The Guardian's Bad Astronomy

[Vanadium 50]

The Guardian claims Betelgeuse is the closest red giant to Earth.

Not even close.

• Aldebaran
• Arcturus
• Mira
• Delta Andromedae
• The abominably named Gacrux
• Capella, which despite the color is a red giant
• Possibly Antares (distances are similar)
• And, what is likely the correct answer, Pollux.

Think they'll fix it?

 

[Baluncore]

Gacrux is probably the closest Red Giant to Earth.
Arcturus is probably the brightest Red Giant seen from Earth.
The Guardian is probably the least accurate astronomical publication, but it tries.

 

[Bandersnatch]

The paper they refer to begins as follows: 'Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant'. Which is true, but misquoted. Maybe they dropped the 'super-' because they didn't want to be seen as giving in to hype?
In all seriousness, though, the distinction must have been lost on the author of the article.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The Guardian probably thinks Jeremy Corbyn is a red giant.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Gacrux is probably the closest Red Giant to Earth.

Why not the closer Pollux? Are you objecting to its color?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Sure it's not written by ChatGPT?

 

[Baluncore]

Why not the closer Pollux? QAre you objecting to its color?

Pollux is probably the closest orange giant.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Pollux is certainly orange, maybe even orange-ywllow, but I did not find "orange giant" in any of my astro texts. This is likely because "red giant" is an evolutionary stage more than a description of color. Much like white dwarfs, which range from blue to almost yellow.

 

[Ken G]

The situation is even worse, since the Guardian article also says "Observing its behaviour gives important insights into the behaviour of red giants before supernova explosions." As stated above, "red giant" is a specific evolutionary phase of a general type of star, and that is a star with a mass that is too low to ever undergo supernova. So the above sentence is oxymoronic, and the problem is not just that the Guardian is confused about how close red giants are, it is that they don't have the least idea what a red giant even is! (The single most important distinction to make about stars is that some go supernova and others don't, and red giants, like our Sun will be, are in the latter class. The significance of the "strange behavior" that Betelgeuse is undergoing is that we might indeed be looking at the kind of "death throes" of a star that is about to go supernova, i.e., not a red giant, whereas strange behavior in a red giant might presage the creation of a much less violent planetary nebula.)

 

[Nugatory]

Striking unnecessary adverbs and adjectives is something that competent editors routinely do, so I would not be surprised to find that a non-technical editor thought that "super" was redundant as "giant" already conveyed the size.

My personal experience along these lines came from forty-odd years ago. I was describing a fairly complex set of memory-mapped IO registers. The tech writer assigned to review my work felt that I was overusing the word "significant" so the two-dozen or so references to the most and least significant bits/bytes came out of final edit as a mix of "most/least significant/important/meaningful", one of each to fix the pedestrian repetitiveness of my prose.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The annoying thing is not so much they got it wrong. The annoying thing is that they don't care that they got it wrong.

 

[Baluncore]

The annoying thing is that they don't care that they got it wrong.

Perfection is the enemy of progress.
They must submit a script before the deadline, publish, or perish.
Forget the past, tomorrow is another day.

 

[PeroK]

The annoying thing is not so much they got it wrong. The annoying thing is that they don't care that they got it wrong.

You should stick to reading the Daily Mail!

A bit of dodgy astronomy pales by comparison with active climate change denial, for example:

https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/daily-mail-still-not-taking-climate-change-seriously/

 

[AndreasC]

The annoying thing is not so much they got it wrong. The annoying thing is that they don't care that they got it wrong.

How do you know they know they got it wrong?

 

[snorkack]

The situation is even worse, since the Guardian article also says "Observing its behaviour gives important insights into the behaviour of red giants before supernova explosions." As stated above, "red giant" is a specific evolutionary phase of a general type of star, and that is a star with a mass that is too low to ever undergo supernova. So the above sentence is oxymoronic, and the problem is not just that the Guardian is confused about how close red giants are, it is that they don't have the least idea what a red giant even is! (The single most important distinction to make about stars is that some go supernova and others don't, and red giants, like our Sun will be, are in the latter class. The significance of the "strange behavior" that Betelgeuse is undergoing is that we might indeed be looking at the kind of "death throes" of a star that is about to go supernova, i.e., not a red giant, whereas strange behavior in a red giant might presage the creation of a much less violent planetary nebula.)

That´s not so obvious. Arguably the most important distinction is the distinction between stars on main sequence, and stars off main sequence.

 

[Vanadium 50]

How do you know they know they got it wrong?

That is an excellent question. Many sites - but not this one - have links to alert the editorial team to errors.

There is a "discussion" tab, but I wouldn't expect the editors to be reading the hundreds of comments looking for such a report.

As for deadlines, things are different in the digital age. You can still publish corrections, but you can also simply change the article. I don't think this is best practice, but it's done by others - there is no technical reason a factual error needs to stay up.

So my answer is "if getting it factually correct was a priority, they would take the same steps (at least) that other news organizations do."

 

[pinball1970]

The Guardian is usually quite good for tech reports, if it is stars you are after though....

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/18744...g-of-supergiant-star-captured-by-astronomers/

 

[pinball1970]

The Guardian is usually quite good for tech reports, if it is stars you are after though....

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/18744...g-of-supergiant-star-captured-by-astronomers/

A link to a paper! In the Sun??

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41...5266&CJEVENT=4fc4a11bfee511ed81305a6c0a18ba73

 

[AndreasC]

That is an excellent question. Many sites - but not this one - have links to alert the editorial team to errors.

There is a "discussion" tab, but I wouldn't expect the editors to be reading the hundreds of comments looking for such a report.

As for deadlines, things are different in the digital age. You can still publish corrections, but you can also simply change the article. I don't think this is best practice, but it's done by others - there is no technical reason a factual error needs to stay up.

So my answer is "if getting it factually correct was a priority, they would take the same steps (at least) that other news organizations do."

They seem to have that:
https://www.theguardian.com/info/20...-complaint-about-guardian-or-observer-content

 

[Ken G]

That´s not so obvious. Arguably the most important distinction is the distinction between stars on main sequence, and stars off main sequence.

But that's not a difference in the star itself, merely the difference in the phase of life it is in. It's like saying the most important difference between people is the overall life they will lead, not whether they happen to be young or old when we meet them, as the latter is just an accident of timing. But I certainly agree with your point that it is very important to understand the age of the star as well, since it strongly affects the internal structure. Some will say "timing is everything."

 

[Vanadium 50]

They seem to have that:

That's good. I certainly didn't find it when I was looking for some link to say "This isn' right."

 

[Ken G]

They seem to have that:
https://www.theguardian.com/info/20...-complaint-about-guardian-or-observer-content

I sent an email to the address given there to suggest the correction to "supergiant", we shall see how they address corrections like that. If accuracy is important to them and they make some kind of correction, then that is probably good enough from the point of view of journalistic integrity.

 

[Ken G]

(No correction as of June 1, https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/series/correctionsandclarifications )

 

[Ken G]

The editors said ". The article in question has now been amended, and a footnote added to be clear that a change has been made." So they have made an effort to address the issue, I'm not sure yet what the footnote was but I presume it says the star is actually a supergiant.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'm glad they fixed it.

They fixed it with a search and replace, adding "super". I'm not sure that it is the nearest red supergiant to Earth. Antares is at about the same distance (5.9 mas parallax), and Alpha Persei , unequivocally closer, is a supergiant in the red giant evolutionary stage, but is yellow.

 

[Bandersnatch]

It is the closest per the paper they refer to and the metric it uses. Not that it's particularly important for it to be so, which is probably why it's mentioned once.
If it's good enough for the paper, it's good enough for the newspaper. They corrected it. It's fine.

 

[swampwiz]

The Guardian claims Betelgeuse is the closest red giant to Earth.

Not even close.

• Aldebaran
• Arcturus
• Mira
• Delta Andromedae
• The abominably named Gacrux
• Capella, which despite the color is a red giant
• Possibly Antares (distances are similar)
• And, what is likely the correct answer, Pollux.

Think they'll fix it?

Capella is a yellow giant.

 

[swampwiz]

I'm glad they fixed it.

They fixed it with a search and replace, adding "super". I'm not sure that it is the nearest red supergiant to Earth. Antares is at about the same distance (5.9 mas parallax), and Alpha Persei , unequivocally closer, is a supergiant in the red giant evolutionary stage, but is yellow.

Then Alpha Persie is not a red giant now.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Capella is a yellow giant.

"Red giant" is really m,ore an evolutionary stage than a description of color.

 

[swampwiz]

"Red giant" is really m,ore an evolutionary stage than a description of color.

So you are saying that journalists should know this fine distinction? Heck, I'd be satisfied if they would stop saying ridiculous stuff like "the plant generated 150 MW of electricity last year".

 

[Vanadium 50]

So you are saying that journalists should know this fine distinction?

Why not? First, it's not that fine a distinction, Second, there are plenty of science journalists around who know this. Third, they got into this mess by changing what was in the paper they sourced, and even a non-science journalist should have known better. And finally, they could have fact-checked the final product.

Further, I expect the PF membership to be interested in learning this, if they don't already.

 

[Ken G]

Stellar classifications are indeed a bit of a mess, because the words can mean so many different things. We probably have to be a bit forgiving.

If one looks at the size and color of the primary star in Capella, it occupies a place in the Hertsprung-Russell diagram that is pretty close to the red giants, just a little hotter and smaller (so is sometimes called a yellow giant, since its spectral type is K0 so almost a G star). But it is much more useful to classify stars based on their evolutionary phase than their size and color, and there the Capella primary is something of an impostor as a red giant-- it is actually a "red clump" star, which means it has started to fuse helium in its core (whereas true red giants have inert degenerate helium cores, so the Capella primary is in a later stage than that, while the Capella secondary is in an earlier stage where it has not yet reached the red giant branch).

So Capella has two main stars that are both close to the red giant branch but one has left and the other hasn't gotten there yet, hence when someone calls Capella a "yellow giant", they are covering a lot of interesting physics about what those stars have done and will do! (On the other hand, calling Betelgeuse a red giant is just wrong, it's nowhere near the right place in the H-R diagram for that, and it is not of the type of star that makes red giants, so it's good that this has been corrected to red supergiant.)