not sure if this is what I saw last night, but around 1:30 am me and a few friends were in front of our house, and I was the first to notice a very strange light in the sky flashing red and blue, comparable to a police siren but not blinking as fast as a siren. Also saw a nice little object fireball in the atmosphere from a shooting star

Does anyone have a comment on coma increase being attributable to the fact that Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury were in the same orbital quadrant at the time of its increase?

I just finished cleaning up after the hurricane

Can someone tell me if we're going to die by this thing hitting our planet?

What's the latest on this? Is it getting bigger, CLOSER???

I thought it was moving away from us.

Originally posted by scrapple
Does anyone have a comment on coma increase being attributable to the fact that Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury were in the same orbital quadrant at the time of its increase?

thats a worthy theory.

however the distance between the planets and holmes is to great for their gravity to have that affect on holmes.

yet in a strange way, you could be right, we dont understand gravity correctly,dark matter will be the key!.

I thought the tail of comets pointed away from the sun, regardless of it's path?

I see a bright orange light in the sky at night which doesn't seem to be in the right place for Mars. I'm curious if that's the comet I'm looking at. Hard to tell without the tail.

Originally posted by Echotebarknwhale
not sure if this is what I saw last night, but around 1:30 am me and a few friends were in front of our house, and I was the first to notice a very strange light in the sky flashing red and blue, comparable to a police siren but not blinking as fast as a siren. Also saw a nice little object fireball in the atmosphere from a shooting star

yep, i have seen this too. First night i thought i was seeing things, and didnt even bother calling the kids out to see. Then i read on some other forum, people were saying that they had seen it too. So next night, went out again, and saw it again. Occassionally flashes green too, but mostly red(orange) and blue. Would love to know what it is.

So by now it should be getting smaller. I wouldn't know, i'm under a blanket of cloud at the moment

Much of what is being observed can be easily explained. I am not an astronomer nor a physicist, but if you think about what is going on, it makes sense. Hopefully I can explain it without being confusing.

Imagine being in a car on three lane highway. You are traveling at 65 miles per hour on the inside lane along a very long, gentle curve. About 1 mile ahead of you is an old beater of a car driving in the outside lane at a speed just slightly slower that you.

Note that if you were to stop your car, the other car is moving away from you. The other car is also moving away from you when your car is moving at 65 miles per hour. However, because it is moving SLOWER than your car, it appears that to be coming at you very slowly. As your car catches up AND continues to travel the inside lane (thus adding to your cars progress in catching up), you will eventually pass the other car.

This is the same with the comet. Our position has been such that we are catching up to the comet, but at the same time it is moving away from us. The curvature of our orbit around the sun is always inside that of the comet. As we continue moving around the sun it will become clear that Earth and the comet are not on a collision course.

Moving on... since it is evening the other car has it's headlights on. Because the other car is almost straight ahead of you, the headlight beams are hardly visible.

Again, this is what is happening with the comet. A comet's tail is always pointed AWAY from the sun, regardless of the direction that the comet is traveling. Our current position in relation to the comet and the sun has us sitting in such a way that we are between the two bodies. So the tail of the comet is pointing almost directly AWAY from us. Therefore that tail appears to be very minimal or, in some observations, non-existent.

Lastly, there is the matter of the seemingly increasing size of the comet or at least the debris cloud that it left behind. Taking this back to the car example, imagine that the old junker car ahead of you suddenly backfires loudly and issues a big, nasty puff of thick, black smoke that lingers heavily as you approach. The other car is still moving away, but the smoke does not travel with the same speed as the car. Meanwhile, as your car is still moving, the puff of smoke gets bigger and bigger as you approach it.

That's quite possibly what we are seeing with this comet. Assuming that something took place and the comet threw up a big cloud of dust, most likely that dust is not moving at anywhere near the same speed as the comet itself. So, because we are moving at a course that makes the comet appear to be "ahead" of us, the cloud of dust will also appear "ahead" of us. As we move toward the comet and it's dust, the dust will look like it is getting bigger and that we're going to go right into it. However, as the curvature of our orbit begins to take us away from the comet, so to will it take us away from the dust cloud. Both of them will begin to grow smaller.

I hope that makes sense. It is not always easy to put into words a concept that is very clear in thoughts.

[edit on 7-11-2007 by John_Q_Llama]

[edit on 7-11-2007 by John_Q_Llama]

Is it getting smaller yet? It should be according to the orbit but if it isn't perhaps it isn't what we thought it is

This comet is starting to get very interesting, and maybe even a little worrying?
Is it even a comet!!?

It scares the hell out of me to hear someone say "listen up People"...just another way of saying "Listen up Sheeple"...nothing to see here...move along...move along.

Maybe this Comet is nothing more than a once ever 115 year visitor to our system but as of yet, and definately not here, no one has been able to explain this comets unusal behavior the last several weeks. Are our (US) astromers been placed on a gag order from the guvment. This celestial event was first reported by an Iranian Astronomer and of course they can spead this info to the world without being suppressed. Place me in the cautionary column with a paranoia check by my name for right now. I caught something on another site that this comet may be birthing another traveling buddy. We'll have to wait and see.