Talk:RR Lyrae variable

Mass

In the lede it reads:RR Lyraes are pulsating horizontal branch aging stars of spectral class A or F, with a mass of around half the Sun's. They are thought to have previously shed mass during the Red-giant branch phase, and consequently, they were once stars with similar or slightly less mass than the Sun, around 0.8 solar masses. Well which is true half of solar mass or 80% of solar mass ? Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 13:43, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Both are true. They *currently* have half the sun's mass (give or take). They *previously* had 80% of its mass (several billion years ago). No contradiction. The paragraph even explains that they shed mass during the the red giant phase, hence they are now less massive than they were. That sentence is not grammatically brilliant, because having shed mass doesn't really imply that they had a mass similar to or slightly less than the sun, and the cause-and-effect is backwards. Maybe you could try to rewrite it in a way that is easier to understand by someone who doesn't already know what's going on, and grammatically better? Lithopsian (talk) 18:45, 22 April 2019 (UTC)