Talk:Thuban

Date[edit]

Anyone have a date for when Thuban became the Pole Star? I found its closes approach, and the time when it lost the title to Kochab, but not when it got it first. I seem to recall a table of pole stars in S&T or Astronomy lo! these many years ago, buy my memory is not that good. Rummaging around on the web produces nothing much.... -- Paul Drye

It started being useful for that purpose around 3300 BC, and was better than Kochab all the way up to about 1900 BC, as mentioned before. In fact, during its entire career as pole star, it was better than Kochab ever was. At about 2750, it was almost dead-on with the pole, and even better than Polaris is today. This chart: http://www.recoveredscience.com/Fig1-8%20zoom%20to%20sky%20pole.gif will give you an idea.

I ran star charts during the times in question, using SkyChart III, and came up with the new values entered in the article. Thuban was closest to the pole for even longer than I thought it was. user:Jsc1973

The Alpha designation is apparently due to its history as the ancient pole star.[edit]

Is there a source for this? Since Bayer was judging magnitude by eye - photometric devices not being invented until long after his time - simple error presents itself as another explanation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Orcoteuthis (talk • contribs) 16:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I put that in there years ago. There's not really any other reasonable explanation for why Thuban would be designated as Alpha Draconis than its historical significance. No astronomer could have erroneously thought Thuban was actually the brightest star in Draco. It's not even close. Eltamin outshines it by a full 1.3 magnitudes. Bayer was too good to have made an error that large. Jsc1973 (talk) 04:18, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a source that agrees with what I wrote all those years ago: http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/thuban.html Jsc1973 (talk) 09:25, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Previous Pole Star[edit]

Logic would say that the pole stars lie in a circle, so.... follow up from present til we get to thuban again and therfor, we have thubans forrunner as pole star.--Jakezing (talk) 15:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More than "logic" tells us this. We know it to be true. Look up Pole star and Precession. Thuban will be the North Star again in about 18,500 years, and will again have a long reign as such. People 25,000 years from now will have Polaris as the North Star, just like today, and there are a few others in between them. Jsc1973 (talk) 09:18, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Th'uban is not mean Dragon in arabic[edit]

Th'uban in Arabic means Snake (ar) ثعبان

see List_of_the_star_names_in_Draco Salem F (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References in Sumer / Akkadian empire[edit]

Is there any references to this star as the Pole Star in Sumerian or Akkadian sources? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.11.220.249 (talk) 20:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure, but there is a tentative identification with the Babylonian MU-BU-KESH-DA on Table 3a of Rogers (1998). However, R.H. Allen associated this star with theta ophiuchi, so who knows?—RJH (talk) 19:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Companion a dwarf?[edit]

The statement that the secondary is of low mass and likely some kind of dwarf has been here since before the article had any references. OTOH the sourced figure in the infobox is 2.2 suns, a clear contradiction. Red dwarfs are at most about half the Sun‘s mass, while white dwarfs are subject to the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 suns. Any objections to my removing or revising this remark?—Odysseus 1479 02:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The article in general is full of uncited statements to varying degrees of believability. I've tagged the main offenders. The sentence you refer to looks like a bit of own research from before anyone had any clue what the mass of the secondary really was. Lithopsian (talk) 19:47, 11 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Noting that Kallinger et al. (2004) determined 2.2 M_☉ as a minimum (AIUI the upper bound being from its invisibility in the glare of the primary), I’ve found Behr et al (2009), who used a different method to get ~2.6 M_☉, for a spectral type around A2V (or earlier, I guess) and a luminosity about one-sixth of the primary’s. Thus a largish main-sequence dwarf, somewhat bigger than Sirius but perhaps under-luminous for the class, at any rate not a red or white dwarf.—Odysseus 1479 22:15, 11 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Reptilian conspiracy theory etc[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_conspiracy_theory#David_Icke

According to British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who first published on this theme in his 1999 work The Biggest Secret, tall, blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from the Alpha Draconis star system, now hiding in underground bases, are the force behind a worldwide conspiracy against humanity. He contends that most of the world's ancient and modern leaders are related to these reptilians, including the Merovingian dynasty, the Rothschilds, the Bush family and the British Royal family. Icke's conspiracy theories now have supporters in up to 47 countries and he has given lectures to crowds of up to 6,000. American writer Vicki Santillano included it in her list of the 10 most popular conspiracy theories.

Kortoso (talk) 03:28, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Was in the article until a few months ago. Arguably still could be; if it has its own article then it must be worthy of a couple of sentences here. See what others think. Lithopsian (talk) 14:19, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It was added on 13 September 2017 by Herostratus and removed on 7 January 2020 by Tomruen. I think it's worth putting back but needs stronger support. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 20:55, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If I count (maybe not, being original writer), I think so. Reptilian humanoid has an article and so does David Icke, a long one (sure he's a ______, but he does have followers and gets some attention).

My attitude (not shared by all) is that hey, the article is short, the info can be put at the end where astronomy people can skip it, it's not harmful, and the net value to some readers would in my guess outweigh the negative value (small IMO) of people annoyed by it (and they're probably mostly crabs anyway so enh). I expect a certain number of readers will come here because of the Icke connection, why leave them hanging.

On the other hand there's no mention of or link to this article from the Reptilian Humanoid article. There's a one-sentence mention and link from the David Icke article, but the text and link there are to the Draco constellation which is a different article. Let's see... my ref was "cite book |last=Hockney |first=Mike |title=All The Rest is Propaganda |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BGFdCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT161 |accessdate=September 13, 2017 |year=2013 |publisher=Hyperreality Books |isbn= |page=161" which says Alpha Draconis, but the Icke article has a ref for just Draco Constellation (I guess; I can't access it, it's in one of his books, The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World, pages 5-9). On good faith I accept that, and if Icke said just "Draco Constellation" we shouldn't assume that means "Thuban", could be 26 Draconis or whatever, and the material should go in that article. But we can't copy an unread ref over, so that'd be unreffed. Icke probably has said both, but "probably" is not a good ref. So hmmm.

Oh wait, there's another article, Reptilian conspiracy theory. That one does say "Alpha Draconis", but the ref doesn't mention that. Herostratus (talk) 22:54, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To anyone who has access to The Biggest Secret: please tell us whether it really says Alpha Draconis. I think that most editors in this thread are pro-inclusion but let's wait for confirmation. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:09, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ite

I wonder if there is value in pointing out the utter implausibility of a white giant in a binary configuration being any sort of home system for space aliens. Unfortunately as we've seen in recent times, Conspiracy theories *are* harmful, and can cause irrational, and even lethally violent (or even genocidal in the case of WW2. the nazis where propelled by their conspiracy theories against jewish folk ) , behavior. A simple irrefutable piece of "This cant possibly be true because ...." might snap some folks out of it. 103.94.51.49 (talk) 04:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

But I suppose that the star name is a stand-in meaning a planet orbiting that star. Could a white giant have a planet harborin evil reptiles? Herostratus (talk) 00:27, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I went to amazon.ca page for The Biggest Secret, clicked the button for "Read sample", clicked ^F to look for Draco, and saw several passages. The longest was: "Researchers into the reptilian phenomenon conclude that at least some originate in the Draco star constellation (see Figure 4). The Draco system includes the star Thurban (sic), once the North Star, by which the Egyptian pyramids are orientated." Perhaps people misinterpreted that, he is not saying Thuban is the source. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:05, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's such a shame when utter nonsense is misinterpreted. PopePompus (talk) 15:25, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wait. "Researchers into the reptilian phenomenon conclude that at least some originate in the Draco star constellation". What researchers? "Researchers" implies some kind of actual research, scientific and reproducable. Madmen indulging in fantastic, impossible, and unsupported suppositions are not usually called "researchers" I think. How, exactly, was this research done? Interviews with the lizard men? Telescope images allowing alien spacecraft to be seen and their flight paths traced back to Draco? Examination of ancient documents? I would like to see the CV of these researchers and what universities they are associated with. Herostratus (talk) 22:37, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You just don't belong to the right journal clubs. PopePompus (talk) 22:50, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This talk page is not for evaluating Mr Icke's statements. It's for suggesting improvements of the article, and I now suggest that it would be an improvement to remove the "Conspiracy theory" section since it's not reliably sourced. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 23:14, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And I found what apparently is behind the dead link used in the article. Sure it says Alpha Draconis -- because it's quoting the Wikipedia article Reptilian conspiracy theory. I removed. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:03, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]