". Asterism seems to be the most accurate term for a visual phenomenon composed of numerous stars that is not a constellation. Perhaps use of this term will help clarify the discussion on this matter. 67.166.145.20 16:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Question - Has anybody attempted to figure out which articles would link to Milky-Way-the-band-of-light and which to Milky-Way-the-galaxy? I have a funny feeling that a tiny fraction of the articles will link to Milky-Way-the-band-of-light. Speciate 22:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what the dominant usage is, but there are more examples of "band-of-light" then one might naively guess. Most references to the Milky Way from astrology articles mean the band of light. In addition, even some astronomy articles reference the band-of-light when describing the apparent position of an object in the sky. A systematic review of the incoming links might well be helpful. 169.229.142.142 22:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's another problem with this bone-headed proposal: there are references to the Milky Way observed in light other than optical. For example, there are all-sky maps that clearly show the Milky Way in infrared light. Would a reference to such an observation be referring to the Milky Way as a galaxy or the Milky Way as a band of light? Nondistinguished 14:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Despite Speciate's un-civil remarks, it is true that this is not a vote. This is a consensus discussion with heavy weight being given towards reliable sources. The scope of an article about the Milky Way (that band of light we see in the night sky) would be what comes to mind when you perform this simple act----> go outside at night and look up. What the heck is that? There is a "thing" in the sky. What’s it called? What is it made of? What is its cultural significance/mythology? Have people been seeing this thing all along? Why don't I see it all the time? A Wikipedia article would describe that thing and all its aspects.

Now there is a second "thing", "The Milky Way Galaxy", a theory built out of observation made of that thing in the sky (and not just that thing... a lot of the objects that tell us about galactic structure... for example Globular cluster, are not seen only within the band of light). That second theoretical thing has its own description, dimensions, mass, material, etc. The article about that second thing would not contain, for example, mythology. It has nothing to do with mythology... it is a construct of theoretical astrophysics.

Re: Asterism. Please note the Milky Way is not an asterism, it is not a pattern of stars... individual stars in the Milky Way are not visible to the naked eye. The Milky Way is the Milky Way, it is kind of unique that way. Halfblue 17:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand that to call it an asterism is a broad interpretation of the term... but I could see that there were difficulties with terminology, and I thought it might be the closest choice. Perhaps "nebulosity" would be better, as someone suggested, or perhaps "celestial" as opposed to "astronomy" would better distinguish between observational astronomy and the actual astrophysical object. On the subject of words that may not fit well, I think that to call the astrophysical Milky Way "theoretical" may raise some hackles. It is a theory that has been verified by enough thorough observation to be established scientific fact, much like Einstein's "Theory" of Relativity. Although I understand that from an observational viewpoint, the scientific explanation of what the visual phenomenon is can be secondary to its obvious visual properties as seen from Earth, to many people, the reverse is true. From an astrophysical viewpoint, the scientific explanation of the object is primary and the visual characteristics of it are secondary. Despite previous statements of those from both perspectives, it is evident that those who consider the visual phenomenon to be primary and those who consider the astrophysical object to be primary are about equal in number. It seems that about as many people will type "Milky Way" in search of the visual phenomenon as in search of the physical characteristics of the galaxy as a whole. I have read statements here, however, of people who "know" that "everyone" will expect to find the visual object, and people who "know" that "everyone" will expect to find an entry on the galaxy itself. I was among the latter; I now realize that both stances are incorrect. Anyway, references by adherents of one perspective to the other as "theoretical", "illusory", "trick of light", and so on, will probably hinder the process of reaching consensus. 67.166.145.20 18:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

When opinion is split we fall back to basics... what can we cite? This is a case for Wikipedia not being a democracy. That should then be balanced off by needs for an encyclopedia---> The thing used by someone who knows nothing or very little about what they are looking up. There is actualy a simple solution to "If we have two articles, what one should be dominate?, what is the one people are looking for?". The answer is don't make that decision for them. Take them to a disambiguation page and let them chose. Halfblue 19:43, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that readers should be directed per the principle of least astonishment. If you are that concerned about people being confused by the lead of this article when they are looking for information on the "band of light", just pipe the wikilinks through Milky Way#Earth-based observations. Does that solve the problem? Nondistinguished 21:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Piping to part of the article would not solve the problem because the glowing thing in the night sky is the Milky Way (as supported by reference) and the galaxy is The Milky Way Galaxy. Making up the stucture of the article counter to available reference violates Wikipedia policy. The best way to rectify "astonishment" with actual reference would be to split the article and redirect "Milky Way" to the Disambigulation page that takes the reader to both articles (their choice). Halfblue 03:51, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no clear case for splitting up this article as far as I can see, since the thing across the sky and the galaxy are the same thing. 140.177.205.91 22:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Opening another heading because we seem to be having a problem even naming something. There seem to be some basic problems with the points trying to be made here.

References

A lot of editors are expressing an opinion but very few are putting forward any reference to support it. Wikipedia articles are not based on opinion. Material must be attributed to a reliable, published source ( WP:VERIFY). Editors at this point should be putting forward actual references to support one view or another as to what the title of an article even is. I have put forward two reliable references so far and there have been no reliable counter references.

Googling

• Google is not a reliable source, in fact it is not a source at all, it is a search engine. Searching for instances of a word as it appears in a title name gives you a result that is left to interpretation. When people come up with titles they use shorthand terms because everyone knows what they are talking about. If I was at a symposium where and an astronomer stood up and said "my paper is "A Catalog of Parameters for Globular Clusters in the Milky Way", I would say "Excuse me--- do you mean within the confines of the band of light?", he would say "no, I mean in reference to objects in orbit around the Galaxy".

• Trying to establish something via a Google search could come under Original research, i.e. the editor is researching the instances of something and then interpreting that research.

• A better use of Google would be Google Book Search Try doing a Google Book Search of "the milky way is" and see what comes up.

The article I started editing had one major flaw: If you tried to look for or follow a link about the "thing" you saw in the night sky (the "Milky Way"), you found out that "thing" had no primary article and in fact you had to dig to find out anything about it under its own heading. That was a major over cite. Halfblue 00:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I performed the Google Book Search advised above. The fourth result, and the first result that consisted of a definition of the term, was from The Physics of Interstellar Dust by Endrik Krugel, p.425. The quote is, "The Milky Way is a rotating stellar system of some 10¹¹ stars that has been created about 15 x 10⁹ years ago." My survey of the first ten pages of results suggests a ratio of asterism to galaxy references of roughly 2:1, but if publications older than 50 years are left out, the ratio falls to about 1:1... actually about 6:5 in favor of the galaxy definition of the term. I hope this data is helpful in the quest for consensus. 67.166.145.20 04:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Your entire argument seems to be "Milky Way" means "band of light" AND "Milky Way" does not mean "galaxy". Most of us think that argument is simply absurd, and you've already been given a number of references where "Milky Way" does in fact also mean "galaxy". I don't know what else to say. Can you acknowledge that the same term "Milky Way" is in fact used to mean two different things? If yes, please explain why the "band of light" is the more important of those two, vis a vis WP:DISAMBIG? 76.235.157.90 03:15, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment Halfblue, I don't think anyone is calling Google a source. Google is a tool, and one of the most valuable ones we have as editors, and using it to find or verify sources is in NO way WP:No_original_research. Original research refers to "using unpublished facts, arguments, concepts, statements, or theories" in an article - not how you search for a list of potential sources (which are then subject to Wikipedia:Reliable_sources). — Mrand ^{T- C} 11:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

My argument is not that "Milky Way" means "band of light" AND "Milky Way" does not mean "galaxy". My argument is that the "Milky Way (band of light)" is a "thing" and that "Milky Way Galaxy" can be a different "thing" (as per reliable sources and current Wikipedia guidelines). I am not saying "Milky Way Galaxy" has to be a different "thing" (in the context of Wikipedia... the encyclopedia that defines "things"), but it may be a good idea because of all the rationales stated above by me and other editors. As to using Google generated word counts, the Original Research I am pointing out is the instantaneous interpretation of a word count. That is not using Google to find a source, that is using Google as a research tool to create your own source (Original research). Such a count can tell you "if" something is, but it is not very useful in telling you "what" something is. Halfblue 20:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment Why not split horizon and visible horizon? Speciate 09:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

The band of light in the sky is the same thing as a galaxy! Similarly that big ball of light seen in the daytime we call "the sun" is the same thing as a star. We don't disambiguate between Sun (star) and Sun (daytime light orb) for the same reason we don't disambiguate between Milky Way (galaxy) and Milky Way (band of light). Nondistinguished 11:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I would have agreed with this position as a simple statement of fact before I researched and thought about the distinction more closely as a result of this debate. I now accept that there is a significant important distinction between the visible asterism that we call the Milky Way in the night sky and the Milky Way Galaxy that we live in. The band of light that we see in the sky is not identical to the Milky Way Galaxy as a whole, but rather to a subset of the Milky Way Galaxy; specifically, the stars that lie in the disc of the Galaxy that are too far from us to be resolved individually with the naked eye, but whose light is visible to us as a bright band when viewed as an agglomerate. To underline the distinction, there are many, many visible stars in the sky around us that are very clearly part of the Milky Way Galaxy, and also very clearly not part of the band of light we see in the sky that we call the Milky Way. The rationale that a page for the visual phenomenon is needed mirrors the rationale for the pages on the constellations and other asterisms. Whereas the Milky Way Galaxy is an important subject and worthy of an entry because of its significance in terms of our knowledge of the structure and arrangement of matter in our three-dimensional universe, the Milky Way asterism in the night sky is an important subject and worthy of an entry because of its significance in practical observational astronomy as a distinct visual phenomenon that other visible objects can be described in relation to, as well as for the historical and cultural significance of the beliefs and myths that have arisen from ancient observations of the Milky Way celestial phenomenon. Which concept is "primary" and "most important", I suspect, is mostly a matter of which field is of more interest to the particular reader: astrophysical science, backyard observational astronomy, or history and mythology of the celestial sphere. Those of us who find one of these fields of much more interest and importance can tend to overlook the reality that there are probably just as many people, scholars and laymen alike, for whom one of the other fields is of much more immediate personal importance. As this debate has shown, the two phenomena of the Milky Way Galaxy and the Milky Way asterism tend to be conflated, but in reality are seperate but tightly related phenomena. It is evident from the tone of this debate that the conflation of these concepts has the potential to cause considerable miscommunication and consternation between those who approach the subject from opposite sides. As one whose primary interest was the astrophysical object of the Milky Way Galaxy, it took time and effort for me to accept that this is not the primary "true" meaning of the term "Milky Way" for every knowledgeable person, but my research has shown me that, contrary to my expectations, there seem to be about as many usages of "Milky Way" that refer to the visual phenomenon that consists of the light from part of the Galaxy as there are that refer to the physical Galaxy as a whole. More, if older historical usages are taken into account. From this, I conclude that disambiguation and a split is desirable and necessary, especially because, as someone whose primary interest is the astrophysical object, the current layout of the combined article which gives precedence to the related celestial phenomenon is highly dissatisfactory. I hope the issue is resolved soon so that those who are only interested in the astrophysical object can research it here without having to wade through info on the celestial object, and vice versa. 67.166.145.20 13:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Poor rationale. The asterism of the Sun is also not identical to the Sun as a whole but rather to a subset of the star; specifically, the visible light that emanates from the photosphere. The distinction you are trying to make is that the Milky Way's emanation of light is somehow special in a way that other emanations of light are not. To take your rationale to its logical conclusion, every astronomical object on Wikipedia would have two different articles: one on the object and one on the image of the object. What makes the Milky Way Galaxy a galaxy is the visible asterism that we see from the Earth. If we didn't see the Milky Way band of light we would conclude that we did not live in a galaxy. That there are other objects in the Milky Way that are not a part of the visible asterism is irrelevant to the discussion. Having two articles is splitting hairs for no reason except to separate topics that are necessarily intertwined. People who are interested in different aspects of the Milky Way are encouraged to write sections in the article about the Milky Way. Creating a new article as a POV fork is strictly frowned upon by Wikipedia policy. I agree that the article is far from perfect as it now stands and I also think that the "galaxy" nature of the Mikly Way should take precedence. The answer is not to send those who think otherwise packing to a new article. That kind of Balkanization does not help readers: it only encourages editors from not collaborating with each other. I understand your frustration with trying to get the article in better shape. It is a hard process. However, splitting articles because it is hard to work with other editors is never the right move. There is only one encyclopedia. Nondistinguished 14:22, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe you have mistaken my meaning, and my attitude on the matter. The rationale that an individual article for the Milky Way asterism is called for mirrors the rationale for the articles on the constellations Leo and Ursa Major, and the rationale for the existing articles on the asterisms of the Summer Triangle and the Big Dipper. Each holds enough specific individual significance to warrant its own article despite the fact that the stellar components of these objects are unrelated to each other except in terms of their angular relationships from the perspective of Earth, and in the case of Ursa Major/ Big Dipper, despite the fact that one is a subset of the other. Their significance is related to their utility in observational astronomy and their cultural and historical notability. This debate, and the research I have done in response to it, have shown me that the same is true for the Milky Way asterism as distinct from the Milky Way Galaxy. I make this assessment not out of frustration or to dismiss the "other side," but out of respect for the realization, that, despite my previous sloppy thinking to the contrary, each "side" has a valid perspective and that both concepts of what the Milky Way "is" have genuine validity and precedent in modern usage, although they are usually conflated to mean the same thing. From an astrophysical perspective, the Milky Way "is" the Galaxy, and the visible band of light is an incidental side effect. From the perspective of the fields of observational astronomy, astrology, and other cultural and historical studies of the sky, the Milky Way "is" the band of light, and the fact that it is composed of distant stars in the plane of our galaxy is of only incidental importance to them in their fields. Both perspectives are valid, and Wikipedia covers all of these fields equally. Just because our field of interest covers the astrophysical object and the band of light seems incidental to us, does not invalidate the fact that to others, the band of light is the primary object of interest, and the galaxy as a whole is of incidental importance to them. Wikipedia is not solely devoted to astrophysics; observational astronomy and stellar navigation, and astrology, are also fields that it covers, however you may feel about those subjects personally. As the examples of constellations and asterisms I cited above shows, precedence indicates that a split is warranted. 67.166.145.20 15:31, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Your mirrored rationale does not apply in this situation. The Milky Way is seen in our sky because there is a galaxy we inhabit called the Milky Way. Constellations appear in the sky because of chance alignments that have nothing to do with a physical object associated with them. Therefore this is a completely inapt comparison. The other "side" in this case is basically trying to say that there is a meaningful difference between the Milky Way as we see it and the Milky Way as a physical object. As I pointed out, this difference is irrelevant when we are describing in totality what the Milky Way is. Let the people who want to describe the Milky Way as a band of light describe it as a band of light. They can do it at this article. All perspectives are welcome at Wikipedia. All perspectives, in fact, are welcome in this very article. That's the way it should be. Since your attempt to cite precedence was faulty, I'm going to go ahead and say there is no rationale for splitting the articles and begin the proccess of merging the inaptly named Milky Way (astronomy) article back here. Nondistinguished 19:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Your conclusion appears not to reflect consensus. It has been established by cited references here that there are meaningful differences between the Milky Way Galaxy and the visual phenomenon of the Milky Way in the night sky. There may not be any meaningful astrophysical differences, but that is not the only relevant way to distinguish between them. There are sufficient cultural, historical, and observational differences to treat them as two separate things. I understand that you do not agree with this statement, but given the disagreement, and the considerable work many have done to (successfully) back up their claims that there is solid reason to treat these phenomena seperately, I believe a split is warranted, once consensus can be achieved. I concede that the article you wish to merge back in was a premature attempt to split the page, and is redundant with the current structure of this article, so I don't oppose that particular re-merge at this time; nonetheless, I hope that a more thorough consensus will precede any further major changes. 67.166.145.20 19:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

The "cultural, historical, and observational differences" are referenced by what source? The best anyone seems to have been able to do is show that the OED has a few definitions. However, the OED is pedantic in its disambiguation, much moreso than Wikipedia. Therefore, I ask you, who else bifurcates the subject as you propose? What reference talks about the Milky Way as two separate things? Nondistinguished 19:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll go hunt down some more sources, but to start with, how about the textbook reference that Halfblue cited numerous times above, which I'll requote here for convenience: "Don’t be confused by terminology: the Milky Way itself is a band of light that we can see from the Earth, and the Milky Way Galaxy is composed of a hundred billion stars plus many different types of gas, dust, planets, etc. The Milky Way is that part of the Milky Way Galaxy that we can see with the naked eye in our night time sky". -- Contemporary Astronomy - Second Edition, by Jay M. Pasachoff, P.414. I encountered other similar references last night in astronomy textbooks as I researched the terminology myself, and the very discussion above itself, as well as the sources I searched last night that did not provide formal definitions, seem quite evenly split between references to the galaxy and those to the band of light. Given this widespread ambiguity about what the term's primary meaning is to different people, I think the idea of a split should not be rejected out of hand.

Back with more references shortly. 67.166.145.20 20:16, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

... And after further review of my research from last night, I find that most of the sources that disambiguate specifically between the concept of "Milky-Way-as-galaxy" and "Milky-Way-as-band-of-light" are either written by the same author I just quoted above from Halfblue's research, or older works which may not reflect modern usage. Other sources that I had put, on initial survey, into representing the "Milky-Way-as-band-of-light" point of view do in fact refer to the term in that context, but their usage is not inconsistent with the view that there is no meaningful distinction between the two. Prior to your arrival, the consensus seemed to me to indicate that there were more than adequate grounds to distinguish between the two terms, and the research I did last night, in a somewhat sleep-deprived state, seemed to support that stance. I still believe that there's no reason not to disambiguate, and your arguments that they are one and the same and have no meaningful differences are not persuasive to me. But as far as conclusive research on that subject goes, I'll concede defeat for the moment.

Incidentally, although I disagree with your logic in this thread and with the wisdom of your decision to unilaterally revert the article, I must say that the version that's up now impresses me greatly. It seems an excellent synthesis of the GA-rated version and the work that's been done since. I hope that no important substantive additions were lost in the process, but from what I can see, it looks like the important improvements that I'm aware of were integrated well. I agree that this version is better, but I suspect enough others may disagree to create some substantial conflict on the consensus front. For now, I'll step back and wait to see what happens. Good luck. 67.166.145.20 21:10, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Additional Reference which I came across by chance while searching the web on a separate project: The site eSky, which appears to be a reliable astronomy website with a couple of awards under its belt, deliberately disambiguates between the Milky Way visual phenomenon and the Galaxy. Its (single) entry on the two topics is titled "Milky Way" and subtitled "The Galaxy". It consists of a short introduction, a section on the visual phenomenon, then a section on the galaxy. The introduction reads: "A bright band that encircles the entire night sky. The Milky Way is, in fact, the main body of our own spiral galaxy, viewed from within: binoculars or a telescope will resolve individual stars in the bright mass." The section on the galaxy opens with: "Strictly, the term 'Milky Way' refers just to the hazy band of light in the night sky. Through popular use, though, it has come to be the accepted term for the spiral galaxy that we call home (though properly this should be referred to simply as 'the Galaxy', with a capital 'G')." Throughout most of the rest of the article the term "Milky Way" is consistently used to refer to the visual phenomenon, and the term "The Galaxy" or "The Milky Way Galaxy" for our galaxy. The one exception is the paragraph where our galaxy is compared with other galaxies; there, they refer to our galaxy simply as "The Milky Way", perhaps to avoid overuse of the word "galaxy" in that paragraph. Hope this is helpful. 67.166.145.20 03:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This is an RFC request for additional input regarding the name/focus of this article and potential split into two articles. The structure of this article was recently changed (August 23rd) from focusing on the galaxy to focusing on the "band of light". Many editors believe the two concepts should be split into seperate articles but don't agree on what should be at "Milky Way" or what the split articles should be called. See: #The "Milky Way" and "The Milky Way Galaxy" are two different things.

I support the split. "Milky Way" should be the phenomenon in the sky as seen from the earth. "Milky Way Galaxy" should be the objective astronomical science about the galaxy as a whole. Each article should have an appropriate link to the other in its lead. VisitorTalk 06:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I oppose the split. The "Milky Way", apart from also referring to a chocolate bar, is primarily used in reference to the Galaxy. If I entered Milky Way and pressed Go, I would expect to be taken to an article on the Milky Way galaxy, not an article on a band of light in the sky. The band of light is simply the galaxy as seen from earth, so I don't agree that the "Milky Way" and "The Milky Way Galaxy" are two different things. I also read the discussion and am in full agreement with those who oppose the the split. Alisdair37 12:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose The name "galaxy" means milk. Also, why should we distinguish between observations that have be made with the naked eye in the distant past and observations made more recently with more sophisticated instruments? The present article is structured nicely from a historical point of view, going from prehistory to the discovery that there are other galaxies besides the Milky Way, to the present. Splitting the article will leave both as pathetically small rumps, especially the main Milky Way as splash of stars article. Speciate 21:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose My experience is that Milky Way generally refers to the galaxy and the article can discuss the band of light without a split being helpful. WilliamKF 04:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Sagittarius Star Cloud documents a piece of the galaxy that only exists because of how we see things, since it's not a gravitationally bound object, or formerly one... We only "see" it as a separate piece because of various effects on light that is blocked by intervening objects. 132.205.44.5 22:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I've come here in response to the RFC. I've never visited or edited this article to my knowledge, I'm just here to provide an unbiased opinion on the discussion at hand. The first thing I've noticed is that all dictionary definitions that I've been able to find of "Milky Way" refer to it as a galaxy, not "a band of light". Even more importantly, the vast majority of Google Scholar results that I looked at when searching "Milky Way" obviously refer to it as a galaxy, not just as a band of light. Lastly a comparison: it seems like focusing this article on the band of light would be the same as focusing the article on the sun towards sunlight (since that is what we see) and having a different article about the physical sun, I suppose called Sun (star). In short, it seems to me that the main focus of this article needs to be the physical galaxy and the "band of light" could be discussed either in this article, or if there is enough unique content that doesn't directly pertain to the galaxy (not sure how that would be), an article on its own. — Mrand ^{T- C} 15:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

PS. There is also the issue of the present structure, where a lengthy discussion of the "band of light" was inserted in front of the discussion of the galaxy. Even if people want to keep the content together, there is the question of whether or the present layout is desirable/optimal. 76.235.157.90 16:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't really view it as an issue that needs to be discussed until the "band of light" dispute is (hopefully) quickly resolved - after which time I'm sure that the article's layout will be corrected/improved. Until then, it's just making unnecessary work.— Mrand ^{T- C} 18:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment. I don't mind whether the article is split or not, but either way, the galaxy as a whole is the primary topic. From someone who is an amateur astronomer, I would expect to see the Milky Way article discuss the galaxy as a whole first. Doing otherwise makes Wikipedia look very silly in my opinion. I personally think that the discussion of or article about the band of light should include, say, a map showing where various features are in the band - e.g. the various star clouds, the open clusters, nebulae etc. The Milky Way (astronomy) article could be made into a decent article on its own (actually looks like someone has already created it). But the discussion of the Milky Way as the galaxy needs to be the focus of this article. Richard B 12:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. I've given some thought to this, and in my opinion, this topic would be best served as one article about the galaxy, which then later on describes the galaxy's view from Earth. A second article, something like say, the Visible extent of the Milky Way could then be created to give a detailed look at the band in the sky and its visible features - which would be treated as a sub-page of the Milky Way article. Richard B 14:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I'm here because of the RfC. Yes, User:Halfblue is correct that the name, "Milky Way" all by itself most literally means the band of light one sees when looking at the dark sky. However, when you look at the Milky Way, you are looking at parts of the galaxy with the same name, and, as the list of papers published about the galaxy that omit the word "galaxy" shows, many people simply omit "galaxy" when referring to the "Milky Way Galaxy." Unfortunately, I doubt a linguistic study has been done about the most prominent use of "Milky Way", so there probably ISN'T a source to point the way towards which name should be used. That leaves us with our judgement as editors. My judgement is that Milky Way should refer to the galaxy, and it should include a small subsection on what the Milky Way Galaxy looks like from earth. Alternatively, Milky Way could go directly to Milky Way (disambiguation), this article could be at "Milky Way Galaxy," and the "band of light viewed from earth" bit could be elsewhere. It's simply awkward linguistics that are at the base of all this, I think. "Milky Way" is correct, short, pithy, and clear when describing "the band of light viewed from earth" except that it is the most common way to refer to the name of our galaxy. As wikipedia articles use common names in preference to scientific names for organisms, it makes sense to keep the galaxy at what people call it, which is "Milky Way." Enuja (talk) 21:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose split on philosophical grounds alone I commented above about what name this article, or different parts of this article, should have. I didn't not specifically address the idea of splitting the article, because it seems obvious to me that it should be split if and only if there is enough information for two separate articles and this article is too long. Yes, one can distinguish referring to light in the sky and where the light comes from, but the subjects are inextricably intertwined. Presumably, people interested in one (say, what our galaxy is like) would be interested in the other (how much of it we can see in what lighting conditions, and how we discovered our galaxy), even if they didn't think about it before coming the article. The same is presumably true in the other direction, as well. If the articles are split for length and readability they should very prominently reference each other to support that great advantage of Wikipedia; being able to learn more than you meant to when you go to an article. Enuja (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Enuja ( talk • contribs) 21:45, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment can we agree that the concept of a band of light, called "Milky Way" exists? And that a Galaxy known as the "Milky Way" exists? That the band of light is part of the galaxy? That the galaxy derives its name from the band of light? Now then... Since the people have perceived this band of light since the depths of antiquity as a thing and that the concept of the all encompassing galaxy is not the same as the ancient idea, why is separate articles not appropriate? 132.205.44.5 22:27, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - This is not a vote. Do not attempt to ram through this split until consensus has been reached. Speciate 22:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Question - Has anybody attempted to figure out which articles would link to Milky-Way-the-band-of-light and which to Milky-Way-the-galaxy? I have a funny feeling that a tiny fraction of the articles will link to Milky-Way-the-band-of-light. Speciate 22:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose The idea of the Milky Way as a band of light that is separate from the Milky Way as a galaxy is a distinction without a difference. We don't have two articles for the object known as Jupiter (one for the planet and one for the point of light seen in the night sky) for the same reason. We can have sections in the article which deal with naked-eye observations of the Milky Way, but separating the article into two is really problematic. If this were 1900, there might be a case for separating the concepts since what the Milky Way actually is was a controversy at the time subject to, for example, the Shapley-Curtis debate. However, today there exists no controversy as to what the Milky Way is, and therefore we should not separate the articles. Nondistinguished 11:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose per Nondistinguished. Seaserpent⁸⁵ _Talk 19:29, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I don't think there should be two separate articles, since they would both cover the same subject. The bright band of light is the galaxy, as viewed from the surface of the Earth. The article ought to document our knowledge of the galaxy, and should document the observations of it, presumably in chronological order. It needs to be written and structured in a way that does not confuse, or blur the distinction between, the thing and the view of the thing. Sheffield Steel ^talk _stalk 20:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

At the top of this talkpage is a link to a reviewed GA version. Comparing that article to this one is night-and-day. I think we should go back to that article and work in some of the naked-eye observational stuff into the article. What do others think? Nondistinguished 14:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Bad idea. The GA article had one major flaw: if I tried to pipe link to that thing in the sky from an article where it was in that context, it led the reader to a dead end, an article that was primarily about a different theoretical thing with no way to resolve it. It was an article that was technically correct and encyclopedically deficient. (I have made remarks about encyclopedic requirements here [18]). Halfblue 18:10, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

This objection makes no sense. The article was better in its previous incarnation. It may have been deficient, but it is better than this one. The way to address problems is to add to that version, not to start from this flawed version. Nondistinguished 19:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Nondistinguished -- the current form of the article is poor compared to its previous incarnation. It really needs to be reverted. -- Moondigger 20:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I do agree with Nondistinguished. Let's improve from a good article, rather than a total change of focus as seems to be the case. Whilst we're at it, let's also improve on Milky Way (astronomy) to prevent the "dead end" that Halfblue suggests currently exists. Richard B 20:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is Milky Way (astronomy) should properly redirect to this article. As was pointed out by editors wiser than myself above, splitting the article is okay if it's done for length. We shouldn't be doing it simply to split the article, however, since the two "distinct" topics are interrelated. Nondistinguished 21:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Fine, but it's an option to have it as a "subpage", i.e. basically a "For more information see ........" I think you could add considerable depth to it, which might be too much on this article. Richard B 21:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

But we have articles on ship classes and individual ships, and those are interrelated, and some of them are stub-short (all ships in the class and the class article itself). Here we have sufficient material for non-stub articles for each topic. (and an overview article, for the galaxy, band of light, and mythology). As it is, the treatment of the subject in the GA article is severely biased/greatly weighted towards the Galaxy concept, a split article would give good weighting to the night sky concept, instead of having it lost in the galaxy article. 132.205.44.5 22:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not biased, it's just incomplete and the current version is a hack-job. I suggest adding more to this article and if it gets too unweildly to content fork then. Content forking now is putting the cart before the horse. Nondistinguished 12:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Please stop

I am reverting the article back (again) to its state as of 17:28, 10 September 2007 User:GRBerry. Please note: there needs to be reliable sourced reference to back up these revision, such as the ones I have provided. Wikipedia is not a democracy so you cannot simply make up articles based on consensus and you definitely can't base it on your personal views. There is absolutely no reason to revert this article all the way back to a year ago unless there are many other things wrong with it (things that need to be pointed out and justified with reliable sources). Halfblue 03:33, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The article wasn't reverted "all the way back to a year ago". You are mischaracterizing the situation and behaving like you own the place. Nondistinguished 12:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a couple of questions:

• If the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is its brightest feature, then how come we can't see it from Earth, when we can see other features of the galaxy (eg. the Death Valley photo)?
• If our galactic core is indeed a black hole, how can it be "bright" at all? Black holes get their name from being black, ie. non-light-emitting. I understand supermassive black holes are less dense than other black holes, so is that the answer? They're so much "less-dense" that they can reflect light?

I'm curious about these and also suggest that they be addressed in the article.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

06:40, September 12, 2007

The black hole itself is not the brightest feature. What we see associated with the black hole is the infalling gas that is radiating mostly in the x-rays. Nondistinguished 12:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Besides, any visual light that is emitted by the central black hole will be blocked by the dustclouds that obscure our view of the galactic core. DaMatriX 17:04, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I have added a new section, "Terminology", that address the concerns raised by the current controversy in accordance with available cited references. More skilled wiki-editors than I can probably improve upon/flesh out/clean up the section, and I would ask that Halfblue add the ISBN number of the textbook he quotes above to provide additional corroboration. I would suggest a similar section be added to the beginning of any Milky Way (galaxy) article, so that the close relationship between the two articles would be properly reflected with a prominent interlink and verifiable justification for the disambiguation. I further suggest that such a Milky Way (galaxy) article be created with all haste, based on the improved version of the prior GA-rated article which many of us have worked on over the last few days. I also recommend a redirect of Milky Way to Milky Way (disambiguation) and a rename of this page to Milky Way (celestial), Milky Way (night sky), or something similar. 67.166.145.20 12:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I started working on this this morning (article revisions are warming up in the bullpen). One problem is technical. It looks to me like the talk page will be totally lost in these moves... or is there some WikiTechnical jigerypokery that can be preformed to keep the talk page at one of the articles? Halfblue 12:32, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Please wait before moving anything. Please leave as is unless consensus shows otherwise. You can't just ignore a significant number of "opposes" for splitting the article. Richard B 14:22, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I suspect there is, but I am not an expert in these matters. Since talk pages can be edited, however (after all, that's all we do when we converse here), it seems to me that a transplant should be perfectly feasible. I strongly recommend that the content of this talk page, especially the archives, be maintained at the Milky Way (galaxy) page, since that context is the one which most of the previous discussion has centered around. What is your preference as regards a subtitle specifier for this article? 67.166.145.20 12:38, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

If we redirect to Milky Way (disambiguation) there wont be a "this article any longer ;^). I put in a question at this users talk [19] on this matter but i agree talk should be kept with the Galaxy. I like Milky Way (celestial), it works as well as the (night sky) sub. The reworked GA article would make a good Milky Way (galaxy) article. I noticed it loses the info box. Not sure how other editors will like that. I personally did not like "the box" because it looked at our Galaxy in a sort of fictional "out side our universe" view. I will leave that to other editors to decide if and when in the future. Halfblue 12:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

As regards "this article" I meant the context that the text of the current article represents; my apologies for the ambiguity. As regards the info box, it was added back with substantial improvements. May I ask that you refrain from words such as "fictional"? That seems to fall into the category of consensus-corrosive terms that I brought up yesterday. 67.166.145.20 13:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The talk pages have been connected through the archives. I suggest when making archive 3 that you redirect Talk:Milky Way Galaxy/Archive 3 to Talk:Milky Way/Archive 3. That way people will be able to find everything easily. No moving is required. Nondistinguished 14:37, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. Could you assist me with proper citation of the paragraph I added to each article? I lack sufficient wikiskillz to do so properly, and I suspect an inline citation is called for given the controversy this issue has caused. 67.166.145.20 15:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi guys. See my comments at the bottom of this page please, as there's some minor technical things that need correcting before moving on. Thanks

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

16:58, September 12, 2007

I decided to see how other encyclopedia handle this issue and found that Brittanica has an article on Milky Way Galaxy which, in my mind, is a beautiful way around this. This is the first line from Brittanica:

large spiral system consisting of several billion stars, one of which is the Sun. It takes its name from the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band of stars and gas clouds that stretches across the sky.

Great. So let's do this. Make this article the article on "Milky Way" and make a new article called "Milky Way Galaxy".

There is only one problem: we must disambiguate the wikilinks. Someone needs to go through and make sure that all the pipes to Milky Way are repiped to Milky Way Galaxy because, indeed, the majority of the links to Milky Way are intended to be linked to galaxy rather than to the "band of light".

I have decided to be bold and have split the articles along these lines. How does this sound?

Nondistinguished 14:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

An additional problem is how things are referred to in this article. This article should only refer to the galaxy when talking about the Milky Way as a galaxy. Oftentimes, this is muddled in the text. Nondistinguished 14:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this solution, and it appears exactly identical to an earlier solution proposed by Halfblue. It will take time to clear up the existing ambiguities, and clean up the wikilinks; I feel this should not be regarded as particularly remarkable, since Wikipedia is a work in progress. Onward. 67.166.145.20 14:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I point out the similarity between this and Andromeda Galaxy. Nondistinguished 14:37, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I suggest the "Names and Mythology" section of each page be swapped. Objections? 67.166.145.20 15:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope. Nondistinguished 16:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

There are thousands of wikilinks to Milky Way and the vast majority are intended to be linked to Milky Way Galaxy. The only way we are going to get through this is if someone makes a BOT to handle this massive disambiguation. Perhaps we should put in a request at Wikipedia:Village pump or Wikipedia:Disambiguation. This is going to be difficult otherwise. Nondistinguished 14:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Surely the bot would need to check for context to see what it needs to disambig towards? Is that possible?? Richard B 15:25, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes. A bot would recognize the link and then a human being would either accept or reject the change. The bot would be used to navigate between the pages, the human could just sit there reading the contextual sentence and make the decision. I estimate that doing this by hand would take about 200 links checked per hour. A bot would allow upwards of 1000. Nondistinguished 16:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps an organized division of labor is called for. 67.166.145.20 15:31, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I hate to do this to you but this compromise thing wasn't really done right. In creating a new article for "galaxy" you left the entire article history behind, on what would now become a redirect. The proper thing to do would've been to perform a page move from Milky Way to Milky Way Galaxy, which would've moved the history and talk page automatically.

This isn't a big deal to fix though. Whoever made the Milky Way Galaxy article should blank it and tag it for speedy deletion using {{ db-author}}. Once it's deleted, we can perform the proper move.

I think there should also be some discussion to what the new title should be. "Milky Way (galaxy)" seems more appropriate to me than "Milky Way Galaxy", but that's for you to decide so you should discuss it.

Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

16:38, September 12, 2007

Yowch. Okay, I'll stop futzing with the articles until after these techinical issues are dealt with. Thanks for the advisory. Regarding the name, the precedent cited is of the Andromeda Galaxy and others, but if there are any strong differences of opinion, it doesn't matter that much to me personally. After further consideration, I developed an opinion; see below. The concession to these particular choices of article names by the most polarized figures on each side may well be the linchpin on which peaceful consensus hangs, in my opinion. 67.166.145.20 17:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

PS - If there's been work done to the Galaxy article that you don't want to lose, you can copy the code from that page and save it somewhere so it can be pasted again once the page is moved. Just a thought.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

17:09, September 12, 2007

PPS - I just noticed that the Galaxy article was actually created a long time ago, so it may not qualify for speedy deletion using db-author. I'll ask an admin how to go about this. However if we just use Milky Way (galaxy) as the new title instead, we can perform the move now without any problem (since the article doesn't exist at all yet), so you should probably discuss which title you want to use now.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

17:15, September 12, 2007

Okay. I've saved the current state of the Galaxy article, but I'd appreciate other redundant backups, in case my setup doesn't handle the special characters right (my system can be iffy about that sometimes).

The pause to check for more widespread consensus is probably a good idea too. I know those of us most active in the debate also have the most energy and enthusiasm to implement changes once our differences have been settled, but we may want to allow some more time for others to weigh in before forging boldly onward. Sorry if my own enthusiasm has offended anyone. 67.166.145.20 17:25, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I've also saved the Galaxy article locally, in case it's needed.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

17:50, September 12, 2007

I think that Milky Way (galaxy) is an inappropriate title. For example, Brittanica uses Milky Way Galaxy for their article. The appropriate thing to do is use that title. I am more comfortable with using that title since it identifies the object properly. Nondistinguished 18:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I am (now) in complete agreement with this position, and I believe it will prove to be the option which is most conducive to consensus. 67.166.145.20 19:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I db-authored it. Whenever it's properly deleted, will the first person who sees that it is done redo the thing? Thanks. Nondistinguished 18:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it doesn't need to happen that way after all... see discussion below and the current history page of Milky Way Galaxy. Can you deal with the longer approval process to get the old history page switched over? I think it has many benefits, as I lay out below. 67.166.145.20 23:02, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to make one other suggestion. Rather than going through fixing wikilinks, I would suggest that once the move is complete, Milky Way should stay redirected to Milky Way Galaxy, rather than to the disambiguation page. This is its most common use, as has been stated already, and if thousands of articles already link to it that way then there's no reason to create a problem. We can keep the "other uses" links up at the top of the Galaxy page, and maybe expand it a little to describe what can be found at the "night sky" article.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

19:04, September 12, 2007

I agree with this idea personally, but suspect it may less conducive to consensus. As I see it, the glue that is holding this budding consensus together is the concept of strict adherence to the most technically accurate verbiage as shown by referenced citation, despite individual preconceptions as to the technical meanings of particular terms. By that principle, I think that the current proposed agreement (that the article devoted to the phenomenon in the night sky should properly be the one entitled simply "Milky Way", while the one devoted to the Galaxy should be properly entitled "Milky Way Galaxy") is optimal. I'm willing to wait for other opinions, but I encourage other editors to consider this perspective carefully and refer to the sources cited if they have not already done so, before any rush to judgment that may upset the balance of this remarkable new truce. 67.166.145.20 19:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Just so I have this straight, the plan is that "Milky Way" should be the title of the article describing the night sky? When I was originally asked about this move I was told "Milky Way" was going to redirect to the disambiguation page. I just want to make sure everyone involved here is "on the same page" (no pun intended).

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

19:41, September 12, 2007

Correct. Earlier it seemed that a redirect to the disambiguation page would be the best compromise that could be hoped for, but the new one as proposed by Nondistinguished is, as I see it, a far more optimal compromise than I would have thought could be realistically hoped for. It's a win-win situation that I had seen as ideal but unachievable, in that each side gets what's most important to them: acknowledgement that the visual phenomenon is indeed the most technically accurate choice to be named simply "Milky Way", and a high-quality, appropriately named article at "Milky Way Galaxy" that represents a continuation of the work that has been done here all along, with a solid foundation in good science. I can't think of a better possible solution, and I'm very glad that Nondistinguished extended this olive branch. 67.166.145.20 20:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I probably should've read through the history of this discussion before getting involved, so sorry about that. It sounds like a good compromise to me, so now all we need is to make sure of the new name before moving forward.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

20:13, September 12, 2007

I asked an admin about the move. If/when it's determined that Milky Way Galaxy should be the new name, a move request will need to be made at Wikipedia:Requested moves. This is so that the histories of the two pages can be merged. If Milky Way (galaxy) is chosen instead, the page can be moved without such a posting.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

19:54, September 12, 2007

I reviewed the description of proper procedure for move requests at the aforementioned Wikipedia:Requested Moves. It appears to me that this particular process has a built-in delay to ensure consensus, which seems quite useful in this case, to prevent (umm... I mean allow... whoops) those of us (including me) who may be overeager about this proposed compromise to ensure that we have the consensus we think we do. Although from my standpoint it appears the most polarized viewpoints on each side have reached a win-win compromise, this idea deserves more time to percolate into the community at large. In the meantime, it seems, if I read the procedure right, that the appropriate move is to make the official move request now, and use the mandated waiting period of 5 days or more in order to ensure consensus. In the meantime, it seems like we may be able to leave each article at its current location and continue to develop each of them... this may be a good "trial period" to give others who may be unsure a chance to see how they feel about the situation. Does the above seem accurate, or have I misinterpreted a point of procedure or technical requirements? 67.166.145.20 21:16, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

...Sheepishly enters sub-heading... Sorry for all the created work, I knew one possible outcome of trying to make corrections to this article is that a lot of links may have to be updated. I have actualy encountered other articles that have had a basic "does this really belong here" problem where everyone carped "fixing that would take days... look at all the wiki-links that need fixing". Looks like it can't be helped, if something needs to be right it needs to be right. I am putting two cents in on the galaxy title but just to help consensus one way or the other and maybe offering a fig leaf if "Milky Way (galaxy)" offers an expedited technical fix ... not opening a new "conflict". Actualy these points are buried at the top part of "The "Milky Way" and "The Milky Way Galaxy" are two different things" but I will recap here:

Reasons for the name "Milky Way (galaxy)"

1. . The guideline for naming astronomical objects/Galaxies may not apply here because we only have one object, the Milky Way. The Milky Way Galaxy is not an "object”, it is a concept based on theory about a visible object. (debatable)
2. . Most objects of this type are actualy not called "XXXXXXX Galaxy" by default (see: Astronomical naming conventions#Names of galaxies), and even the few that are, such as Andromeda Galaxy are still called nebulas in several of my text books. "Andromeda Galaxy" may just another faux cultural name and not a good guide.
3. . Personal tendency towards "neatness". When searching "Milky Way", seeing Milky Way (galaxy) in the search immediately tells the searcher that this is a different thing from the other "thing" (Milky Way).

That's two cents, sleeves rolled up for any bruit force disambiguation jobs. Halfblue 22:25, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, very much, for wanting to work together. In this case, though, I think that the consensus issues may outweigh the possible technical benefits to using the "Milky Way (galaxy)" title. As I understand it, the delay that would be necessary if we went with "Milky Way Galaxy" won't stop us from working on the articles as they are... I noticed in the history of the current Milky Way Galaxy page that the admins noted that we don't need to delete anything or stop progress on the articles for the time being to go through the Wikipedia:Requested Moves process. It might be best to hold off on fixing the incoming links for the time being, but content-wise we can have a few days to flesh things out, and let people get used to this idea so we can be sure of consensus. I think it's really important to Nondistinguished to stick with the name "Milky Way Galaxy"... important enough to concede that the other article should have the "Milky Way" title with no further disambiguation, anyway. On reflection, I agree. Verifiable reference is where this willingness to compromise comes from, I think, and the verifiable references that do disambiguate between the two topics do consistently use "Milky Way" and "Milky Way Galaxy" as the appropriate terms. In addition, "Milky Way Galaxy" matches the format of other galaxy entries here at Wikipedia, and I think this is a plus as far as standardization goes, for those of us who come at it from the astrophysics side of things. I propose we go with these titles for maximum consensus and maximum concordance with verifiable reference, and work on the articles individually while the Wikipedia:Requested Moves process goes forward. We can hold off on incoming links until the move goes through and/or we have demonstrated widespread consensus with this solution. Does that make sense to you? 67.166.145.20 22:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Brief note: I'll be away for several hours, as A) I feel like my loquaciousness/enthusiasm may be inappropriately dominating the natural consensus process and B) me need SLEEP. Just, everyone play nice, 'kay? Pretty please? 67.166.145.20 01:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Halfblue, your textbook still referring to the "Andromeda Nebula" must be ancient! People used to vastly underestimate the distances to galaxies prior to the 1920s - so that they believed them to be nebulae within the Milky Way. They were referred to as spiral nebulae (and presumably elliptical nebulae as well). Now that we can measure distances more accurately, it's known that they are separate galaxies. For naming galaxies, there is a list of ones with traditional names here. Note that Andromeda Galaxy is its name on this page. But what else would you call it? The only acceptable other title would be Messier 31. Andromeda is the name of a constellation, and is not the name of the galaxy. The list referred to is an observer's list - so the Milky Way isn't referred to.

I still think this is the wrong way to go about it, however, because in scientific literature, although both "Milky Way Galaxy" and "Milky Way" are used, if you search titles of scientific papers, and taking the first hundred articles, 83 have "Milky Way" in the title (referring to the galaxy), compared to 3 which have "Milky Way Galaxy". see here. That seems pretty overwhelming that the title Milky Way is in regular use and does refer to the galaxy. Richard B 01:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a scientific work per se though. It's an encyclopedia, which should make relatively little use of the kind of esoteric language that generally appears in scientific papers. A search on Google shows much more uses of Milky Way Galaxy as a title for a work of information for the lay person -- as in the Britannica example. Originally I had thought the "Milky Way (galaxy)" title fit more with Wikipedia naming convention, as a way to say "Milky Way is the proper name for many different things, but this article is about the galaxy," but now it seems that the proper name actually shows up as Milky Way Galaxy most of the time, which seems to be a proper name in and of itself. A search for "our galaxy" on Google even shows instances of the word "Galaxy" coming up alone and capitalized -- as in space.com: an article begins, "Is there obvious proof that we are alone in the Galaxy?" which would seem to refer to the word as part of the proper name, rather than simply a description of what the term "Milky Way" refers to ("the Galaxy", as opposed to "a galaxy"). So I'm all for Milky Way Galaxy, because regardless of the compromise it seems to be the most accurate for the purposes of an encyclopedia.

Equazcion ( Talk • Contribs)

03:52, September 13, 2007

Agreed. Additionally, it's not contested that the title Milky Way is in regular use and does refer to the Galaxy. It is also in regular use to refer to the phenomenon in the night sky as distinct from the Galaxy as a whole, and when astronomy texts and resources specifically disambiguate the two concepts, the widespread practice is to refer to the night sky phenomenon simply as "the Milky Way", and to our galaxy as "the Milky Way Galaxy" or "the Galaxy". (As per several references cited above.) Since the sky phenomenon has no additional title besides "Milky Way" while the Galaxy does have a longer, formal title, it seems clear that "Milky Way Galaxy" is the most accurate full title for the article on our galaxy. 67.166.145.20 06:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC) Sleep? What's that?

The "Milky Way" and the "Milky Way Galaxy" are the exact same thing. We don't need a separate article, as we do with Milky Way (mythology), which is an entirely separate subject. Yes, the Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy in which the Solar System is located. And yes, it is visible from Earth as a nebulous band of light in the sky. There is nothing to disambiguate. — Viriditas | Talk 11:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you... this is the precise statement which seemed intuitively obvious to me prior to this debate, but on careful consideration and after consultation with verifiable reference, has been unexpectedly proven false. I added this important factoid, which I thank Halfblue for bringing to light, to the proposed revisions of the articles; since it's not up now and may be removed if readded, I include it here for the purposes of debate: Technically speaking, the term "Milky Way" alone should refer exclusively to the band of light in the night sky, while the term "Milky Way Galaxy" (or "the Galaxy") is the proper description for our galaxy. In practice, however, the intended meaning of the term is often clear from the context in which it is used, and the term "Milky Way" is routinely used to refer to either topic. This statement is verifiable by the references that have been supplied, and has not been refuted by counterreference. Although this seems weird to those of us whose primary interest is the Milky Way Galaxy, this may be a selection bias based on our primary field of interest. Numerous encyclopedic references disambiguate between the two concepts. One got its name from the other. One is a subset of the other. This fact of terminology, and precedence of disambiguation of terms in multiple encyclopedic contexts, is an important fact that should be included in any Wikipedia entry on either the Milky Way or the Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy context is much more important to those of us who like the article as it has historically been, but we should not be sloppy and conflate the terms to be the exact same thing and not meaningfully ambiguous as a result of this bias. That would be a value judgment of the relevance of distinction between the terms that is not supported by reference. As such, the previous treatment of the subject does not respect NPOV, and this should be addressed. 67.166.145.20 12:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a meaningless distinction that serves no useful, informative purpose, and there is no NPOV problem whatsoever. Frankly, this entire discussion makes absolutely no sense. — Viriditas | Talk 22:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I acknowledge and respect these opinions, and realize they are shared by many. I contend that further discussion is warranted. 67.166.145.20 22:53, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

What would you like to discuss? Usage and naming conventions support the current title of this article. Your argument that the term Milky Way should refer exclusively to the band of light in the sky is not supported by its use in the literature. — Viriditas | Talk 23:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

References have come to light which support the proposition that the term Milky Way should refer exclusively to the band of light in the sky in an encyclopedic context. I will list the sources that have come to my attention in response to your more direct query below. After my responses to this round of questions, I personally will not engage in further discussion on the issue tonight, as A) I feel I have now expressed my opinions as fully as I can, for the moment, B) I would like to see what the wider response to the reasoning I have presented thus far is, and C) I'm very sleepy and past my peak debate form for the day. This is exhausting work, and I'll come back when I'm refreshed and see where the discussion has gone. Thank you for the questions. 67.166.145.20 00:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen any such references, and the term is used in the literature to refer to the galaxy. This is the primary topic and needs no disambiguation. It would be absurd to create a separate article to "refer exclusively to the band of light in the sky" when that band of light concerns the galaxy itself. I'm afraid I'm not understanding your argument. — Viriditas | Talk 12:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I sympathize with your position and your difficulty in understanding my argument. The argument is difficult to understand for one who firmly holds your position. I agree that, for the moment, the creation of a separate article to refer to the band of light is premature, and its value is debatable. This debate needs to take place with respect and careful disambiguation of terms. I'll do my best to further clarify my position for you and others. Please understand that those of us making the case for change are working to show verifiable reference to the limit of our ability. The claim that we believe is verifiable does not conflict with the fact that the term is used in the literature to refer to the galaxy. The opinion that the galaxy is the primary topic is legitamately debatable. 67.166.145.20 12:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

There isn't anything to disambiguate at this time. This common name is the primary topic, and the current version of the article discusses the use of the term "milky way" in the second paragraph of the lede. — Viriditas | Talk 12:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I have re-integrated this factoid into the current introduction and will begin a section-by-section edit to reflect this formal terminology. As I do so, are there any of those who concede the verifiable nature of this factoid who are willing to help me formally cite it, using resources referenced above? I lack sufficient experience and skill with Wikipedia and the formal citation process to do so on my own, and since there currently exists debate/confusion on this matter, I regard it as vital to cite this factoid thoroughly and properly, from a number of independent sources. I appreciate any assistance. 67.166.145.20 15:11, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The band of light and the galaxy are the same thing. I've reverted your unsourced addition which did not improve the article. — Viriditas | Talk 22:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I respect your right to do so, and will not personally attempt to reintroduce this fact into the article unless and until further consensus is demonstrated. 67.166.145.20 22:53, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It's already in the lead section; what source are you using to support your additional "facts" and why are they important enough to include in the article? — Viriditas | Talk 23:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The primary sources referenced so far are 1) A university level textbook reference cited above by Halfblue, 2) an astronomy website called eSky [20] which appears to be reputable and has a couple of awards under its belt, and 3) precedent from the Encyclopedia Brittannica cited above by Nondistinguished. To the best of my understanding, these are permissible sources according to the principles of WP:Verify. I encourage others who are more skilled than I in the areas of formal research, in encyclopedic and other contexts, to investigate these sources further and attempt to either support or refute the claims made and sources cited by myself and others, as suits their position in the matter and inclination to do so. 67.166.145.20 00:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Let's say for the sake of argument, that you move the article. Now what? Are you proposing that the term "Milky Way" confine itself to to a small discussion about a "band of white light" with a dab link at the top to Milky Way Galaxy? That would not be acceptable according to common name and primary topic procedures. However, if you are talking about creating a new article about the band of white light itself, there is nothing stopping you from doing that right now. — Viriditas | Talk 13:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

For the moment, I propose that the term "Milky Way" confine itself to a disambiguation page, unless and until both of the following criteria should be met: There is judged sufficient material for an independent article on the band of light, and it is decided that "Milky Way" unadorned should be its most accurate title. I suggest that further discussion about a proposed article to deal with the band of light is premature until the core claim which I will attempt to restate is satisfactorily verified or refuted. 67.166.145.20 13:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

"Milky Way" is the primary topic article for the Galaxy. There is no good reason to redirect a primary topic to a dab page. — Viriditas | Talk 13:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Re: No good reason... I will attempt to more clearly articulate what I believe constitutes good reason. Nondistinguished's proposal is also a good option. I observe no clear consensus for the opinion that "Milky Way" is the primary topic article for the Galaxy. 67.166.145.20 15:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Notable Precedent: I refer editors to the article on the Solar System, which addresses the issue of capitalization of the term in a manner consistent with the style guidelines I propose here. 67.166.145.20 16:56, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

And to help drive the point home: to equate the Milky Way to the Milky Way Galaxy is precisely equivalent as to equate the Sun to the Solar System. I think we can all agree that the Sun is not the Solar System, despite the fact that it's the part of the Solar System which emits most/all of its light output (minus contributions of human technology). The Sun and Solar System both exist as distinct objects, though on certain scales and from certain vantage points the distinction between them becomes astrophysically irrelevant. It does not follow from this that there are no relevant distinctions between them; merely that in certain contexts the distinctions are minimal. 67.166.145.20 17:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

See [21] and [22]. Your distinction is not supported in the literature. — Viriditas | Talk 23:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The links you provide look interesting and should stimulate ample discussion and debate for those of any position on this issue. I am too physically and mentally exhausted to explore them fully at this moment, but will do so tomorrow if the discussion has not moved past that point by then. I suggest that there are many kinds of literature to consider, aimed at various audiences, and it should be thoroughly considered and discussed as to which type of literature is the most appropriate resource to consider on this matter, in the context of a Wikipedia article. 67.166.145.20 00:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The links show that the colloquial term "Milky Way" is used far more than "Milky Way Galaxy" in the professional literature. The links do not show any major distinction made between "Milky Way" and "Milky Way Galaxy". — Viriditas | Talk 13:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree that the links show that, but that does not refute my claim. I suggest that the professional academic literature may not be the most applicable resource for this particular claim of terminology. 67.166.145.20 13:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This is the domain of astronomy, so the professional academic literature is appropriate. What other "applicable resource" do you recommend? We don't deal in dictionary definitions. Furthermore, Milky Way is the most common term in use for the Galaxy, and functions as the primary topic. I don't see the problem. — Viriditas | Talk 13:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

There are two relevant contexts in which to consider the domain of astronomy. The professional research context, and the amatuer observational context. I feel some considerable weight should be given to the second, as there exist several articles at Wikipedia which cater primarily to this audience, and the level of sophistication of material is more appropriate for an encyclopedic article intended for the general public. 67.166.145.20 15:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Revised Proposals, scaled down and separated because there are multiple points of contention and organizational matters to be decided (split, move, terminology convention to be used as style guide):

• The article that has existed at Milky Way should be moved to Milky Way Galaxy, as legitimate ambiguity exists (as supported by reference) and "Milky Way Galaxy" is the full proper name of the astronomical object that is our galaxy.

• Until it is decided whether the Milky Way itself, the band of light in the night sky, warrants a seperate article, the link to Milky Way should redirect to Milky Way (disambiguation).

• Regardless of the outcome of either of the previous proposals, the convention of terminology that has been brought to light is an important factoid supported by reference that should be prominently featured in any article on either the topic of the Galaxy or the band of light in the night sky.

• The structure and language of any Wikipedia article based on either the Galaxy or the band of light should consistently reflect this distinction.

Perhaps these points should be carefully separated out and argued separately. The current matter under discussion is the move of the article that has historically been at this location to a more specific name. There seems to be enough of a consensus by people willing to do the associated gruntwork to formally present this proposal, and those of us who agree with this proposal are currently in the process of deciding the most appropriate name to move it to, should such a move take place. The decision of a name is necessary to begin the process of a proposed move, but this process is consensus-dependent. It may take days or weeks to reach a decision on whether the move will happen, and the process at Wikipedia:Requested Moves can provide adequate safeguards to ensure it does not happen prematurely, without consensus. So to further refine and scale down the specific proposal under discussion:

• I propose that those of us who wish to move the article should request that it be moved to Milky Way Galaxy.

Are those in favor of a move willing to agree to this name as the destination? Discuss. 67.166.145.20 14:11, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. Nondistinguished 17:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

That only works if you agree that the galaxy should be moved. It ignores those of use who think that the galaxy should stay here as the primary topic (with a paragraph or two discussing the band of light) and that the extended discussion of the visual effects are what should be moved, per summary style. 169.229.142.187 18:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Conceivably, if there is no need for a "band of light" article, Milky Way could simply redirect to Milky Way Galaxy. That would not be affected by the above proposal. Nondistinguished 20:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I do not ignore those who hold that vantage point at all. That is a position worthy of serious consideration and debate. Per the guidelines of Wikipedia:Requested Moves, a name for the proposed new home of the article must be agreed to prior to formal submission of the request to move. Built into that process are safeguards to ensure that there is consent prior to the the move request being approved. There will be more than adequate time to debate this matter while the bureaucratic procedure goes forward, and in fact the debate is a vital part of that bureaucratic procedures. As I understand it, there is usually a five day minimum delay prior to the approval of contested move requests, and at present there seems to be a substantial backlog which will likely allow us more time to reach a consensus. I ask for consensus for the proposed name merely to get the ball rolling on this lengthy process. I hope that a careful review of the guidelines at Wikipedia:Requested Moves will eliminate any concerns that any such move would happen precipitously. 67.166.145.20 18:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen any reason to move this article. The common name for the galaxy is appropriate. — Viriditas | Talk 22:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I respect and acknowledge this opinion, and realize it is shared by many. The purpose of this discussion and proposed formal process is to explicitly clarify these issues in an effort to reach true consensus of opinion, whatever that turns out to be. 67.166.145.20 22:53, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

What part of Wikipedia naming conventions and disambiguation guidelines are you using to formulate your opinion? — Viriditas | Talk 23:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I did not form this opinion based specifically on Wikipedia naming conventions or disambiguation guidelines, although the points that have been raised by those who have cited such conventions and guidelines appears to me to support my position. This is a good topic for discussion in the debate on whether we should move the article, and I look forward to that process. I formed this opinion based on references cited by others and discovered in my own (amatuer) investigation, on my (developing) understanding of WP:Verify guidelines, and on the reasoning process I have outlined above. I would be happy to discuss my reasoning further when I am refreshed and ready to continue, if others have further questions for me about it. At this point in the process, I feel it is time for me to step back and let others with different skill sets, ideas, and perspectives carefully consider the ideas laid out here by myself and others, and discuss their own opinions in a civil and respectful manner, with respect for all parties involved.

The debate to this point has been jumbled and chaotic, and I understand the difficulty many others may have with wading through the debate above and my own long-winded reasoning style. I hope, however, that my contributions today have brought more order and clarity to this process. I look forward to seeing where it goes. 67.166.145.20 00:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

There seem to be a few specious arguments cropping up again.

• An encyclopedia is first and foremost based on reference. Wikipedia guidelines are very clear on this. You cannot make up an article that simply ignores reference.
• Encyclopedias describe "things". There is a "thing" called the "Milky Way". It has been seen for 2 million years. It has been named for 2000 +. It is a visual phenomenon caused by something else. Textbooks draw a distinction between it and the other theoretical "thing" that causes it. The article as stands this morning [23] has the following major flaws:
  • It is total counter to reference. " Interpretations and syntheses must be attributed to reliable sources that make these interpretations and syntheses"
  • It does not describe the primary "thing" that has that name (established by reference).
  • There is no way to link that "thing" (the band of light) from another article.
• I have pointed this out several times What’s in a name? (is my face getting blue?), doing Google search for word counts is not a reliable source, it is original research.

By reference there should be two primary sections, one describing the band of light and one describing the galaxy. Should there be two separate articles? try out his logic statement:

The Big Dipper is in the Milky Way Galaxy but it is not in the Milky Way.

Totally ignoring reference and the needs for an encyclopedia is not supportable. I am therefore reverting the article back to 16:27, 12 September 2007 by User:Equazcion. GA status does not mean something can be wrong... those who dispute the current article and proposed division need to back their views up by reference, not opinion or original research. Halfblue 12:03, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Nothing has been ignored. According to the archives, this discussion has occurred several times over the years, with the same arguments being made over and over again. I don't see any dispute about the current article, nor do I understand your revert. — Viriditas | Talk 12:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that the very fact that this point of contention recurs and continues implies a strong case for change on some level, as per WP:Disambiguation, with which I'm currently familiarizing myself. 67.166.145.20 12:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I would not go that far in this particular instance. On 29 August 2006, User:Voortle wanted to move this article to Milky Way Galaxy because that user felt that the candy bar was the primary topic. Previous to that, on 15 Apr 2005, User:132.205.15.43 wanted to split the article in two, with one article about the "silvery river in the sky" and the other about the "Galaxy". The article was successfully split into the mythology series page. So, I'm not particularly clear what the newly proposed move is attempting to do here, as the current article covers the most relevant aspects of the topic. The examples that Halfblue has recently left on my talk page do not justify moving the page. — Viriditas | Talk 12:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I respect your opinion, but disagree with it. This is the matter that will have to be carefully debated at length. I'll do my best to help clarify my position that a change of some kind is advisable. 67.166.145.20 12:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What justification for moving the page have you and Halfblue offered? The current version of the article states: "The term "milky" originates from the hazy band of white light appearing across the celestial sphere visible from Earth, which comprises stars and other material lying within the galactic plane." That's essentially what Halfblue is claiming. [24] Why should the article be moved to another title? — Viriditas | Talk 13:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that this is not an accurate statement of the claim being made. I'll attempt to restate my core claim more clearly, after a short break. 67.166.145.20 13:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Please be sure to inform me as to exactly what outcome you would like to see and why, so that I know where you stand on this issue. — Viriditas | Talk 13:31, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I want to take the time to express it as clearly as I can, so it'll take a bit. I'll try to briefly respond to your pending questions/statements first. 67.166.145.20 14:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't characterize the current atmosphere as specious argument, but rather strident, healthy debate (although nascent). I fully agree with the statement that the claims made by your referenced sources must be seriously addressed. I must say, however, that some of your claims and positions go beyond the claims supportable by the referenced sources, and this has caused and continues to cause widespread skepticism about your sources and your position, which makes it harder for others to see and respect your strictly verifiable claims. In particular, I suggest that, at least for now, you do not actively pursue your arguments that the band of light phenomenon is the "primary object" and that the galaxy is "secondary theory." I advise you that among those who have historically worked on this acclaimed article, this particular claim is incendiary, volatile, and corrosive to consensus. In my opinion your source fully supports your claim that the Milky Way and the Milky Way Galaxy are not the same thing, but does not support any preference as to which should be considered primary. I contend that any claim as to which is primary is a matter of opinion, and should be avoided per your advice re: opinion vs. verifiability. I also suggest that at the moment further editorial action on the article is premature, as the sources which support the claim of nonequivalence of topics is currently under review. Please understand that among those who have put hard work into this article over the years, there is an unusually high standard of verifiability that will take time to fully satisfy. Could you provide the ISBN number for your astronomy text book, and repeat the full citation of this particular reference? That would help a lot, now that the dialogue has started to clarify. 67.166.145.20 12:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Here is the book (I think it is the one you asked about):

• Contemporary Astronomy - Second Edition, Jay M. Pasachoff, Saunders Colleges Publishing - 1981, ISBN  0-03-057861-2

The Quote I use is the chapter summery. I agree with the observation "this point of contention recurs and continues implies a strong case for change on some level, as per WP:Disambiguation". Please check my history for investigations into this (try recent posts at User talk:Viriditas). That "‘‘the band of light phenomenon is the "primary object" and that the galaxy is "secondary theory." falls under WP:NOR -" Interpretations and syntheses must be attributed to reliable sources that make these interpretations and syntheses". The fact the galaxy is continually referenced as "Milky Way Galaxy" or "The Galaxy" means it has the wrong article name if you put it at "Milky Way". I think we have a problem here rectifying "common knowledge" and referenced knowledge. That was why I original proposed splitting the article and redirecting "Milky Way" to the existent disambiguation page... it solved a world of problems and kept us on a supportable footing wile informing the unknowledgable (the primary mission of an Encyclopedia). Halfblue 14:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Books published between 1990-2007 use "Milky Way" to refer to the galaxy. [25] Same goes for articles in the professional literature. [26] See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects). Note: I chose the arbitrary dates only to reflect recent scholarship. You can plug in any dates you want. — Viriditas | Talk 14:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be ignoring the questionability of Google searches being substituted for reliable sources. Please note: I will be off in the real world for 24hrs. Halfblue 14:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

These aren't standard Google searches that return unreliable web sites, but a rough indication of reliable books and scholarly papers that use the term. In other words, these are reliable indicators of standard usage in scientific books and journals. — Viriditas | Talk 15:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

You are interpreting what the usage is re:did the author use a real title or just a shorthand becuase they know that everyone knows what they mean. Doing research, not stating your peramiters of evidence, and interpreting that research is called #1 Sloppy Research, and #2 Original Research. Halfblue 15:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

We are allowed and in many cases expected to do research in order to decide what goes in an article. WP:NOR says we can't cite our own conclusions in the article, but deciding the appropriate presentation or the balance of arguments is supposed to be based on our studying the source material. It is entirely reasonable for people to review a large set of reliable sources and take note of the different terminology that may be used for the purpose of this talk page discussion. 76.231.189.193 16:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Halfblue, see Wikipedia:Search engine test. Wikipedia:Notability, and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Specific search enginge results are used to help determine the correct names of articles, and the results listed above (Google Books and Scholar) are acceptable indicators of professional usage. It is reasonable to conclude that when someone enters "Milky Way" into a search engine, they expect to find information about the Galaxy. — Viriditas | Talk 20:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

(I agree that this is reasonable to conclude. I also point out, for balance, that it is not unreasonable to conclude that when many people enter "Milky Way" into a search engine, they expect to find information about the phenomenon in the night sky... especially if their formative source of information about the topic clearly stated that there was a subtle but important distinction between them that is often glossed over for convenience of language use.) 67.166.145.20 20:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I don't see how you can conclude that, nor do I see evidence that is true. — Viriditas | Talk 20:45, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. Just know that I see evidence that is true, that seems valid to me. I don't feel the need to try to persuade you that this conclusion is true, but I ask that you acknowledge that from my perspective, it doesn't seem like a particularly controversial proposition, and I'm free to believe that if that's what seems rational to me. Fair enough? 67.166.145.20 20:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If what you say is true, we would expect to find the term "Milky Way" used that way. Do we? (try "Milky Way -galaxy") Even Sky & Telescope uses it to refer to the Galaxy. [27] — Viriditas | Talk 20:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I was unclear. Starting to run out of steam now that tension has been satisfactorily (for me personally) resolved. I just mean that the number of people who might expect to find the "band of light" definition when they type in the term, might just be non-trivial. Trivial and non-trivial, however, can be a matter of subjective judgment, and I don't expect or ask anyone to agree with my assessment of the level of likelihood of that possiblity. I just think, given this recent experience and previous occurences of this debate, that enough of a significantly non-zero set of individuals might hold that position, and experience a violent cognitive dissonance reaction when encountering something that flew in the face of their expectations, that some appropriate effort ought be made to soften the blow, for the benefit of all involved. It remains to be determined, in my opinion, what the wider consensus is as to what that appropriate level of effort would entail, but now that the pro and con sides have been reasonably clearly articulated to the point where we can understand what each other are saying, even if we don't agree, I think a few days to allow the wider consensus to be clear to all involved is what's called for. I don't think that's inconsistent with moving forward with the formal proposal to move, regardless of where the consensus ends up; let the chips fall where they may on that one. And I suggest that (going through the motions/formally entertaining the possibility) (take your pick), might help those who have felt unheard feel more reassured that their claims are being heard, addressed, and worthy of consideration... as any viewpoint really ought to be, no matter how weird it might seem to us personally or as a community.

Anyway, I'm about done for the day. Thanks for engaging me in the discussion, I feel this has been very helpful for all involved. 67.166.145.20 22:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

under the "size" section there appears to be some dubious math going on: "100,000 light years in diameter, and about 1,000 light years thick" but "if it were reduced to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the Solar System would be a mere 2 mm (0.08 inches) in width." these do not agree.... Rootneg2 ( talk) 10:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

These do agree. Ratio of diameter of solar system to diameter of Milky Way is about 0.00156 ly to 100000ly equaling 1.6e-8, and ratio of 0.002m to 130000m is also 1.6e-8. I base the diameter of the solar system on Pluto's aphelion. 71.33.130.248 ( talk) 11:24, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

also, the 1000 lightyear thickness may be quite wrong! the source quoted and linked merely states "this is the value". no explanation on data or methodology given.

a value around 6000 to 12000 ly seems more probable. the following link has info on data/methodology: http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2163 but even here it's not clear if they're talking about the bulge's or the disk's thickness. more detail needed. -- Tobyvoss ( talk) 08:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

This whole comparison seems arbitrary and not very helpful (why 130km to 2mm, rather than, say, 65km to 1mm?). If you're going to make size analogies then you have to use things that people can easily imagine - very few people have a mental picture of what 130km looks like compared to 2mm. Cosmo0 ( talk) 14:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The article should state the fact that the 1000LY (avg)/12000LY (core) thickness measurements do not include halo objects. These halo objects are often included in diametric measurements. 65.166.89.2 ( talk) 17:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I discussed some of the problems with this article on this slashdot thread

99.235.196.247 ( talk) 13:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

There seems to have been a lot of misinterpretation of this result by Wikipedia editors. As you say in the linked thread, it refers to the gas disk and not the stellar disk and so doesn't replace the earlier value of 1,000 light years, which is for the stars and is well-established. Both values are averages. I've tried to clean up the confusion in the article, making the difference between the 2 estimates more clear, but it's far from perfect. Although the recent research is unpublished, I've left it in since the size section previously lacked any mention of the different components of the disk. Cosmo0 ( talk) 14:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

"The Galactic Halo extends outward, but is limited in size by the orbits of the two Milky Way satellites, the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds, whose perigalacticon is at ~180,000 light-years.[12]"

This point doesn't seem to be corresponding with;

"Once they (The Magellanic Clouds) were thought to be orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. However, new research seems to indicate that this is not the case.[1][2]"

Quoted from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_Clouds article.

Perhaps this point should be reviewed. Keep up the good work here! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.161.18.155 ( talk) 21:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The relative size of the Solar System to the Milky way in the last sentence of this section looks wrong: If the Milky Way is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, and the Solar System is approximately 6 light years in diameter (including the Oort Cloud), then the relative size of the Solar System to the Milky Way if the Milky Way was 100km across would be 6m, or 0.006km, not 2mm. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicolette Erasmus ( talk • contribs) 13:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

If the scale is reduced to meters, then at 100m across, the Solar System would be 6 mm wide compared to a 100m wide Milky Way —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicolette Erasmus ( talk • contribs) 14:02, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

How about the velocity of the Milky Way from the "center" of the Big Bang? RobertM525 ( talk) 08:19, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The Big Bang had no center, since by definition it happened everywhere. The velocity of the Milky Way can, however, be measured relative to the rest frame of the CMB, which is the remnant of the Big Bang. The value is given in Milky Way#Velocity. Cosmo0 ( talk) 11:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

So... everything isn't radiating out from a central point? I thought that was the whole principle behind the big crunch thing... Guess not... RobertM525 ( talk) 09:49, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Jdrewitt ( talk · contribs) feels like shrinking the panorama. I feel this is a bad idea and hurts the article.

Other opinions? Dragons flight ( talk) 19:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The original size of the thumb at 700px is unacceptable. Wikipedia pages look different on different machines. Read: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Images, specifically: "Some users need to configure their systems to display large text; forced large thumbnails can leave little width for text, making reading difficult". The new gallery format is much more satisfactory and improves the article considerably. It also includes both panorama's instead of just one. Jdrewitt ( talk) 19:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

We have panoramic images on many pages, e.g. {{ wide image}}. By ensuring no other text occupies the same horizontal space you eliminate the crowding concern. And, yes, panaromas are informative and useful to the general reader. In my opinion, shrinking this image (even in the gallery) substantially detracts from the purpose of the section, i.e. to describe the appearance of the galaxy. Dragons flight ( talk) 20:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The user can click on the image in the gallery and see the image in whatever resolution they wish. However, for the purposes of making the article 'look' good, the new format is more satisfactory and is a vast improvement considering the issues I have highlighted with the previous format. However, the opinion of other users who are neutral to this dispute would be greatly appreciated. Jdrewitt ( talk) 20:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at the two versions (specifically this one and this one) and, personally, I think it looked fine as it was originally. That said, I don't have any particular objection to the current layout either, but if I had to choose between them I'd pick the former (I'm just referring to the one image here, not to the other changes that have been made). Cosmo0 ( talk) 22:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, particularly as the former layout, not only makes things look wierd, but also demotes a former featured picture , as shown below

to the sidelines. Jdrewitt ( talk) 07:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The image shown of Herschel's illustration of the Milky Way is flipped 180 degrees on the horizontal axis. The original PhilTrans paper (which is sitting in front of me on my desk) has the bifurcated arms on the left, not the right. I've made a note to that effect in the text describing it. Sorry to not actually just flip it; I'm new to Wikipedia. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.31.151.2 ( talk) 20:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The infobox lists speed relative to the Universe. That's meaningless. Does anyone know what this speed is actually in reference to?— David618  ^t Fiziker  ^t 20:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)(old username)

The speed relative to the universe is the anisotropy of the background microwave radiation caused by local movements of the Earth around the solar system, the solar system in the Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way in the universe. The microwave radiation is slightly blueshifted in the direction we are moving and slightly redshifted in the direction we are moving away from. The former two motions are well known from other calculations and so can be calculated, and removed from the anisoltropy. Any residual blue and red shifts then are due to the Milky Way's own motion in the cosmos. Hope this helps. John D. Croft ( talk) 23:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, that suggests that the number isn't "meaningless", but it hardly explains to Wikipedia's readers what it does mean. Motion cannot conventionally be defined without being relative to something else, and "the cosmos" isn't adequately and specifically described in a way to make this comprehensible to most other than astrophysicists (assuming even they all agree, which I'm not sure is true given the apparent recency of some of the data and theories on this aspect of cosmic anisotropy). I also suspect that this may be the only galaxy article for which we have such a number, which further begs the question of what it really means to a general audience. In short, I'm not sure there's a point to including this number in an infobox, as if it's a standard, general measurement with no questions over its meaning or derivation. It sounds more like something that needs significant explanation, far more in fact than one can find at Cosmic microwave background radiation#Velocity relative to CMB anisotropy or in the first paragraph at Anisotropy#Physics. ~ Jeff Q  (talk) 01:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

This should be taken out of the infobox and properly explained in the main part of the article. I might get around to looking up the information in the coming week, but if John D. Croft or anyone who already knows what this means can do it, it would be good. — Fiziker  ^t 14:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

There's already an explanation in the text. I've changed the title in the info box, to make it more clear what the number refers to, and linked it to Cosmic microwave background. I also updated the value in the infobox to agree with the one given in the text, which is correct according to the paper cited (the original citation was to an encyclopedia, which is where the 'relative to the universe' language seems to have come from). Cosmo0 ( talk) 20:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Cosmo0. Stupid of me not to have noticed the explanation in this article after the trouble I went to to review the other pertinent articles. I'm still not sure this number belongs in the infobox, but at least the label is more specific and has a reference cited. I wonder if it might not be better to direct the inbox label link to the paragraph in this article, which is a more direct explanation, but also has links to those relevant articles. I've added a span-id tag to that paragraph (linking to Milky Way#cmb) in case we decide to do this. ~ Jeff Q  (talk) 23:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be good to put in a map of the sky that shows the "path" of the Milky Way. I looked all over Wikipedia and couldn't find any decent map of the whole sky or a map showing the Milky Way. Eric Kvaalen ( talk) 23:23, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

• There are a few maps in Local_group and Virgo Supercluster, but they don't contain velocity data.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.84.251.91 ( talk) 09:47, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

But I would prefer a clickable map of the whole Milky Way in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caco de vidro ( talk • contribs) 9:51, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

News item: New observations have indicated that the Milky Way might better be divided into two arms rather than four.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080603/sc_space/newimagesmilkywaylosestwoarms ^{dead link}

-- Powers ^T 20:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[Try not to ever use news.yahoo: their links die after a few days and aren't cached or archived.] -- Jeandré, 2008-07-11 t22:53z

SPACE.com has a great illustration showing the new thinking: http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/080603-galaxy-arms-02.jpg There has apparently been some merging, splitting, and deleting done with some of the arms and their names. -- 24.11.104.84 ( talk) 21:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Just to round out the coverage: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24951910/ MSNBC's version. (I'd offer to be bold, but looking at that neatly done section, with its spiffy chart and image, makes me very wary...) umrguy 42 02:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't have a nice reference handy, but people have known for some time that there are a number of "issues" with the classic four arm configuration. One of which is that it isn't very stable. In contrast to a two arm system, a four arm patterns are predicted to dynamically degenerate into either two-arm systems or multi-arm messes on time scale that are astronomically short (a few billion years), so if the Milky Ways does have four arms then it would have to have been excited during a relatively "recent" epoch. The other problem is that if you look out at the sky, the other four arm galaxies we see (and they are rare) tend to have arms clustered in pairs rather than laid out in a uniform pinwheel. While it was always possible that the Milky Way is simply an unusual galaxy, it does seem more natural to think that we haven't yet gotten the shape right. Dragons flight ( talk) 02:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Indeed... so, how can we fix the article? :) umrguy 42 03:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The article doesn't really go into detail about the arms, so I think a slight reworking of the "spiral arms" section is all that's needed. We'll need to keep the old configuration up for the time being, but mention the new configuration as well. I would also suggest reworking the graph to point out that the "Orion arm" isn't a full spiral arm but just a spur off one of the big ones. We might want to include this new image too. Personally, I think it looks nicer than the old one. Serendi ^pod ous 09:57, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Is that image done under contract to NASA, and thus PD? (*hoping*) Powers ^T 12:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, yes. It's from a NASA press release. Serendi ^pod ous 12:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Annotated with 2008-06-06 correction. -- Jeandré, 2008-07-11 t22:15z

AAS 212: The spiral structure of the galaxy 1, 2, 3, 4. -- Jeandré, 2008-07-11 t22:53z

I've proposed replacing the old Milky Way artist's conception with this new one at Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Astronomy#New image of Galaxy. The discussion should be in one place, wherever that is, and I've already posted messages in a few places pointing to the project talk. Indeed, the new image is far better scientifically; I'll let others make aesthetic judgements. ;)

I'll work on the spiral arms section when I get a chance. (I am at the same institution as the folks who did this work, so I've heard a lot about it.) ASHill ( talk | contribs) 14:37, 4 June 2008 (UTC)