[Data-modeling] New Extrasolar Planet type is up for your consideration (hope to promote to Astronomy soon)

[Robert Cook]

As you know I'm not into over-abstraction, but I wonder if it wouldn't  
make sense to factor out some of these properties into a more abstract  
type.  Currently the astronomy domain has a type called "celestial  
object":

http://www.freebase.com/view/schema/astronomy/celestial_object

and Planet:

http://www.freebase.com/view/schema/astronomy/planet

Neither of these have the many useful properties you've added to  
exoplanet, yet both of them overlap several of the properties that  
you've added to exoplanet.

Celestial object, at least, seems pretty abstract.  Planet, on the  
other hand, could be very specific -- the planets in our solar system,  
but it could also include moons, asteroids and exoplanets, much like  
the "Planet" infobox does on Wikipedia.

I'm not an astronomer, so somebody with more domain expertise would  
probably provide better guidance, but I think that it would make sense  
to have the Exoplanet pull most of its properties from Celestial  
object and another type which would define all of the properties for  
non-star celestial objects.  Despite Wikipedia's precedent, I think  
calling this type a "planet" is probably a bad idea, given how charged  
that definition can be.

Does this makes sense?

R

On Apr 8, 2008, at 6:17 PM, Gordon Mackenzie wrote:

> http://www.freebase.com/view/schema/user/metapsyche/exoplanetology/exoplanet
>
> User metapsyche initiated the type and has done of most of the hard
> work of modeling/adding the properties to hang off of exoplanet. He
> has also added most if not all instances of exoplanets Freebase
> currently contains from previous topic refreshes from Wikipedia.
>
> We hope you find the properties useful. If there are any mistakes,
> missing properties or units of measurement questions please reply to
> me (and the list).
>
> Several questions I have been pondering:
>
> Use of parsec versus light year (from what I understand, light years
> are used as a unit of length/distance for science popularization
> purposes and parsecs is preferred?)?
>
> Trying to figure out if a survey, like that of the TrES that is
> composed of three telescopes at different observatories, is an
> Astronomical Organization or that of an Astronomical Survey? Super
> WASP? Minor Planet Center?
>
> IAU, definitely an astronomical organization.
>
> We've just started with the organization and the instrumentation
> (Astronomical Observatory and Telescope just placeholder types at the
> moment). As for Astronomical Observatory, it probably should be two
> types at first in an enumerated list: Space Observatory (includes
> satellite/spacecraft types) and Terrestrial Observatory (includes
> Structure). But unsure how to accomplish this.
>
> It would be great to be able to have two different set of properties
> populate a topic when a trigger property (boolean I guess) would be
> the only initial property. E.G. Astronomical Observatory, is it
> Terrestrial-based? (True /False) and depending on the state of the
> boolean, space or structural properties would be made available for
> data.
>
> ~ Gordon
>
> <<< gordon at metaweb.com >>>
>
>
>
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