Obscure Comet Brightens Suddenly

reply to post by Shar

Yep, that was definitely Venus. Another case solved.

And for anyone who still wants to try to see the comet, I gave instructions on how to find it in this post. Currently the comet is very close to the star Mirfak in the constellation Perseus.

It is getting harder to see naked eye, but looks great through binoculars.

[edit on 11/15/2007 by Hal9000]

Fox News just did a story on this. Their guest scientist said that Haley's brightened suddenly back in the 1980's but that this brightening was incredible. He also said that it was passing close to Jupiter. He claimed that the brightening was due to an 'out-gassing'. What if it keeps getting brighter - and bigger - as if it is getting closer, not just giving off gas?

Well it sucks to be on the other side of the planet right now; I would love to see this. That is unless it's headin' right for us!!

Heh, dirty snowball my ...., those days should be long gone.
Why do they perpetuate the myth is it blind arrogance or faith? Or, if I put my tin foil hat for a minute.. is there something about space they are hiding from us?.
We've heard a lot of conjecture from the institution as to the effects, but not much about the cause. Except the impact scenario which is possible I must say, but the chances are slim.

I'd like to throw a theory out there for consideration, based on my previous comments.
But, this is still going to be a grab at straws explanation, even form an electric comet view. However it may help lead closer to the truth of what is really happening.

Just off top of my head so I hope I don’t mess up the details.
So what is a comet according in the electric model? The only significant difference between a comet and an asteroid is its orbit. Comets have elliptical orbits so they experience a change in charge density as they approach the positively charged sun. The differential in the charge forms the plasma sheath and tail, arcs will erupt on the surface and jettison material out and carve out craters on the surface.
So with that in mind, what could be causing it since its moving away from the sun?
It could be a birkeland current, it could be a cme, but I don't think there has been any activity from the sun that would account for it. Although that stuff Copernicus posted back there about the solar activity was interesting. There does seem to be some correlation between solar flares and comets.

According to EU theory all that’s required is a difference in charge density for a plasma double layer (coma) and tail to become visible. So this is what I think.
Apparently there is has been an increase in stellar dust entering the solar system because of the way the magnetic fields are currently aligned. So, could this charged cosmic dust form clumps of plasma throughout the solar system? I’d say yep. Would it have enough difference to cause this? I couldn’t say, but that’s what I’ve been thinking.
I also think its effects are seen in the warming of the planets and moons and increased solar activity, possibly noctilucent cloud increase, Saturn and Jupiter seem to be displaying energetic aurora activity and violent storms recently as well.
You could read a lot more into this if you now what I mean, but just sticking to the facts so far. Admittedly I’m connecting a lot of dots here and it’s bound to have some flaws, just my favored theory atm, But if true, how will it affect us? I think every thing is connected down or up, from the galactic core. All things connected.

Good job with this thread Hal, thanks for the updates and pics.

Originally posted by squiz
Heh, dirty snowball my ...., those days should be long gone.
Why do they perpetuate the myth is it blind arrogance or faith? Or, if I put my tin foil hat for a minute.. is there something about space they are hiding from us?

Check out the stuff about the Electronic Universe: Linkage, I found it very interesting. If you print it out, you get 74 pages, but its a worthwhile read.

Originally posted by Copernicus
reply to post by Hal9000

 

I wish I could find some kind of site with what the Sumarians said about the universe, detailing what exactly was being said. But so far, no success.

And you are right in being a skeptic, I dont blame you at all. Just means we need to find what the Sumarians had written in their works somehow so we can verify his interpretations of it.


[edit on 14-11-2007 by Copernicus]

The Sumerians didn't know of 10 planets here is some knowledge i gained when asking myself the same question about the Sumerians. At the bottom there is a link to the Mul Apin tablets which is the written babylonian astronomical knowledge.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by kerkinana walsky
that cylinder seal you mentioned is it this one ?



its Akkadian dates from around 2300bce.

The seal is transliterated (the Sumero-Akkadian signs in English letters) and translated in the principal publication of the Berlin Vorderasiatische Museum’s publication of its seal collection, Vorderasiatische Rollsiegel (“West Asian Cylinder Seals”; 1940) by Mesopotamian scholar Anton Moortgat on page 101. This book is in German, so I offer the German and an English translation:

Line 1 = dub-si-ga “Dubsiga” [a personal name of an apparently powerful person[1]]

Line 2 = ili-il-la-at “Ili-illat” [another personal name, this time of the seal’s owner]

Line 3 = ir3-su “dein Knecht” [German for “your servant”[2]]

So the full (rather boring) inscription of VA243 reads: “Dubsiga, Ili-illat, your/his servant.” Nothing in the inscription suggests anything remotely to do with astronomy or planets.

www.michaelsheiser.com...
In fact its been posted here before
www.abovetopsecret.com...
and it doesn't show planets at all but shows the Pleiades.

Mul Apin tablets which is the entire corpus of astronomical knowledge recorded by the Babylonians:

www.geocities.com...

This includes some later knowledge of course but means basically that if it isn't in here then earlier civilisations such as the Akkadians and Sumerians couldn't have known about it.
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So i dont think this is planet x or anything to do with the Sumerians but still the emergence of this comet is fascinating. Great work Hal with the pics and keeping us updated.

Mod Edit: New Forum Image Linking Policy – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 15-11-2007 by Jbird]

Nice gif, but a tad on the large side IMHO.

I'm sure I've just seen Comet Holmes, and to me it doesn't seem any dimmer or smaller. Just my suspicious mind

reply to post by Copernicus


Thanks Copernicus, I already saw that link in your thread in the science and tech forum. Thanks for posting it, I was a little shocked actually, he has come to many of the same conclusions. There's a few that I'm not completely there with, but I believe there's a lot of truth in those pages.

reply to post by sinthia


I just had a look at it. It's dimmer and much larger.

Fox News just did a story on this. Their guest scientist said that Halley's brightened suddenly back in the 1980's but that this brightening was incredible. He also said that it was passing close to Jupiter.

This "guest scientist" clearly doesn't know much. 17P/Holmes is currently nowhere near Jupiter. The comet was slightly perturbed by Jupiter when it was at aphelion (furthest distance from the Sun) in 2004, but even then it was no closer to the planet than Earth is to the Sun !

Originally posted by Copernicus
...It kind of says a lot about the mass media when we have a comet larger than the sun in our solar system, and they arent even covering it.

Because, even though it is remarkable, it is not uncommon for a comet's coma to grow as large as the Sun. Some comets had comas that were over a million miles in diamter, which is about 15% bigger than the Sun. Comet Hale-Bopp had a coma about that large. There have been many others that common people have never heard of.

While it's certainly scientifically interesting, a coma as large as the Sun is not uncommon enough to be newsworthy for the mass media.

reply to post by Mogget

Maybe the FOX "guest scientist's" confusion is that the comet's 7-year orbit takes it close to the orbit of Jupiter, if not Jupiter itself. In fact the comet's orbit never takes it inside the orbit of Mars -- Comet Holmes will always stays between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter for the foreseeable future (unless someday something happens to change that!).

Here's a "java" applet that shows Comet Holmes' orbit relative to the other planets. (this applet may take a while to load sometimes):
ssd.jpl.nasa.gov...

[edit on 11/16/2007 by Soylent Green Is People]

[edit on 11/16/2007 by Soylent Green Is People]

I'm not getting this "not reported by mainstream media" thing. It's been on AOL, CNN, FOX and many other websites. The comet hasn't done anything remarkable for three weeks now, the cloud of gas is just expanding as you'd expect. In a week or so it will go back to being invisible.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Thanks for the illustration 'soylent'! I'm a visual person and the applet helped a lot!

Here is a Hubble Space Telescope picture of Comet Holmes (and a nice amateur photo) taken November 4th and released yesterday.

www.nasa.gov...

Astronomers used Hubble's powerful resolution to study Comet Holmes' core for clues about how the comet brightened. The orbiting observatory's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) monitored the comet for several days, snapping images on Oct. 29, Oct. 31, and Nov. 4. Hubble's crisp "eye" can see objects as small as 33 miles (54 kilometers) across, providing the sharpest most detailed view yet of the source of the spectacular brightening.

reply to post by IAttackPeople

Sweet. IAP, you are the man.

Everyone who's been waiting to hear from NASA, well here it is.

I see they haven't detected if the nucleus broke up or not.

The Hubble images, however, do not show any large fragments near the nucleus of Comet Holmes, unlike the case of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (SW3). In the spring of 2006 Hubble observations revealed a multitude of "mini-comets" ejected by SW3 after the comet increased dramatically in brightness.

Ground-based images of Comet Holmes show a large, spherically symmetrical cloud of dust that is offset from the nucleus, suggesting that a large fragment did break off and subsequently disintegrated into tiny dust particles after moving away from the main nucleus.

Unfortunately, the huge amount of dust near the comet's nucleus and the comet's relatively large distance from Earth (149 million miles, or 1.6 astronomical units, for Holmes versus 9 million, or 0.1 astronomical unit for SW3), make detecting fragments near Holmes nearly impossible right now, unless the fragments are nearly as large as the nucleus itself.

I can still see it with the naked eye very clearly. They've given poor weather for the next few days though so I might not see it until Tuesday night. I take it from the views expressed that most people are satisfied that there is nothing bar a decent spectacle to be had from comet holmes then.

I'm getting bored of waiting for a good armageddon

reply to post by Hal9000


On SLOOH radio last night, TaviG said that a square mile of the coma material weighs 1/20000th of an ounce! Amazing if true.

I went outside the city and looked with my scope but couldn't spot it. I guess it's still near Mirfak? There was a light fog a couple dozen feet off the ground giving me a distortion so it was hard to see clearly.

As a side note it's been years since I had the chance to leave the city and see the Milky Way. Refreshing. I even saw a meteor trail clearly lit in vivid smokey detail. Never seen that before.

No "end of the world" from this. Just another spectacular expression of our universe in action.

Thank you to all who put up vital information and links to this.

Great thread for those that really love space.

Found it tonight and I was surprised. The great big blur was unmistakable. But even with my strongest lense with the cloud filling the entire view I couldn't make out the nucleus.

As another side note you know your astronomy book is out of date if it talks about the Andromeda Nebula...