Talk:54598 Bienor

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Good article54598 Bienor has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 13, 2025Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 28, 2025.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Bienor is a very long space centaur?

GA review

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Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:54598 Bienor/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Nrco0e (talk · contribs) 03:45, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Mrfoogles (talk · contribs) 17:56, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]


Going to see about reviewing this one. Probably going to do so in bursts, so don't be surprised if I come back with "just 1 more comment" a few times, but it'll be done in a week. Nice topic choice. Mrfoogles (talk) 17:56, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm currently a bit busy, but I'll try respond to all your comments later today, if time permits. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 15:52, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, I'm pretty busy too. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:35, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Mrfoogles: I've responded to all of your first readthrough comments now. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 05:52, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for pinging me, had gotten a bit distracted. Will try to get through the rest of this today. Mrfoogles (talk) 16:24, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Seems to meet manual of style guidelines nicely.

First read-through:

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    • "Bienor has a highly elongated shape that spans up to 254 km (158 mi) across its equator to 90 km (56 mi) across its poles." Does that mean the equatorial diameter, or the equatorial circumference? It's not completely clear. Maybe say 254 km in its longest dimension and 90, 110 km in the other two dimensions, or something similar?
      • I've changed it to "Bienor has a highly elongated shape that spans up to 254 km (158 mi) across its longest dimension to 90 km (56 mi) across its shortest." (see revision). If it's still unclear, let me know. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 17:31, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Where it says it was the fourth to be observed occulting a star, it's strictly the fourth to be observed by multiple people at the same time to be occulting a star. I think some clarifying word should be added, like "positively observed", "clearly observed", or maybe "confirmed"?
      Oh, that's not quite what I meant: I was talking about the sentence in the lead "It is one of the largest centaurs with a known size and is one of the first few centaurs that have been observed occulting a star" which doesn't match exactly what the body paragraph says, that it was one of the first few to be observed occulting a star by multiple people simultaneously. I don't know if it is also one of the first few to be observed occulting a star by 1 person, but they're different statements. Mrfoogles (talk) 16:29, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • After the sentence "Bienor was discovered on 27 August 2000 by the Deep Ecliptic Survey (DES)" why do four sources have to be combined to list the members of the team?
    • I can't see where (Buie, M.W.) cites "Bienor was one of the few objects discovered by the DES whose orbits lay between Jupiter and Neptune"; page 119 doesn't seem to back it up.
      • I was referring to Table IV, where Bienor is listed as (54598) 2000 QC298. Buie et al. briefly talk about Table IV in page 118, saying " Table IV includes *all* “nearby” objects from our survey. These objects have orbits at or interior to Neptune but beyond Jupiter. Most of these objects are Centaurs...". I've changed the page cite to 118-119. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 17:36, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      That works. Also, this isn't required for GA, but I think adding a quote to the citation with that quote would be very helpful. I would do so myself, but I don't know how to do that with the reference format you're using here. Mrfoogles (talk) 16:39, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • (Masaki, Y.) seems to disagree with the article, saying Bienor is in the 5:4 resonance with Uranus but will soon be ejected, while the article says it "nearly" is and may previously have been.
      • Hmm... I could not find any other source besides Masaki (2003) that mentions anything about orbital resonance in Bienor's orbit. So there hasn't been a refutation nor a qualification of Masaki (2003)'s statement about orbital resonance, which is a bummer. There's a chance that the Masaki (2003) paper could be using an outdated/less accurate orbit of Bienor, so the resonance statement may no longer be true.
      • I'll ask you (also pinging @Renerpho:) whether that resonance statement should be removed or at least trimmed to avoid undue weight. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 21:57, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      @Nrco0e: Thanks for the ping. As a sanity check, I just ran a quick simulation of Bienor, analogous to what we did in [1], and I can confirm that the nominal orbit is resonant as claimed. That's with an arc of 72 years, compared to the 2 years available to Masaki. While not quotable on Wikipedia, I think it's good to know that the claim holds up.
      We don't need the WP:OR though. Masaki actually address that problem in §4 "clone tests", where they show that "the resonant character still holds for at least 50 000 years", but also that "if the current provisional elements contain large uncertainties, these Centaurs do not librate in the mean motion resonances".
      I would write (change highlighted): The orbit of Bienor seems to be in a 5:4 mean-motion orbital resonance with Uranus. If confirmed, this resonance would not last longer than a million years because the resonance is destabilized by the gravitational perturbations of other planets. I don't think due weight is an issue (this clearly warrants the two sentences, if not more once this is actually confirmed). The data needed to confirm this has been available for years, but it will only be when someone writes a paper about it that we can change this. I think that's just the current state, and doesn't reflect negatively on the Wikipedia article. Renerpho (talk) 18:58, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      Fantastic, thanks for checking! I've changed that part accordingly. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 19:01, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      Works for me, thanks @Renerpho. Mrfoogles (talk) 16:40, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • In the Orbit section, it would help to clarify what "implanted" means -- does that mean they entered the solar system within the orbit of neptune recently? Also, what does "primitive surface properties" mean and why does being new to the within-Neptune solar system confer them? A brief clarification of those things would be helpful, I think; you could use footnotes if you wanted.
      • "does that mean they entered the solar system within the orbit of neptune recently?" - Yes, that's what "implanted" is supposed to mean. I've clarified that detail in this edit, though I've decided to remove the surface properties part since it isn't relevant to the section. 05:51, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Break (stopped at Physical Characteristics)

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  • Neither (F, Marcello) or (Rizos, J.L.) seem to support "Bienor is a dark object that appears "spectrally neutral" or gray in visible light": (F, Marcello) says it is in the BR group and (Rizos, J.L.) say that Larcerda et al place it in a "dark-neutral" group in a two-group classification system. I also think it's misleading to say "similar to many other centaurs" when there are two main groups: this seems to imply centuars are generally like that. Also, if you're going off of the exact value of the visible albedo and describing it, you should probably put the exact value in a footnote to explain that that's where you got it from.
    Are you talking about the sentence "All the studied objects are distributed along a quasicontinuous trend spanning from “gray” (neutral color with respect to those of the Sun) to very “red” (showing a spectacular increase in the reflectance of the I and J bands)." I think I would be ok with putting the "gray" statement back in based on that as long as there's a footnote noting that it's relative to the sun, unless you're sure that's not necessary -- presumably there are quotes around "gray" for a reason. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:59, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Have changed the sentence that is now "The remaining fraction of Bienor's surface composition has been tentatively suggested to be largely organic compounds" to add "tentatively suggested" given the paper gives like 3 disclaimers, says its fit isn't unique, reports a bunch of data gathering issues, and their fit conflicts with the 13% water ice from 2009; change it if you disagree.

Second readthrough

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  • (Trying to check understandability with this one, too, not just sources.)
  • "although it exhibits several unusual behaviors such as gradual brightening": I think this should be clarified that you're referring to a gradual increase of absolute magnitude (not apparent) and over years: both of these things are unclear. If you do change to absolute magnitude, dropping a brief definition of the term would probably be good for general understandability, although I don't think it's required as you can just click on the link. I see you used "intrinsic brightness" later on.
  • Not required for GA, but since you removed the bit about what could be known about the surface properties from it's entry within the last couple million years could probably provide good context for the section on its surface properties.
  • In "The remaining fraction of Bienor's surface composition has been tentatively suggested to be largely organic compounds", should kerogen be specified, or is that just another term for "organic compounds"?
    • "Kerogen" is just another term for organic compounds in that cited source, even though the more general definition of "kerogen" isn't really appropriate for Bienor: the Wikipedia article for kerogen includes organic matter from life. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 07:20, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusion

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That should be it for the comments; other than that it looks pretty good. Neutral, stable, illustrated, verifiable except for the points mentioned, complies with the MOS to the extent required, and appropriately clear prose except for the points mentioned. Mrfoogles (talk) 17:56, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Nrco0e Mrfoogles (talk) 14:36, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry---I've gotten really busy over the past few days. I'll try to respond to some of your comments later today. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 15:45, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Mrfoogles: I believe I have responded to all of your necessary comments. Again I apologize for the long delay, life has unexpectedly caught up to me this week. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 07:43, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nrco0e No problem; just went over the last stuff and it all looks good except for the gray discussion. Mrfoogles (talk) 19:01, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, passing this:  Done. As said, it meets manual of style, is written clearly and adequately understandably, is cited to supporting sources, has images, is neutral, and is broad in coverage. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by TechnoSquirrel69 talk 07:03, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(
)
The silhouette of Bienor as seen by stellar occultation observations
The silhouette of Bienor as seen by stellar occultation observations
  • Source: Rizos, J. L.; et al. (September 2024). "A study of centaur (54598) Bienor from multiple stellar occultations and rotational light curves". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 689: A82. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202450833.
Improved to Good Article status by Nrco0e (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 22:22, 14 October 2025 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
QPQ: None required.

Overall: Article was nominated for DYK within 7 days of reaching Good Article status. Article is more than 1,500 words in prose and is properly sourced. Article seems to have a lot of red links for people's names (who may or may not be notable) but this does not affect DYK eligibility, though I do recommend removing those links. Earwig picked up an unlikely copyright violation of 2.9%, but this mostly because Earwig picked up multiple instances of the name "Minor Planet Center." Image looks OK and discernable. The hook is simple, but I felt it was eye-catching to people who are not well-versed in astronomy. This is the nominator's first DYK and a QPQ is not needed at this time. AGF on print sources. lullabying (talk) 22:57, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]