text:
Should we use fahrenheit or celsius? Does it matter?
There are two major measurement units: Fahrenheit and Celsius. Us crazy American enthusiasts often use the Fahrenheit system, while the rest of the world uses primarily the Celsius (metric) system.
Which should we use? Should we just specify both? Or does it matter?

We're big kids now, talking about the big stuff. Time to dust off the Kelvin and arm ourselves with it.
Seriously though, in a scientific situation Kelvin is usually used, especially in situations like these where the temperatures we deal with are usually at the extremes.
(Also, just like the policy on AmE vs BrE, we need not expect everything to be in one format. It's good to try to follow a standard though.

I like this idea, really.

As a fan of Fahrenheit, I concur.  Outside of the troposphere, only Kelvin has any relevance.  (And even I don't recommend Rankine. ;)

Duh, I don't know why I didn't think of Kelvin.

To be pedantically correct, the term is kelvin (plural: kelvins) rather than initial caps Kelvin. Think of the unit in terms newtons, ohms, amperes, etc. Give William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin his due respect and lowercase his name when writing about units of temperature. Only a very, very small number of scientists have earned the metrological distinction of having their names lowercased. Lord Kelvin is one of them.

I think sticking to SI units would seem best. If someone needs to add, for example, Fahrenheit temperatures then that could be done within a parenthesis along with the Kelvin or Celsius. But, since there is a standard, we should stick to it.

I suggest we use Celsius in general, but if we are quoting or borrowing numbers from a source we should maintain their unit of choice (providing Celsius in parentheses). Fahrenheit can always be provided in parentheses for convenience.

I tend to respond using the same terminology a questioners use when I answer their questions.
If the questioner asks in terms of degrees Fahrenheit (°F for short), my response is likely to use those units, but parenthetically might also use degrees Celsius (°C for short) or kelvins (K for short), or both. If the questioner asks in terms of degrees Celsius I might toss in a parenthetical kelvins -- but not degrees Fahrenheit. Finally, if the questioner asks in terms of kelvins (K for short, sans the degree symbol), those are the units I'll use in my answer.
As an aside, the correct term is kelvins rather than degrees Kelvin or Kelvins. The spelling should be lowercase (kelvin rather than Kelvin), and the degree symbol (°) is superfluous. That the units are in lowercase when spelled out but uppercase when abbreviated is an extreme honor. Only a very small number of scientists have been metrologically recognized to the extent that have lowercase units named after them. Lord Kelvin is one of those scientists. Respect his name and lowercase it.
In addition, the degrees prefix in degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius indicates that those scales are not absolute. The kelvin scale is absolute; the use of the degrees symbol in conjunction with the temperature unit "kelvin" (K for short, sans the ° symbol) is not needed and has officially been deprecated.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
What should our chatroom be named?
Currently, our chatroom has the (rather unexciting) name 'Colloquium'. In my opinion, we should not be using a common ancient Roman phrase for this modern site. What should our chatroom be named?
Format:

Foo Bar
Because we all like to foo bars!

The Observatory
Maybe too obvious, but I like it.

That would be a wicked name for a mod-only chat room. Freaky ;-)

Yes, this has to be for the mod chat room.

Cosmic Background
I.e. the radiant bunch.

Heh... I see what you did there.

Milliways
It's when we are going anyway. Why not be early?

Reserve me a spot next to the Halfrunt party...

The Local Cluster
Our best known stellar neighborhood.

The Black Hole
It sucks you into chat.

The Sombrero Galaxy
ref: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/815/conversation/the-sombrero-galaxy

Please please please! I even changed my display name for this one!

As someone who is haunted regularly by an elderly lady wearing a sombrero, I approve.

Learning by Cosmosis
It's how astronomers make discoveries

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Are physicsy questions on-topic here?
I'm seeing quite a few physicsy questions. Are they on topic here?
Examples:
If nothing travels at the speed of light, except light, how can a black hole also pull light into itself?
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/69/does-e-equals-mc-squared-apply-to-a-black-hole
Do all the objects in the universe exert force on all other objects?

This issue has been raised elsewhere, so I'm closing this as a duplicate to keep the discussion in one place.

Ah, somehow I didn't make the connection between physics and astrophysics. Thanks!

Good question!
Yes, only if the physics is about the astromony! If you are trying to ask about speed of light in space, its OK!
Some questions might seem to be off-topic because of too low quality or too low searching for answer by the asker.
If you are trying to ask, define astronomy. It can be on-topic but the answer was an easy Google, so the community would downvote them! Or even flag them. So first search thoroughly then ask here!


text:
Balance between professional and enthusiast questions
Something that just occurred to me and probably needs to be discussed - the balance needed between professional and enthusiast questions.  There hasn't really been any problems here thus far, but this needs to be discussed.
Ultimately, any clear question, whether it takes an answerer 10 seconds to find on Wikipedia or such probably should be answered properly.  I have seen on some other sites, where more learned members ridicule the questioner - the net result is often that , for better or worse, the questioner becomes discouraged and does not bother anymore.  Whereas by modelling good answers and questions would more than likely help them.
If the question is badly written (unclear etc), downvote and flag/vote to close - public ridicule does not look good for the site at all.  I'd be interested in what others have to say about this.

I think this is a valid thing to discuss. First of all let me start out by saying that I personally do not know what the right balance between professional/enthusiast questions should be. I've always treated stack exchange sites as a resource for asking non-obvious questions having to do with a given topic. So in that sense (and because I'm a Ph.D student in a physics program), I'd hope that this site would turn into a place for young professionals, students, and others to come for help with more advanced issues. People who come asking questions like, 'Why does the moon orbit the earth?' are simply being lazy. Wikipedia is a perfect resource for things like that. They shouldn't be ridiculed, they should be (kindly) encouraged to not post things that could be found in a matter of seconds.
Bad questions however (meaning issues of ambiguity, clarity, grammar/spelling, etc..), can and should be taken care of through the normal stack exchange up/down vote mechanism.

In my view, at present there are far too many questions that (a) could have been answered by reading wikipedia and/or another site that pops up straight away on a search or (b) are answered by cutting and pasting material from such sites - and sometimes by the same person.
I agree that ridicule is never appropriate, but I think it is appropriate to close questions that show insufficient basic research (eg answer could easily be found on wikipedia) or that fail to specify what it is about such sources that is puzzling or does not answer the question.
This SE will stand/fall by the quality and originality of its Q and A. In my opinion it is falling short compared with other SE sites.

I think this is a strong function of the number of professionals that choose to regularly participate. The beta just opened yesterday, but I can see from the list of those that have signed up that we do not have too many professional astronomers/astrophysics involved (yet). I think that professional participation is the only way that this portal will avoid the fate of the previous Astronomy Stack Exchange, which suffered a slow death.
One of the Area 51 metrics for the success of a Stack Exchange portal is the number of answers per question, with 2.5 being the target, I think it makes sense for both professionals and enthusiasts to answer the same questions, as each answer would likely appeal to different target audiences. A seemingly simple enthusiast question can actually be quite difficult to answer correctly.


text:
Planetary tags for our solar system versus exoplanets
So far we have tags for Venus, Uranus and Neptune (from my questions), I am sure the rest of the solar system planet tags have either already been made or will be soon.  We also have an exoplanet tag for any planet outside of our solar system.
What do members think of a tag for each of the major planets in our solar system, as there are tremendous scope for questions related to individual planets.
General tags such as dwarf planets, asteroids, exoplanets - as there are many of these in existence. Perhaps the only exceptions to this would be for particular cases such as Pluto, Titan etc.
What do people think of this?

It's pretty likely that tags will be introduced for all the interesting objects in the universe as people ask about them.  Singleton tags don't tend to be very useful, but if there's one question on a planet, the odds are good another one will be asked at some point.  It's perfectly ok to have a general tag (exoplanet) and a specific tag (say, 51-peg-b) on the same question.


text:
Who should our moderators be?
Our moderators pro tempore have already been selected.
See Moderator Pro Tem Announcement

Original Post:

If your meta site does not have a post to nominate Moderators, start one now! Pro Tem appointments will begin about two weeks after the site is created. The more guidance we receive, the more informed our choice. Moderator Pro Tempore

Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.
The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.
Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.

We're looking for members of this site who:

Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.
Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.
Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.
Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.

It's also good if the moderators:

Are members with participation in both the meta and main site.
Participated in Area 51, generate social network referrals, or blog about the site.
Are members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community.

Lifted from the meta.space nomination thread.

Looking at the nominees - in any case, we are going to have a top notch team. Like many, I will gladly support whoever is elected.

I'd like to nominate Undo for the position.

He's certainly been a big part of the contributions to the site so far, stretching all the way from day 1 to helping in meta, to editing, reviewing and approving. Always free for a chat in the chat room and always constructive, I can think of no reason why Undo wouldn't be a fantastic resource in guiding the site through its Beta stage.

Thanks Rhys, much obliged!
I'm very flattered that people want me to help moderate this site. I'm certainly willing to dedicate some of my time to this thriving community.
Pros:

Almost 10k on Meta.SO
Enthusiastic
Referred a few users that ended up following through on their commitments.
The three mods I asked for opinions on me moderating here (TildalWave, Pearson, and Manishearth) all were in favor of it.
For some reason, the folks in our chatroom seem to want me to do this.
Active on Space.SE, a probable overlap area.

Cons:

I've never had a diamond before
I'd have to learn on the job
I will most certainly make mistakes.
The folks in our chatroom seem to want me to do this.
I'm not really the best at voting consistently - if I had to choose one weakness as my biggest, this would be it.

I've always been very intrigued by the SE system of moderation. I would very much like to help the site more than I currently can without a diamond. If I'm not chosen, I will still stick around and do what I can as a normal user.

In all seriousness, Undo is also very humble - this and his willingness to learn would make him an ideal mod - that is why we in the chat room want him to do this.

I nominate Donald McLean for the moderator pro tempore position:

Astronomy account
Astronomy Meta account
Stack Exchange account

Donald is a software engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute
  in Baltimore, Maryland. They provide support to the NASA Hubble Space
  Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope projects.

I have no idea if he would be interested for the position, but for what it's worth, he swore he had nothing to do with the dropping of the NOAA-19 satellite on the shop's floor so there's no objective reason why we wouldn't consider him as a suitable candidate. :D

I accept the nomination. If elected, I promise to be a fair and impartial moderator with no agenda other than to make this site the best that we can make it.

I would like to nominate RhysW (myself) for the position

(source: stackexchange.com)

profile for RhysW on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1797843.png

For the two days I have been a part of this beta I have loved every second of it.
Astronomy is one of my favourite topics to the point where I have been taking open university courses on it in my spare time.
In the few days I have been here I have contributed more in questions and answers than I have to every other SE site in the last few months put together.
My main entry into the SE network was about 9 months ago through WorkPlace.SE, another beta site. I have contributed to workplace in many ways:

Answers
Meta posts to guide the site
Welcoming and helping new users
Encouraging participation to get us a blog
Participating heavily in chat
Voting, editing, reviewing
Creating detailed tag wiki's (a work in progress)

And all of these things I will be doing here on Astronomy too!
So as you can see, Astronomy is something that will have my full dedication and participation and is a topic I fully want to see succeed!

Rhys would be very suited for the position - I've gotten to know him pretty well in Chat and on Space.SE. Also, his name pronounced 'Rees' not 'Riz' :)

I want to remind everyone to be comfortable enough to stick out your own neck here. Moderating isn't really a position of self-promotion, but a position of self-dedication.
That said, if you feel you have something to offer the community, go for it!
So I'm going to nominate myself, called2voyage!

profile for called2voyage on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/2359501.png

I've been a committed user over at Space Exploration for a while now, and Astronomy has always been an interest of mine.

I'd like to note that c2v has provided many valuable contributions to both Space and Astro.

[+1] I especially like the line stating "Moderating isn't really a position of self-promotion, but a position of self-dedication" since that proves that called2voyage understood what it means to be a moderator. After all, being a moderator is not about being "the most active", it's about keeping things in order without pushing yourself forward on each and every occasion. That's far more worth than any "score" if you ask me. Therefore, I vote for call2voyage.

I'm going to nominate astromax.

profile for astromax on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1423264.png

Meta: Meta Account
Field knowledge (PhD candidate in Physics)
Delivers excellent answers and knowledge

A man, a legend, an inspiration. I'm nominating Rory Alsop / Dr. Mayhem:

Building Stack Exchange websites on Rock N Roll since est. 1866.
  ► Meta profile

Rory is an IT security professional: He is a moderator on IT Security Stack Exchange
Dr. Mayhem is a Metaltech: He is a moderator on Musical Practice & Performance β
Rory is personally productive: He is a moderator on Personal Productivity β
Rory and Dr. Mayhem are a star: Now nominated to moderate The Local Cluster

Apparently, a man so nice we nominated him twice! :D

Well, with 2 nominations, how could I refuse?
I was actually pretty active on the first incarnation of Astronomy SE, before it got rolled up into Physics (which is where I got most of my Physics rep from), so I'm glad this second iteration has come about, and am keen to see it succeed.
As mentioned, I do enjoy the activities that come under the moderation banner - and feel this is a subject area I can be useful and fair, and help another site develop to graduation and beyond.

I'm sorry, I honestly didn't see Undo already posting a nomination of @RoryAlsop. This will teach me to not write posts with intermezzo :D

I deleted my nomination in favor of this better one - there were two!

I'd like to nominate Manishearth for the position.

profile for Manishearth on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1212053.png

He has experience modding other sites, Physics and Chemistry, and thus would be familiar with the tools already. On top of this he, has shown interest and participation in the site up to its current age. This puts him among one of the top contributors.
No idea if he's interested, though, with the load of modding the two other sites.

I'm afraid I have to decline this. I'd really love to relive the experience of watching a beta site grow and slowly start handling itself1, but I have multiple reasons as to why this isn't possible for me:

Firstly, while I'm very enthusiastic about this site now, I have no a priori plans of staying active here. Don't get me wrong — I've always enjoyed astronomy — but I'm not sure if I can sustain longterm participation in this site. Sites like IT Security and Robotics are other examples of sites on topics I'm enthusiastic about, but where I'm unable to sustain regular participation (mainly due to time constraints)
Time. I'm already extremely busy these days and not able to give enough time to Phys and Chem as I'd like. Fortunately, neither site is suffering due to this, thanks to the community and the mod team. But I'd rather not have to divide my time further.
Conflict of interest. Technically, Astro.SE is a proper subset of Physics.SE, scope-wise. A lot of the community members on Phys would prefer to avoid the fragmentation of the community caused by this new site. I'd rather not step in the middle of that.
I'd also prefer to see some fresh hands at the stern of this site. Moderation experience is a good thing, but given that this site failed in the past we may need some new ideas to get it going. Of course, one doesn't need to be a moderator to do that; but usually its the mods who end up with the job of  stoking the flames of meta. I'm not saying that the mod team of the previous Astro site was incompetent (far from it!), but a fresher perspective is always good. Rhys and Undo are two users who I particularly feel could provide this.

That being said, I'll certainly try to keep up a modicum of participation on this site and work with whatever mods it gets when it comes to the cross-site overlap.
1. It really is an awesome experience. At first you start off with editing and nurturing almost every post you see, but slowly the community takes over some of the various jobs you used to do, usually performing them better than you did! From a moderator's perspective, this is something that feels really nice :) For those hesitant to nominate, you may wish to take this into account!

Wherever I go, he's rocking there. I really hate this guy. (But, a funny mod) :P

I'd like to nominate TildalWave:

He's already the moderator of Space Exploration SE, so he may be a bit busy, but on the other hand, that site is partially related to Astronomy, so he may be helpful and may have useful information, even on this site.

Much obliged, but I respectfully decline my nomination.
This idea of me nominating for the Astronomy Stack Exchange has been mentioned before in both Space Exploration and Astronomy main chat rooms, where I have listed several reasons why I don't think it would be the best idea:

@RhysW You're spot on the money there, I don't plan on nominating. If
  it will end up being a call of duty, then I probably wouldn't say no
  and pretend I'm hard to get, but I'd much rather see exclusively to
  this site dedicated pro tem mods. We'll work together a lot anyway. ► Transcript

and

@RhysW Honestly, it's not because of the workload, it's more trusting
  oneself to not become partial to one site more than the other, when
  they're quite similar in nature. If it was two utterly distinct sites
  and I'd be into both, I wouldn't hesitate. But with these two, I'm not
  even hesitant, I know it wouldn't be the best idea. It's just human to
  compare two similar things, but is not good for either of the sites,
  they should evolve independently. ► Transcript

Just to be clear, these are my replies to suggestions I take on moderating a new, beta Stack Exchange website that has its scope partially intertwined with Space Exploration, where I'm currently a pro tem. Most of these arguments of course fail for already graduated sites, and I'm not saying I might not consider such nomination on future elections. So, with my honest wishes this Astronomy 2.0 site makes it, and my intention to of course still participate here in a non-moderating capacity, I have to decline this nomination for a pro tem.
Whoever the Stack Exchange community managers choose for Astronomy pro tempore moderators will be working fairly tightly with Space Exploration and Physics Stack Exchange websites both in refining their respectful websites' scope, as well as sharing and migrating contents, so mixing these positions between too similar in contents websites might not be in the best interests of any.
You all deserve to get your own, 100% dedicated to this website moderators that will never be in doubt which site's interests to put in front first. Thank you for your trust though, the nomination is still very flattering!

@TildalWave as you wish! It was just a quick idea - and I'm not visiting chatrooms often.

Lol -2. What the...?


text:
Attribution of sources used in questions and answers
Any and all sources, particularly when we are quoting from another website, journal article, book etc. must be properly attributed to the source.
Attributions can take the following forms (and folks are welcome to add to this):

A link to the web source, this should contain the name of the article (in case of dead links later on) and attribution to the author and/or organisation.
A full reference for non-online resources (yes, they do exist).

Failure to attribute to the resources is outright plagiarism and is not only unethical, it is in many cases, illegal.  At the very least, it casts a very negative light over this site.
Basically, if you did not write it, even if you did - give a full link, hence full credit to who wrote it and where the information came from.
All members need to keep an eye out for this activity - if you see it, downvote and flag it.  It is almost tacit approval if people upvote a plagiarised question or answer.
Anecdotal side note:  I have had my work plagiarised before, I can tell you from the receiving end of that, it is a awful feeling.

Is it possible to have an update on how this policy is working out. It seems to me that Astronomy SE contains a high % of answers that simply cut and paste from other sources. Often these are attributed, but equally these are often from sites which assert a copy right with "all rights reserved". I have noted in the last few days that even when flagged there is inconsistent treatment of these.

This is insufficient. It needs to be made clear which words are not the authors and where they have been taken from.

@RobJeffries I know this comment is old, but in case this is a still a concern: If you suspect the usage of material violates the terms under which that material was shared (including cases where material is not explicitly licensed), please flag those posts with a custom message giving a brief explanation of what the problem is.

@RobJeffries And if you feel the text in the question or answer here needs to be more explicit with attribution guidelines, feel free to edit them.

Absolutely agree, and might I add that in some cases where individual users tend to blindly copy/paste off other sources and conveniently:

forget to use quotation markup, a.k.a. blockquote for extracted materials, and
tend not to clearly attribute their sources with original author's or source name and link, where possible

and do this frequently or don't pay any attention to continuous reminders from others, this will have to be sanctioned with a suspension of the user account for the duration that should suffice to read and understand the Attribution Required Stack Exchange blog post, that is linked to on all Stack Exchange pages in the footer, saying:

user contributions licensed under cc-wiki with attribution required

This is an even more sensitive matter for a young beta website, and failing to keep this under control can result in consequences for the whole website that might result in failing to graduate. This is not an official Stack Exchange statement, but I can see it hitting us like a boomerang after complaints are filed at the head office.

Additionally, users answering questions should understand the materials they copy off other sources and be ready for follow ups in the comments and improve their contributions when requested. Comment threads ending like this:

I don't know - I didn't write the article.

which actually happened here, on this website, an hour ago, should never ever reappear, unless we are building a website that will serve as a target for mockery of others. And I don't think we're here to waste our time on comical low quality. Not those asking questions, not those answering them, or worse yet, new members reading such threads and getting fair yet unfavorable impression where they ended up at the same time.
Thanks!

I cannot upvote this enough. Especially "never ever reappear".


text:
Tags to synonymise, merge or nuke
I have just reached the 'can make tag synonyms', so thought making this discussion would be prudent.
Which tags should be synonymised, merged or nuked.  Discuss them here!

For ease of use maybe do one suggestion per post, to allow it to be voted on and discussed individually

In terms of voting, how many votes before we take action?

24 hours from the time the answer was posted gives every timezone to have seen it, after 24 hours maybe take action then if it is positively voted? 1 person cannot make a synonymisation alone anyhow, it requires others to vote approval

The OP seems to be not a user any more, is anyone still monitoring this issue?

@FJC Yes, it is still being monitored.


text:
Homework policy
Although this issue more than likely won't be as much of an issue as say, Physics.SE and Mathematics.SE, there could still be astronomy-based homework questions.  I think we need to hash out a homework question policy, just in case.
I am not really keen on a homework tag at all, as questions should be about specific astronomy topics.

homework of this topic would usually be a school project, or university student questions.

What do other think?

My opinion on the subject is that

We probably won't have a huge amount of homework questions,
We should accept the questions as long as they follow our other rules.

For example, following our other rules would mean:

'why does the universe has stuff in it' would be closed as too broad.
'For a planet with as much mass as foo has, why does it do x?' would be perfectly fine.

Basically, we shouldn't really even care about whether the question is homework or not. If it's a good question, it's a good question. If it's too broad, it's too broad. That's my opinion on the matter.

So, you agree - no [tag:homework] tag

We probably don't need it, yes.

Although I agree a homework tag is not necessary, I'm surprised it hasn't been debated more here.
The main argument for having a homework tag, I think, is it would allow people to avoid or seek out those questions more easily (depending on their personal preference).
It also might make it easier to search for if the problem has already been asked.
"I am not really keen on a homework tag at all, as questions should be about specific astronomy topics."
I agree that a question should be specific and related to astronomy but couldn't we just make the homework tag not stand alone (meaning, someone would need to include another tag as well as the homework tag)?

It looks like we have about 10 homework questions (that are openly acknowledged as such--if they aren't acknowledged, it's not worth trying to force the tag on the OP), so it may be worth revisiting this discussion.


text:
Everyone ask ONE expert question today!
We're having some... Trouble. Namely, we have been held back from graduating to a public beta for one more week.
Why? Many of our questions are very basic. How can we fix this? Ask more meaty questions!
I've noticed just a bit of confusion on just exactly what 'meatier' means - interpretations range from adding details to uploading four butchered cows.
Here's my take on it: We need to ask expert, detailed questions. Questions that you would think are just out of reach of many people, or would need data to be combined, etc.
Questions that would have an answer which would create new information. Questions which would take existing information and put it to use, creating a result that future Googlers might find interesting.
Questions which would require new information to be gathered are awesome. Hard to think of, but awesome.
Let's ask what the proper nail spacing is on 1/4" drywall coated in plexiglass, not how to put up drywall. There is already information better than what we could provide.
To bring the analogy to Astronomy, ask how to collimate a telescope with a laser collimator, not how to look at Mars.
So, here's my encouragement to everyone: we can get over this. We will get over this. All we need is for everyone that sees this to pitch in and help.
There are just over two hundred of us here. A little over a hundred signed up for private beta, maybe fifteen are really actively participating. But if everyone that sees this asks one good question, we can make a huge, and much needed, positive impact to the site.
I'll admit that I'm not the best at thinking up questions. It's hard. But we have some of the smartest people in the world here (that's you, O reader), and together we can certainly think of some awesome questions. Your question might inspire me.
If you're unsure about whether your question would be bad, fine, good or awesome, we're always free in our chatroom. Please, feel free to ask us. We're in this together.

+1 Undo for President of the Universe

Does it count, for example? http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/400/is-the-surface-of-tres-2b-actually-dark

@Zolt I would say that's an expert question, yes.

I would like to add, also provide answers to some of the questions being posed.
Researching and writing answers is not that onerous, just go into Google Scholar or something similar, find a couple of relevant articles, read them and write an answer from them (remembering to give proper attribution).

This comment courtesy of TildalWave :)

Since it's an astronomy related site, I would prefer ADS over Google Scholar to find good sources; even though the search engine is not Google's, it is definitely more astro-focused. Digging in astro-ph could also worth it (and you're sure everything is freely available).

@MBR even better!  never knew those existed - awesome, thank you for these - it will make searching a lot easier.


text:
What is the status of this beta?
I am wondering what the status of this beta is?  Are we going to launch or are we going to fold (and our posts migrated)?
The drop off in activity can be explained as a sign that we need new members, i.e. go public.  With that in mind, wouldn't it be best to let the greater SE community decide, by their activity (or lack thereof)?

The drop in activity is pretty normal for two week betas. I don't think that we need to be too cncerned about it.

Yes, we definitely need new blood. Activity suggests we've somewhat tired, which is perfectly normal. More members, more activity, and now less active members will become more active too, because it gets more interesting. It's that simple. We've prepared the table, now we need guests so this feast can commence before the food gets cold. Open the doors! We'll serve desserts after the main course. ;)

Rather late to comment after 7 years, but the questions seems intersting still. Astronomy SE is still beta.

This could be closed now the site is no longer in beta.

I'm pleased to announce that Astronomy (2.0) will be entering public beta this week.  We've been continually impressed with the enthusiasm here and have high hopes for this site to achieve Stack Exchange's goal to provide "expert answers to your questions".  Overall with the response to the extra week in private beta has been encouraging and am looking forward to your progress in the next few months.
As the site goes public, think about who you might invite to participate in the site and think about the 7 essential questions.  On the main site, keep asking and answering the sorts of questions that will be interesting to knowledgeable astronomers either of the research or backyard variety.

Thank you for allowing us to continue on in the beta process. We won't disappoint.

This is great news (am having a very good day today) - this news, the news that I am cleared of cancer (Hve hd a scare for the past 3 months) and have got 2 more academic papers published.


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Do we have a newsletter?
I went over to the newsletter list to subscribe to our newsletter - a weekly email SE sends you containing recent popular questions, a nice way to keep up on the overall taste of the site:

I don't know if I'm looking too soon, but a search for astronomy yields...

Nothing.
Are we going to have one? Am I jumping the gun in looking for it just a few hours after public beta opened?

Yes, you're jumping the gun. :P I'm not sure what all is involved with enabling it, even though there might be the required mass of questions already, but it took some days (no idea how many) on [Space.SE] for it to appear in the list. When it will, it will most likely be available at this address. I just get an image of a  cute tumbling panda with a 404 error message for the moment, saying Oops! Something Bad Happened!, tho. And that it is their fault, not mine. Well, I knew that already LOL

Newsletters get enabled some time after the site activates because there's some extra design effort involved.

The design team has now added our newsletter.


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List of resources?
I notice many people ask questions similar to:

Where can I find a list of full/new moons?
When does the sun/moon rise/set in my area on a given date?
How do I compute planetary/lunar positions very accurately?
How do I convert ra/dec to alt/az

and so on. Should we post a list of links to external resources (eg, HORIZONS and other NASA pages) somewhere, and, if so, where?

When someone asks a question which folks are likely to ask over and over, you should use that opportunity to create a really awesome, canonical answer to make this an invaluable resource on the Internet.
For example, if someone were to ask when the sun/moon rise/set on a given date, don't give them the time or answer with a hyperlink to some other discussion group somewhere. Write a detailed, step-by-step, ultra-clear guide with screenshots and examples. Really teach folks looking for that information how to find or derive that information for themselves.
That's how you build up a body of answers to common questions in Astronomy. Those questions will bring in lots of traffic from search engines. And if you can provide great answers to those questions, you stand a great chance of attracting some great new users who will add value for years to come.
You can't really do that with a single page with a list of links.


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Are questions about installing astronomy-related python packages on topic?
In particular, PyRAF is a tool for analyzing spectra. Aside from its documentation there are few online resources about it, and no question and answer sites for it. Can the Astronomy Stack Exchange fill that gap?
The proposed question: After installing PyRAF with
        $pip install stsci.distutils and
        $pip install stscipython
I try to run it with $pyraf or, in python, >>> import pyraf. Both actions give a segmentation fault: 11
How can I install the software so that it will run properly?

I see no reason that such a question couldn't be asked here since our relevant topics include:

Setting up, using and maintaining your astronomy related equipment

Software could be viewed in a sense as virtual equipment.
Of course, if the software package were not astronomy specific it would not be on topic. There is the risk that the answer to the question is not specific to that particular software package, but I don't think that is a good reason to deem the question irrelevant.


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Are order of magnitude approximation questions on-topic?
Are order of magnitude approximation questions on-topic?
e.g. How long (order of magnitude) did it take for Pluto to form to 90% of its size?
This seems like an on-topic Astrophysics problem, but will likely result in a number of different answers. The only way to determine which answer is the best would be by upvoting.
Is this an appropriate question for Astronomy Stack Exchange?

Yes, for answers in which a order of magnitude estimation is the best available, then that should be the answer. It should perhaps be left to the answerer of a question what is an appropriate level of accuracy, though I see nothing wrong with questioners indicating that a "Fermi estimate" is sufficient for them.
That "the only way to decide which answer is best is by upvoting" seems to be no problem at all, indeed, that is the principle paradigm of the site.

Not just here, but in all Science SE's, 'cept Math.


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Should out of date/obsolete questions be closed
This question about a sky object from 2013 is of not much value anymore, even if we assume an event that repeats yearly.
(It's not a good question either: no location, no picture or sketch)
Do we close questions like this because they are obsolete?
With what reason?

In general they should be left. The example you gave is a poor question, and could be closed as "unclear", but a good answer can be given to a such a question along the lines of "That was Jupiter, and here is how you can identify sky objects...", or "No, the bright star in south at midnight was not Venus, and here is why..."
Answers like these can improve the "sky literacy" of people who browse this site.


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Do we have a FAQ?
Does this site (meaning the actual site, not the meta site) have a FAQ? I notice several questions are asked repeatedly, and it might be nice to have a prominently displayed FAQ.

What kinds of questions? You mean like posts on the main site? Normally, the course of action with these is to close as duplicate.
In cases like "where can I find the positions of the planets tonight" or "where can I find a catalog of stars" or "how can I visualize what tonight's sky will look like" the titles are certainly generic enough to have one canonical post (not necessarily one canonical answer, one post can have multiple answers). If the body of the posts is actually more specific than the title, than either the title should be edited to be more specific or the body should be edited to be more generic.
It is possible to answer "where can I see Venus" in a way that is more specific than "how can I see what the sky looks like tonight". Regardless, there are some cases where it is appropriate to ask the user to broaden the question. Creating a question just to provide a canonical answer is not looked well upon on all SE sites--each site handles it differently. Maybe propose that as an answer to this question (answering your own meta question is always fine) and see how people vote on it.

No, and the reason is that questions closed as duplicates that haven't any up-voted answers are automatically deleted during system cleanups (after quite long period of inactivity), and duplicates with good answers are often merged with those questions they're duplicates of. So there's no easy way of constructing a FAQ that would be meaningful and at the same time only present live links.
There are some tools that could help you estimate which questions can be considered as FAQ, however; First stop could be Stack Exchange Data Explorer in which this Most frequently asked (not answered) questions query has been prepared. Current results look like this:

And so on and I'm not sure these results are representative of what could be considered as Astronomy FAQ. Not thus far at least, with only 7 questions having more than one other question that was closed as a duplicate of it.
There is of course also the Frequent Questions display option on the site which lists questions that were most linked to in other Q&A threads, and a not really advertised Greatest Hits page you might not know about.
So I'm not sure that having some FAQ functionality would be very useful. Visitors seeking answers can use site search, filter with the help of tags, are being pointed to similar threads by our members in their contributions, the list of which also displays in the Linked and Related sidebars, and when they're writing a new question, the system will display a list of similar already asked questions as they type away. Ad those questions closed as duplicates display at the top where and how many answers can be found on the topic.


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Topic of the Week: [astrometry]
Topic of the week is a week where we make an effort to ask and answer more questions around a specific tag, this brings more attention to the topic which in turn should bring us more views and users who are interested in those areas.
Topic of the week helps us flesh out topics that look like they could use a bit more attention.
Feel free to post an answer, suggesting a tag each, maybe with some reasoning to get voted on so we can see what you would like to ask and answer more questions on.
A quick note, ones that might be worth suggesting could be topics around a certain event, i.e if a meteor shower is about to happen then having that as topic of the week before / during that period would obviously be very advantageous.
Weeks (active in bold):

December 8-14, 2013 - spectroscopy
December 15-21, 2013 - amateur-observing
December 21-28, 2013 - N/A
December 29, 2013 - January 4, 2014 - milky-way
January 5-11, 2014 - astrometry

If current week doesn't have a topic selected, then the previously week's topic stays active until a new topic is selected by votes on the suggestions in the answers below. Please vote on those answers that aren't indicated as already used.

Archived Topics

amateur-observing (used December 15-21, 2013)

Wikipedia on Amateur astronomy
Amateur astronomy, also called backyard astronomy and stargazing, is a
  hobby whose participants enjoy watching the sky, and the abundance of
  objects found in it, mainly with portable telescopes and binoculars.
  Even though scientific research is not their main goal, many amateur
  astronomers make a contribution to astronomy by monitoring variable
  stars, tracking asteroids and discovering transient objects, such as
  comets and novae.

I also suggest creating a few tag synonyms like backyard-astronomy, stargazing and amateur-astronomy, and already existing tag amateur should likely also be a synonym of one of its more descriptive alternatives, so the topics and tags are easier to find due to many synonyms used to describe non-academic, non-professional astronomy.
(Suggested changes made)

astrometry (January 5-11, 2014)

Astrometry is the branch of astronomy that involves precise
  measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other
  celestial bodies. The information obtained by astrometric measurements
  provides information on the kinematics and physical origin of our
  Solar System and our galaxy, the Milky Way.

This tag doesn't yet exist, so it might be worth adding it beforehand, if this suggestion is accepted for a TOTW. But since we recently launched ESA's Gaia towards a Lissajous orbit at Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point and is tasked with mapping one billion stars of the Milky Way (only ~ ⅓%, but still a feat with no comparison if all goes well), measure precise distance to them and track their movement with two 1000 megapixel cameras that are precise enough to detect a Euro coin from the surface of the Earth if it was placed on the Moon, or resolve a human hair from 1000 kilometers away, I thought this topic might be interesting enough to a wider audience. ;)

spectroscopy (used December 8-14, 2013)

Astronomical spectroscopy is the technique of spectroscopy used in astronomy. The object of study is the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, which radiates from stars and other hot celestial objects. Spectroscopy can be used to derive many properties of distant stars and galaxies, such as their chemical composition, temperature, density, mass, distance, luminosity, and relative motion using Doppler shift measurements.
Astronomical spectroscopy can be broken down into three major bands: optical, radio, and X-ray. While all spectroscopy looks at specific areas of the spectrum, different methods are required to acquire the signal depending on the frequency/wavelength. Ozone (O3) and molecular oxygen (O2) absorb light with wavelengths under 300 nm, meaning that X-ray and ultraviolet spectroscopy require the use of a satellite telescope and/or rocket mounted detectors. Radio signals have much longer wavelengths than optical signals, and require the use of antennas or radio dishes. Infrared light is absorbed by atmospheric water and carbon dioxide, so while the equipment is similar to that used in optical spectroscopy, satellites are required to record much of the infrared spectrum.

 from Wikipedia
Example questions:

How does one determine the effective temperature of a star from its spectrum?
How well can we in principle determine $T_{\textrm{eff}}$ of a star?

milky-way (used December 29, 2013 - January 4, 2014)
Nothing more fascinating than learning about our place in the universe and how our galaxy is nothing more but one in billions, nothing partuclar about it.

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System.Its name
"milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching
across the night sky in which the naked eye cannot distinguish
individual stars.
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy some 100,000–120,000
light-years in diameter which contains 100–400 billion stars. It may
contain at least as many planets as well. The Solar System is located
within the disk, about 27,000 light-years away from the Galactic
Center, on the inner edge of a spiral-shaped concentration of gas and
dust called the Orion–Cygnus Arm. The stars in the inner ≈10,000
light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the
bulge. The very center is marked by an intense radio source named
Sagittarius A* which is likely to be a supermassive black hole.

Example questions:
What is the age of the Milky Way compared to the Universe?
What is the proof that the Milky Way is a barred spiral?
Was the Milky Way galaxy once a Quasar?


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Areas of interest and expertise of members
It would be interesting if members (should they choose to) detailed their areas of interest and expertise.  Just as a very rough gauge about where the community is at with regards to Astronomy.

I'll start off:
Expertise:
Planetary atmospheres, ultraviolet radiation
Interests:
Planetary atmospheres, ultraviolet radiation, planetary/solar system evolution, exoplanets, amateur radio-astronomy

Expertise:
Software engineering and design, project management
Previous areas of study:
Cosmology, black holes
Interests:
I'm going to list interests relevant to Space Exploration as well as here.
Planetary sciences, colonization, astrobiology, exoplanets, cosmology

Expertise:
star formation, interstellar medium, angular momentum transport processes, protostellar/protoplanetary disks, magnetic fields in astrophysics, stellar evolution, stellar atmosphere, high performance computing
Interest:
Almost everything (but I'm not really into cosmology, that's all)

Expertise:
cosmology, larger scale structure of the universe.
In the near future instrument pipeline
(I'm a postdoc)
Interests:
mostly what is in my expertise. Programming.

I'm an undergraduate student, who tends to read arXiv papers he doesn't understand.
Expertise
None. I know basic GTR and have some knowledge of the various aspects of astrophysics.
Interests (pertaining to this site)
Cosmology and astrophysics.

Expertise:
Aerodynamics, Conceptual Designs, Frontend Development, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Interests:
Everything: The Cosmos, Longevity and Space Propulsion Systems


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Non-expert questions
Specifically, mine.  As you would know, I am not a professional nor expert in astronomy (am an applied atmospheric physicist and a teacher and as I often say in chat, I am as dumb as a box of rocks), but I have written almost 60 questions and answers (my questions alone are over 10% of the site total).
One of my questions was listed as an example of a question of concern in an earlier meta post ad several of my questions are unanswered.
I am now concerned that my non-expert contributions have diluted the professional goal for the site.  I have slowed down significantly, but are still worried.
Is there anything more I can do to help build the professional stature of the site?

Astrophysics is a very broad topic, and this is still an extremely new Stack. Few people who can ask technical questions will have visited here yet, and there's not always someone here who really knows how to answer something.
Once we build up a more significant population of regulars, I would hope to see a greater variety in the questions, and more folks with the expertise to answer them.
No, I don't think non-technical contributions dilute the site. As long as it's relevant and interesting, it's good astronomy. Perhaps a split in the far future into separate astronomy (non-technical) and astrophysics (technical) forums would be appropriate, but right now I doubt that we have the numbers.

There is a difference between non-technical and non-expert - I am referring to the latter.

@UV-D Touché, I missed the precision of that distinction. That being said, if questions and answers are of high quality then it doesn't matter who wrote them. If you're not an expert on the topic, writing an answer will take a little research, and that's not a bad thing. Both people learn something new. Your unanswered questions are good questions, but sometimes there's something only an expert can answer well.

If you really want to help build the professional stature of the site you may be interested in reading this short answer by Robert.
We currently have a high number of theoretical questions, this isn't a bad thing, those questions are on topic, and we will continue to welcome them with open arms
But we could benefit hugely by getting more practical questions too! These types of questions arise when you grab your telescope, venture out to a hill and actually experience some issues or actually stumble across a problem you need solving. How do you maintain your telescope? How can you keep it flat on a rough surface? How can you account for problem X Y Z....
There are literally thousands of these types of questions out there and we are ready and eager to tap into them!
If you really want to help and are bothered by your own volume of theoretical questions, then please realise you are more than welcome to start throwing practical questions in the mix too! After all, that is one of our main target audiences!
So in conclusion, no, I wouldn't worry about your previous questions, you haven't single-handedly ruined the site, quite the opposite, you have provided a large amount of on-topic initial questions to get us started, I can tell you are ready and eager to help the site succeed and the best way we can achieve that is to lead by example! The best way we can do that is to have a higher percentage of practical questions and answers.
Hope this helps!

Okay, the only practical side of things I have is about amateur radio astronomy... I will see what I can do.  However, theoretical (planetary) astronomy is where my passion is and planetary atmospheres is about as cloe as expert as I go.

I will make a compromise, Will only ask about radio astronomy, but will answer anything I can.


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Support Physics Problem Solving on Area 51
I know there are many Physics enthusiasts on Astronomy SE. I would invite them to have a look at the new site proposal on Area 51
Presently Physics SE isn't meant for problem-solving. It is more about specific physics concepts. The new site wishes to be what Physics SE isn't i.e. a platform to discuss various ways of solving a problem and helping users find out their mistakes while solving. See the meta post on Physics SE to get a better idea.
At the moment we lack followers on the proposal. But I think it can be a successful site. Do have a look and leave your suggestions on the meta post. Thank you.

As SE employees have killed the proposal on Area51, that community is now living outside the SE network here: http://physicsproblems.nfshost.com


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Are we graduating sometime soon?
Just a question about how we are doing - statistically, on Area 51, it doesn't look too bad.
I understand that many members are busy people (in real life), I know I am (5 jobs, 12 research projects etc). But despite this, there is still a steady stream of questions and answers.
My question is how close are we to graduating?  and what is needed to help us get to that point?

We've had this question come up on Space Exploration and Astronomy a couple of times. Basically, the deal is that Stack Exchange policy has changed a little bit so that Beta isn't exactly considered a temporary state anymore. Some sites could stay in Beta forever (without being at risk of being closed) if they are more minimal. However, I do believe Space Exploration and Astronomy are on the path to graduation, but it is not a process that there is any desire to rush. The community team will continue to let us grow until we are truly stable.

@called2voyage Does a clear growing tendency exist in the long-term stats?

@peterh Yes, a clear growing tendency exists from the start of the site.

@called2voyage Thanks! Then all is fine, it is only matter of time.

@peterh Not to be cynical, but the growth rate does not monotonically increase. Rather, Astro SE cycles between high activity and low activity. Using this tool, we see that the questions per day hasn't improved much over the last three years, but the visits per day has steadily grown. I think it's too early to tell whether the questions per day is increasing overall, but I'm still hopeful that the site will eventually graduate.

Not monotonic? Do people actually quit the stack? Why? I'd expect growth rate to speed up and slow down, but not see actual membership decreases.


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Canonical question for “What is this light in the sky?”
Do we have a good question that we can point to (as a duplicate) for the I saw this light in the sky questions, that don't have enough information?. I could not find a good one.
I'm thinking about a question that has answers that can be used as 'determination guides'.
Should we write one? (How can I identify this light that I saw in the sky?)
A community wiki?
FWIW: Currently

63 questions with 'light in the sky'
8 questions with 'strange light'
9 questions tagged ufo

No need to close as duplicate. If it's a poor question, just close as unclear what you're asking. You can point the user to our help resources which indicate that we have strict requirements for such questions.

The last point in https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/13489/21 sort of answers this + it may be a good "quick comment" answer for people who don't know it exists?

If anyone wants to indicate a dupe, this could be it: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/11634/star-like-light-moving-in-the-sky-what-could-it-be

Copying call2voyage's comment:

No need to close as duplicate. If it's a poor question, just close as unclear what you're asking. You can point the user to our help resources which indicate that we have strict requirements for such questions.

For reference: This is what the What topics can I ask about page says:

What about that thing in the sky?
Avoid asking questions about unidentified aerial objects unless you are prepared to provide detailed pictures and/or sufficient description to identify the time, location, and characteristics of the sighted object. Specifically, this is not a UFO reporting site, but identifying things in the sky is a part of astronomy. If you must ask about that thing in the sky, be prepared to explain a lot and add additional information requested by commenters, or your question may be closed quickly.

Copying from barrycarter's comment under my question:
You may want to leave a comment pointing to this answer with resources for identification.


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What's with the amount of spam here?
Over at least the last half year I noticed spam popping up here, that I do not see on the other 15-20 SE sites that I visit (with the same frequency).
What makes Astronomy.se different? More spam, Bayesian filters not effective in relation to the subjects, not enough human eyes?

I'm curious, too. SmokeDetector is reporting a lot recently, which is quite abnormal given the regular traffic on this site.

This site is hitting hard these days, lol.

Interesting is the "Reports by site" graph here - last month Astronomy had even more spam reports than e.g. Meta.SE or Drupal.SE

@ByteCommander Adding to that, given that the traffic here is only about 2.7k/d whereas there's 6k/d on Meta and a whopping 14k on Drupal, it seems like this site has a special attraction to spam :)

Related question for a site which had/has the same problem. It seems we just don't know the answer.

Anyway, don't worry. SmokeDetector is permanently monitoring spams and we'll help nuke them quickly.

Looks indeed like Astronomy is getting the short end of a long stick at the moment. Maybe there's a specific campaign targeting astronomy going on

Have we checked if these are coming from the same IP address? If that's the case, could the mods IP ban?

I also notice that it hangs around longer than on other sites. Fewer users -> fewer flags -> less frequent opportunities to flag spam -> more visibility for spam. Charcoal's doing a good job of mitigating that, of course, with some automatic flag casting, but we still need frequent Astronomy Stack Exchange users to finish the job.

@SirCumference Not usually from the same IP address--when it is I do IP ban.

On the plus side, all of this spam apparently has helped a lot of people get the deputy badge, almost half of which have been rewarded in the last couple of months. Also on the plus side: I've noticed that the volume of spam appears to have fallen off considerably in the last week or two.

I'm afraid this question can only be answered by those spammers, which is never going to happen. So this may be left as an eternal mystery.
Given the recent reports by SmokeDetector, it seems there's no special pattern in the contents or the type of spam here. We're noticing the same spam posts all over the Stack Exchange network, so we can only guess headlessly. Maybe a specific campaign targeting this site or whatever.
By the way, Drupal Answers once had a similar question, and it's left a mystery, too.
Don't worry, Smokey is constantly scanning the whole Stack Exchange network for spams. We will do whatever we can to help you nuke the spam posts quickly. Even if Smokey misses one, we can still manually find it and purge it.


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Link in user profile wants to install PUPs (potentially unwanted programs)
WARNING: Follow the links mentioned here with care.
The profile description for new user Solenodon Paradoxus, has a link to his/her blog at solenodus dot com which redirects to reps.appcase.com, which then does a 'Are you a human check' and then wants to install a 'Safe Browsing Extension' into my FireFox browser.
Things like these are a big NO-NO in my book.
Does someone need to undertake action?
Hold the press. I thought I'd try a second time, to check if this was cookie-controlled, and happens only one time. Now I get redirected to https://google-nl.promotioneleprijs.pw
Someone needs to undertake action. At a minumum his blog is hacked, at a maximum this is someone with bad intentions.

I wonder if this is similar: I clicked on an imgur link in an SE chat room and ended up at a url in India with a screen that looked like Google; what happened?

@uhoh That sounds like malvertising, possibly in combination with ISP advert injection; this sounds like site takeover. Similar in the sense that it's all malware. BTW that blog domain is now down.

Thank you for letting us know about this. I've edited the links out of the user's profile and have privately let them know about the issue. As far as I can tell from looking at archived versions of the page, the domain was originally actively used by this person, but has since lapsed, so I think this problem wasn't malicious - but certainly something we needed to address.
It turned out that the user was unaware that the domain had lapsed, and the mistake was indeed innocent. All's well that ends well.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Is the [ufo] tag on-topic for this site?
Is the [ufo] tag actually on-topic for this site? The help page discourages questions about satellites and notes we are not a UFO-reporting site. Most of the questions tagged with this are of the "what is this light I saw in the sky" nature and mostly appear to be related to satellites, for which there is already a tag. Given this, do we need or want [ufo]?

I've never really liked questions about lights in the sky. They tend to list the location, time, and color of the lights . . . and that's about it. Invariably, we have nowhere near enough information to give an accurate answer because none of us were there at the same time, and we have no way to gather additional data. It's so bad that we tend to close them as duplicates of Star like light moving in the sky, what could it be?. Even if we can figure something out, the culprit is usually an airplane, a satellite, or sometimes the ISS.
Yes, I agree with you that ufo questions should be firmly off-topic, as should basically any questions of the form "I-saw-a-moving-light-in-the-sky-and-I'd-like-to-know-what-it-is", because odds are good we won't be able to answer it. That said, I don't want to suggest imposing a blanket ban on asking to identify an object in the sky (especially if it's a deep sky object). My proposal, then, is to allow questions that are asking us to identify clearly celestial bodies, not lights that zip across the sky. The criteria I'd suggest such questions meet are:

The object should be either stationary or should move very slowly, implying that its apparent movement is merely due to Earth's rotation; in other words, it's essentially fixed in the sky.
The asker should give the details (location, time of day, date) of when they observed the object.
If it's possible to give the object's coordinates (e.g. right ascension and declination), then that's a must.
If the OP has photographs (especially high-quality ones), they should ideally be posted.

This might make it easier for us to match the celestial object to the expected positions of known objects - planets, bright stars, etc. Plus, in the course of gathering this data, the asker might very well end up figuring out the question on their own.
I don't necessarily want to end up having a bunch of "What's this star?" questions, because those could be equally unanswerable, but at least forcing the asker to provide details according to these criteria should narrow down the current set of completely unanswerable light-in-the-sky questions to a smaller set of potentially answerable (and much more likely about actually astronomical objects) questions that would be suitable for the site.
I'm being a bit long-winded here, but yes, I would argue that the ufo tag should be off-topic here (those questions are poorly-written, hard to answer, and not about astronomy), as should a broader subset of questions we get.

I agree - I just replaced all [tag:ufo] tags with [tag:identify-this-object].


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Do we need a notice about billionaire space ventures?
It seems that every time a certain billionaire launches a bunch of satellites in his quest to inflict the internet on every last corner of the Earth we get a whole bunch of "what are these objects moving in a straight line" questions.
Should we put a notice on the "ask question" page about checking whether said billionaire has recently been launching stuff before asking the umpteenth question on this subject, or something to this effect?

I added the feature request tag as well, because we don't have the capability to add a notice to the ask question page on our own, that would be something SE would have to add.

I've linked to your question here.

Yes.

update: Additional problems:

Premature, reflexive close-voting of Several stars in line because it has the words "stars" and "line". It hasn't been established for sure that they are moving and there are only three stars which could be orion's belt if static, or the A-train constellation if moving.
Overzealous down voting of Stars are moving in row What could it be? attempts to penalize one new user for other new user's equally valid questions. SE never requires people to search the site before asking their first question. We should do that in helpful comments, not silent, anonymous down votes.

I think it's a great idea if such a thing can be done. If we had AI it could sense "line of stars or objects" somehow and pop a message up asking "do you think it could be some billionaire space venture" or a more appropriate message.
I don't think that the rate of these question has reached anything like an annoyance or pain threshold yet, so at least currently these can be addressed by closing as duplicate with the "does this answer your question" auto-generated.
In the mean time, it is important to remember that each time a new user comes here to ask about this phenomenon (or anything else) it is a new and different individual coming to Stack Exchange to learn a little bit about Astronomy, and we need to treat them the same way as any other person asking their first SE question.


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Duplicate Sagittarius A* tags
We have tags for both sgr-a and sagittarius-a, which should presumably be merged. The actual usage of both of these tags shows they are both actually being applied to questions about Sagittarius A* rather than Sagittarius A (Sgr A* is a component of Sgr A). Unfortunately it isn't possible to use an asterisk in a tag name, and "sagittarius-a-star" seems misleading. Any suggestions about how to handle this?

I'll merge them. As for your last question, we could make a sagittarius-a-asterisk tag, but since Sagittarius A* is a component of Sagittarius A, I don't see the need for a separate tag.


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Is astrobiology on topic here?
A question that occurred to me in regards to the off-topic closure of this question about Martian tetanus, are questions about astrobiology on topic here?
The parts of the question about human exploration of Mars are probably off-topic according to my reading of the Help Center (which probably makes the question overall more of a fit for Space Exploration*). Nevertheless there's still an astrobiology side to the question and I'm not sure where astrobiology questions would fit between here, Space Exploration and Biology (maybe).
Any thoughts? And if we do decide that astrobiology belongs here, should we update the Help Center?

* yes I know that being a better fit on a different site is not a close reason, you don't need to explain it to me, and no I didn't vote to close the question.

I think astrobiology as a component of astronomy--that is astrobiology performed using space or ground-based telescopes, should be on topic. Astrobiology that can only be performed by landers/rovers should be left to Space Exploration. Highly speculative astrobiology should be off topic as it is primarily opinion based.


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Is "solve this n-body system for me" on topic here?
Are worldbuilding-style questions which boil down to "is this n-body system I've invented stable" on-topic for this site?
As examples I am talking about things like

Is this a potential planetary setup for the Alpha Centauri System?
Is a Procyon - brown dwarf - Jupiter - superearth - Mars - Pluto system theoretically possible?

Since these questions are in general unanswerable in a definitive fashion, should they be allowed?

I don't think that questions which are "unanswerable in a definitive fashion" are ever good SE questions, no. I think that a question like that can be closed using existing reasons pretty quickly, but it could also be edited, or closed as duplicate to a canonical answer.
These questions linked above are in fact questions about building specific solar systems of their OP's invention, not thought experiments intended to understand astronomical principles, so they're not really about Astronomy and they are really World Building questions.
You could simply ask

Should we start accepting World Building questions?

and to that I'd say we probably shouldn't, because where does it end?
Instead, maybe we can collect a list of answered questions that address stability and offer it as a resource for users wanting to ask about building worlds.

Good answer! I agree.


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Should the "naming" and "nomenclature" tags be merged?
We have both naming and nomenclature - does it make sense to have these as separate tags, or should we merge them? If so, which one would be preferred?

I have wondered about this before, but as the naming tag is currently defined, they are not synonyms. The naming tag is specifically about the process of assigning an identifier to an astronomical object. nomenclature can be used to talk about any of the technical terms used in astronomy, aside from just those unique identifiers assigned to astronomical objects. If you see the naming tag used in the wrong way, please help the asker by retagging the question.


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Is [space-travel] on topic here?
Is space-travel on topic for the site? To me it looks like a big red flag that the question actually belongs on Space Exploration, or in the more hypothetical cases Worldbuilding.
Looking at the questions that have this tag, a lot of them are closed/migrated, and many of the ones that have not been would in my opinion be candidates for closure/migration if necromancy was not a concern. The relevant page in the Help Center states that artificial satellites whose purpose is not related to astronomy is off-topic, and for the astronomical aspects we have artificial-satellite and space-telescope.

If you're satisfied with my response, please upvote as this is an issue that will require CM intervention, and I will need to demonstrate that the community wants action here.

This is on the CM team's backlog, and we'll get back to you once someone gets assigned to have a look at your request.

You're right, just about every one of those is off topic (ok, some may be borderline), and many of them are already closed. I don't really see much of an on-topic use for this tag anyway, so it really needs to go.

+1 I agree that the tag should be removed, its very existence conflicts with the clear distinction between Astronomy and Space SE.

If we added a tag warning to this block, would it make sense to say something pointing at the [space.se] on topic page letting them know that it may be a valid alternative but to check the scope?

@Catija That sounds great, actually!


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Do we need separate tags for [habitable-zone] and [goldilocks-zone]?
We have separate tags for habitable-zone and goldilocks-zone — does it make sense to keep both of these?
Of the two, habitable-zone appears to be used more frequently, although its tag wiki entry does define it in terms of a "Goldilocks Zone".

Done with the merge!

Based on a quick Google search, they do appear to be completely synonymous. I think we should prefer habitable-zone as the main tag and make goldilocks-zone a synonym, because "habitable" is a more plain rendering of the concept whereas "goldilocks" requires an understanding of the British fairy tale and how the parallel is drawn ("not too hot" and "not too cold").


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Should the tags stellar-classification and spectral-type be merged?
We have two tags, spectral-type and stellar-classification. The former appears to be slightly more popular, and the latter appears to have been mostly used on questions about spectral types?
Do we need both of these, and if we merge them what should the merged tag be?
update: in order to get to the bottom of this, there is a question in the main site where the technical issue can be resolved before the tagging issue is addressed.

Does "spectral type" and "stellar classification" refer to the same thing?

Following to see what others say.


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Change Community Wiki Answer
I recently posted an answer for which i used Community Wiki option. Later I realized that SE is suggesting not to use the Community wiki thus I want to remove it with Moderator Assistance

I fixed it for you :)