Comet Elenin is coming!

reply to post by thorazineshuffle

Thanks for the explanation! I should have phrased my question a little differently. What I should of asked was, in the copy of text from Elenin's facebook page, he stated that a telescope could not locate the comet now. Why would you not, as it is much closer now than it was 5 the ago when he discovered it.

The comet is readily visible in normal light to observers with powerful enough telescopes. He was referring to Arecibo, the world's largest radio telescope. The plan is to bounce a radio wave off the comet to map its surface through radar imagery. To do so, a request must be made and observing time scheduled. Arecibo is a very busy telescope. Here is what Elenin himself says on his observatory's sight:

Comet C/2010 X1 ( Elenin) may be studied with the help of one of the biggest radio telescopes in the world – Arecibo. This only very recently became known. Lance Benner answered my letter having to do with the detection of NEOs with the help of the 70 meter Goldstone radio telescope. From his words we learn that finding a comet at a distance of 0.23 a.u. is a complex task for their radio telescope. For that purpose the gigantic 300 meter Arecibo radio telescope is better suited.

According to Ellen Howell, such work has been done at Arecibo and in 30-50% of the cases it has been successful. An application for four nights of observing time in the period from September 27 to November 10, 2011 has already been sent to the committee that apportions observing time. I hope these observations will all take place and that they will be successful!

SpaceObs

I don't believe he's received word yet whether the telescope will be tasked as he wishes.

Originally posted by thorazineshuffle
reply to post by DJW001

 

Thanks for the explanation! I should have phrased my question a little differently. What I should of asked was, in the copy of text from Elenin's facebook page, he stated that a telescope could not locate the comet now. Why would you not, as it is much closer now than it was 5 the ago when he discovered it.

We're fast approaching the point that the comet will be too low at sunset and too close to the sun to reasonably observe it. At that point we'll lose sight of it until after perihelion. We're not quite there yet, but we will be soon.

*I see now he was talking about Arecibo, not all telescopes in general. It actually does apply to telescopes in general once it gets too close to the sun though.

Originally posted by thorazineshuffle
reply to post by nataylor

 

I misphrased my question, sorry. See my response above. Thanks!

Ah, if you're talking about Arecibo imaging the comet, that's totally different than "seeing" it. Arecibo uses radar to image the comets. That means it must send a signal out from Earth, and listen to what bounces back from the comet. This is much different than an optical telescope, which just passively collects light reflected from the comet. For radar imaging, you want to do it when the object is as close as possible to the antenna. This means more of the radar signal you send out reaches the object, and more of that signal bounces back to the antenna.

Originally posted by mclinking

Originally posted by beltemps
a new site which is dealing with all aspects of elenin:
Elenin Comet

edit on 25-5-2011 by beltemps because: typo

A new site dealing with all FICTITIOUS aspects of Elenin. It is NOT a comet. If it were, it'd be the slowest comet on record. At the moment, this object is moving at 60,000 mph, the same as the Earth. But follow the JPL data base by all means and you'll see how its speed shoots up in late Summer.
A lot of trouble after that.

mclinking

Aha... And you know this from your own observations...? Sorry to be a spoilsport but I stick with the conservative comet explanation...

reply to post by cloaked4u

Yeah, SO WHAT. who cares. It will be so far away, i will need a telescope to see it. Another HOAX people. Just go away now , go away. Not even close for any impact.

Seeing as you jumped from page 1 to the end and did not bother to read the thread I will point out that the comet Elenin is not a hoax it is real and yes you will probably need a telescope to see it. No one siad it was going to impact so why don't just go way and stop making stupid comments without having read the thread.

Ellenin will not even come close enough. We will not get hit , not by a long shot.

For some crazy reason,. there is a growing minor concern that Elenin (may) have something
In tow. Now,. Could it be possible that the earth might be involved in some debris from the tail?
I think maybe,.. but only speculation will tell
Exciting times ahead,..
If Harold camping says the end is in October.... Wow,. what a coinkidink that would be hey

reply to post by Lil Drummerboy

For some crazy reason,. there is a growing minor concern that Elenin (may) have something
In tow. Now,. Could it be possible that the earth might be involved in some debris from the tail?
I think maybe,.. but only speculation will tell

The crazy reason is just that: crazy. An Argentine newspaper printed a story that combined a confessed hoax about Chinese scientists and invented a lie that a noted Argentine astronomer claimed that there was a spaceship following the comet. I checked with him personally, it was a malicious lie made up by the newspaper. The author of that hoax has been spamming it all over the internet, including ATS. The Earth passes through comet "debris" all the time, the result are periodic meteor showers. Most of the "debris" is microscopic dust that burns up in the atmosphere. No speculation is required, the Earth has passed through comets' tails frequently with no ill results.

Where are all the pictures of this comet elenin? Figure the discoverer Leonid Elenin would be hot on his blog with video/pics, etc. He after all discovered C/2010 X1 and you already know how many people are interested in this "C/2010 X1"

reply to post by spydrbyte25

Where are all the pictures of this comet elenin? Figure the discoverer Leonid Elenin would be hot on his blog with video/pics, etc. He after all discovered C/2010 X1 and you already know how many people are interested in this "C/2010 X1"

Here are some of them:

www.aerith.net...
www.amication.de...

Hello, new here- please be gentle with me.

Also, didn't really know where to post this- so if this isn't the correct thread please move.


Does the website "www.spaceobs.org" have any really ties to "Leonid Elenin"? It is linked in a "supposed" facebook page for this individual that I found under the "Does Leonid Elenin even exist?" thread.

(This post felt entirely out of place with that thread)

Anyway, maybe someone with more experience can google translate these posts, or even a native speaker.
The second post from the top was very interesting..

Here's what I've translated thus far:

"Perhaps the close approach of Comet Elenina from the main belt asteroids 25.05.2011 | Author: Leonid Elenin (+6 rating / rating, 8 votes / votes) ISON-NM / L. Elenin Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) all closer to the inner boundary of the main asteroid belt. Her approach with asteroids have become increasingly rare, but May 21, 2011 managed to shoot one of the most interesting encounters, which I mentioned earlier. May 21 at 00:52 UT Elenina comet and an asteroid (74732) 1999 RQ176 held at a distance of only 225,830 km, which amounts to 0.59 average distance from Earth to the Moon. In addition, based on measurements obtained on the same images, the size of the coma of a comet has exceeded 100 000 km and probably more realistically a coma and we could see it in pictures with larger telescopes. Once on this asteroid we would have just opened a spectacular view! From left, obtained 3 hours after closest approach, you can see how close are the two objects. Asteroid 1999 RQ176 sufficiently large representative of the family of Flora and has a diameter of about 2.7 km. Six weeks later the comet crosses the orbit of Mars, reaching the heliocentric distance of 1.5 AU and according to a famous astronomer John Bortle, just from that point and start the fun. Category: News | Tags: C/2010 X1 (Elenin), Comet, Comet Elenin, Comet, Comet Elenina | 35 Comments New circumsolar asteroid 22.05.2011 | Author: Leonid Elenin (+5 rating / rating, 5 votes / votes) NASA / JPL overview of the Spanish La Sagra opened a new facility under the temporary designation 15LB160. This asteroid is likely to be classified as potentially dangerous, the minimum distance of the intersection of its orbit with the orbit of Earth 0.044 AU, body diameter of about 450 meters. The object has not yet received an official designation, but has already been confirmed by many observatories, including on our own. It is quite possible that this asteroid will enter the top ten near-Earth asteroids with the smallest distance of the perihelion passage of q ~ 0.1 AU! P.S. The asteroid was designated 2011 KE."

Here's the link to the "path chart"? From the website:
spaceobs.org...


Forgive me if this is a naive post. Just trying to figure out what this site is.

Originally posted by disastergirl
JPL overview of the Spanish La Sagra opened a new facility under the temporary designation 15LB160. This asteroid is likely to be classified as potentially dangerous, the minimum distance of the intersection of its orbit with the orbit of Earth 0.044 AU, body diameter of about 450 meters. The object has not yet received an official designation, but has already been confirmed by many observatories, including on our own. It is quite possible that this asteroid will enter the top ten near-Earth asteroids with the smallest distance of the perihelion passage of q ~ 0.1 AU! P.S. The asteroid was designated 2011 KE."

@disastergirl; I am not sure which one you are trying to figure out: Elenin or 2011KE.
Neither is any reason to be concerned for potential disaster.

Interesting however that 2011KW is a 450 meter size of rock but only discovered 8 days ago. Next time it will be close to Earth is about May 2021 and then it is 5 times further than now. By now it actually passed right over our North Pole, every second going further away from us. Now it is a very small distance of 11,908,000 km from Earth. At the speed of a 747 Intercontinental flight it would be a trip of 12,240 hours to get there.

The reason this meteor will be listed as Near Earth and Potential Dangerous is that it might possibly pass near our earth again sometime in the future. You can see the Orbit Diagram here, and can change dates to see how it will be in future or has been in past. Data is still limited, so there is an error potential of about 5%. The scary part of all this is actually that IF this thing was to hit Earth, they would only know of it eight days in advance!

ssd.jpl.nasa.gov...

reply to post by Aromaz


Well thank you! That certainly answered all of my questions, thank you for the NASA source as well. Part of my questioning was how accurate that site was as it's in Russian and I can't tell how much merit should be given to it.

Really? Just 8 days? That's interesting. Do you have any sources/info/anything where I can read more about this? Thanks in advance!

reply to post by disastergirl

Forgive me if this is a naive post. Just trying to figure out what this site is.

SpaceObs is the organization that runs the observatory that Elenin discovered the comet with. Yes, he is a real person. You can see him interviewed:


(There is an English translation on the YouTube page.)

The SpaceObs webpage has an English version available; there is a drop down menu on the upper right.

Edit to add: It is a far more reliable source than anything you will find on YouTube. YouTube is infested with hoaxers.

reply to post by DJW001

Edit to add: It is a far more reliable source than anything you will find on YouTube. YouTube is infested with hoaxers.

LOL Thats a laughable statement to claim the mainstream news outlets are a more reliable source? and yet the media have been covering up all the secrets and are protecting the government, not causing a panic with this comet, pretty much the same goes with the unemployment rates.

Originally posted by Agent_USA_Supporter
LOL Thats a laughable statement to claim the mainstream news outlets are a more reliable source?

It's a laughable statement to claim that SpaceObs is a mainastream news outlet. It's a blog, a blog used by the amateur astronomer who discovered the comet, and yes, amateur astronomers are far more reliable sources than youtube.

reply to post by Aromaz


Were you able to find a link where I could read up on this 8 day notice? Still confused about it. Is this something that happens with everything moving in space or just for this particular comet? Additionl info would be greatly appreciated!

reply to post by disastergirl

Were you able to find a link where I could read up on this 8 day notice? Still confused about it. Is this something that happens with everything moving in space or just for this particular comet? Additionl info would be greatly appreciated!

You can keep tabs on potentially hazardous space objects here.

reply to post by disastergirl


The NASA site I gave you the link of has all the factual details of this (and other) asteroids; From date it was first discovered, updates, orbits, closest to sun/earth, periods, etc. Same with other cosmic bodies i.e. comets. This 2011KE is just one of many Near Earth Objects. (NEO). This is the observatory that first discovered it.

www.minorplanets.org...

For more details you can follow many links, but the NASA site has it all. Lower down there are a number of windows you can open. One is "Orbital Elements" in that on the right half is all the statistical details. Third line from top is First observation; Second line how many times the orbit was scanned and calculated and Fourth line was last date for scanned orbit and bottom line was last date/time the orbit was calculated.

In same NASA site you can also find the data files for Elenin.

Sometimes meteors are observed decades before they come close to earth; or even when they will not come close to earth at all. It is all based on some sort of luck, a heck of a lot of hard work, good eyes and the look at the right place on the right time when the right movement takes place against the right background . . .

Basically this is what happens: Most of these objects are too small to really 'see'. Unless they are lit up like a nearby comet. One can mostly observe them as movement against the background. So when an object is say 500 meter big and it moves from right to left as viewed from your location maybe 20 million km away, it is relatively easy to spot. But if the same object is the same size, speed and distance - but it is coming right towards you; it becomes nearly impossible to see that - because you can not observe the movement against the background. Kind of like a white ball travelling towards you from the same white colour background.

Just to make your day more interesting; here is the NASA list of Near Earth Objects, including size, speed, and issues like possible collisions with Earth on a future date. Keep in mind for a real major disaster it will need to be quite a big asteroid; say 500 meters in size at a reasonable speed (Like 15 km /sec), made of material (Like Iron) that will not shatter upon enertering our atmosphere . . . So this table has only two asteroids with potential risk of relative small scale disaster - both are rated on the Torino scale as 1:

TORINO RATE 1 = A routine discovery in which a pass near the Earth is predicted that poses no unusual level of danger. Current calculations show the chance of collision is extremely unlikely with no cause for public attention or public concern. New telescopic observations very likely will lead to re-assignment to Level 0.

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

reply to post by disastergirl


One more interesting site. This is maintained by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). what is interesting here is that they have two Sky-Maps; The one illustrating some of the BIGGER Near Earth Objects like Asteroids and the other give you an idea of the 2011 active Comets (updated today). You will need a very BIG telescope even to see 10% of them.

www.minorplanetcenter.net...