Talk:OH/IR star

Category or navbox?

Rather than trying to maintain a list of OH/IR stars in the article, a category might be a good idea. Categories are maintained at the article level so it is much more likely that categorisation will be complete rather than trying to keep lists here (or elsewhere) complete. There seem to be enough stars to make it worthwhile. An alternative is a navbox template, but adding more navboxes to stars is probably just clutter, and again they have to be centrally maintained (as well as added to each individual article). Worth reading WP:CATEGORY and especially Wikipedia:Categorization dos and don'ts, but I think this would be OK as a category. Lithopsian (talk) 10:16, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

OH/IR red supergiants and red hypergiants refer to the same object type?

This [1] makes it clear that OH/IR red supergiants and red hypergiants refer to the same object type, thoughts on this? nussun (talk) 06:30, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Red hypergiant is a subjective/emotive term for stars with extreme size and luminosity, but with no real definition. The hypergiant luminosity class isn't used for red supergiants. OH/IR star is a scientific term for a type of cool luminous star with high mass loss (usually ongoing, but possibly historic) causing self-extinction, recycling of much of the optical output into the infrared, OH masers, etc. It is most commonly used for AGB stars, but also for red supergiants. Observationally it can be difficult to tell the two apart without detailed study. Even considering only red supergiant OH/IR stars, it would be a stretch to consider them an exact synonym for red hypergiants. Maybe if more papers could be found that consider them equivalent ... Lithopsian (talk) 10:23, 24 May 2022 (UTC)