Talk:SGR 1806−20

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on December 27, 2010 and December 27, 2011.

Position in figure

In the NASA-credited pix, the location of 1806 -20 is wrong. The correct location can be mapped using the wiki page for Sagittarius at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_%28constellation%29 where 1806 -20 is just below and to the left of M23. On that image, the horizontal white line below M23 is at -20 degrees declination; the vertical white RA line to the left of M23 is the 18:00 hour line. Also, NASA has the correct pix at: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/swift_nsu_0205.html Sorry for not editing the article myself, but I'm a newbie at wiki, and I didn't want to mess up this nice article. --Solspot 16:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I got it, substituting a figure that was in the Gallery with the correct position. Wwheaton (talk) 08:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What is the point of the gallery?

There doesn't seem to be any..(Later edit) Removed it 82.169.255.79 (talk) 22:38, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Absolute Magnitude -29

Without reference to a magnitude system this number is fairly meaningless, but I decided to do a bit of search to see if I could determine the origin of this value. It could be absolute bolometric magnitude which from the rest of the articles on it seems likely. However, I was unable to find any reference to any determination of the absolute magnitude of the Dec 27, 2004 flare. If nobody provides a response, I will probably remove the actual reference to a specific magnitude. Autkm (talk) 02:24, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

actually I'm shocked at the general lack of citations. Going hunting… --Smkolins (talk) 11:42, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

o k- here's a start:

Visual Magnitudes of Other Objects, By: Larry McNish, Stellar Magnitudes and the Brightest Stars, November 11, 2011, (citing someone else without specifics)

~~List of most luminous stars, by LaRose Blanche,factinformationtruth.blogspot.com, November 6, 2013~~ (depends on List_of_most_luminous_stars which has the same vague source - both mention the magnitude and appear to depend on some report from Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission but never specified.

Other sources to include in the article sometime:

SGR 1806−20 distance and dust properties in molecular clouds by analysis of a flare x-ray echoes, by Gilad Svirski, Ehud Nakar and Eran O. Ofek, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 000–000 (0000) Printed March 2, 2011

THE DOUBLE-LINED SPECTRUM OF LBV 1806−20 by Donald F. Figer, Francisco Najarro, Rolf P. Kudritzki, February 2, 2008, draft

Anniversary of a cosmic blast, By Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy, December 27, 2009

An exceptionally bright flare from SGR 1806–20 and the origins of short-duration g-ray bursts by, K. Hurley, S. E. Boggs, D. M. Smith, R. C. Duncan, R. Lin, A. Zoglauer, S. Krucker, G. Hurford, H. Hudson, C. Wigger, W. Hajdas, C. Thompson, I. Mitrofanov, A. Sanin, W. Boynton, C. Fellows, A. von Kienlin, G. Lichti, A. Rau & T. Cline, NATURE, VOL 434, 28 APRIL 2005, p. 1098–1103

The Distances of Short-Hard Gamma-Ray Bursts and the Soft Gamma-Ray Repeater Connection, by Ehud Nakar, Avishay Gal-Yam, Tsvi Piran, and Derek B. Fox, Astrophysical Journal, 640:849-853, 2006 April 1, (accepted 2005 September 20)

The Radio Afterglow produced by the Giant Flare from the Magnetar SGR 1806-20, by Greg Taylor, ISB 310, Tuesday, April 26th

Massive disturbance of the daytime lower ionosphere by the giant γ-ray flare from magnetar SGR 1806–20, U. S. Inan, N. G. Lehtinen, R. C. Moore, K. Hurley, S. Boggs, D. M. Smith, G. J. Fishman, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L08103, doi:10.1029/2006GL029145.

--Smkolins (talk) 12:41, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

SOHO saw it GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT, SGR1806: Optical Transient Candidates in SOHO/LASCO Images, DATE: 05/01/08 02:54:09 GMT, FROM: AAVSO GRB Network at AAVSO <aavso@aavso.org>, P. Schnoor and A. Price, on behalf of the AAVSO International High Energy

Network (there is a whole series of articles at [1]) Radio observers picked it up - Detection of Gamma Ray Bursts and X-ray transient SGR1806-20 with VLF Radio Telescopes, By Rodney Howe, … --Smkolins (talk) 13:27, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

[2] might be plumbed for details where the info was gathered from? --Smkolins (talk) 13:29, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

EXPLOSION section

"A similar blast within 3 parsecs (10 light years) of Earth would destroy the ozone layer and would be similar in effect to a 12 kt of TNT (50 TJ) nuclear blast at 7.5 km"

Except, a 12kt nuke would not destroy the entire ozone layer. This sentence is in need of clarification. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luxdsg (talk • contribs) 16:25, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed claim about the nuclear bomb. If they can't show their work after 7 years, I think it's safe to say there will never be a citation.

It seems to be a rather arbitrary claim, and speculative. There is nothing to support it. Not even the math that was used to come to this conclusion. As such, it has been removed.VoidHalo (talk) 08:24, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

?

most things I know don't use their own to convey a science comparison, .. you can't physically say those words, .. 216.210.69.108 (talk) 23:05, 29 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

14.5 kiloparsecs is NOT 50,000 light-years according to CONVERT

here is the proof: 50,000 light-years (15.330 kpc) and 14.5 kiloparsecs (47,000 ly) ESAD-Hooker (talk) 21:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Close enough, well within any margin of error. Of course if there were a citation giving an actual distance, we could actually argue about some real numbers instead of made-up ones ... Lithopsian (talk) 21:37, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you think 6% is "well within any margin of error" then I will accept your response. Why not say 14.5 kiloparsecs (47,000 ly), at least the "made-up ones" actually {{convert}} correctly ESAD-Hooker (talk) 04:47, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I looked around a bit as I suspected that 14.5 kpc had a few too many significant figures. There may be a more recent paper, but the most recent one looking at distance to SGR1806-20 appears to be SVIRSKI G.; NAKAR E.; OFEK E.O. 2011, MNRAS, 415, 2485-2494 (SGR 1806-20 distance and dust properties in molecular clouds by analysis of flare X-ray echoes) They suggest the distance with a 90% confidence level is between 9.4kpc and 18.6kpc.I am not sure where the 14.5 kpc number came from, but didn't delve too much into the early literature. Autkm (talk) 21:28, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Distance info is outdated

This star is ~8.7 kpc away, see: https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0815

In addition, 1E 1048.1-5937 is not the closest magnetar, there are a number closer, including SGR J0418 + 5729 which is estimated to be 1.6 kpc away: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.1034.pdf

Finally, there's a good resource for magnetar information here, from McGill University https://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~pulsar/magnetar/main.html 67.171.246.19 (talk) 06:16, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Have at it. Looks like you've got a reliable source for that distance, which is more than the article has right now. A quick literature search suggests that 8.7kpc is still widely accepted, although you might want to check Svirski et al (2011) just for context. Lithopsian (talk) 11:11, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]