Talk:IRAS 17163−3907

A fact from IRAS 17163−3907 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 7 October 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the star IRAS 17163-3907, the closest yellow hypergiant ever found, is said to resemble a fried egg?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/October.

Wikipedia

Closest?[edit]

The closest? What about the other yellow hypergiants rho Cassiopeiae, V509 Cassiopeiae and V382 Carinae, respectively 11.650, 7.830 and 5.930 light years away. If the last was 13,000 ly away, it would be an impressive -9,1 absolute magnitube without counting the presence of interstellar dust.--C messier (talk) 07:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That claim is just false, although there is considerable uncertainty about the distance of these stars. I have completely removed this claim, as well as several others that are simply untrue (eg. being 1000 times the diameter of then sun). Admittedly these statements were copied from external sources, but it just goes to show the msnbc.com is not a suitable reference for astrophysical data. Lithopsian (talk) 15:51, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wavelengths[edit]

The article mentions light in the (invisible) infrared spectrum, but then goes on to use "red", "blue", and "green". Isn't it inaccurate, to say the least, to use colors to describe invisible radiation? This should be explained.--Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 18:51, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fairly standard technique for colorising astronomical images. I suppose you could consider it misleading since the images rarely attempt to reproduce true visual colours even when the filters are within the visual range. Still you'd be hard-pressed to find an astronomy image from recent times that is not subject to this technique. Lithopsian (talk) 15:51, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]