Talk:Starburst region

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): WhiskeyJack27. Peer reviewers: Mgoumas.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Citations

We should add some citations. WhiskeyJack27 (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Examples

I was thinking that this article would benefit from having a few example Starburst regions, any objections? WhiskeyJack27 (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC) I agree that this article should have more examples of Starburst regions to make the point clearer Hmedina19 (talk) 05:09, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

References

This article relies on a single source. It should have information from a variety of sources. Hmedina19 (talk) 05:09, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Rating

I think that the rating of this article should be changed from Stub-Class to at least Start-Class. Felix558 (talk) 08:23, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Done. Lithopsian (talk) 20:23, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Wrong rate

Opening says NGC 3664 produces “3600 Solar Masses per million years[1] compared the star formation rate of the entire Milky Way of about seven million solar masses per million years”.

3600 is less than 7M. Which rate is wrong? Jmacwiki (talk) 05:35, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I checked online at https://mmarengo.physics.iastate.edu/noao-ngc-6334-mini-starburst-region and the 3600 is correct for the R136 starburst region. The Milky Way forms about 3 stars per year, or 3 million stars per million years. I conclude that the comparison made is nonsensical. Drbillellis (talk) 14:25, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

"The Milky Way forms about 3 stars per year", where'd you get this from? The Robitaille/Whitney reference pertains specifically to the star formation rate (SFR) of the entire milky way. The values it gives are all around one million stars per year (M_sun yr^-1), which is a million times higher than the article states.--RainerBlome (talk) 22:56, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh well. Turns out that astronomers use a convention that can cause confusion, unless you pay close attention to the typography, which I did not. In the astronomical system of units the M in the notation M_☉ used in the Robitaille/Whitney reference means mass, not million. Makes me wonder why they don't use m, which may be less prone to confusion. In general, I prefer conventions that do not rely on typographical distinctions, best if still unambiguous when written as plain text. In particular, the abstract of the Robitaille/Whitney reference at archiv.org is in plain text and renders the SFR as "Msun/yr", losing any indication that the M denotes a unit, not a number. --RainerBlome (talk) 21:04, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

So how to change this to be sensible? Maybe express as rate/volume (using quoted linear dimensions^3, perhaps)? Or rate/total mass? Seems clumsy to me, but at least it would show a meaningful comparison. Jmacwiki (talk) 21:24, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Depends on your requirements. In general, yes, per volume sounds right.--RainerBlome (talk) 22:56, 14 April 2021 (UTC)