The constellation is "created" by a late 16th / early 17th century dutch astronomer. However it appears to have acquired its name (and perhaps Plancius's choice of pattern for the stars) from the brightest star in that portion of the sky, known by the arabic name for "phoenix". I am assuming the Arabic name predates the European creation of the constellation. This somehow needs to be apparent - that is, the constellation got its name (and surely therefore necessarily its form) from the Arabic star name.
aha I double checked this - turns out the name Ankaa was only coined after 1800 AD, well after the establishment of the constellation. Have added as it gives it context and chronology. Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 14:24, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Young Ostriches Al Ri'āl" Why the capitalisation, and why no comma (ie. Young Ostriches, Al Ri'āl), as when referring to the boat earlier in the para?
"seen to portray Aaron the High Priest by Julius Schiller", makes it sound like a play. Is what is meant here "seen by Julius Schiller as portraying Aaron the High Priest"?
"Of these, he labelled two neighbouring stars Lambda". How is this possible? And neighbouring what?
Hmmm, I meant neighbouring each other. There are several examples of stars very close together getting the same Bayer designation. Changed to "close together"Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 14:29, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"with a period of 1.66977 days (40 hours, 4 minutes, 28 seconds)". Impressive science, but i wonder if editorial discretion might render this less precise? It is after all an article about the constellation in general - those are details I would expect only in the article on the actual stars.
Re Zeta, it is confusing to be told it is an eclipsing binary, only to be told next sentence that it is a four-star system. And what is a "telescopic component"? I thnk of the term os meaning an extendable leg?!
The section deteriorates from "HD 142 is a yellow giant that has an apparent magnitude of 5.7,..." and is in need of structure and explanations of relevance or significance. For example, perhaps the paragraph needs to begin with an introductory sentence along the lines of "Phoenix contains X stars that as of 2013 had been determined to have planetary system, though several are too faint to be seen with the naked eye." I am guessing that the reason we have the sentence "Four planetary systems have been discovered with the SuperWASP project" is to kind of explain to the reader why the star names begin with the "WASP" acronym, but in the article about the constellation Phoenix, we don't really care how any of these was discovered - it is straying from the article topic - and perhaps the sentence should be omitted. This needs tweaking:
exoplanets are fascinating and their discoveries make it into mainstream news quite often. I rejigged so it has an opening sentence and incorporated the superWASP bit in to give people a link to read on how they find planets.Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 14:59, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"...each with a single planet larger than Jupiter detected" - perhaps just "each with a single planet larger than Jupiter"?
Ditto para that currently begins "Gliese 915 is a white dwarf only 26 light years away". This para needs an introductory sentence explaining why we should care, and what these four objects have in common (particularly the last sentence, which seems a factoid of its own).
All sorts of issues with the final one-line paragraphs. It is in the "stars" section, but isn't about a star. It has this lovely bit of writing: "...located near the galaxy ESO 243-49. It is thought to be a galactic remnant of a dwarf galaxy that was absorbed in a galactic collision with ESO 243-49". Would it be possible to use the words galaxy/galactic more frequently than that if one tried? Finally, as written, it seems unremarkable info, given that black holes are (I believe?) reasonably common in the universe - why are we singling this one out? Is it the only one in Phoenix?
Intermediate-mass black holes are rare and were only hypothetical till recently. I saw this which makes it more newsworthy and will beef up the single sentence. Need to sleep now and add tomorrow...Given this is more about a galaxy core, I've moved it to the galaxy section. NB: galactic excess wordage removed.Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 15:02, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Night sky illustration - Source copyright info here does not allow commercial reproduction per WP's free use guidelines. However, it appears that the uploader is the copyright holder, so it appears OK.
Much astronomy material is very dry - maddening as I am looking for material on Gliese 915 as it is the closest star in the constellation to us...but no source says this. The brown dwarves are small dim stars which are only being discovered now, and the extremely old star is interesting - I will try to add a sentence to each as to why they are interesting and maybe reorganise.Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 13:53, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Right - what I have done is a "taster" as the objects are all examples of interesting things. Hence I can combine the sentences on Nu phoenicis and Gliese 915 into a para on closest stars, and add some detail that highlights how weird Gliese 915 is. Ditto the brown dwarfs, and the oldest star. Trick is to balance with just enough info to make them interesting but not be exhaustive as that is what the daughter article is for. Do you think they need more now and/or do they sound engaging enough?Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 22:43, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure the poor nom at Perseus would agree, but mapping as against Chinese constellations would be useful, since it is done for the Arabs and for Schiller.
Regarding the constellations by which it is bounded, it seems strange that there is none to the east. I assumed that this was to do with the detail of how they lie against each other, but eventually it is a question that will be asked.
"assigned Omicron, Psi and Omega to three stars, which subsequent astronomers such as Benjamin Gould felt were too dim to warrant their letters". I wondered: does this mean they no longer carry those designations?; in which case it should not be completely expressed in the past tense. If however they did retain the designations (as the WP article's later text implies), then the expression "which subsequent astronomers" isn't really right either, as it was obviously a transient or minority view. Needs further explaining and/or tidying up.
I still feel a little uncomfortable about the para re the WISE brown dwarfs, but confess to not really being able to articulate what the issue is. Perhaps it is that most of the para is general explanatory material about brown dwarves, including that there are "many" of them, without really a sense why the two in Phoenix are worthy of note.
There are not many of them as yet. Nice to link the constellation to new findings. Will leave it up to FAC to get more consensus on this and drop it if need beCas Liber (talk·contribs) 21:04, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The para after that might be better introduced: "Phoenix contains HE0107-5240, possibly one of the oldest stars yet discovered. An ancient star located 36000 light years distant, HE0107-5240 has a visual magnitude..."