text:
Astronomers: What magazines do you subscribe to?
The Astro mods are considering the possibility of getting some ads put in astronomy-related magazines for Astronomy.SE. We could easily look up some popular magazines, and we probably will. But I thought I'd take a moment to ask our community, because you may make us aware of some that are important to you.
So what (astronomy-related) magazines do you subscribe to?
(Physics or science in general might be good target magazines too.)

How did it go? I think it was a great idea! If I were an astronomer I would try to figure out how to about give a short talk "How to ask and answer in Astronomy SE" at some conference.

@uhoh If I recall correctly, nothing ever came of it. I can't remember if Rhys or Don was spearheading it.

this situation sounds like some direct advertisement to people skilled in the art/active in the field might be a big help. Politics SE really got their community under control quite nicely, this one is harder because it's a very popular topic among both the general public and (likely very busy) active researchers who can't be bothered, and because it's so new there aren't a lot of older established people who have both the extra time to spend and the detailed knowledge to address the issues. Perhaps what's needed is a knowledgeable community?

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:
Returning to moderation
I've been giving a lot of thought to the question of resignation over the weekend, and one thing that kept going through my head was Jon Ericson's blog post. Despite what he had to say about differences with leadership about healthy community management, what stuck with me was Jon's hope that the company could learn how to work with the community and his desire to become a moderator again.
Things are pretty bad right now, but toward the end of last week I saw some signs that communication between the community and leadership is not completely severed, if strained. It's not going on through the usual channels, but it's still there and feedback is still being heard to some extent. As I thought about this and what Jon said about having hope, it was hard to deny that it looked like there was still a chance to salvage things, and I think the best way to keep those lines of communication open is to stay on as a mod.
No matter what the future has in store for us, here at Astronomy we have a great community now, and things here have been scarcely impacted by the network drama. I want to continue to support this vibrant community as long as I can. Thank you for all the support in response to my leave of absence post! I look forward to resuming work with all of you.

My suggestion would be: don't consider, how the company behaves today. Consider, how will they behave, after the storm runs out. It still might be a reason to come back, but... I think there is no reason of any hope, contrary what Jon and the others said.

@peterh-ReinstateMonica Whatever the prospects of hope are, this community is still here, and I still have interest in supporting it.

@peterh-ReinstateMonica I mean, you still do things around here. If there's no reason to stick around, why are you?

Yes, that is acceptable, only the worth of the diamond is reduced hugely (and of the rep-bound privileges, too). You might have also the reason, that returning as a mod decreases the expected value of the count of the future mods, actually enjoying the (censored) what is coming on, by 1. Furthermore, resignation is imho a very ineffective way to protest, compared to the alternatives.

@peterh-ReinstateMonica Everyone has to weigh for themselves what the best course of action is. I've decided that for now the best way I can ensure a good future for mods and the community is to stay engaged.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

FYI to CMs - Jon's name is included here with explicit permission: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53506087#53506087

No one has said it yet, so I will.
Thank you, called2voyage,  for your past and now continuing service to the Astronomy and Space Exploration communities.

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


text:
Guideline regarding abbreviations
On Space Exploration we had a discussion before about the use of the abbreviations.
Over there we decided to make our guideline: write things out in full the first time (with abbreviations in parentheses) then use abbreviations later.
What is our stance on abbreviations here?

I suggest that we use the same guideline as Space Exploration:
Use the full terminology  the first time, with the abbreviation in parentheses, then use abbreviations later.
Tags in general should avoid abbreviations except in cases where they are abundantly clear.

Writing style will be tricky to enforce, but as long as writers try to be informative for as many readers as possible, that should suffice. So some will reverse this and use abbreviation / acronym first and explain its meaning in parentheses, or others will just attach a link to them where it should be more obvious what they meant, et cetera. But of course, I wholeheartedly support this notion and hope as many read it as possible. ;)

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


text:
Where do we draw the line concerning planetary science questions?
Exoplanet questions and other planetary science questions seem to be valid here, on Space Exploration, and on Physics. Where do we draw the line on what is valid where?
exoplanet

@UV-D That's what we need to decide as a community.

@UV-D Why don't you make a case for it in answer to this question. People will upvote it if they agree with you, or suggest improvements/alternatives.

Summary: Planetary science is on topic.

We don't need to. It's perfectly OK for sites to have an overlap. Migrations should only be done if:

The question is off topic on the source site
If not, it still may be migrated on OPs request
If it is borderline on topic on the source site and doesn't get answers, again it can be migrated.

No need to draw a line. It's fine if more than one site gets a piece of the pie.

So should we call planetary science questions on-topic here?

@called2voyage Yep.

Then, IMO, this is the best answer. If we agree it is on-topic with both sites, then there shouldn't be any conflict.

We need to be careful to avoid the English Language & Usage / English Language Learners problem over here. Planetary sciences is one area that is particularly fuzzy when it comes to determining what is space exploration and what is astronomy. I suggest that we need to draw a line somewhere in the middle, and we need to draw it early and stick to it.
Questions of astronomical technique in planetary sciences should belong here.
Questions regarding rovers, satellites, etc. involved in planetary sciences should belong at SpaceEx.
I imagine there will be other things that don't clearly fall into the above two categories, and we need to figure out how to handle them.

UV-D has pointed out a type already that doesn't fit into these two categories: orbits and rotations of planets.


text:
How to draw a line between Astrophysics and Physics, if there is any posibility?
There is not really much to say. Ideas?

Here is a good blog post on this topic — Respect the community – your own, and others’

Quoting myself

We don't need to. It's perfectly OK for sites to have an overlap.
  Migrations should only be done if:

The question is off topic on the source site
If not, it still may be migrated on OPs request
If it is borderline on topic on the source site and doesn't get answers, again it can be migrated.

No need to draw a line. It's fine if more than one site gets a piece
  of the pie.

Great answer - each site should allow the questions that its community needs. In some cases, the same exact question on "just physics" may get wildly different answers on a site full of astrophysicists, because they're collectively focused on a different part of the answer that's more relevant in an astronomical context.

But clearly there questions which do exist which are far better suited for a physics stack exchange site. If people ask questions regarding circuit diagrams on the astronomy stack exchange site, that would be bad. There are mutually exclusive regions, and the tricky part is determining what those are. Optics is clear example of this overlap - blocks on inclined planes are not.


text:
Keeping Tabs on Astronomy.SE's Progress
Let me start out by saying that I sincerely hope this site gets off the ground. This is the first beta I've participated in, so I don't know how we're doing in comparison to other sites at the same point in its cycle.
Additionally, when viewing the site through Area 51, you can see the progress in each category. My question is, Do we need to meet every category in order to become a site? Or, if there are some categories which "mean less" than others, which ones are they? I'm interested to see how we're doing at this point in time. If we're not doing as well as we should, we can mount a serious effort to change things before it's too late. If anyone knows where to get that information, please post.

Comparing it to Space Exploration that is merely 2 and a half months ahead in its beta days to Astronomy SE, I can say that you've gathered more questions and answers than we did at the edge to going public. But I see Astronomy developing more early days problems, so I can see the need to perhaps accelerate the pro tempore moderator selection process. Some of the problems here that I didn't see as apparent on Space.SE:

Plagiarism and attempts at creating canonical Q&A early on
Scope interfering with scopes of other SE sites, with opposition from the latter
Greater number of inexperienced SE members that need guidance
The majority of questions still seem to be of the general reference Q&A kind
Private beta members are less active in meta, with not many discussions active

But don't get me wrong, all of these points can be worked on and will be a lot easier to achieve once you get your own moderators. They will have quite a bit of work in the early days, but this workload does decrease as the community itself learns the ropes and the site has more high reputation users.
As far as the community goes, I'd say you're in slight advantage to where we were during the private beta, largely probably due to some of our Space Exploration regulars moving here and with clear intentions in making Astronomy (2.0, reboot?) work this time around. My suggestion to kickstart it would be in also tapping from external to SE experts, get some fresh but highly qualified names here to establish more authoritative presence. Depending on SE community alone is, in my opinion, not the best option with the nature of the site being so far away in scope from the ability of your average tech geek (myself included, no disrespect intended) that is lurking the seas of Stack Exchange to keep threads interesting and insightful.
Oh, and it is also by far too early to be looking at Area 51 statistics. With merely a week on your tachometer, those stats are not the best indication of how well the site is progressing. What you want is quality. Quality that will reassure each of your members it's not wrong to suggest this website to some of their friends and not merely be seen as spamming their inboxes.
Once publicly available stats will start making sense, you will be able to somewhat track them on Quantcast. For the time being though, they are utterly irrelevant and not worth preoccupying yourself with them.
My 2 cents. ;)


text:
Should tags reflect questions exclusively or the entire question-answer post
This question has been discussed on other stackexchange sites as well but I feel this is a good time to ask it and get a basic understanding of where we are at. So here we go. When asking questions the OP sets tags. These tags then reflects the question as the Original Post sees it. We can edit the tags list if there is an obvious omission. When answers arrive it may become evident that the question may not completely reflect what the answers reveal and so when reading the Q-A combination new tags may be appropriate.
As I see it, there is an advantage to have tags reflect the entire Q-A post rather than just the question. This is because when looking for similar information by using a tag, the information may not necessarily be in the question but rather in the answer. A good example from TeX.sx is when people ask how to solve a graphics problem. Usually there are two basically incompatible avenues to go down (pgf-tikz and pstricks) and the question may not ask for either of them. Hence answers concerning these solutions may go untagged with respect to these major directions.
Some say you can simply do a free form search. This is of course true but then we would not need the tags in the first place. So the question from me is tags for question content only or tags for combined Q-A- content. I look forward to see where this leads.


text:
Should this site allow questions related to extraterrestrial life?
I just made a proposal on Area 51 for a Q&A site related to alien lifeforms, and someone mentioned that it should be the part of Astronomy.
What is the right path? Should it be a separated site or we should focus on asking these types of questions here instead?

There is SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), for example, that specifically tries to detect intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. So regarding lifeforms, it could clearly be argued it at least affects our methodology in trying to detect them. If intelligent, then as SETI assumes, at some point in time they will develop radio wavelength communication capability that we can detect by using radio telescopes and listening to the Universe. If however we'd be just trying to establish if some distant planet currently (in astronomical sense, so apply the time needed for the light to travel the distance) hosts air breathing and carbon dioxide or oxygen producing Earth-like carbon based lifeforms, we might want to detect that through radio-astronomical spectrometry.
So I say yes, this site should allow questions related to extraterrestrial life and their possible lifeforms, but not in a speculative way asking directly about them and what we couldn't possibly answer, but if the observations that are inquired about specifically target one or a few aspects of these lifeforms or their stage of development, then I don't see any objections. I suspect we might get many questions regarding the search for Earth-like planets, so with that in mind, those questions would already be implying possible support for a specific type of life form at specific stage of technological and scientific development - us. Tho we're not extraterrestrial, we do have common criteria that specifies our range of function. Describing an extraterrestrial life form with the purpose of asking about our possibility to detect it should thus be equally acceptable.

Then I think I won't close my proposal. Also, join if you want!

@ZoltánSchmidt - When I said "this site" I meant Astronomy. ;) It is one of the selection criteria of astronomy methods. If there should also be another A51 proposal and later evolve as a separate, individual Stack Exchange entity, that's another matter though. I personally have nothing against it, but I don't see it as succeeding either, because most of what could be discussed about with a scientific method is already covered in other, already existing Stack Exchange websites, including Astronomy. But I might be wrong...

In order to be successful, an SE site must have a sufficiently broad mandate to allow an adequate number of questions to be asked and answered. Also, it is the policy for SE sites to focus on questions that have specific, supportable answers - as opposed to either conjecture or generalities.
It seems to me, then, that "alien life forms" would be too narrow of a subject (considering that nobody on Earth has ever found evidence of an alien life form). It would therefore be better to put those questions here.

From a radio telescope perspective, ET is certainly a good topic for Astronomy. Otherwise, it seems like it will eventually become a part of planetary science (at least we hope!) which would make it on topic for both Astro and Space Exploration.


text:
What can we do about the deteriorating quality of questions?
I was an active member during the beta launch of this site, checking the site regularly for questions I could answer and writing exhaustive answers.
Since the past 2 months or so, increasing number of questions are targeted towards misconceptions towards astronomy encouraged by popular science. The very good questions are research based and would require a lot of effort, often more than my capability.
This is apparently having a negative effect on site stats. Please give suggestions on what can be done to solve this dilemma? If you feel that I am incorrect in saying so, please point out the fallacy.

For posterity, I'd like to add something to RhysW's otherwise good answer:

Up-vote quality questions & answers - always.

I know "above k" users say that the rep-points doesn't count, but it does. Getting that first up-vote triggers the reward system even if you like it or not. Votes are feedback (in both positive and negative terms). This is true for both pros and amateurs. We're all humans.
Let's face it, there will always be more amateur astronomers than professionals. We need to treat those few as our precious. One loss is one too many.

Up-vote a quality answer

even though you've already posted an answer yourself.
regardless of their rep-points.
always!

Up-vote a quality questions

even when you don't know the answer.
regardless of their rep-points.
always!

FTR: I'm an amateur amateur astronomer, not a professional.


text:
Why was my question likely to be closed as subjective?
I was going to ask a question but a blue box popped up saying that it would probably be closed for being subjective. What does this mean?


text:
Reference policy
The site intend to be a Q&A site for astronomers and astrophysicists, even though amateur questions are welcome. It therefore seems to me that, since it is a "science professional" site, we should stick to scientists habits, that require to either source or mathematically demonstrate any statement. It seems to me that there are slightly to many answers that are either "Wikipedia-based" or without any proper reference at all.
Questions:

Am I the only one to perceive that as a problem?
What could/should we do to encourage members to source their answers? (if we consider that something is to be done)

It does bother me that there are so many unreferenced answers. Some users who call themselves professional even react with hostility to requests for references. I don't understand this behavior. Wikipedia I think is acceptable as a general reference, but should not usually be the only basis for an answer.

Is this a professional site? Says who? Since when?

Well, RTFM (other Astro-meta discussions for a start, as well as the definition of this SE site itself). Since the beginning it was stated that is supposed to be an expert site, for astronomers and astrophysicists. However, even though it is not in effect a professional site, it makes sense to prove, one way or another, what you state. It's science in the end, not some lousy barroom philosophy.

@MBR - Well, I guess you'll have to start all over then: 90% of questions I've read are amateur questions. Which doesn't make it less of a science, BTW.

Anyway, amateur questions don't imply amateur answers.

I'd like to present this answer as an example of a fantastic answer that deserves every up-vote it has received. Do we really want to discourage the author of that comment, (and similar people) by placing a weird emphasis on citing sources, as if this were a journal or encyclopedia? Because if we do, we'll loose some of the people that make this place great.

@brentonstrine That author explains his answer in sufficient terms to see how he derives them. In this case you could consider the answer "sourced". Note that our help center does not require citations, merely explanations of how the information is derived.

I totally disagree. Downvoting should be for questions you think are wrong, not for lack of references. Astro.SE is not a peer-reviewed magazine, and I don't know where you get the idea that it is for professionals only. Most questions I've seen here so far (I'm pretty new here) are obviously amateur questions.
I've been active for some time on Electronics.SE, having posted 1800+ answers and gained 100k rep. Not once have I seen the question about references. Yet the quality of the answers is good. I see no reason why you would change the voting rules, which are

upvote for an answer which is useful
downvote for an answer which is not useful.

If you want to see pages of references then you are probably a professional and then Science or Nature may be more your cup of tea.

I can say that you're not alone in hoping for more citations. Lately, I've been trying to add in relevant sources I can to my answers, which (hopefully) has the side effect of encouraging others to follow those lines to learn more. So I, too believe that more citations would be a good thing.
But there are a lot of cases where citations might be unnecessary. in cases of "common knowledge" - i.e. where facts are readily available, to the point where the majority of people would know them. Problem is, each person has a different definition of what facts constitute "common knowledge". To a sixth-grader, it is "common knowledge" that the Milky Way is a galaxy, while to me, an astronomy enthusiast, it is "common knowledge" that the Messier designation for the Andromeda galaxy is M31. So answers that contain these types of facts may not need citations. Ultimately, though, if the OP wants more sources, s/he has every right to ask for more.

I think the best course of action is to downvote unsourced or poorly sourced answers, and make a comment regarding how the answer can be improved.
Of course, for users who are new to the site, you may choose to comment and talk to them before downvoting, but if their question or answer remains unchanged for a while you should either downvote or improve yourself. Otherwise, the Stack Exchange model for quality will fail.
For more information on how this is in line with the Stack Exchange system, see What is the exact meaning of a downvote/upvote?. Relevant portion:

The goal of voting is to help steer people on the site to do the right kind of behavior you think should be on the site by rewarding the user with points and by sorting their content to the top.

I disagree with this. There are people who are well capable and knowledgeable enough to give good and valid answers out of their head without looking at any source at all, by doing a calculation themself, etc ... It depends on the (type of) question and IMHO one should use a good common sense and discretion to decide if a reference is needed by all means or if an answer is good and can stand as it is. IMHO answers should be judged according their correctnes, instead of sourcedness. This pragmatic approache works on Physics SE (and is not the reason for any problems there ...)

I mean the correctness of an answer, how well and clearly it explains things, etc should be much more important than the sourcedness. An answer where the poster just summarizes what he has read from different sources without really understanding it and therefore messes stuff up can be useless even if it is well sourced (I have observed such answers here), whereas a well explained clear correct answer can be very helpful and valuable even if it is not or badly sourced so to speak. And by no means should IMHO good correct answers be downvotet just because of the sourcedness issue ...

@Dilation "unsourced or poorly sourced" I never said you should downvote just because an answer is unsourced. If the person posting is knowledgeable enough and this is verfiable, then sourcing may be omitted and this answer would not be considered poorly sourced. Basically, the person posting the information is the source.

Many times, however, it is difficult to determine the correctness of an answer without sources, so unless a user's knowledge is well established it might be better to provide a basis for the information. Downvoting is acceptable if a user has no basis from which to assess the correctness of the answer.

in case I can not evaluate the correctness of an answer myself, I just leave this task for others who can do it and do not vote at all. Downvoting answers because I personally can not assess their correctness but maybe there are other more knowledgeable people who can, in particular about topics I am not knowledgeable enough, would seem a bit unfair to me. But this is just me and probably you did not mean it like this...

@Dilaton It is indeed a good think to focus on the correctness of an answer more than on a sourcedness, but in most cases, I think it should be not to difficult for the user to source (or justify one way or another) its answer. And even if the others can potentially check the correctness of the answer, it can be sometimes difficult to show how an answer is incorrect (it is in general easier to affirm things than to demonstrate their incorrectness). In the other hand, if it becomes a "bad habit" to answer without sourcing, it can become a huge task to double-check every poorly-sourced answer.

Downvoting answers for being poorly cited completely breaks from the Stack Exchange convention of what up/down votes mean. If I come in from Google to a question and I see an answer voted -5, I assume that it's wrong (not that it's correct but poorly cited). If I see an answer voted +10, I assume it's useful. If I am writing a research paper, I should not be using this site at all, though I may upvote an answer which cites a good resource.

@brentonstrine That's not what Stack Exchange says: http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/497

That link mentions "research effort" in the rubric for up/down votes on questions. For answers research effort is removed from the meaning. Up means "useful" down means "not useful." Voting up and down for any other reason (e.g. "this is useful, but not well cited, so I will downvote") breaks the convention.

@brentonstrine Please see the relevant portion quoted in my answer above.


text:
Are there enough new questions coming in?
When looking at the list of questions on main from the "newest" tab and scrolling back in time, it seems to me (without extracting statistics), that there are hardly 5 new questions coming in each day (not only at weekends).
On Area51 it is said that 15 new questions per day on average are needed for a healthy Beta ...
So are there currently enough new questions coming in here on Astronomy?

Ok, now I have found the (negative ...) answer here, stupid me ... So I will probably delete this meta quetion soon, as a more appropriate question would be to ask what can be done about these worrysome statistics?

I saw a typical curve that successful SE sites follow for questions and visits. It starts with a big surge, then dives to a low point, and then gradually recovers until it reaches healthy levels.
Unsuccessful sites probably just keep going down until they hit near zero before they get closed.
So far, it looks like Astronomy could go either way. So go out and spread the news, quickly before the site dies.

Do you think it is time to ring some kind of warning bell ... :-/? There seems to be a bit more activity right now though and a new expert in cosmology has joined and nicely answered my two questions :-)


text:
Deja Vu? How do we keep the site alive?
First of all, I am happy to see this topic getting another go! I love the field, and wish to contribute as much as possible. So this was tried a while back, and sadly the site didn't survive. It ended up getting merged with Physics.  I am all open for ideas and suggestions to keep the site vibrant and going so that it can stay as its own site.


text:
At least two answers per question reasonable?
If I remember correctly, one of the guidelines to help beta stack exchanges eventually earn full stack exchange status, is to have an average of two answers per question.  Certainly for questions that don't have clear cut answers or involve some opinion (e.g., "What is the best kind of telescope to view such-and-such?") this is reasonable, but for questions that have clear cut answers (e.g., "How massive is the sun?") one thorough and well-worded answer can often do a good enough job that any other answers to the question would be redundant.  For questions such as these, is it really reasonable to expect multiple answers?
I don't know if the questions I used as examples are actual questions on the site, I was just using them as examples.


text:
Policy on asking for book recommendations
I want to ask a question asking for book recommendations (specifically an introductory text on cosmology for advanced undergrad/beginning grad level).  I am wondering what the policy is for asking for book recommendations.

Just be careful with recommendation questions that your requirements are pretty narrow. For example:

What is the best cosmology textbook?

The above is too broad and subjective. The following is better:

What introductory texts on cosmology for advanced undergrad or beginning grad level would satisfy X, Y, Z needs of mine?

Or something like this:

What introductory texts on cosmology for advanced undergrad or beginning grad level would contain X, Y, Z information I'm looking for?


text:
Why is the general public more interested in Astronomy than other branches of Physics and Cosmology?
I am just curious about why it is the case. It seems to me that it is even true when compared with Cosmology, which studies similar things. I feel that the people just want to look at stars, and I have ever met people that know what Astronomy is but not Physics. This give me an impression that Astronomy is more like an amateur field. I know it is not, and the real research often involves huge amount of data analysis.
Anyone can give explanation to me?

Is it because looking at the stars is easily accessible to everyone (or most people), whilst cosmology isn't available to the general population every single night?

@Carl How about physics then? Here have many enthusiast so I guess they can give a good anserw

Yeah, many people are interested in physics, but the general public as you say are more interested in the astronomy side of it. I think that's simply because it's more accessible to them.

Cosmology is a little abstruse for some people, even astrophysics in general can often seem daunting to the general public. Atomic/molecular/optical physics, particle physics, and condensed matter physics are similarly obscure.
Applied physics is interesting to some people, but it is heavily dependant on what their other interests are.
Astronomy on the other hand has a very old tradition, and in its simplest form just involves looking up at the night sky.
Space has the added benefit of being "the final frontier" to many, because we see Earth everyday but space is far removed from us. This makes it wondrous and mysterious.


text:
How is the current Astronomy compared with the old one?
As everyone should know that there is another old closed Astronomy  SE. So how is the current website compared with the old one? In particular, how about the question quality? I am not quite sure about the reason it get abandoned, but you may learn a bit there.
You can have a look of old questions in the public data dump there. Please don't copy those questions here as most are already merged to the Physics.SE.

I'd say it's too early to tell, because the old Astro had a pretty good private beta iirc (I wasn't around, I just know from some graphs I made when it was getting closed) but support dwindled later on in the public beta and didn't pick up again.

Similar question at Area 51: Why wouldn't this just be part of the existing physics Stack Exchange site?.

I was active in the previous astronomy SE, and my impression is that it failed because of lack of questions. I think what questions we had were of reasonable quality, not really distinguishable from the ones I have seen here, and they usually got good answers, but as time went on there just weren't enough of them.
My overall impression of the nature of the community was that there were a small number of enthusiastic members, some of whom were quite knowledgeable. So, questions got answered (and answered well), but once this core community ran out ideas for seed questions, there were too few questions from people outside of this core to sustain the site.
So, I think the challenge this community needs to address to avoid the same fate is how to attract more questions, hopefully without sacrificing quality. This subjective impression matches up pretty well with what I see on the final stats for the previous beta.
On the meta side, we had many of the same questions about what is "on topic" as I see on this meta (theoretical questions allowed? amateur only, professional only, or both? What about questions on astronomy software?)


text:
Equipment discussions (telescopes, astrophotography etc)
Should we encourage questions about amateur astronomy? i.e. what are the advantages of Dobsonian telescopes? How do I build a telescope? How do I get started on astrophotography?
Although it could be a good growth area for this forum, I'm not sure what we could offer that other sites don't.

Yes, absolutely!
Astronomy is one of the few fields where amateurs can contribute significantly. With the affordability of relatively sophisticated equipment and advances in astrophotography, amateurs are still making significant contributions.
Amateurs discover comets, they measure occultations that help discover new planets, they contribute useful data to the knowledge base of professional astronomers. Some use home-made radio telescopes, and some use stuff that was once professional equipment re-purposed for amateur use. Then there's the American Association of Variable Star Observers who collectively use small telescopes to measure variable stars more effectively than professionals ever could — all amateurs;
… and they should be encouraged to become a part of this site, telescope questions and all.
Certainly, the capabilities between amateur and professional astronomer has widened, but I would take the questions of a budding enthusiast actually working with their telescope in the backyard over some of the highly-theoretical questions asked by those with little practical knowledge any day.

I am not going to comment on the bigger picture of whether amateur astronomy questions are good for the site, but I can comment a little on the second part.
An SE site about astronomy can provide value, even with other sites, because it isn't a forum.
I gave a talk a few weeks ago about the site I help moderate.  One of the things I brought up several times, is that forums facilitate discussion, but SE facilitates getting answers for real world questions.
I ran into this last night while looking up something.  I can't recall the exact topic I was researching, but it was essentially about one of the various special purpose filters.  I found several threads on the forums about the filter.  Each thread led off with a question about the filter.  Then there were many posts the followed

some asked where to get the filter, and what the best price was
some were just "me too" posts
some where "I have it but I haven't tried it yet"

All three of these types of posts would have been deleted here, leaving just the answer to the question.

There is nothing wrong with follow up questions in science. On the contrary, that is how scientific research proceeds. This might be different concerning non-scientific topics and is why the science sites are not exactly the same as say for example the so-called Trilogy sites. And as I understand it this post is rather intended to figure out the scope of the site (if such applied questions are on topic) than the "style" of interaction among people (how much "discussion" they want to tolerate etc) which varies from community to community anyway.

MPD: IMO this answer is slightly tangential, but it makes sense to me. @Dilaton Who said anything about stifling followup questions? Those are allowed, when asked as separate questions. And most mods leave a comment urging the answerer to do so before deleting. The problem with subquestions in threads is that other potential participants can't easily find it, and those not interested in the subquestion will find it as noise. I've come across many physics forums where this happens leading to threads derailing completely. To be clear: I don't think Astro and the trilogy differ in this aspect.


text:
Where should I put this question?
It's not a scientific one but it would be interesting to read some answers. Probably meta is a good place, but inside astronomy.stackexchange it would get more reads.
The question would be something along the lines of "What would Galileo think if he were to read Astronomy.StackExchange? What would be the most surprising Q&A for him? What would he understand and what wouldn't he?"

It's an interesting question, but unfortunately it does not belong in either the meta or the Q&A of this site. Perhaps you can bring it up as a topic of conversation in our chat room. Folks might like the entertainment there, but that type of on-going discussion isn't really going to work well within this Q&A format.
The Stack Exchange engine is designed to compile a work of reference; a collection of well-vetted technical writing about the subject of Astronomy. As such, the engine itself will actually become a hindrance to extended conversations and sharing. It just wasn't designed for that.
Yours is certainly an intriguing thought experiment, but it is more the subject of a roundtable discussion or debate than anything that can be reasonably answered here.
I would suggest bringing it to chat.

I followed your suggestion, the chat is not that active however

Eduardo Serra, hopefully astronomy.stackexchange comes out of beta soon and the chat room will have enough users to become active.


text:
Community Wiki Anwers badge
I think offering (a) badge(s) for users who choose to make their answer a Community Wiki answer would be a nice way of encouraging/rewarding those who dare to do so, even when neglecting a few/many potential points. Because we all care about our site reputation.
I post this as a feature request. Also to hear you opinions on this.

You may want to share this on Meta Stack Exchange for greater attention, since this affects all the sites, not just Astronomy. My suspicion is that people won't go for this since the SE staff are trying to phase Community Wiki out, see this post, particularly the section after the line break.

We've been slowly backing away from using Community Wiki in most situations. That doesn't mean the badge is a bad idea. Rather, we'd want to find a way to make a badge that encourages the rather nuanced behavior we want to endorse. And that's not going to be easy. If you have some ideas about how to make a badge that does something other than cause people to randomly set some of their answers Community Wiki, please let me know.

Nice, I wasn't aware of that. So I figure this would not be the way to go then.


text:
Can we have a site icon for astronomy.stackexchange.com?
Simple as that. What I mean by site icon is the icon that web browsers display for any given site, or the one that appears next to each stackexchange community site under the stackexchange menu.


text:
silver badge tenacious
I was browsing through the list of silver badges. And I came across a few explanations to which are not that easy to understand. For example,
Silver badge : TENACIOUS.
It says:

Zero score accepted answers: more than 5 and 20% of total.

I didn't get it. What is it exactly?
Many other explanations are not that obvious too. They need to be more explained, I guess. I hope I am at the right platform asking the right question.

See also: Better description of “Tenacious Badge” and List of all badges with full descriptions. The tenacious badge is particularly strange.

If you post all of the ones that need an explanation, I will expand this answer.
That description you posted means that your answers that were accepted yet have a zero score (no votes, or upvotes and downvotes cancel out) represent 20% of your total answers. There must be more than 5 of these to get the badge.
Does that make sense?

ya it does. point made. :)
To post all those, i will sit one day and give the list. Thank you.


text:
Status of Astronomy Stack Exchange Site
What is current status of Astronomy Stackexchange site? Is it a Full Site now or still in beta stage?
Where can I find the status of Stackexchange Site (e.g. Private beta or beta or a Full Site)?
I use stackexchange mostly from my mobile app. Is that reason why I can't see status of site?

Astronomy is still in public beta. We launch sites only when they've demonstrated the ability to sustain growth. For a rough idea of what we look for, see the Area 51 statistics. Like many sites in beta, Astronomy doesn't have the rate of new questions we are looking for yet. Every other measure signals this is a solid community that we are happy to have on our network. How long will the site have before it graduates? As long as necessary.
Besides the traffic and engagement numbers, we also look at the content quality. Last spring, we ran a self-evaluation so that you could tell us how things are going:
Let's get critical: Apr 2014 Site Self-Evaluation
When I reviewed the results, they looked fairly typical of a mid-stage beta: there are some things that can be improved, but the site is clearly accomplishing it's mission to provide expert answers to Astronomy questions.
Figuring out how to increase questions organically is a puzzle. So far, the best method I've found is the weekly topic challenge. If you want to help your site grow, this is something I'd encourage you to try out.
The mobile app doesn't really make a distinction between a graduated site and betas. The only real way to tell is to look at the icon in the site list. As long as Astronomy is in beta, it will have the generic speech bubble with a capital A in it. When our designers create a skins for graduated sites, they'll change the icon too. (And personally I look forward to what they will do with the design of this site when it graduates!)


text:
Do questions about the history and discoveries of astronomy belong here?
For instance, if I were to have a question about the discovery of certain astronomical facts/ideas, is this the right place for it? Like, the who/when/how something was discovered?
Simple example: When did people realize that supernovae expel off neutrinos? / How did we discover this?

This is an excellent question! Ultimately, I think it will be up to the community. Perhaps you should test out posting such a question. You can mention in the body of the post or in a comment on it that you're not sure if it should be on topic and you can link to this meta question.

I think history is important in astronomy. Partly because the terminology raises questions about history (like: Why are some black holes called quasars? Why the sequence OBAFGKM?) Partly because astronomy is developing quickly and is making history today, maybe on a more fundamental level than any other science. The recent remake of the TV series Cosmos had a strong emphasis on the history of astronomy.
Practically, I think that questions about the history of astronomy can get much more and better answers here than in any community about history in general. I think that the tag "history" will work here until there's enough interest to create a History of Astronomy community.


text:
Is More Math Important For This Site?
A quick glance at Physics SE shows that there is a lot more math used on that site, generally in answers. Granted, there are a lot of physics concepts (not including those oh-so-treacherous homework-style problems) that can only be explained using math, but there is a conspicuous usage of math in answers there, and an equally conspicuous lack of math here, even on similar topics, such as general relativity. I often even get the feeling that (shudder) Astronomy SE gets the "softer" questions.
Does anyone think this is an issue (I'm currently not leaning one way or another)? Should we encourage math usage where it is relevant, or will that simply leave us with a bunch of unnecessary calculations?


text:
Blog Status Update #1
You might have heard that we're trying to rustle up support for a site blog. It seems like we have a critical mass of potential writers such that it should be able to support itself with content for the foreseeable future, even if people aren't able to write as often as they'd like. With that in mind, called2voyage and I have taken steps to set it all up, and we now have a site, An Eye on the Universe (hat tip to called2voyage for the same), created using WordPress, a fairly accessible platform that has the features we need, like LaTeX support.
Here's where it stands:

At the moment, we've edited the default post WordPress publishes so there's actually something for the casual visitor to see.
There's an About page with some super-helpful links.
called2voyage and I are administrators, which means we can do basically anything on the site.
We already have one person added as a contributor, meaning they can submit posts for publication but still need approval from an administrator or editor to publish.

. . . That's about it, but it was a reasonably productive day.
If you're thinking about writing for the blog, you'll need to create a WordPress account, then ask us to give you contributor access, either by commenting here or pinging one of us in chat.
If you want to tell us in more detail what you'd be interested in writing about, write up an answer here.
As always, of course, if you have anything else you want to discuss - comments on the theme, say - feel free to write up an answer to this question.


text:
Is there a 'birthday' evaluation on the table?
Congratulations to the site on one full year in beta!  I've only been using the site for about two months now, but I've been encouraged by its progress. I know from looking through Meta that there were "Site Self-Evaluations" in January and April. Given the recent milestone, I was wondering if there is any chance of a 1-year evaluation coming soon. I for one would be very interested in seeing it; the site stats on Area 51 (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/40709/astronomy) clearly don't give a full picture.

Self evaluations come every 6 months now and the most recent was in early April. So there should be another starting real soon now.

Taking a look at the queue right now. . . Should be interesting.


text:
How are we doing compared to the previous Astronomy site?
There was an older Astronomy site that was closed 3 years ago for lack of activity. I wasn't around then - nor was I around for the start of this incarnation - so I have no idea what it was like back then.
How are we doing compared to the older site? Have we fixed problems that came up then?

I feel like the community team is best to answer this question, but my perception is that we have encountered some of the same obstacles but we still seem to be attracting new users consistently. We also seem to be discovering our ideal area for question base. We're far from graduation, but I think we've demonstrated our utility as a site.

One thing that I think has changed is that the community managers have adopted a more patient policy towards beta sites with lower activity levels. After all, we're still here a year later with slow but steady question and visit rates.

I didn't participate on the previous Astronomy site, but you can read about the reason it was shut down in When a Site Grows Quiet. The key point is:

But when a site struggles to maintain any semblance of steady progress — when it's struggling to garner an audience, a healthy core of experts, and a steady stream of questions — it becomes increasingly unlikely that the site will find a core audience to sustain it.

If you look at the final Area 51 statistics of the previous Astronomy site, you'll see that it was getting around 350 visits and one question a day after about 11 months of operation. Considering the popularity of the topic in the public imagination (look at the number of images of Pluto people are posting on social media right now for evidence), this seems disproportionately quiet. Our general Physics site appears far stronger.
When I look at the statistics for this iteration of Astronomy at about 11 months from private beta, I find that the traffic averages about 350 visits a day, just like the old site did. But this site got about double the number of questions a day. We've done a lot of research (including an experiment on Parenting) and concluded that the single best predictor of a site's future health is the rate of questions it gets.
Since the previous Astronomy site was shut down, we've changed our philosophy of how to handle quiet sites. Instead of shutting them down and waiting for someone to come along and reboot them (which is a lot of work and no guarantee of success), we now let sites run (crawl?) along as long as they don't descend into spammy backwaters. (This only applies once a site has gone public. We still hold back sites that perform poorly in private beta.) In practice, this has meant we don't shut down beta sites.
Thankfully, the future of this Astronomy site shines brighter than that. Currently, it's averaging three and a half questions per day, which puts it in good company. We aren't really close to talking graduation, but you can rest easy about closure. If you care about the success of this site, make it a habit to ask any Astronomy questions you have here. Remember, there's nothing wrong with answering your own question.

It's not dying, it is ill but stable. Here's the number of active answerers (with 2 or more positively scoring answers per week). A healthy site has upwards of 20 answerers per week, a moribund one struggles to keep 2.

https://data.stackexchange.com/astronomy/query/342741/number-of-active-experts-per-week-courtesy-of-isaac-moses#graph


text:
Is there a key argument for not merging Astronomy and Space Exploration Q&A sites?
That's the question. Short and simple.
Having spent time on each lately, I am left wondering if this would help build overall numbers and participation rates.
Clearly both sites are not generally driven by professional driven questions, but rather public curiosity questions, with more informed serious amateurs or enthusiasts providing the answer side of things.
Currently public participation gets split across the two groups.
When questions are migrated, the original poster needs to join and sign up to the other group just to follow up on their question if they want to post comments etc and get involved in the process.
Signing up to a new group with ones current account is not that clear on SE - or it was not to me - you put in the same details, and the connection as same account happens automatically. I found I had to reload the page for it to take hold for some reason. It took a few explorations to find out how, and have it sorted. A few hours of time.
The time and 'work out how' barriers to sign up to another group to add more to a question you've asked and had migrated may seem trivial to the experienced users, but I think they are significant barriers to complete new comers. (It is one of the reasons why I think new comers questions should not be migrated unless they really need to be.) The difference for new comers is post, and find following up on the response to your question a bit difficult and don't come back, or post, enjoy the answers where they posted (they took the time to learn to post the question and bookmarked it to come back), no need to work out how the site works, and with a few more questions and positive outcomes, are then likely to become more involved.
I am not sure if there are stats available to test this perception. Stats like, how many people post once and don't return, vs post and become involved.
Merging the two groups means both groups, Astronomy and Space Exploration, and the public that come along for the first time, are regularly seeing the questions of both groups. I wonder if the synergy of interest may be significant in this regard, and increased participation a possible consequence.
Counter to all this is: Does it matter?  Sure groups participation is currently where it is, ticking along, but is there really a problem? Possibly not! Some seem to hold a degree of concern, while others do not.
I raise the question to learn in more succinct form if it has been considered more recently, what the pros and cons would be, and if a merger of the two groups would be seen as a positive from both sites.
"Astronomy and Space Exploration" Acronym, ASE Site!  I can see it working.
If I had been working on one of these groups, and someone new came along to suggest this (as I do now) I would feel pretty annoyed. The work involved, time to debate, etc .. . I get that. So apologies there.  Its just that it strongly presents to me that the question does need asking.  Not suggesting it be done now, or at all, but asked all the same, possibly this not being the first time.
If it has been discussed, possibly once again in the current state of things and context, then its on the shelf so to speak should it prove a necessary consideration at a future time.

Please review: http://meta.astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/97/concerns-about-this-site and http://meta.space.stackexchange.com/questions/89/radical-proposal-merge-space-exploration-and-astronomy

I'm not saying there isn't discussion to be had here, but in the past when it has come up the answer has been no.

I will say this: the site is experiencing growth. It is slow, but tangible. The best solution may really be to just wait and let it grow naturally.

I am thinking delete the question. I'll leave it till tomorrow though.

Also, if you want to explore statistics: https://data.stackexchange.com/

I don't think it would be a bad idea, anyways thinking on to make the things better is surely positive. But if a voting would happen (no, it won't be ever), I would vote to the current state, but it wouldn't be an easy decision. My reason is behind it the "look and feel" of the sites. "Astronomy SE" looks to me now as a "high science",  as a very deep thing. Also Space SE looks as a hardcore engineering site. But "Astronomy and Space" looks (and thus, probably, will become) a below average enthusiast site. To me, only this argument is against the merge, but it is stronger as all the other.

As a poster of this question I am happy for it to be deleted in retrospect unless someone has strong objection. Thanks call2voyage and @peterh

It would make perfect sense to me.  There is a difference but the amount traffic in questions being migrated from astronomy to space and the other way that it shows that those asking the questions don't understand the difference. Merging would simplify things.

The overlaps between physics.SE and astronomy.SE are a bit problematic, as are the overlaps between space exploration.SE and engineering.SE. The overlaps between space exploration.SE and astronomy.SE are (or should be) rare. Yes, there are people who are frequent contributors to at least three of these four parts of the SE network. We generally know where the lines are.

@Cam_Aust If you want to, you should be able to delete your own post by clicking the "delete" link next to the "share" and "edit" links at the bottom of your question.

@called2voyage Thanks, yes. I have not deleted the question yet in view of a few comments being added. It seems its awhile since this possibility was discussed, and I am thinking its better left to show the recurrent thought has been revisited in 2016. Comments reflecting the consensus view that I would interpret as:  Yes, merging has some merit, however in practice not the way to go at this time.


text:
How is this question "primarily opinion-based", and can I save it from closure?
An SE newcomer puts a reasonable question but doesn't use the right astrophysics words, and instead of allowing voting to indicate its usefulness or otherwise, the question has been voted for closure as "primarily opinion-based". I'm struggling to understand why.
Is it because, having asked whether a particular solution might explain the expansion of the Universe, the OP offers the opinion that this solution "makes sense to me"? If so, this is an absurdly literal and hard-nosed reaction.
Seriously, this needs review. The question is currently running at +3 votes and has two answers (I declare my interest: one answer is mine) each of which addresses the underlying question, i.e. could the expansion of the universe be caused by something "beyond"? It's perfectly reasonable to question the assumption of a homogenous isotropic Universe, or whether string theory, branes and extra dimensions might be involved. How is that "opinion-based"? And how are the two answers "almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise"? That, frankly, is insulting.
Instead, I wonder whether the support for closure is really just a knee-jerk reaction to the naive wording which, taken literally, asks if something exists beyond existence. Surely we correct the misunderstanding and probe the deeper point to the question. Well, that's how I thought SE was meant to work (oops, that's an opinion. I deserve some spaghettification in the nearest ergosphere).
Ok, that's my rant, I feel better now - but I also want advice on how to approach the recommended solution, i.e. "If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question."
Is it acceptable for me, having provided an answer, to edit the question so as to remove the "opinion" and focus on the presumed intent of the OP?

I agree with you. I'll post a link to this Meta discussion on the original post. I hope we can get the close voters over here to share their perspective.

Once it's been edited it goes in the review queue. I can also reopen it as a mod if I feel it will be accepted by the community.

As I mentioned in comment to that question, for me the fundamental issue is that it asks about outside the universe.  That leaves us with no useful way to answer, as outside the universe is simply a concept physics (and astronomy) cannot usefully address.  Indeed anything we don't know of now that could be outside of what we call the universe would, once generally accepted, become part of our model of the universe.  There's no "outside" to discuss here and any response is de facto opinion based.

Is it acceptable for me, having provided an answer, to edit the question so as to remove the "opinion" and focus on the presumed intent of the OP?

I have learned not to try and work out the "presumed intent" of people asking questions.  Experience has taught me that people, particularly those without a basic grounding in the "vocabulary" of science, often ask questions that don't properly reflect what they want to know.
But it's up to the individual to decide in each case if they feel they have an insight to the question that others do not.
Don't edit a presumption in.
This is obviously my opinion, but I think that many people, especially new users, would be intimidated or very annoyed to find someone else editing a question in a way they don't agree with.  This is particularly important for experienced users editing other people's questions as users with high reputation have their edits appear without having to wait for approval.  That's very disconcerting to a new user when it happens.
I would always suggest making recommendations or suggested edits in comments, unless that's impractical.  Wait for the OP to either indicate agreement or do the edit themselves.

Is it because, having asked whether a particular solution might explain the expansion of the Universe, the OP offers the opinion that this solution "makes sense to me"? If so, this is an absurdly literal and hard-nosed reaction.

I tend to follow the practice on Physics SE and would view this as a "personal theory" which would be off-topic there.  There's no such rule here, of course, so I tend to more liberal about it on Astronomy SE, but I with the OP asking about "outside the universe" and an existing explanation (FLRW expansion) already existing, this is another reason (from my point of view) to vote to close.

The question is currently running at +3 votes and has two answers (I declare my interest: one answer is mine) each of which addresses the underlying question, i.e. could the expansion of the universe be caused by something "beyond"? It's perfectly reasonable to question the assumption of a homogenous isotropic Universe, or whether string theory, branes and extra dimensions might be involved. How is that "opinion-based"? And how are the two answers "almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise"? That, frankly, is insulting.

It's how democracy works on SE.
I've answered questions myself that were subsequently closed for a variety of reasons.  This is simply the way a democracy works - you get to take part in the process, but just because it doesn't work out the way you think it should doesn't mean the system is flawed.  The people who voted to close don't think it's flawed.  It's a win-some-lose-some thing.
I can't do anything to stop you feeling insulted by a close vote that you feel reflects on your answers.  An answer may, however, be a reasonable attempt to answer and still not be sufficient grounds to change someone else's (equally honestly held) view of the question as being opinion based.
Fundamentally String Theories and others cannot be proved or dis-proven and lack any evidence to back them up.  They are, by any reasonably definition, opinion based.  That they are require a great deal of knowledge to discuss authoritatively does not mean they are not, with reference to the original question, opinion based.

Thanks for sharing! This was a very cogent and sensible explanation.

Thanks for a comprehensive answer. I still think that the close votes are an over-reaction to some naive vocabulary, that the underlying issue being raised is of wider interest, and that the emphasis on supposed "opinion" in this case is misplaced. But I appreciate the time you've taken to explain your reasons, and the advice on editing.

The user took a while to respond to my comment but has agreed to me editing the question to remove the contentious elements, which I've now done (pending approval). The question itself might seem naive to cosmologists, but I suspect there will be many amateur astronomers who might wonder the same thing, so I think there's value in having it re-opened.

@chappo I'm still considering the reopen request, but in the meantime I'd remind you that with the question's wording changed you may (or may not - your choice of course) want to slightly update your own answer.

Thnx Stephen. I might edit mine but it’s ok as it stands - the bit about “outside the universe” is useful even if the question no longer mentions it. Mark’s answer remains fully relevant IMHO.


text:
Why have recent cosmology/astrophysics questions been closed as off-topic?
Given there have recently been several questions put on hold as "off-topic" when they're clearly about cosmology/astrophysics (which is defined as on topic in the Help Centre), I thought it might be worth resurrecting this meta issue. Have we recently become too narrow in our focus, or are there other factors involved?
I've included three examples at the end, and proposed some actions...
1. The meta issue
The Help Centre says that

Astronomy Stack Exchange is a Question and Answer site about astronomy
  and astronomy related topics; the study of objects and matter outside
  the Earth's atmosphere and of their physical and chemical properties
The purpose of this site is to provide expert level answers to
  questions on:

Setting up, using and maintaining your astronomy related equipment
Astronomical observations, for all celestial objects across the    entire spectral range.
Astrophysics and Cosmology [my emphasis]
[etc]

The inclusion of astrophysics and cosmology is deliberate, but from the start it has raised questions of application.
2. Background
Back in private beta stage, in September 2013, manishearth explained that we don't need to draw a line between Astrophysics and Physics: "It's perfectly OK for sites to have an overlap."
In response to the same OP, SE's Director of Community Development, Robert Cartaino posted a link to the instructive 2012 blog post — Respect the community – your own, and others’ — which is well worth a read. In the blog, Community Manager Josh Heyer suggests:

Be a bit jealous of your site – don’t blithely turn askers away simply
  because their question could be asked somewhere else. Don’t hit them
  over the head with your scope, help them tailor their question to fit
  into it – and if that means your site’s scope overlaps a bit with
  another site’s, so be it. ... Close questions with an eye toward
  improvement and re-opening, not driving users away.

Also in Sept. 2013, SE Community Manager Jon Ericson unequivocally responded to the question "Do cosmological questions belong here or not?":

Yes. If astronomers and astrophysics study such questions (and they do), ask your cosmology questions here.

In another contemporary post - Let's ask more meaty questions! - Jon Ericson urged users:

Please ask deeper and more-specific questions. And when you see commonly-asked questions, either write strong answers that improve
  on easily discovered sources or vote to close (as "too broad", most
  likely).

3. Not clear enough?
In October 2013, seeking further clarity, called2voyage posted the question How much is astrophysics, cosmology, and theoretical astrophysics on topic?:

"There have been some concerns raised about cosmology and theoretical
  astrophysics, as well as astrophysics in general.
The concern is that this community does not support astrophysics
  questions, especially cosmology and theoretical astrophysics.
If you think this community can support astrophysics questions, make
  your case for it in an answer here."

The single answer listed 9 examples of good cosmology/astrophysics questions on our site, plus 8 users with known expertise in these fields, as evidence that Astronomy SE can indeed support such questions.
A more recent (2016) question asked Are Questions related to Cosmology and ancient history of astronomy allowed in Astronomy SE?. Regarding the "cosmology" half of the question, there was one short answer by called2voyage that seems to me to be definitive:

Yes, scientific cosmology is perfectly acceptable here.

4. Current examples - action needed!
The following three closures have occurred in just the last two weeks...
Beginning of space-time
Assessment: This is without doubt a cosmology question. Rory voted to close this question as off-topic "because it really belongs on Physics (although it is probably a dupe of a few there)", but that's not a reason to close. I voted to close too, but I'm still learning the intricacies of my newly-acquired privilege and in hindsight probably made the wrong decision. It's a poor question, as it shows no research effort (for instance this topic been covered ad nauseam on Physics SE), but that's a reason to downvote rather than close.
Status: Currently closed. Zero votes; two answers, both with positive votes, one answer accepted.
Solution: (1) Reopen as a canonical question on the topic, so that future duplicates can be directed to this post. A third answer (perhaps as a community wiki?) listing some of the best Physics SE answers on this topic would add further value. Otherwise, (2) Reopen and vote to delete: if it's not good enough as a canonical post, it's probably not good enough to retain at all, and it doesn't meet SE's criteria for the system to delete it automatically so voting would be required.
Matter Temperature during Recombination
Assessment: This is a theoretical astrophysics question about the thermodynamics of the Recombination Epoch. It was put on hold by a moderator for being "off-topic", which would appear to be incorrect. Its core request "How can I derive this equation?" is probably better suited to Physics SE, but that's no reason to close. Zephyr has provided a link and brief response in a comment.
Status: Currently on hold. Votes: +1. No answers.
Solution: I recommend reopening, as it doesn't meet the criteria for closure. However, I don't think this question adds a lot to our site, and Zephyr's comment may well be the best answer the OP is going to get, in which case 2 downvotes (to bring it to -1 score) would be sufficient for this question to be automatically deleted in about 20 days as a dead question [I think death from natural causes is probably nicer than deletion by voting].
Probability that a photon suffers its last scattering event
Assessment: This post asks for help understanding how an expression relating to CMB and redshift was derived. This is theoretical astrophysics, which is on topic. It was put on hold by a moderator as off-topic for being about Earth Science, which makes no sense; I can only guess that perhaps the moderator confused Compton scattering in the early universe with Rayleigh scattering in the Earth's atmosphere. I've voted to reopen.
Status: Currently on hold. Votes: +5. Answers: zero. However, the same question has been cross-posted at Physics SE, where the OP has provided an answer to their own question.
Solution: The closure was for an invalid reason, so the question should be reopened. Given it's been cross-posted to a site more appropriate to the content, the best solution would be for the OP to delete their Astronomy post (and FWIW, become only the 16th site user to earn a Disciplined badge).

The OP of the third question (the one cross-posted on Physics) has cheerfully chosen to earn their Disciplined badge :-)

Cosmology/astrophysics questions are definitively on topic. I reopened the first, the second had already been reopened, and the last one was an improper cross-post so I left it closed (it was closed because it was a cross-post, not because it was off-topic--despite the mechanical close reason on the post).

@called2voyage thnx for reopening the 1st. What are your thoughts on the 2 options I proposed for that question? I guess the 3rd option is "do nothing", but I'm inclined towards making it a useful post (i.e. option 1).

I don't think it needs to be a canonical question. I think it can be addressed as is.

Cosmology and astrophysics questions are much harder to answer than many other questions and yes, they might get better answers on Physics SE. The key word here is might - not will.
The questions that involve difficult-to-understand concepts or higher-level mathematics require someone with the right skillset to give a good answer, and a better skillset to explain it in lay terms when needed. The people with these skills are a short list when it's physics, and a shorter list when it comes to astrophysics and cosmology. This means sometimes a longer wait for an answer.
But closing or migrating the questions without giving them that chance will mean we have more of the 'what is brite lite in sky' compared to interesting and thought-provoking questions.


text:
Red dot stays on review queue after queue is empty
I just saw a red dot on the Suggested Edits queue and so checked it - there were two edits pending review in the queue. But I am still seeing the red dot now even though the queue is empty.

After clicking on Suggested Edits...

Has anyone else had this? Is this a bug?

Happens on other sites too: red dot remains when a review queue (any queue) has just been cleared. It's a bug.

The way the review indicators work is complicated. This may be by design: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/302226/228367

I believe the red dot is based on the total number of reviewable items in the queue, while the review pages show the number that are reviewable by you. The review icon (dot or not) appears on every pageload by every user with review privileges, so a simpler and cache-able database query speeds up the site.
In your case, suggested edits need approvals from two users. If you went through the queue and provided the first vote on every item, then there are no more tasks in that queue for you. But the queue is not empty, so everyone still sees the red dot --- you included.
If you went through and provided the second vote, so that the queue was really cleared, then caching might keep the dot around for a few minutes anyway.


text:
Can't open any question when logged out
When I log out and try to open any question on Astronomy Stack Exchange, I get this error. The Meta works fine and also when I log in, everything works as expected.

I haven't been able to reproduce this while logged out (even checking the same question). Is this still happening, and if so, can you specify what browser (and maybe OS) you're using?

It just started working again…


text:
What is an association bonus?
Background
I was recently searching for a question to answer, and I came across this one question with a score of -2, and I noticed this was that particular person's only question, and he had a some sort of reputation bonus of 100. At first I thought he might've won a bounty. Although, he also had not answered any questions, either. Then I was sorta confused, so I decided to check his reputation changes, and I found this:

So apparently he/she won some sort of "association bonus".
Question

What is an association bonus?

Duplicate on Meta Stack Exchange

From the FAQ on Meta Stack Exchange: What is the association bonus?

The Association Bonus is a block award of 100 reputation granted on all of a user's network profiles, including ones created after the bonus is awarded. It is awarded when a user's account has accumulated 200+ reputation on any one site in the network, provided they have at least two network accounts. This bonus gives users who have shown some basic understanding of how the Stack Exchange system works a boost past the initial site restrictions on sites where they have low reputation.

It can be 100% sure that the user has just passed the 200 reputation milestone on another site, which grants them an extra 100 reputation on all sites. It's a very common phenomenon.
It's also the same reason why I have 101 rep here instead of 1 - even though I have zero post on the main site (Astronomy) - because I have more than 200 elsewhere.


text:
How long, under current policy (as of 6/18/2019), do closed questions remain visible?
I've asked a question for which I feel a zero score to be appropriate, and I have no objections to any of the comments posted about it, but it has content, and has received comments, which I feel may remain useful to others asking similar questions for a long time.  A couple of keywords (the surname of a major physicist [Poplawski] and a two-word phrase representing a fairly common concept ["galactic rotation"]) that are in it currently appear at the top of more than 400 results in a google search, so I feel that its preservation may save considerable time for persons who are students or researchers in the future, in a way similar to the way in which the marking of questions as duplicates may save them time.  Consequently, I'm wondering how long it would be left accessible on the site after its closure.

FYI - the pending reopen vote on your question is gone, so it will now be subject to #7 on the list below after nine days.

Duplicate questions are never deleted automatically, and rarely (if ever) deleted manually. They stick around to help direct people to the appropriate question. Often duplicates come up because there is more than one way to ask a question.
For non-duplicate closed questions, they are only auto-deleted in certain situations:

The system will automatically delete any post flagged six times as offensive or spam (3 times on English Language & Usage and The Workplace).

The system will automatically delete closed, unlocked questions with zero or negative score having no positively scored or accepted answers or pending reopen votes, that were closed for any reason other than duplicate nine or more days ago and haven't been edited in the past nine days. (RemoveAbandonedClosed)

The system will automatically delete rejected migrations (questions created as a result of a question from another site being migrated there, and later closed for any reason other than duplicate) that are at least 30 days old. (RemoveRejectedMigrations)

The system will automatically delete negatively-scored, unlocked, and unanswered questions (both open and closed, including as duplicates) that are older than 30 days. (RemoveDeadQuestions)

The system will automatically delete unlocked, unanswered questions older than 365 days on main (non-meta) sites with score of zero (or one, if the owner's account is deleted), fewer than 1.5 views per day on average, and fewer than two comments. (RemoveAbandonedQuestions)

The system will automatically delete any post with a negative score when its owner's account is deleted, unless the post is a question that has at least one positively-scored answer. (This doesn't apply on meta sites.)

The system will automatically delete any post, regardless of score or answers to questions, when its owner's account is destroyed (only done for spammers and blatant trolls).

The system will automatically delete migration stubs (original site copies of questions migrated to other sites, which haven't been rejected by the destination site) that are at least 30 days old. Questions deleted under this criterion still have their revision histories visible to everyone, and links to them redirect to the new question instead of showing an error page. (RemoveMigrationStubs)

Posts with zero or negative score that receive six recommend deletion reviews (four on Stack Overflow) in the low-quality-posts review queue are automatically deleted "from review". Posts can be kicked into this queue either automatically or with very low quality and not an answer flags, and can be removed from the queue if enough Looks OK reviews are cast against them.

(From How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion? on Meta Stack Exchange)
Note that except in special circumstances, closed questions with positive scores and/or positively scored or accepted answers and/or pending reopen votes are not auto-deleted.

For clarity, if this is your question, it currently has a pending reopen vote and thus won't be auto-deleted as long as that is the case.

19 hours ago the system auto-deleted the question. If you hover a cursor over "19 hours ago" (or whatever it says now) you can see the exact time and date in "Zulu" (GMT).
You obviously put quite a lot of thought and effort into formulating this question and composing the post, and I'd hate to see it all go to waste. I'll make some suggestions, though I'm not well-versed on the topic.

This question can be broken into two parts...

I wonder if you can break this down into two (or more) questions, and work the problem step-by-step. First ask a shorter question about the "first part" and wait for answers. It is possible that based on answers to it and discussion in comments, the second part of your question might be better formulated differently.
In Stack Exchange, a "deleted" post is usually not really deleted but just becomes invisible. For a few months you will be able to find it under on own profile page if you list your questions; there may be something called recently deleted questions. After a month or two (I'm not sure exactly) it won't appear there anymore, but you can still find it by coming back to this meta post and clicking Might the discrepancy between mass and rotation rates, in galaxies, be explained by mass within BHs?.
You can still click edit on your question and select and copy bits of text to paste into your new question as part of the editing process, but you should not re-post the same question.
Instead I recommend that you try to shorten it substantially and focus on a small subset of the question, and see how that goes first.


text:
Would questions about stargazing be on topic?
I'm not an astronomer, but I do have a daughter who is fascinated with the planets and stars. I'd love to get her a telescope and start stargazing with her, but I don't know where to begin. Would absolute beginner questions be on topic here? Or is this more for professionals in the field?

We will gladly accept questions at all levels. However, folks would appreciate it if they were quality questions.
We realize that, for beginners like yourself, the first questions that come to mind are things like "How do I get started?" and "What telescope should I buy?" Unfortunately, those kinds of questions tend to be too broad, too vague, and/or easily outdated (as new products are introduced and older ones become obsolete).
This is a question and answer site, not a discussion board. Questions should have clear, specific answers (if they are known). Asking for product recommendations fail that test. In fact, any question starting with something like "What is the best way to" is going to be mostly opinion based and is off-topic.
This isn't a good place for really basic questions that can be answered with a simple Google search or Wikipedia, such as "What is a star?"
Questions should not duplicate other questions. Check other questions on the same and similar topics to ensure that the question hasn't already been answered, even if the answer appears to be to a different question.
There are lots of great beginner questions out there just waiting to be asked.


text:
Create a wiki entry for future Starlink launches?
With the recent 2020-03-18 delayed-from-Sunday launch of the latest SpaceX mission for the build-out of the Starlink constellation, I am expecting another round of the "what is this set of bright lights moving in the sky" questions. Indeed this question seems to be the start of this new round.
With the expected possible launch schedule of up to 20 Starlink launches in 2020 alone, this could mean a lot of these type of questions every few weeks as the satellites are launched and before they spread out and move up to operating altitude. Can we create a wiki article and/or a bot that redirects these sort of questions to a table with the launch schedule and a "if you see a set of bright lights within X days of a launch date in this table, it's Starlink satellites" auto-answer ?

I think a CW Q&A that we can close them as duplicates of is a good idea.

This is a very good idea!
A related concern was expressed in Do we need a notice about billionaire space ventures?
I guess the next step (once a community "yes" was established here) would be to ask the next question "What would the question be exactly?" but I also suspect that considering your intrinsic familiarity with the topic being a "card-carrying" member of the IAU and the last person to see an earlier SpaceX stunt , if you just wrote a question in the main site and opened a Wiki answer, in this particular case it would be fine.
If you build it, they will come


text:
Is there a consensus on the capitalization of Sun, Moon, Earth and the planets on this site?
The English Language and Usage SE has this question "What is the correct capitalization of the words earth and moon?" but I do not see this issue dealt with on this here.
Is there any guidance whether those words should be capitalized in the Astronomy SE?

The recommended convention is to capitalize when referring to the proper name of a Solar System body, including "the Sun", "the Earth", and "the Moon".
That said, this guidance should be used if you care to be consistent with your own posts. Don't go out of your way to change the capitalization in someone else's post unless it is a matter of clarity.

Broader than just within the Solar System: it’s a basic convention in English to capitalise all proper nouns. Hence “our galaxy” (no capital) but “the Milky Way” (capitals). [“Universe” is tricky, but I capitalise it if I’m using it as a name rather than a generic description, e.g. “some say there’s more than one universe” vs “the Universe is infinite”.] Another convention is consistency: if a post capitalises “Earth”, for example, it would be incorrect to refer in the same post to our host star as “the sun”.

@ChappoSaysSEDuddedMonica I've also seen the convention of using upper case to refer to our Galaxy, but lower case to designate any other galaxy.

@usernumber have you seen that expressed as a convention, or have you simply seen some people write that way? I’m not saying it’s wrong - punctuation is a matter of style, which is why we have style manuals to prescribe such things - but I would probably remove the capital if it was in a document I was editing. Appending a determinative generally doesn’t make it a proper noun: I wouldn’t write that I drive my Family to our Holiday House to get a clearer view of our Galaxy.

@ChappoSaysSEDuddedMonica The teacher in the interstellar medium course I took said it was a convention.


text:
When can a "beta" site become an official one?
I wondered for a long time what is the difference between a "beta" site and an official one. I have a major problem at school when the lightspeed systems blocks the beta sites but not the official ones so I couldn't get onto Astronomy SE but I could get onto Math SE. Is it the number of people participating? Is it the number of questions or answers? Can moderators make a site official?

First of all, to correct the term, there are "beta" sites, and there are "graduated" sites (the one you called "official").

What is the difference between a "beta" site and an official one.

The core features are still the same, but some differences are (AFAIK):

Beta sites don't have migration paths
Beta sites have beta reputation threshold privileges
Beta sites don't have customized site-design
Beta sites don't have community ads

I have a major problem at school when the lightspeed systems blocks the beta sites but not the official ones so I couldn't get onto Astronomy SE but I could get onto Math SE.

This is something that is out of control of Stack Exchange. You must inquire this with your IT support and perhaps asking to unblock/whitelist with convincing arguments. However, some clarifications might be needed: are you sure you cannot access all beta sites?

When can a “beta” site become an official one? Is it the number of people participating? Is it the number of questions or answers? Can moderators make a site official?

When Stack Exchange staffs deem that the site is ready for graduation (see also: Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites and their related links). It's not related to the number of people participating (but might be related to the active users in moderating contents). It's also not really related to the number of questions or answers. And no, the moderators don't have the power to graduate the site on their own.
The baseline that Stack Exchange gave was "consistent 10 questions/day", but since October 2017, no beta sites have graduated.


text:
Reputation transfer
I note that there was a merge between astronomy and physics SE some time ago, before another astronomy SE was made. My question is, that if there is even a similar transfer, would badges and reputation of a user on the transferred site be transferred over to the other site?

The likelihood of this iteration of Astronomy getting closed is extremely low.

Answering your questions directly,

if there is even a similar transfer, would badges and reputation of a user on the transferred site be transferred over to the other site?

No. The reputation and badges will be recalculated/awarded according to the current status of the account after their posts have been migrated.
This is the side-effects of the standard post migration. From the FAQ,

What is migration?
Migration allows an off-topic question to be gracefully moved to another site in the Stack Exchange network. It preserves the current revision of the question, all its answers, any comments on any post, as well as most of the votes.
Side effects of migration

The destination question's score is reset to zero if the origin question had a negative score. Otherwise, its score is retained, and the votes are attributed to the Community user.

The original scores are preserved for the answers, with the votes (again) being attributed to the Community user.

Answers on the origin site are deleted immediately upon question migration. (This causes a reversal of all associated reputation on the origin site.) The answers will be visible on the destination question.
The question is left as a stub, or pathway to the new site, for 30 days, after which it is automatically deleted. During this time, the stub question will be locked to preserve the post in its original state, and prevent comments and votes. (Again, this causes a reversal of all associated reputation on the origin site.) Note that the old link will continue to redirect to the new question even after that time.

(Emphasis mine)

So, reputation will be recalculated on both sites, and badges that are related to the post's score will be awarded again on the target site.
Note also that badges cannot be taken after awarded (except tag badge, because it depends on the amount of the answers and their score), so users can have both badges on the source and target sites after the migration.

Aside from that, it's also better to understand the reason for closing the old Astronomy.SE: inactivity. From the Physics.SE meta post and its linked blog,

when a site struggles to maintain any semblance of steady progress — when it’s struggling to garner an audience, a healthy core of experts, and a steady stream of questions — it becomes increasingly unlikely that the site will find a core audience to sustain it.
Next week, we’re shutting down six sites that fall into this category:

Astronomy

However, this site doesn't show any indicator of inactivity or in danger of getting shut down. There would be a meta announcement from the Community Manager long before the shutdown. So, there's no reason to worry about it :)


text:
Too many questions about Starlink
As of 12:30 UCT on the 15th of January 2020, four of the fifteen newest questions are about Starlink satellites.  Should we consider having one, definitive answer and closing any new questions as duplicates of that?
I guess, though the OPs won't be aware of it at the time of posting, that the questions should also be directed at Space Exploration, rather than here.  Should we be pointing the posters to an answer on there?

Related: Do we need a notice about billionaire space ventures?

Line of lights moving in a straight line, with a few following has been serving as a de facto Original Starlink Question.
I think a community wiki answer there would be appropriate.


text:
How can I withdraw a down vote?
I down voted this question because I took the bright points on the image to be stars.  It was pointed out to me that they were artifacts from an overlay of a star map.  So my down vote is invalid and I'd like to with draw it but when I try I get a message saying

You last voted on this answer 6 hours ago. Your vote is now locked in
unless this answer is edited.

How can I withdraw an incorrect down vote?

In this case, I would suggest adding an edit pointing out that a star map overlay has added artifacts to the original picture.  Then you can withdraw your downvote and delete your comment(s).

Great idea, I've done that.


text:
Changing the question based on new evidence or asking a new question?
Context
I've asked a question on why some graph absorption pattern is shown on Earth. Based on information that Venus did not show this pattern. However, I could at the time not find a source that shows Venus does not show this pattern, so I thought it would be best to focus the question on asking why Earth shows this pattern (as I expected I would be able to derive the reason for that difference from that answer).
This question has been answered, and the answer, does not answer why it is shown on Earth but not on Venus, nor am I able to derive that from the answer. By now I have found the evidence that the pattern is not shown for Venus and included it in the question.
Question
However, I am in doubt, whether it is better to change the question (back) to: "why is the pattern shown on Earth and not on Venus?" or whether it is better to keep the question on: "Why does Earth show this pattern?" and ask a new question with: "why is the pattern shown on Earth and not on Venus?"
For completeness this is the question my doubt is about.
Note
As pointed out by Connor Garcia♦, unchanged I think the question is not a best fit for Astronomy as it then is about Earth sciences. At the time of writing I did not realize this due to the XY-problem which is related to Astronomy. So if it is best to keep the question unchanged and ask a new question, I think I will vote to move the question to the Earth sciences site.

I was just asking the question if it was Earth Science or astronomy.   If it was clearly Earth Science, I would have just migrated it.  I think Peter Erwin's excellent answer and your edits to the question now make it clearly astronomy related!

Once answers begin to be posted we need to work hard to restrain ourselves from changing the question in any way that interferes with the answers matching the question, and the usual etiquette is to check with answer authors before making big changes and to at least inform them even in the case of small changes of anything more than cosmetic impact. We have to accept that everything that happens in SE is imperfect, and sometimes just asking a new question linking back to the old one and refining/clarifying there is the best remedy.

Including the extra source in the form of the image of Venus has led to an answer that answers the XY-problem, on why Earth has the pattern and Venus does not.
This makes the question astronomy related and implies no additional question is needed.

I've added a link to the Stack Exchange definition of the XY-problem. If that's not what you meant please feel free to link to the appropriate definition.


text:
Are questions asking for help with calculations and results on or off topic?
As the title states, are questions that ask for help with calculations, or help with the results of the said calculations, on-topic? or are they off-topic, and would have a better home on a site like Physics.SE, or Mathematics.SE, or elsewhere?

Some Specific Context:
I'm working on a little side-project relating to orbits and orbital positions of objects in our solar system. I am relatively new to the mathematics behind orbital mechanics, and my understanding goes as far as what I have read online (and a few hundred hours of Kerbal Space Program...).
I have managed to adapt what I have learnt into some code to calculate cartesian and spherical coordinates. However, when I have fact-checked the output against records on JPL's HORIZONS System some of the results are not what I am expecting to see.
So I would like to ask about my understanding and implementation of the calculations, and whether I am interpreting my results correctly.

Checking in the Help Center, I would say that this question probably falls under Planetary Science and Celestial mechanics, but there does not seem to be any pointer as to whether help with calculations is something that is accepted on this site.
I also had a quick search for Maths and Calculations here on Meta, and the only two questions that seem relevant (this one, and this one) do not answer the question.

I just ran across this question and I'm surprised to see that it's been viewed 62 times and has received 3 up votes but nobody has posted any kind of response to it. My feeling is that Python's EAFP (1, 2, but not in Java) applies in this case. The site is pretty friendly and so a reasonable question is not likely to quickly collect down votes, and instead if there are issues they'd be brought up in helpful comments.

This question could likely have also been asked in Space Exploration SE as well. I know it's been almost two years now, I hope you were able to resolve your issues independently.


text:
Questions pertaining to ongoing competitions
As part of the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition, the pre final round question sheet has been released. Should questions regarding answers to the paper be closed, or at least have an 'answer embargo' of sorts until this section of the competition finishes in a week?

Yes, we should lock these posts until after the competition is done. If you see posts that needed to be locked for this reason, please flag them with a custom flag and reference which competition question the post is related to.
This applies only to new questions. Existing questions from before the competition began are still fair.