Talk:Star system

Dubious

91 Aquarii is listed as a quintuple system, probably it is an obsolete theory, or a major confusion somehow, when following diverse links i find four or five star systems with at most three components, see Talk:91_Aquarii#Disputed. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 18:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

It is no longer listed in the article; 91 Aquarii now says it is a triple star. -- Beland (talk) 06:41, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Hextuples

Alcor/ Mizar are now considered bound together which makes the Alcor binary and the Mizar quadruple add up to a hextuple. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.5028 (Astrophysical Journal) Aidan Karley (talk) 12:15, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Designations / Naming COnventions

Not mentioned in this article, would be useful to understand the nomenclature for star systems. For example, Alpha Centauri is a triple star system, the individual stars are Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B and Alpha Centauri C, however the system is referred to as Alpha Centauri or Alpha Centauri AB - the reason for this is not entirely clear just looking at this article. Perhaps this article could describe the conventions used and how they are determined based on how stars are gravitationally bound. --EvenGreenerFish (talk) 07:14, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe that Alpha Centauri AB and Proxima Centauri are referred to separately for a few reasons - firstly, the fact that they were historically given those names, and secondly, because Proxima is still only a "very likely" member of the system, rather than being 100% verified. You can see historical "artifact titles" at work a number of systems; for example, the two stars of the Zeta Reticuli system still use their old double star designations, Zeta¹ and Zeta², because they were first thought to be an optical double that wasn't physically associated (rather than members of a wide binary, as we know them to be today). --203.57.209.105 (talk) 03:44, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

There is now a detailed explanation in the "Designations and nomenclature" section. -- Beland (talk) 08:27, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Stability of (a) in the diagram

Wouldn't (a) in the diagram necessarily have to be unstable? --JorisvS (talk) 09:01, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is mentioned in the article. -- Beland (talk) 07:29, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Dubious - Mintaka/Delta Orionis

Every source I can find online says that Mintaka is a four-star system, with an OII and a BV star pair forming an Algol-type eclipsing binary, and two distant companions (which seem to be mostly unstudied, but one source has the brighter of the two as a B-type star of some sort). However, it's listed as a quintuple system here, with no citation. Unless someone can back this up, I'm going to go ahead and change it. --203.57.209.105 (talk) 03:35, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The article Mintaka now clarifies it has five stars, with citations. -- Beland (talk) 08:01, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Discussion affecting this WikiProject - The Sun

There is a discussion about whether The Sun (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) should redirect to Sun (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) or to Sun (disambiguation) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). THe discussion is at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 July 25#The Sun. The editor whose username is Z0 06:53, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Error in the introduction?

"If there are no tidal effects, no perturbation from other forces, and no transfer of mass from one star to the other, such a system is stable, and both stars will trace out an elliptical orbit around the barycenter of the system indefinitely" I'm not an astrophysicist, but don't binary systems lose energy via gravitational radiation, and therefore eventually spiral into the barycentre? I appreciate it would be very slow, but it's not indefinite is it?

Yes. Also Future_of_an_expanding_universe also says that (star) matter will decay (and escape) or turn into black holes and evaporate via Hawking radiation. That level of nitpicking may not be reasonable in an introduction, though. That's like trying to tell people that parabolic flight should actually be called elliptic flight or atoms should really be called toms or iron-56 is unstable. Darsie42 (talk) 09:15, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I have rewritten this passage to avoid "indefinitely" and clarify the assumptions. -- Beland (talk) 08:01, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Fomalhaut

The bullet point entry says "all" but then lists only two stars; then mentions one of those two stars at the end as "additional". Seems to be confusion over the components in this summary. Mastakos (talk) 00:22, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I couldn't find the text you are referring to. -- Beland (talk) 08:30, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Abundance Error

In the section titled "Abundance", it is stated that 2/3 of stars are singles. This is not true if 1/3 of star systems are multiples. This can easily be corrected by stating 2/3 of star systems are singles. However, if the intention is to make a statement about what portion of the entire population of stars is in a single versus what portion are part of multiple systems, then the answer is that it is likely that more stars are part of multiples than single star systems.

Simple Proof: 1: If there are X star systems and 1/3 are multiples with at least 2 stars and at least one system with 3 or more stars, then there are 1/3 * x * (2+) = a value greater than 2/3x

2: Since there are only 2/3x remaining systems, all with exactly one star then, presuming there isn't a gross precision error in the 1/3 : 2/3 split, then it is likely that the majority of stars reside in multiple systems.

3: For 2/3 of stars to be single, at least (2/3)/(2/3+1/3/2) = 80% of systems would need to be singles. If this is the case, then the 1/3 : 2/3 proportion is thoroughly inaccurate and should be amended. 72.208.247.223 (talk) 11:09, 14 June 2025 (UTC)